“The Germans Wore Gray, You Wore Blue”: Frank Capra,Casablanca, and the Colorization Controversy of the 1980s

Abstract

Converting Casablanca to color was undoubtedly the last straw for most anti-colorizers. The colorization controversy began in the spring of 1985 when Frank Capra went public with his apparently strong objections over the colorizing of It's a Wonderful Life (1946) by Colorization, Inc., of Toronto, Canada. The roots of the impending hostilities actually reach back to early 1981 when the executive board of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) began actively campaigning for a “creative rights” clause in their ongoing contract negotiations with the Motion Picture Association (MPAA), the major film producers' and distributors' trade association. This inter-industry squabble eventually surfaced, more prominently between 1985 and 1988, and became the subject of Senate hearings, print and electronic news coverage and editorializing,

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