Newly Discovered Color Movies Show Herbert Hoover's Softer Side

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Tue May 2, 2017, 03:33 PM - Edit history (3)

Don't hate on Hoover. He was quite the humanitarian. Both parties wanted him to run as their candidate.

If you're ever near West Branch, Iowa, site of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, you would do well to pay the museum a visit.

Newly Discovered Color Movies Show Herbert Hoover’s Softer Side

From Hooverball to White House frolics, you’ve never seen the staid president quite like this

By Erin Blakemore

smithsonian.com
March 23, 2017

“Rigid.” “Icy.” President Herbert Hoover is known for his dour personality and his failure to act decisively when the Great Depression swept the United States. But now newly discovered color home movies show a more relaxed man—one who appears a lot friendlier than you might think.

The footage was found in the archives of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum in West Branch, Iowa, where the 31st president is buried. Previous archivists apparently knew about the film, but weren’t aware that it was shot in Kodacolor, an early color film format introduced in 1928.

In a press statement provided to Smithsonian.com, the museum says that the extent of the home movies was only discovered after audiovisual archivist Lynn Smith obtained a grant to preserve and digitize the film. As The Washington Post’s Michael E. Ruane reports, Kodacolor looks like black-and-white film to the naked eye, so it makes sense that previous archivists would have overlooked it. A library official tells Ruane that the film is thought to be the earliest color footage of both the White House and Hoover.

So what does the film, which will be unveiled in its full length on March 29 at the library, show? Sit back, relax, and enjoy a preview of all seven reels:

Credit: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum

Take a tour of the White House grounds with the help of Alonzo Fields, who served as the White House butler for 21 years and was later memorialized in the 2013 biopic The Butler. Fields shows off the White House grounds and gardens, which were carefully overseen by First Lady Lou Hoover. Keep an eye out for Lou, who makes an appearance in the film, along with her beloved dogs Weegie and Pat.
....

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist. Her work has appeared in publications like The Washington Post, TIME, mental_floss, Popular Science and JSTOR Daily. Learn more at erinblakemore.com.

Read more from this author | Follow @heroinebook

Hoover Family Kodacolor Home Movies

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWYr9BNP0UdmXVvjoyOiSGg

Kodacolor (filmmaking)

In motion pictures, Kodak's Kodacolor brand was associated with an early lenticular (additive color) color motion picture process, first introduced in 1928 for 16mm film. The process was based on the Keller-Dorian system of lenticular color photography.

The process used a special panchromatic black-and-white film stock used with the emulsion away from the lens. The film base in front of the emulsion was embossed with a mass of tiny lenses, the purpose of which was to form small images of a striped filter which was attached to the camera lens. The filter had three colored stripes (red, green and blue-violet); when an exposure was made the varying proportion of each color reflected from the subject passed through the filter and was recorded on the film beneath each of the embossed lenses as areas of strips in groups of three, each strip varying in density according to the received color value (Dufaycolor used similar principles, but had the filter as part of the film itself).

Filming required the camera to be used at f/1.9 only, so that the striped filter worked correctly. The original Kodacolor film required an exposure of about a 1/30 second at f/1.9 in bright sunlight representing a film 'speed' (sensitivity) in modern terms of about 0.5 ISO. The physical movement of the film through the gate (frame-advance) requires additional time. The later Super Sensitive Kodacolor could be used "outdoors in any good photographic light, and even indoors under favourable conditions."

To project the film a projector was required fitted with the Kodacolor Projection Filter, which is similar in appearance the filter fitted to the camera. The lenticular image on the film is transformed into a natural color picture on the screen. As with most color processes involving a lenticular image the pattern intrudes, and there is noticeable light loss.

While Kodacolor was a popular color home movie format, it had several drawbacks. It could not yield multiple copies easily, special film was necessary to shoot with, and the additive image was colorful and clear, but inherently darker than subtractive processes.

Lenticular Kodacolor was phased out after the introduction of 16 mm Kodachrome film in 1935.