Colorization Issue May Be Decided by Committee Today

Lanky Lauren Bacall doesn’t exactly fit the image of a Washington lobbyist, but she played the part without a hitch last month. As about two dozen lawmakers picked over a buffet lunch at the Capitol Hill home of Rep. Bob Mrazek (D-N.Y.), Bacall made a pitch for congressional action to prevent owners of classic black-and-white films from colorizing them.

“It’s an obscenity that they’re colorizing those films,” Bacall said in an interview after the lunch. “Great films and classic films should be protected.”

That’s far from the first time Washington lawmakers have listened to Hollywood stars decry colorization. Ever since the “Maltese Falcon” was transformed to color two years ago, big name directors and actors have trekked to Capitol Hill asking lawmakers to put a halt to the process. Bacall’s predecessors included Jimmy Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Woody Allen, Ginger Rogers, Sydney Pollack, Fred Zinnemann, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, among others.

But on the other side of the debate, lawmakers are hearing from similarly familiar--if less glamorous--names. Jack Valenti, the powerful president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, broadcasting mogul Ted Turner and producer David Brown are just three of them. In addition, forces opposing restrictions on colorization--including studios, broadcasters and video dealers--have hired former members of Congress and other well-known, influential Washington lobbyists to plead their case.

Both sides’ efforts are expected to be put to a final test today, when a Senate-House conference committee votes on a proposal to form a National Film Preservation Board that could discourage both colorization and substantial editing of movies for TV and videocassettes.

The proposal caught opponents by surprise when a House committee voted to include it in an appropriations bill that primarily funds national parks and energy projects. The House-Senate committee vote today could kill the film board proposal, or assure its passage through Congress.

Congress’ vote comes just a week after Ted Turner announced his latest colorized movie: “Casablanca,” one of Hollywood’s most popular classics. “Casablanca” in color will air on Turner’s SuperStation TBS in November.

The months of debate leading up to this vote have been a wrenching time for Hollywood, causing sharp rifts between the artists who make movies and the business executives who own them.

“There have been similar disputes in Hollywood,” recalls Roger L. Mayer, president of Turner Entertainment Co. and for many years the man in charge of MGM’s 3,500-film library. “But nothing quite as violent as this.” (Mayer recalled that some directors balked at CinemaScope when that process was developed in the 1950s.)

At one point during the House battle in June, Valenti said he lost his stomach for opposing Hollywood’s creative community. Knowing he couldn’t attract enough votes from a key committee and facing a bruising battle on the House floor, Valenti agreed not to lobby against the legislation--for the time being. (Later, after the House vote, he publicly voiced his opposition to the proposal.)

“I was sick of looking like I was opposing Jimmy Stewart,” Valenti said in a recent interview. “I love Jimmy Stewart. I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt ungainly, ill at ease.”

The fight over colorization “was a family quarrel,” added Valenti, a man accustomed to legislative battles with other industries, not entertainers. “It’s totally inappropriate for people in our industry to quarrel in public.”

Valenti hopes today’s congressional action will bring the bitter conflict to an end. But proponents of the legislation, particularly the Directors Guild of America, view the bill as just one step toward much broader government action to protect artists’ “moral rights” to control the creative direction of their products.

Under the proposed legislation, a government-funded National Film Preservation Board--to be comprised of representatives from the film industry--would designate up to 25 movies a year as “national treasures.” If any of these films were colorized, or substantially edited for TV, they would have to be labeled and would be prevented from carrying the board’s seal designating them as classics.

As the legislation is currently worded, any film edited to fit television’s smaller format would fall under those restrictions.

Opponents of the film board proposal say it would inject unnecessary government intrusion into the creative process. “You would have a group deciding which films qualify as classics,” said Turner Entertainment’s Mayer. “A classic is not something that can be decided by a majority vote.”

Mayer added that the process inevitably will become politicized, with film owners lobbying for their movies to obtain the national registry seal. “You’ve got a group of people appointed politically who will decide whose picture gets to be made a classic this year,” he said.

“That’s a straw man,” responded Glenn Gumpel, executive director of the Directors Guild of America. “This is not a government body. It is made up of people intimately involved in the industry.”

Gumpel added that the directors guild would prefer that there be no limit on the number of films that the board could designate as classics.

But the disagreement between the two sides runs much deeper than the controversy over creating a film board. There are fundamental questions at stake: Is a film a form of art as sacred as the “Mona Lisa”? If so, who is the creator? The director? The writers? Or, as some argue, the studio moguls who put it all together?

Turner, who owns the MGM film library, has stated repeatedly he has the right to do whatever he wants with his movies. Other less inflammatory supporters of colorization point out that they aren’t harming the original film. Rather, they say, they are merely providing an alternative to viewers--and making classic films accessible to audiences who otherwise would not watch black-and-white films.

Because the process is so new, it is difficult to gauge the long-term audience draw of colorized films. According to data provided by John von Soosten, programming director at Katz TV Group in New York, which acts as a sales representative and program consultant to local TV stations, films do get an initial audience boost after being colorized.

“Miracle on 34th Street,” one of the few colorized films to be syndicated nationally, reached between 4.3 million and 8 million homes when the black-and-white version was shown on separate occasions during the holiday season in the 1980s. Those numbers jumped to 13.4 million in 1985, when it was first shown in color, but dropped back down to about 8.7 million last Christmas.

According to Turner Entertainment, the black-and-white “Miracle” brought in about $30,000 a year in revenues to the MGM library during the past two decades. In the two years after it was colorized, it brought in $350,000.

“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the 1942 musical starring James Cagney was watched in about 5 million homes nationally when it was shown in color the first time in February, 1987, according to Von Soosten. That compares to an audience the previous year of about 3.5 million homes and about 4.1 million in 1984, when the black-and-white version was shown.

In Los Angeles, at least one colorized film did worse than its black-and-white version. When a colorized “Maltese Falcon” aired in February, 1987, on KTLA-TV Channel 5, its ratings were half of what the black-and-white classic garnered in 1985. Both aired at 8 p.m.

Some TV station officials say the ratings potential of colorized films is overrated. Don Searle, research director for KCOP-TV Channel 13 in Los Angeles, said that early colorized films drew larger audiences because of their novelty.

That first flush of interest, he said, is wearing off. “We don’t assume that they are going to have better ratings (by showing the colorized version),” Searle said.

Still, said Von Soosten, syndicators push the colorized versions with their TV station customers rather than the black-and-white copies. “It has more cache,” he said, adding that syndicators can charge a premium above the extra cost of producing a colorized film.

Movie directors, however, say that consumer tastes are beside the point in the debate over colorization and other forms of editing. They contend that films should not be altered to fit consumer tastes any more than paintings, statues and other works of art should.

“The artistic process is not a democratic process,” said Elliot Silverstein, who has led the guild’s fight against colorization. “In fact, it’s a very tyrannical process. . . . Consumer rights are not interchangeable with writers’ and directors’ rights.”

Film directors and stars have been the most effective messengers of that argument on Capitol Hill. New York’s Rep. Mrazek, who first introduced the film board legislation last spring, became interested in the issue after he met Fred Zinnemann, director of the classic “High Noon.”

Mrazek is a film buff, and “High Noon” is one of his favorites. In the months after Zinnemann convinced him to enlist in the anti-colorization cause, Mrazek has hosted half-a-dozen lunches and dinners at his home--giving key lawmakers a chance to mingle with Hollywood’s legends.

Those sessions, recalls Tom Barry, Mrazek’s administrative assistant, were packed--despite short notice and hefty social demands already facing members of Congress. By the time members of the House rules and appropriations committees were faced with a vote on the issue in June, most of them had met with stars such as Jimmy Stewart and Burt Lancaster at Mrazek’s house. Opponents of colorization purposely sought out senior entertainers--the industry’s “living legends,” as Barry put it--to plead their case.

“Many members of Congress are in their 50s or so,” said Barry. “They grew up seeing these people on the silver screen. They bring a great deal of credibility to the cause.”