[78-L] BIG news for Jolson fans from Warner Home Video

[Harold Aherne]

According to the press release posted at the Home Theater Forum, "Mammy" will
indeed contain its Technicolor sequences (which were rediscovered only about 8 years
ago; UCLA unveiled its restoration of the film in 2002). Here's a review of the restored 
version originally posted on alt.movies.silent:
 
"A magnificent restoration, and if you’ve seen prints of this before as I have, well… 
you’ve simply never seen the film before!  All picture and sound elements of the 
film have been vastly upgraded, revealing (for the first time) just how lovely the 
photography is.   The Technicolor footage is composed of two segments… 
an entire reel mid-way through the film (the minstrel show performance during 
which Jolson accidentally shoots [Lowell] Sherman) and then, oddly, the closing 
three or four minutes of the film.  How strange (yet delightful!) to see Jolson in 
Technicolor in blackface!  While the quality of the Technicolor is far better than 
we usually see (on par with the "Li Po Li" number in SHOW OF SHOWS) some 
of the footage was either missing or damaged and needed to be momentarily 
replaced with sepia tinted footage from the B&W print in much the same way 
Marilyn Miller’s "Wild Rose" number was handled in the restored version of SALLY.
The addition of Technicolor makes "MAMMY" something of an event… so 
tremendously different from the rather tired looking muddy print we’re used to 
seeing.  In addition, the print also included the film’s Overture and Exit Music discs."
 
However, I've never heard anything about Technicolor appearing in "Big Boy". Mordaunt
Hall's NYT review (13 Sep 1930) makes no mention of any colour, and he generally noted
such things (on the very same date he discussed the colour scene in MGM's "Call of 
the Flesh" starring Ramon Novarro).
 
There is a chance that WB may package the Jolson films together and offer them at 
a discount...I bought their package of 7 silents for $70 (purchased separately they would
have cost $140). They also have a set of 5 WB musicals with Dick Powell and/or Ruby 
Keeler available for half the price that the individual discs would usually cost (the titles 
are, for the record, Flirtation Walk; Happiness Ahead; Shipmates Forever; Colleen; 
and Ready, Willing and Able (the latter one has the famous number where Ruby Keeler 
and Lee Dixon tap dance on the keys of a giant typewriter).
 
-Harold