Color Photography
Color photography, both still and movie, has been around for many more years than most Islanders realize. For example, the first Hollywood productions made on location in Hawai‘i, two single-reel films called Hawaiian Love and The Shark God, both dating from 1913, were hand-colored in part.
Natural-color films shot in the Islands arrived only five years later. The first of these was Kilauea—the Hawaiian Volcano, made by the Prizma Color process in 1918. The earliest feature film with a Hawaiian setting to use color was Leathernecking in 1930, although it was actually shot on the Mainland, and mostly in black and white. It was not until 1942 that an all-color feature appeared. This was the Betty Grable-Victor Mature Song of the Islands, filmed in part on the Big Island.
Still photographers were experimenting with color photography and processing at least as early as the 1920s. In January 1924, for example, an Advertiser photographer showed color prints of flowers, a rainbow, and Kaua'i scenery before a meeting of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club.
Local processing of 8mm and 16mm Kodachrome amateur movie film was announced in 1940, followed a decade later by a similar service for 35mm Kodachrome slides. The first camera club devoted exclusively to color shooting, the Hawai‘i Color Pictorialists, flourished from 1946 to 1955.
The first Island television programs, beginning December 1, 1952, were aired in black and white, and color telecasts remained unavailable until May 5, 1957. On that evening, KHVH-TV presented a program of color slides and movies, including a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Although only fifty O‘ahu residents owned color sets at this time, the program was seen by many others in the Hawaiian Village Hotel lobby and the nearby aluminum dome auditorium.