This Day in History - 3 May 2013

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: May 3, 1913

GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN FILES Kinemacolor Theatre's stained glass sign turned up in a Vancouver antique shop in 2002 and was then sold to someone for their home theatre.

   Many people think the first colour movie was Gone With The Wind in 1939. Others believe it was the Wizard of Oz, which came out the same year. In fact, they were showing colour movies on Granville Street on May 3, 1913, at the Kinemacolor Theatre.

   Kinemacolor was a primitive colour film process that was all the rage in Europe just before the First World War. It was invented by English cinematographer George Albert Smith, who ran film through a projector at 32 frames per second, twice the normal speed, and then filtered it through red- and green-coloured lenses to produce "the world's wonders in nature's colours"

   Smith patented his invention in 1906, and the first Kinemacolor film, A Visit to the Seaside, was unveiled to the masses in London and New York in 1909. Four years later, Canada's first Kinemacolor Theatre opened at 603 Granville, at Dunsmuir.

   Movies were quite short in 1913, hence the Kinemacolor theatre bill 100 years ago featured several films. Some featured King George and members of the Royal Family reviewing troops, cadets and boy scouts in England. Another film showed a "week of fun and frolic" as Panamanians celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal.

   That Skating Carnival was billed as "an English comedy of the burlesque type." Fifty Miles From Tombstone was touted as a "gripping western story combining strong dramatic action, pathos, and an irresistible vein of delight­ful comedy: "There was even a "Kinemacomedy concert" called Music By Proxy, which is some what perplexing, given that mov­ies were silent at the time. But the Kinemacolor theatre had its own nine-piece orchestra.

   Unfortunately, the process never really caught on. In 1914, the Kinemacolor theatre closed and the Colonial theatre took its place.

   The Colonial lasted until 1972, when it was torn down to make way for the Pacific Centre Mall/ Block 42 development downtown.

   Before the Colonial was demol­ished, somebody salvaged a giant stained-glass sign from the Kinemacolor theatre that had managed to survive the decades. It wound up in a Keg and even­tually at Architectural Antiques on Main Street, which sold it to someone who was building a home theatre.

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun