B&W Seasons of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie on DVD — Colored Versions or Urban Legend? (1 Viewer)

[Arthur Powell]

Don't forget Orson Welles comment about colorization: "Tell Mr. Turner to keep his goddamn Crayolas away from Citizen Kane!"

PS - I hope your reference to Drums Along The Mohawk was meant to illustrate the ignorance of the customer. 'Drums' was always a 3-strip Technicolor movie.

I've encountered several people (one PhD in fact) who have sworn up and down to me that both Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were colorized. One even tried telling me that the first time he saw Oz it was in black and white. When I asked him if that viewing on a B&W TV, he said yes but didn't seem to get the contradiction.

 

[Arthur Powell]

If colorization will not 'bring' an audience, then I wonder exactly who is watching all those highly-rated I Love Lucy colorized specials that CBS airs every year in prime time? Surely, not the b&w purists. I watched the first one out of curiosity but it looked fake to me, so I never bothered to set my recorder whenever a new special came on.
And just for the record, I'm not a fan of colorization myself. As I said in an earlier post, I prefer to watch Bewitched in b&w and I find the colorization distracting and I hated the abundant use of pastels.
I was just trying to keep an open mind and see things from both sides of the spectrum, but this topic seems the same as arguing about politics and religion. lol

I think that those colorized Lucy and Dick Van Dyke specials are probably bring in some vintage TV fans as well as some people who are just curious to see the color results. I remember reading that Fox was touting back in the 1980s the high ratings for the then newly colorized Miracle on 34th Street and how those ratings were much higher than those for the airings of the standard B&W version over the past several years. Granted, I'm definitely seeing the issue with hindsight, but those higher ratings were brought about because of people curious to see how the film would play in color and not necessarily an indictment against the black and white version.

 

[MartinP.]

I've been hearing both sides of this discussion for many years now. There is one vital thing that the pro-colorization crowd seems to miss time and time again.

TV shows and films that were produced in Black and White used different lighting techniques, different make-up techniques, sometimes even the choice of materials/fabrics for costumes, not to mention all the work that went into the set designs. This includes the paints used on the set walls or wallpaper. Yes, these things were seen in the 'real world' in color but on film they were in Black and White and a lot of work went into every aspect of the picture we the audience saw. Colorization distorts that if not destroys it. Shadows and subtle shading gets lost. Most of the time the colorized picture looks flat, like a painting. In fact, that's what colorization looks like to me. A painting. I simply cannot understand how this flat painted look is more appealing than the original Black and White picture.

I took a tour of the Warner studios back in the 1970's and a guy who had painted backdrops and did set design for many Warner films and TV (including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) was asked if they painted the background murals any differently for a b&w production than for color and he said NO they did not.

I'm sure there are examples of this off and on, but nothing is absolute.

As for this:

Shadows and subtle shading gets lost.

It's gotten lost in the use of nitrate film to safer film stocks to digitalization of b&w films, too, but don't let that worry you.

 

[MartinP.]

Don't forget Orson Welles comment about colorization: "Tell Mr. Turner to keep his goddamn Crayolas away from Citizen Kane!"

Don't forget that when Topper was first colorized Hal Roach as well as Cary Grant were quite enthusiastic about it.

PS - I hope your reference to Drums Along The Mohawk was meant to illustrate the ignorance of the customer. 'Drums' was always a 3-strip Technicolor movie.

It was meant to show how a vocal campaign to demonize colorization in its infancy was affecting people in various ways.

Although several silent films had the hand-painted color treatment and no one seemed to mind that at the time.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I've encountered several people (one PhD in fact) who have sworn up and down to me that both Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were colorized. One even tried telling me that the first time he saw Oz it was in black and white. When I asked him if that viewing on a B&W TV, he said yes but didn't seem to get the contradiction.

I hope that wasn't the guy with the PhD....

 

[Arthur Powell]

I hope that wasn't the guy with the PhD....

No - that was my high school gym instructor!

 

[darkrock17]

That reminds me of the time a girl that that was in one of my film classes at my local community college swore up and down that Psycho was a Universal film and not Paramount. I told her Paramount released it originally and then the rights transferred to Universal a few years later. But, she wouldn't have any of my explanation, so finally after this went on for a bit I finally proved t her that it was. I showed her on YouTube that it was in fact a Paramount film. After that she stayed quite for a bit until she was at again with yet another movie.

We'll to make a long story short

It doesn't matter what you tell someone, some people are too admit/thick-headed to be proved that they are in fact wrong.

 

[MartinP.]

^^^
...as Ed McMahon might say: "You are correct, Sir!"

 

[LCD22]

Here you go

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/co...-creeks-bewitched-full-series-release.344996/

We went through this a couple years back, and had people turning off color, pulling caps from the old Columbia House VHSs, and the final determination is...

It didn't really matter, they all look the same, no matter what source was used.

That's not really an answer as to what was used, but it is an answer as to whether it's incorrect.

Read through the thread, though. It's interesting.

"Interesting" is the right word, even the black & white/color debate in this thread.

I was aware of the prior thread. Thanks, Robert, for providing the link.

Larry Tate, would you know where I can see the Japanese extra on Bewitched you spoke of here?

 

[Lecagr]

I have Sony's black and white DVD sets of Bewitched seasons 1 and 2, and I Dream Of Jeannie season 1. While these DVD sets might be the colorized ones with the color turned off, it's not an issue for me, I just want to have the episodes in black and white as they were originally seen, no colorized junk for me.

 

[MartinP.]

^^^

It's called "choice."

 

[AndrewCrossett]

I'm currently watching season 1 of I Dream of Jeannie, in the original B&W. I have to say that it would have been much better in color. It's set in Florida, and shows set in sunny tropical places generally look pretty depressing in black and white. (SEE ALSO: Season 1 of Gilligan's Island). But I always want to see a show the way it was originally presented.

 

[Lecagr]

With the colorful tropical island setting, I think Gilligan's Island should have been filmed in color from the beginning. The first season in black and white looks pretty drab.

However, with I Dream Of Jeannie, the first season looks good in black and white because it fits the mood of the show, during the first season the episodes were more subdued, it was more of a fantasy/romantic comedy. After it switched to color in season 2, the show started becoming more zany, eventually almost resembling a live action cartoon, and the color episodes certainly fit that mood.

The first two seasons of Bewitched in black and white are fine too, then for season 3 in 1966-67 it was ready for the switch to color.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Not only that, but the image is now zoomed to fill the 16x9 frame. Those old colorized episodes didn't look fantastic in standard def 4x3, but they really look grungy zoomed in on that already blurry, low bandwidth station.

i was ecstatic when i found out that Dish was carrying METV that was until i saw it, its so pixelated and blurry i can't watch it thats not to mention it's cropped 4x3

 

[AndyMcKinney]

i was ecstatic when i found out that Dish was carrying METV that was until i saw it, its so pixelated and blurry i can't watch it thats not to mention it's cropped 4x3

Sorry you had bad luck with MeTV on Dish. Is that some sort of 'national' feed they're running, or one of your local stations? If the former (i.e. the same feed for all Dish subscribers nationwide), that is truly tragic, as it's 720p and 16:9 (for commercials/promos and shows that are presented bigger than 4:3) in my local market.

Of course, everything on Dish is overcompressed (at least, it was when I had Dish), perhaps moreso for the local stations. They probably didn't allow much bandwidth for the digital subchannels. For most subscribers, I don't think they get many of their local subchannels via satellite or cable (certainly not all of them).

 

[AndrewCrossett]

However, with I Dream Of Jeannie, the first season looks good in black and white because it fits the mood of the show, during the first season the episodes were more subdued, it was more of a fantasy/romantic comedy. After it switched to color in season 2, the show started becoming more zany, eventually almost resembling a live action cartoon, and the color episodes certainly fit that mood.

The same thing happened with Lost in Space. The early B&W episodes made an attempt to tell a serious story and had much less of the wackiness of the later episodes. I thought maybe it was because their sets and props looked too cheesy in color to be taken seriously... but Star Trek managed it alright. (Though even it got goofier in its final season.)

 

[JQuintana]

i was ecstatic when i found out that Dish was carrying METV that was until i saw it, its so pixelated and blurry i can't watch it thats not to mention it's cropped 4x3

Bewitched is still on AntennaTV channel and it looks pretty good overall. I record it to my Tivo Roamio.

 

[Harry-N]

I think that there may be another factor involved as to which shows are OK to colorize and which aren't. Sitcoms like BEWITCHED and JEANNIE and MUNSTERS and ADDAMS and LUCY and GILLIGAN and ANDY are all just that - situation comedies. They're meant to be lightweight entertainment and to make people laugh. Adding color to them doesn't seem too egregious to many due to their general non-seriousness.

Shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE or THE OUTER LIMITS that tackled heavier issues would seem to me to be among the shows that shouldn't be tampered with. Their black-and-whiteness were actually a part of the effort in their story-telling. That's not meant as a put-down of the artistic folks who lit and photographed the black & white sitcoms - they all executed their crafts with the proper aplomb, but it just seems to me that dramas have a little more "weight" than the sitcoms of the era. One of the best examples of that is THE FUGITIVE. It's first three seasons in black & white are all considered the best of the bunch, but when the show actually went to color for its final season, it lost that edge that the black & white shows had.

If the younger among us cannot stand watching something in black & white, then let them miss out. Perhaps someday they'll grow out of their stubbornness and actually learn that it's not so horrible. Many of us have changed in our ways over the years. I suspect that the young will too.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

If the younger among us cannot stand watching something in black & white, then let them miss out. Perhaps someday they'll grow out of their stubbornness and actually learn that it's not so horrible. Many of us have changed in our ways over the years. I suspect that the young will too.

Honestly, and I hate to acknowledge that this is what's going to happen, they won't change. The shows and films will just be vaulted and forgotten.

I mean, we're at the point where you see snobby yutes who say "Ugh, it's not in HD? I can't watch this crap!". If they won't even watch something because of a tiny bit of resolution that literally makes no difference whatsoever to the program, black and white will be a major dealbreaker.

Or, worse, you'll see what's happening with The Twilight Zone, and just remake (ruin) it for a new audience.

 

[bmasters9]

Shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE or THE OUTER LIMITS that tackled heavier issues would seem to me to be among the shows that shouldn't be tampered with. Their black-and-whiteness were actually a part of the effort in their story-telling.

I take it that such is true about not only those shows, but any vintage B/W crime/detective/police series or similar.