The Wizard of Oz Kansas scenes modification question

In The Wizard Of Oz when it was originally shown in theaters the Kansas farm scenes were not shown in Black and White, but rather in Sepia Tone (as can be seen on the current DVD/Blu-Ray/4K releases).

According to IMDB these scenes were changed to be shown in Black and White starting with the 1949 re-release.

Here's an example from a circa 1985 VHS release of the modified Black and White footage:



This modification was carried over to all Home Video releases (and TV airings) of the movie until the 1989 "50th Anniversary" VHS/laserdisc release where the Kansas scenes were restored to their proper Sepia Tones look as they were originally intended to be scene.

My questions are:

1. Why did they ever change it from Sepia Tones to Black and White in the first place? Was this a mistake or a deliberate choice made by somebody?

2. Why did this carry over to all the Home Video releases for so many years? Did they use old re-release movie prints as sources for the Home Video releases?

I'm just glad the change was corrected because the Kansas scenes really do look better in Sepia tones.

 

So I’m guessing here. The movie wasn’t a big success in its original release, so perhaps the powers that be felt justified in tinkering with it, and that they felt going from B&W to color was more dramatic than going from sepia to color. And I’m guessing that for the initial home video releases, they wanted to release the version that people were most familiar with, and that was the B&W. I remember the first time I saw the sepia version, I thought they had tinted it, because I always remembered it as being B&W.

 

You answered your question already.

The Kansas part is supposed to be sepia toned.

Everything after was a careless or lazy mistake.

 

But then it would have gone from black and white, to sepia, and then color since the "going through the door" scene was shot in color with everything on the set colored in sepia.

 

Ha - good catch. And I do remember pausing that part of the movie and saying - hey that’s not really B&W.

 

You can make a creative argument that "pure B&W" is not sepia, and what was in the negative was B&W. The sepia was added in the release prints, which were made in the old Technicolor building in which I'm sitting right at this moment.

For the 4K and 2K digital scans, they used the safety YCM separation negatives made in the early 1950s, because the original nitrate negs were already beginning to fall apart. From what I was told, a combination of Tech IB prints and YCM separation negatives were used (as many as 6 copies) just to put together the best individual shots possible and create a single good looking digital copy. Some original 1940s Technicolor IB prints did survive, and the staff at Warner MPI did screen them and make notes to match the image as much as humanly possible. In general, Tech prints do not work very well for digital scanning, because they're too dark and crushed for home video.

I actually don't agree. I think the sepia in the video is too heavy handed and too much. I think something more subtle would have been better, like a mild tint, but this is purely a creative decision. Nobody's alive to vote on how it looks, at least nobody who was there 80 years ago and made the decisions. Only the ghosts are left. (Insiders told me that no 2 prints looked exactly alike, so it's kind of a moving target.)

BTW, as a side note, in the 1990s I worked on an AFI "Top 100 Best films" TV special. When we got to the Wizard of Oz clip, we had the scene where Dorothy walks through her living room and opens the door to reveal Oz in color. I spent about an hour creating what was essentially a visual effect mask so that the room around her was in true B&W, but what we saw revealed inside the door was completely in color. I like to believe this was the effect that Victor Fleming (and the other uncredited directors) intended, but it wasn't possible in 1939. But this was just a brief montage for the TV show, not the entire film. The supervising producer laughed when I showed it to him and he agreed it was actually a fairly cool bit.

There's always the question of, "do we make it look good for today, or do we make the film look exactly as it was in the theater in its original release?" To me, there isn't an absolute answer: we have to use good judgment in mastering and go with what looks best. But we try not to go too far -- the object isn't to make it look like a flawless 2021 CGI movie. Would I go with the color mask on a new release? Probably not, because George Feltenstein at WB/MGM is a stickler for keeping things historically accurate. I also argue, "the moment a motion picture is on a TV screen, it already looks different than it would as a projected print in a theater." But people are beginning to forget what that looked like, because it's so rare these days. We do tend to fix a lot of things that were impossible to fix all the way through the 1990s, simply because we can. Still, we try to use restraint and not polish the life out of the image. (You can see similar arguments about the upcoming Let It Be release, where there are heavy debates all over the net on grain reduction, sharpening, the 1.78 framing, and so on.)

 

The intent was for the Kansas parts to be toned to sepia. This can be seen in the shot where Dorothy opens the door, which was shot in Technicolor. The continuous Technicolor shot starts in sepia, with a double for Garland dressed in a sepia toned dress, the double steps out of the frame, then Garland in color steps in to enter the Technicolor Oz. This gives a Technicolor reference for the intended sepia toning.

One continuous Technicolor shot from 0:37 - 0:48 in this clip:

 

Remember paying 250 bucks for that laserdisc boxed set.

 

For "The Ultimate Oz" I assume?

LaserDisc Database - Wizard of Oz, The: The Ultimate Oz -The Definitive Collector's Edition [ML103990]

$250 seems like a bit too much to me, but on the other hand that does look like a really nice set with some excellent bonus features and goodies.

 

That's it. I still have it. Tons of audio session tracks--probably the most fascinating aspect. I haven't fired up either of my Laserdisc players in a while!
The one aspect that still beats bluray---fast forward for the CAV format, moves fluidly and stops on a dime(frame).

 

That's awesome that you still have it (and two working laserdisc players!). If I'd spent $250 on that set I know I'd keep it, too!

 

I do wish that continuous opening shot of Oz didn't have the close up of Garland cut into it [0:49 - 0:56], as I feel it interposes with the graceful flow of that mesmeric Technicolor camera shot
and the awe-inspiring imagery.

 

This is a digital restoration, so whatever you see is not exactly Technicolor. I think it's good, but it's not quite the same.

 

The other night on "Wheel Of Fortune" Pat Sajack mentioned (after a "Wizard Of Oz" related puzzle) that some of the scenes were filmed in this very studio. (He mentioned the scene with the trees, which may include the scene and song involving the trees that was cut from the movie?)

 

As previously mentioned, the first reel(?) of Oz is sepia toned to hide the transition to Technicolor, a trick lost when MGM abandoned dye transfer for Metrocolor a.k.a. Eastman direct contact printing.