Tonight at 7 PM Northwest Chicago Film Society kicks off its first repertory series in more than a year at The Auditorium at Northeastern Illinois University (3701 West Bryn Mawr Avenue). The main attraction this evening is Follow Thru, a lesser-known musical from 1930 that’s screening from a recently restored 35-millimeter print. Likely one of the few musicals ever made about golf (and also one of the raciest—it’s a pre-Code production in the best sense), Follow Thru also has the distinction of being among the first feature films produced in Technicolor. In 1930 the format was still something of a work in progress—it would be another few years before movies started getting made in the “three-strip” process, which captured a wider range of colors than early Technicolor did. The “two-strip” process on display in Follow Thru is still rather vibrant, and the filmmakers take full advantage of it during a musical number set in a vaudeville version of hell.
- Nancy Carroll in Follow Thru
You say that the studios didn’t master Technicolor by 1930. What were some of the last bugs that needed to be worked out of the process before then?
The people who developed the process had the goal of creating a satisfactory caucasian flesh tone, which you achieve better with a mix of green and red. The third color, which gave you your yellows and blues, wasn’t necessary for getting that flesh tone. Pretty much they built the system for that purpose, and then all the other colors sort of fell out where they would.
