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This color footage was filmed even before movies had sound, and 13 years before a color feature film was released.

George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues."

http://1000words.kodak.com/post/?ID=2982503 -via Nag on the Lake

Previously: 19th Century Color Motion Picture.

The following is an article from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.

Imagine the boy next door trading in his Levi's for fishnet stockings, his all-American sister sporting a sexy French maid's outfit. It's a scene that's played out at movie theaters around the world every Saturday at midnight-all because starving actor/playwright Richard O'Brien needed to pay the rent.

DON'T DREAM IT, BE IT

In the early 1970s, Richard O'Brien had just been fired as a chorus boy in a musical on London's version of Broadway, the West End.With no money and a wife and child to support, and lots of time on his hands, O'Brien penned a bizarre musical about cross-dressing, sex-starved aliens. He called it The Rocky Horror Show. And somehow this weird show actually got produced. It opened at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1973 and was an amazing success; it was even named the best musical of the year.



Shortly after its debut, producer Lou Adler bought the play and moved it across the Atlantic to Los Angeles' Roxy Theater, where it met with critical and audience acclaim. It also caught the eye of filmmakers at 20th Century Fox, who were sure they could transform it into a hit movie. The film version starred newcomers Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, and the singer Meat Loaf. It took eight weeks to shoot and cost $1 million to make. But before the movie was released, the play opened in New York...and flopped.

COLD FEET

Because the play had bombed, 20th Century Fox spent little on publicity for the film, and it played in very few theaters. The movie initially had about as much success as the Broadway show-critics hated it and audiences stayed away in droves. It appeared that The Rocky Horror Picture Show was dead in the water.



But because of the play's early success at the Roxy, the movie did well in Los Angeles, so Adler was convinced that the film just hadn't found its audience. In 1976 he persuaded New York's Waverly Theater, in the heart of Bohemian Greenwich Village, to begin midnight showings. The tactic was tried in a few other select cities across the country as well. The hope was that it would catch on with cult audiences, just as offbeat films like El Topo and George Romero's horror classic Night of the Living Dead had done.

JUST A JUMP TO THE LEFT

Within months, a phenomenon began to take hold. Audiences decided to tear down the invisible wall that separated them from the on-screen action. They weren't content just watching the movie from their seats-they began to dress as their favorite characters and perform along with the film, creating a show within a show. Seeing the movie became an interactive adventure, the Rocky experience was now part movie, part sing-along, part fashion show, and all party. Being in the audience at The Rocky Horror Picture Show now involved shouting lines at the screen, covering up with newspapers during scenes with rain, squirting water pistols to simulate rain in the theater, throwing rice during the wedding sequences, and dancing in the aisles doing the "Time Warp", the film's contagious anthem.

(Image credit: Flickr use José María Mateos)

The Rocky phenomena spread across the United States, giving birth to a midnight movie industry that spanned from major metropolitan areas right through to the straightlaced suburbs of America's heartland.

Almost 30 years after its initial debut in the attic of London's Royal Court Theatre, Rocky still plays every weekend at midnight in dozens of theaters across the United States and around the world. And in November 2000, The Rocky Horror Show returned to Broadway...this time to critical praise and commercial success. It was nominated for several Tony Awards, including best revival.

Launching Pad

Can you picture Russell Crowe in high heels and a black bustier? In the 1980s, the Academy Award-winning star of Gladiator toured Australia and New Zealand singing and dancing through more than 400 performances of The Rocky Horror Show as the cross-dressing Dr. Frank N. Furter.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

A family of giant armored turtles called meiolaniid flourished millions of years ago and was thought to have gone extinct 50,000 years ago. But now evidence from an archaeological dig on the island of Vanuatu shows a species called Meiolania damelipi survived until about 3,000 years ago.

The shell of one early meiolaniid species, known from fossils recovered in South America and named Stupendemys for its size, was 11 feet long and seven feet wide. The more modern Meiolania platyceps, found in Australia and Melanesia, had a relatively small five-foot-diameter shell, and weighed an estimated half-ton. All had armored club tails and horned heads.

(One species is even named Ninjemys, in honor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, though M. platyceps looks much more like Super Mario Brothers 3-vintage Bowser, the King Koopa).

According to the fossil record, Meiolania damelipi flourished 3,000 years ago and were extinct 200 years later, possibly because of human hunting. The size of the newly-discovered species is not specified in the article. Pictured is Meiolania platyceps. Link -via Unique Daily

(Image credit: Australian National Museum)

Eight-year-old Teresa Juniso mailed off $12 to the Wil Wheaton fan club and never received anything she was promised. Twenty-one years later, she wrote about the experience. That made Wheaton look like a bad guy, even though Juniso meant it as a humorous post. But he made it right by sending the promised fan club items and a letter from himself as the 15-year-old Star Trek: TNG actor to the 8-year old Teresa. So the story has a happy ending after all. See the letter and a transcript at Letters of Note. Link -via Codename: Beryllium

We don't usually go see martial arts movies because of the plot, but there are a few that stretch credibility to its utmost limits. Cracked investigated these movies. Take, for example, Heart of the Dragon, one of two movies in this list about mentally-challenged martial arts experts.

...when we first meet Danny, he's goaded into ordering all kinds of food from an expensive restaurant for his friends, none of which he can pay for. He's embarrassed and wants to go home. This is a mentally challenged man who's been taken advantage of by people he thought he could trust. Tragic.

At least, it would be if the staff at the restaurant didn't respond by instantly kung fu-ing the ass of a clearly disabled man, complete with wacky sound effects--every punch to his stomach sounds like Moe beating up on Curly.

Link

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Cyriak Harris made an animation for the BBC speculating as to what goes through Simon Cowell's mind as he stands in judgment of everyday people chasing their dreams of performing fame. -via Arbroath, who wonders what goes through Cyriak's mind.

Star Wars fans now have a way to find love, or at least a compatible Jedi -in a hurry. Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando hosted three days of speed dating sessions for conventioneers, the first ever speed dating event just for Star Wars fans.

The ages of the speed-dating participants at Celebration V ranged from 18 to 54, but most appeared to be in their mid-20s. The women were, by and large, attractive; most wore street clothes. Of the men, no more than three were openly carrying lightsabers, and in general, they looked less like Jabba the Hutt and more like Luke Skywalker than might have been expected.

"The women who show up are looking for someone to make a connection with," Glitch explained. "Most of the guys are just like, 'I get to talk to a girl! Fabulous!' "

Some attendee really hit it off, and made trips to the Star Wars Commitment Chapel, conveniently provided by the convention planners. Link -via Fark

(Image credit: Red Huber/orlando Sentinel)

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Who can negotiate a maze faster, a human or a rat? Another round of lunacy from Tom Scott. -via b3ta

Just in case you were overwhelmed by all the great things we linked to this week, here's a reminder of the "Neatorama only" posts that you won't find elsewhere, and we certainly don't want you to overlook!

Last Saturday was a special occasion that Jill Harness commemorated by posting Happy Birthday To Steve Martin. She also gave us some fun facts about Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle.

In the Movies: Elevator Shafts by Johnny Cat gave us a taste of the many movie scenes that confront our fear of falling.

We looked at the pretty side of geometry and topology in Math Art.

After her youngest turned one, Tiffany looked back at birthday parties for babies in the post Crazy Things I Have Done While Partying With One-Year-Olds at NeatoBambino. She also wrote about Pediatricians And Their Questions.

Monday was the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, so we had an appropriate article from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader called The Resurrection of Elvis.

We learned the stories behind The Best Duck Songs in the History of the Universe, from mental_floss magazine. And saw the videos.

Have you ever felt your small car was inadequate among all those big vehicles? From Steven Johnson's Museum of Possibilities, here are some ideas on Looking Beyond the SUV – Literally.

Over at the Art Blog, our newest gallery is from painter and illustrator Michal Karmazon. Check it out!

Be sure to check out The Question of the Day at NeatoGeek for some lively discussions and thought-provoking comments. You can even suggest a question for future posts!

And David Israel brought us a special treat: an interview with Lev Yilmaz, creator of the video series Tales of Mere Existence, along with plenty of videos.

A Cthulhu-inspired guitar inspired many of you in the NeatoGeek Caption Contest. A t-shirt from the NeatoShop goes to Thom, who came up with a winning caption: The tentacles all go to eleven.

This was the second week for Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy from comic artist Stephen McRanie. Noah gave us a winning entry: he filled in the bubble with a picture -almost all of you will get the reference!

Congratulations to kantoboy and manders, who both won prizes from the NeatoShop in this week's Decipher the Doodle contest at NeatoBambino! See their entries at the post, as well as the real explanation of the drawing.

In case you haven't noticed, our NeatoBlogs page (the button is at the top of this page) has a new look. It gives an overview of the sites under the Neatorama umbrella and links to the most recent posts as well. Meanwhile, we are working on bringing you even more ideas to try out.

Have a great weekend, y'all!

In this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, you'll be confronted by quotes from Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He didn't come up with all of them himself -some are movie lines, and some are things he said as governor of California, or while he ran for the office. Can you tell which is which? I surprised myself by scoring 80%. Link

We fear piranhas and make jokes about them, but they have their place in the ecosystem. National Geographic sets us straight with some facts about the fish.

They’re good parents—at least initially. A mom may lay 600 eggs at once, dad promptly fertilizes them, and both parents guard the brood once it hatches. (Later, they might eat some of their young. But let’s not focus on the negative.)

Despite their scary looks, they’re actually cowards. Okay, that’s a bit unfair, but studies have shown that rather than congregating to hunt cooperatively, as was always believed, they join forces because they’re afraid of being eaten. They’re especially likely to band together—in schools as large as 1,000 fish— at times of year when predators such as caimans and dolphins are regularly present. Apparently, they’ve gotten the message (evolutionarily speaking) that there’s safety in numbers even if you yourself have really sharp teeth.

That's just a sample of the things you might not know about piranhas. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

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What are these people in Moscow lined up for? Jobs? Cash? No, about 30,000 people lined up for the opportunity to eat at the first McDonalds to open in the city, in 1990. -via Buzzfeed

The Journal of Irreproducible Results held a contest to find the funniest graph ever. The winner is All Theories Proven with One Graph by Don Grace of Florence, Alabama. See a larger version at the magazine site. Link -via Everlasting Blort

A song lyric says: "When all you've got is nothing, there's a lot to go around." Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley conducted experiments that show poor people tend to be more generous than rich people.

In one experiment in particular, led by doctoral student, Paul Piff and his researchers, participants completed a questionnaire reporting their socioeconomic status  and a few days later were provided with $10 to share anonymously. The findings concluded the more generous of the income brackets were on the lower-income scale. A recent national survey
reiterates the results, revealing lower-income people give more of their hard-earned money to charity than the wealthy.

At a time when the richest one percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, Piff and his colleagues' findings are more than a little timely. "Our data suggests that an ironic and self-perpetuating dynamic may in part explain this trend," the study researchers write, to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "Whereas lower-class individuals may give more of their resources away, upper-class individuals may tend to preserve and hold onto their wealth. This differential pattern of giving versus saving among upper--and lower-- class people could serve to exacerbate economic inequality in society."

Did anyone else think, "duh!" when they read the last line of that quote? Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Kathryn Harper)

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Police raided a farm in Christina Lake, British Columbia to find that black bears had been enlisted to scare intruders away from the premises. Two people were arrested for running a marijuana plantation. The ten or so bears did not pose a threat to police.

"They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.

In Canada, feeding bears is illegal as it leads to bears associating food with humans and increases the likelihood of bears coming into towns and cities to look for food.

One has to wonder whether the bears were guarding the marijuana or helping themselves to it. Link -via Arbroath