Floor swept by Mr. Pinch at quarter past nine, four films logged forward two reels each since dawn check-in. Closed up under amber lamps dim low across the south-room work-stations as Cordelia finished her last frame of the Brittany picture and stood back to look at it for a long moment without speaking, which is usually her way of saying a thing has come out right.
Eleanor's final reel of The Lighthouse Bride resting on the drying rack, celluloid drinks evening dye through the slow drying hours and we will know tomorrow morning whether the dawn-flesh trial holds in the cooling. Frederick's mountain palette pinned to the consultation wall for the night, his note that the cobalt sits a half-shade too cold against the rock; he will re-mix at dawn.
Pigment reserves inventoried, alizarin running low (orders placed with Pettingill & Co. on Devonshire St.); the south-room west door locked; the heat-lamps damped to a single bulb each so the frames rest warm but not driven. Morning brings new frames and the Quirke supervision rotation begins again at six.
— M. W., closing.
A page from the chromatic-reproduction catalogue circulated to theater circuits east of the Hudson, printed in two-color letterpress on Beacon Hill in March of this year.
To the houses that will project our pictures this season —
When an audience sees color on a moving picture for the first time, something in them changes that they cannot name and we cannot quite name either, except to say that the room is quieter for a moment and then warmer. We have watched it happen in our preview room and we have heard it described back to us by exhibitors from Worcester to Providence. It is not novelty. It is not decoration. It is the picture's second performance, and we hold ourselves to it as we would to any performance.
Every hue on every frame you will project this season was chosen — chosen, and tested, and chosen again — by one of eight artists who came to this work from painting, from porcelain, from stained glass, and from years at the long table. They mix in small batches. They watch each other's swatches at the morning check-in. They argue gently and often about a single shade of amber. They are not "applying color." They are deciding what your audience will feel in the third row, sixth row, balcony, when the lamp passes through the celluloid and arrives at the screen.
If you watch carefully, in the lantern-room scene of The Lighthouse Bride, you will see a warmth in the keeper's daughter's hands that was not there at intake. That warmth was decided by Eleanor Pembroke across nine working hours and three trial palettes. It is a small thing. It is what we do. We are proud to send it to your screen.
With sincerity and the steady hand of the floor —
Margaret Whitmore, Director