Home processed Dufaycolor 6x6 cm transparency, c.1956

Dufaycolor is an early French and British additive color photographic film process for motion pictures and stills photography. It was based on a four-color screen photographic process invented in 1908 by Frenchman Louis Dufay. Dufaycolor worked on the same principles as the Autochrome process, but achieved its result using a slightly different method.^[1]

How it worked[link]

The film base was dyed blue, printed with a mosaic using a resistive greasy ink and bleached. The resulting spaces were then dyed green. The process was repeated at an angle, the new spaces being bleached and dyed red, forming a mosaic of color filters consisting of a mesh of red, green and blue lines, at approximately one million color elements per square inch, known as a reseau.^[2] When exposed to light through the reseau, the film's emulsion was exposed to a single color of light. Thus the emulsion behind each color element recorded the tones for each primary color.^[3]

Upon projection, the reseau served to filter the white projected light, so that the colors of the photograph corresponded to those in the recorded scene; for example, red values were only shown in red. The same principle applied to green and blue components.

Development[link]

In 1926, the Dufaycolor process was purchased by British paper manufacturing firm Spicers. The firm then funded research to turn Dufaycolor into a workable color motion picture film process. In 1932, Spicers finally released Dufaycolor as a motion picture process.^[4]

Use in motion pictures[link]

Dufaycolor was used in only two British-made feature films; Radio Parade of 1935 (1934) for two sequences, and Sons of the Sea (1939), an all-color film directed by Maurice Elvey.^[4] Dufaycolor was also used in some short films; Len Lye, for instance, used Dufaycolor for his short films Kaleidoscope (1935), A Colour Box (1935), and Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1940).

Although less expensive than Technicolor, Dufaycolor was still expensive in comparison to black-and-white film. As color became more common in motion pictures, Dufaycolor was superseded by technologically superior processes, such as Technicolor and Kodachrome. Dufaycolor remained the only successfully implemented additive film stock for motion pictures until Polaroid designed a system using similar principles in the 1970s.^[3]

See also[link]

• Color motion picture film
• List of color film systems
• List of film formats
• Gasparcolor
• Early Color Feature Filmography

References[link]

External links[link]

• Color Photography - Dufaycolor, a 1938 article on the process.
• Dufaycolor - The Spectacle of Reality and British National Cinema, a recent article on the process and the history of its use.

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Alberta Hunter (April 1, 1895 – October 17, 1984)^[1] was an American blues singer, songwriter, and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. In the 1950s, she retired from performing and entered the medical field, only to successfully resume her singing career in her 1980s.

1910s – 1940s[link]

Born in Memphis,^[1] she left home while still in her early teens and settled in Chicago, Illinois.^[2] There, she peeled potatoes by day and hounded club owners by night, determined to land a singing job. Her persistence paid off, and Hunter began a climb through some of the city's lowest dives to a headlining job at its most prestigious venue for black entertainers, the Dreamland ballroom. She had a five-year association with the Dreamland, beginning in 1917, and her salary rose to $35 a week.^[3]

She first toured Europe in 1917, performing in Paris and London. The Europeans treated her as an artist, showing her respect and even reverence, which made a great impression on her.^[3]

Her career as singer and songwriter flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, and she appeared in clubs and on stage in musicals in both New York and London. The songs she wrote include the critically acclaimed "Downhearted Blues" (1922). She recorded several records with Perry Bradford from 1922 to 1927.

Hunter recorded prolifically during the 1920s, starting with sessions for Black Swan in 1921, Paramount in 1922–1924, Gennett in 1924, OKeh in 1925–1926, Victor in 1927 and Columbia in 1929.

Hunter wrote "Downhearted Blues" while recording for Ink Williams at Paramount Records, but she received only $368 in royalties. Williams secretly sold the recording rights to Columbia Records, in a deal giving the royalties to Williams. The song became a big hit for Columbia, with Bessie Smith as the vocalist. Hunter learned what Williams had done and stopped recording for him.^[3]

In 1928, Hunter played "Queenie" opposite Paul Robeson in the first London production of Show Boat at Drury Lane. She subsequently performed in nightclubs throughout Europe and appeared for the 1934 winter season with Jack Jackson's society orchestra at London's Dorchester Hotel. One of her recordings with Jackson is Miss Otis Regrets (she is unable to Lunch Today).^[4] While at the Dorchester, she made several HMV recordings with the orchestra and appeared in Radio Parade of 1935 (1934),^[4] the first British theatrical film to feature the short-lived Dufaycolor, but only Hunter's segment was in color. She spent the late 1930s fulfilling engagements on both sides of the Atlantic and the early 1940s performing at home. In 1944, she took a U.S.O. troupe to Casablanca and continued entertaining troops in both theatres of war for the duration of World War II and into the early postwar period.^[4] In the 1950s, she led U.S.O. troupes in Korea, but her mother's death in 1954 led her to her seek a radical career change. She prudently reduced her age, "invented" a high school diploma, and enrolled in nursing school, embarking on what was apparently a fulfilling career in healthcare.

1970s[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Hunter was working at New York's Goldwater Memorial Hospital in 1961 when record producer Chris Albertson asked her to break an 11 year absence from the recording studio. The result was her participation (four songs) on a Prestige Bluesville Records album, entitled Songs We Taught Your Mother. The following month, Albertson recorded her again, this time for the Riverside Records label, reuniting her with Lil Armstrong and Lovie Austin, both of whom she had performed with in the 1920s. Hunter enjoyed these outings, but had no plans to return to singing. She was prepared to devote the rest of her life to nursing, but the hospital retired her in 1977, when they believed her to have reached retirement age (she was aged over 80).

Bored by inactivity, Hunter decided to resume her singing career, because she "never felt better." In 1978, at the suggestion of Charles Bourgeois, restaurateur Barney Josephson offered Hunter a limited engagement at his Greenwich Village club, The Cookery. She accepted and a two-week gig proved a smash when the comeback garnered generous media attention and people started flocking into The Cookery.^{[citation needed]}

Impressed with the attention paid her by the press, John Hammond signed Hunter to Columbia Records. He had not previously shown interest in Hunter, but he had been a close associate of Barney Josephson decades earlier, when the latter ran the Café Society Uptown and Downtown clubs. Her Columbia albums, The Glory of Alberta Hunter, Amtrak Blues, (where she sang the Jazz classic "The Darktown Strutters' Ball"), and Look For the Silver Lining, did not do as well as expected, but sales were nevertheless healthy. There were also numerous television appearances, including on To Tell The Truth (in which panelist Kitty Carlisle had to recuse herself, the two having known each other in Hunter's heyday). There was also a walk-on role in Remember My Name, a film produced by film director Robert Altman, for which he commissioned her to write and to perform the soundtrack music. As capacity audiences continued to fill The Cookery nightly, concert offers came from Brazil to Berlin, and there was an invitation for her to sing at the White House. At first, she turned it down, because, she explained, "they wanted me there on my day off," but the White House amended its schedule to suit the veteran artist. During that time, there was also a visit from former First Lady turned book editor Jackie Onassis, who wanted to sign her up for an autobiography but was unhappy with the co-author assigned to the project. The book was eventually done for another publisher, with the help of writer Frank Taylor.

The comeback lasted six years, and Hunter toured in Europe and South America, made more television appearances, and enjoyed her renewed recording career as well as the fact that record catalogs now once again contained her old recordings, going back to her 1921 debut on the Black Swan label.

Personal life[link]

Hunter's life was documented in Alberta Hunter: My Castle's Rockin' (1998), a documentary written by Chris Albertson and narrated by pianist Billy Taylor, and in Cookin' at the Cookery, a biographical musical by Marion J. Caffey that has toured the United States in recent years with Ernestine Jackson as Hunter.

Hunter came from a difficult background. Her father left when she was a child and to support the family Hunter’s mother worked as a servant to a whorehouse in Memphis. Although she married again in 1906, Hunter was not happy with her new family. Hunter left for Chicago around the age of eleven, in the hopes of becoming a paid singer; she had heard that it paid ten dollars an hour. Instead of finding a job as a singer she had to earn money by working at a boardinghouse that paid six dollars a week as well as room and board. Hunter's mother left Memphis and moved in with her soon afterwards.^[5]

Hunter was a lesbian, though she kept her sexuality relatively private. She began a relationship with Lottie Tyler while living in Harlem, and Tyler traveled to France with Hunter in August 1927. Though their relationship later ended, the two remained friends until Tyler's death.^[6]

Hunter finally got her break when she moved to New York City. She performed with Bricktop and Louis Armstrong. She continued to perform until shortly before her death in October 1984. She is buried in the Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum, Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York (Elmwood section; plot 1411).^[7]

Hunter was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011, while her album Amtrak Blues had been previously honored in 2009.^[8]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• 1977: Remember My Name (Columbia)
• 1978: Amtrak Blues (Columbia)
• 1981: The Glory of Alberta Hunter (Columbia)
• 1982: Look for the Silver Lining (Columbia)

Live album[link]

• 2001: Downhearted Blues: Live at the Cookery (Varese)

Collaborative albums[link]

• 1961: Chicago: The Living Legends (Riverside) (with Lovie Austin's Blues Serenaders)
• 1961: Songs We Taught Your Mother (with Victoria Spivey and Lucille Hegamin) (Bluesville/Original Blues Classics)

Compilation[link]

• 1996: Complete Recorded Works Vols. I – V (Document)

Filmography[link]

• 1991: Jazz at the Smithsonian (Polygram)
• 2001: My Castle's Rockin' (VIEW)^[9]
• 2005: Jazz Masters Series: Alberta Hunter (Shanachie)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Alberta Hunter at the Internet Movie Database
• Alberta Hunter: My Castle's Rockin' at the Internet Movie Database
• Hunter biography and discography at Redhotjazz.com

Len Lye, born Leonard Charles Huia Lye (5 July 1901 - 15 May 1980), was a Christchurch, New Zealand-born artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives such as the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950, much of his work went to New Zealand after his death, where it is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.

Career[link]

As a student, Lye became convinced that motion could be part of the language of art, leading him to early (and now lost) experiments with kinetic sculpture, as well as a desire to make film. Lye was also one of the first Pākehā artists to appreciate the art of Māori, Australian Aboriginal, Pacific Island and African cultures, and this had great influence on his work. In the early 1920s Lye travelled widely in the South Pacific. He spent extended periods in Australia and Samoa, where he was expelled by the New Zealand colonial administration for living within an indigenous community.

Working his way as a coal trimmer aboard a steam ship, Lye moved to London in 1926. There he joined the Seven and Five Society, exhibited in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition and began to make experimental films. Following his first animated film Tusalava, Lye began to make films in association with the British General Post Office, for the GPO Film Unit. His 1935 film A Colour Box, an advertisement for "cheaper parcel post", was the first direct film screened to a general audience. It was made by painting vibrant abstract patterns on the film itself, synchronizing them to a popular dance tune by Don Baretto and His Cuban Orchestra. A panel of animation experts convened in 2005 by the Annecy film festival put this film among the top ten most significant works in the history of animation (his later film Free Radicals was also in the top 50).

Lye also worked for the GPO Film Unit's successor, the Crown Film Unit producing wartime information films, such as Musical Poster Number One. On the basis of this work, Lye was later offered work for The March of Time newsreel in New York. Leaving his family in England, Lye moved to New York in 1943.

In Free Radicals he used black film stock and scratched designs into the emulsion. The result was a dancing pattern of flashing lines and marks, as dramatic as lightning in the night sky. In 2008, this film was added to the United States National Film Registry.^[1]

Lye continued to experiment with the possibilities of direct film-making to the end of his life. In various films he used a range of dyes, stencils, air-brushes, felt tip pens, stamps, combs and surgical instruments, to create images and textures on celluloid. In Color Cry, he employed the "photogram" method combined with various stencils and fabrics to create abstract patterns. It is a 16mm direct film featuring a searing soundtrack by the blues singer Sonny Terry.

As a writer, Len Lye produced a body of work exploring his theory of IHN (Individual Happiness Now). He also wrote a large number of letters and poems. He was a friend of Dylan Thomas, and of Laura Riding and Robert Graves (their Seizin Press published No Trouble, a book drawn from Lye's letters to them, his mother, and others, in 1930). The NZEPC (New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre) website contains a selection of Lye's writings, which are just as surprising and experimental as his work in other media. One of his theories was that artists attempt to reproduce themselves in their works, which he exposited in an essay complete with visual examples.

A 45m Wind Wand on the New Plymouth waterfront

Lye was also an important kinetic sculptor and what he referred to as "Tangibles". He saw film and kinetic sculpture as aspects of the same "art of motion", which he theorised in a highly original way in his essays (collected in the book Figures of Motion).

Many of his kinetic works can be found at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, Taranaki including a 45-metre high Wind Wand near the sea. The Water Whirler, designed by Lye but never realised in his lifetime, was installed on Wellington's waterfront in 2006. [1] His "Tangibles" were shown at MOMA in New York in 1961 and are now found worldwide. In 1977, Len Lye returned to his homeland to oversee the first New Zealand exhibition of his work at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Shortly before his death in 1980, Lye and his supporters established the Len Lye Foundation, to which he gave his work.^[2] The Gallery is the repository for much of this collection, employing a full-time curator to ensure its preservation and appropriate exhibition.

Lye was a maverick, never fitting any of the usual art historical labels. Although he did not become a household name, his work was familiar to many film-makers and kinetic sculptors - he was something of an "artist's artist", and his innovations have had an international influence. He is also remembered for his colourful personality, amazing clothes, and highly unorthodox lecturing style (he taught at New York University for three years).

In 2010 a retrospective of his work was held at Ikon, Birmingham UK.

Personal life[link]

Lye was married twice. His first wife was Jane (Florence Winifred) Thompson with whom he had two children:

• Bix Lye, also a sculptor, who lives and works in Williamsburg, New York
• Yancy Ning Lou Lye (born 20 May 1940, Chiswick, London)

In Las Vegas in May 1948, Lye married his second wife, Annette "Ann" Zeiss (born 1910, Minnesota) on the same day he obtained a divorce from Jane. Ann was formerly married to Tommy Hindle, a British journalist.

He died in Warwick, New York.

Len Lye Collection[link]

The Len Lye Collection and Archive consists of all non-film works in Lye’s possession at the time of his death in 1980, as well as several items that have been gifted or acquired by the Foundation since. This body of work is extended by Len Lye works in the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. The New Zealand Film Archive is the repository of Lye’s film prints that are owned by the Len Lye Foundation, and viewing prints are also in the Collection at the Govett-Brewster.

The relational database of the Len Lye Collection and Archive consists of 3,772 catalogue entries with an estimated total of 18,000 items. An inventory of the collection includes:

• 24 paintings
• 52 unique photograms
• 10 textile works
• 14 rare books
• Approximately 1,000 photographs, many documenting his sculpture
• 33 16mm film prints
• 12 linear metres of archival material: 120 boxes containing approximately 1,200 individual folders
• 16 exhibition-standard kinetic sculptures
• 530 audio tapes
• Approximately 11,000 slides
• 1,400 ‘doodles’, drawings and prints
• Various materials from the artist’s studio
• Approximately 14 kinetic sculptures to be reconstructed or developed

Further information[link]

There are two documentaries about Lye: Flip and Two Twisters and Doodlin', and a DVD of Lye's talks illustrated with slides: Len Lye Talks about Art.

Filmography[link]

• Tusalava (1929)
• The Peanut Vendor (1933)
• Kaleidoscope (1935) in Dufaycolor
• A Colour Box (1935) in Dufaycolor
• Rainbow Dance (1936) in Gasparcolor
• The Birth of The Robot (1936) in Gasparcolor
• Trade Tattoo (1937) in Technicolor
• Full Fathom Five (1937)
• Colour Flight (1937) in Gasparcolor
• North or Northwest? (N or NW?) (1938)
• Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1939) in Dufaycolor
• Musical Poster Number One (1940) in Technicolor
• When the Pie Was Opened (1941)
• Kill or Be Killed (1942)
• Color Cry (1952)
• All Soul's Carnival (1957)
• Rhythm (1957)
• The Sign of Plexiglass (collaboration) (1959)
• Free Radicals (1958, revised 1979)
• Particles in Space (1979)
• Tal Farlow (completed posthumously, 1980)

References[link]

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Auckland City Art Gallery (1980) Len Lye: A personal mythology (catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition of his paintings, steel-motion contributions and films). ISBN 0-86463-100-6
• Bouhours, Jean Michel and Horrocks, Roger (ed) (2000) Len Lye, Paris, Edition Centre Pompidou. ISBN 2-84426-034-9
• Curnow, Wystan and Horrocks, Roger (1984) Figures of Motion: Len Lye, Selected Writings', Oxford University Press/Auckland University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-19-647996-7
• Horrocks, Roger (2002) Len Lye: A Biography, Auckland, Auckland Univ Press. ISBN 1-86940-247-2
• Horrocks, Roger (ed) (2002) Happy Moments: Text and Images By Len Lye, Auckland, The Holloway Press. ISBN 0-9582313-3-8
• Kashmere, Brett (2007) "Len Lye" in Senses of Cinema (Revised text of an entry first published in The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, 2006)
• Len Lye in Te Ara online encyclopedia
• Horrocks, Roger (2009) Art that Moves: The Work of Len Lye, Auckland, Auckland Univ Press. ISBN 978-1-86940-422-2
• Horrocks, Roger (ed) (2009) Body English: Text and Images By Len Lye, Auckland, The Holloway Press. ISBN 0-9582313-9-7

External links[link]

• Len Lye at the Internet Movie Database
• Len Lye at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Biography, Work listings and more
• Leonard Charles Huia Lye biography from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
• Work by Len Lye in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
• Works, on New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre website
• Listen to two Len Lye MP3s on thewire.co.uk
• Len Lye's Water Whirler, Wellington, New Zealand
• Information on Len Lye's Wind Wand
• Len Lye's work in the collection of Te Papa
• "Len Lye: The Body Electric; Ikon Gallery, Burmingham, UK"

James Pliny Whitney
The Hon. Sir James Pliny Whitney
6th Premier of Ontario
In office February 8, 1905 – September 25, 1914
Preceded by	George William Ross
Succeeded by	William Howard Hearst
Member of the Legislative Assembly
In office January 31, 1888 – September 25, 1914[1]
Preceded by	Theodore F. Chamberlain
Succeeded by	Irwin Foster Hilliard
Constituency	Dundas
Personal details
Born	(1843-10-02)October 2, 1843 Williamsburgh Township, Upper Canada
Died	September 25, 1914(1914-09-25) (aged 70) Toronto, Ontario
Political party	Ontario Conservative Party
Spouse(s)	Alice Park[2]
Religion	Anglican

Sir James Pliny Whitney, KCMG (October 2, 1843 – September 25, 1914) was a politician in the Canadian province of Ontario. Whitney was a lawyer in eastern Ontario, Conservative member for Dundas from 1888 to 1914, and the sixth Premier of Ontario from 1905 to 1914.

Early life[link]

Whitney was born in Williamsburgh Township in 1843 and attended Cornwall Grammar School before articling the law office of John Sandfield Macdonald in the 1860s, but did not resume his legal studies until 1871. He was called to the bar in 1875.

Early political career[link]

Whitney became leader of the party in 1896 taking it from a narrow, bigoted rump into a forward-looking party determined to build the province.

Premier of Ontario[link]

In the 1905 election, he led the Tories to victory for the first time in 33 years by defeating the Liberal government of George William Ross.

Statue of Sir James Whitney by Hamilton MacCarthy, Queen's Park, Toronto.

Whitney's government laid the basis for Ontario's industrial development by creating the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, with Sir Adam Beck as its chairman and driving force. His government also passed the Workmen's Compensation Act and enacted temperance legislation. He also appeased the anti-Catholic, anti-French-Canadian sentiments of supporters of the Orange Order in his caucus (such as George Howard Ferguson) by passing Regulation 17. This regulation banned the teaching of French in schools beyond the first three years of school. The measure inflamed French-Canadian opinion across Canada, particularly in Quebec, and split the country as it entered World War I.

Death[link]

Whitney died in office shortly after winning the 1914 election.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ontario Plaques - Sir James Pliny Whitney

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