Trucolor

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Trucolor was a process used and owned by Consolidated Film Industries division of Republic Pictures. Trucolor was a two-strip (red and green) process based on the earlier work of William Van Doren Kelley's Prizma color process.

Republic used Trucolor mostly for its westerns, through the 1940s and early 1950s. The premiere Trucolor release was Out California Way (1946 with the last film photographed in the process being Spoilers of the Forest (1957). With the advent of Eastmancolor and Ansco color films, which gave better results at a cheaper price, Trucolor was abandoned.

In addition to feature films, Republic commissioned Robert Clampett to make one cartoon, It's a Grand Old Nag. Leonard L. Levinson was commissioned to make 4 animated cartoon travelogues, Sloan Nibley wrote a real travelogue Carnival in Munich, and Lewis Cotlow filmed a feature length Zanzabuku in Africa. John Ford filmed a Korean War documentary in the process This is Korea (1951). Republic made an epic version of the battle of the Alamo, The Last Command where the Mexican uniforms were made in sky blue to look better on the screen.^[1] Republic also made a South Seas adventure Fair Wind to Java (1953) that climaxed with the explosion of Krakatoa. Trucolor went on location to Europe as William Dieterle filmed the life of Richard Wagner in Magic Fire (1956) and Portugal featured in the potboiler Lisbon directed by and starring Ray Milland. However, John Ford refused to film The Quiet Man in Trucolor despite Republic's head Herbert J. Yates insisting on the process.

Trucolor films were shot in bipack, with the two strips of film being sensitized to red and green. Both negatives were processed on duplitized film, much like Trucolor's rival process Cinecolor. Because of its chemical composition, however, Trucolor film fades over time, unlike Cinecolor.