Television|"The d**k Van d**e Show" in Color? See It on Sunday

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Photo Mary tyler moore and d**k van d**e star in The d**k Van d**e Show. Two colorized episodes including Thats My Boy??, above will be broadcast on CBS on Sunday. Credit CBS

On Sunday, colorization is coming to one of televisions great comedies, The d**k Van d**e Show, and perhaps grousing will be heard in some quarters from holdouts who still object to mucking with black-and-white classics. Me, Im looking forward to it. Ive seen these episodes many times before, but the color at least based on the excerpts Ive seen wakes them up.

CBS is devoting an hour of prime time to two of the seriess finest installments, and it would be hard to come up with a better pair of episodes from any 1960s sitcom. Thats My Boy??, the Season 3 premiere in September 1963, is a tour de force for Mr. Van d**e, whose Rob Petrie character relates a story about the time he convinced himself that he and Laura Mary Tyler Moores character had brought the wrong baby home from the hospital. Coast to Coast Big Mouth, the Season 5 opener two years later, gives Ms. Moore the spotlight: Laura, appearing on a nationally televised quiz show, is tricked into revealing that Robs boss, the vain Alan Brady (star of the fictional Alan Brady Show), wears a toupee.

The epic comic confrontation in Coast to Coast Big Mouth in which Ms. Moore tries to stammer out an apology as Carl Reiners Alan Brady, surrounded by his now useless toupees, rages simply looks more alive when Lauras hat and dress are deep red. Both episodes were written by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, and their scripts have a timelessness that colorization complements. That, said Mr. Reiner, who created the series, was by design.

Assiduously when doing that show, I stayed away from slang, he said. I had a feeling this show was going to last a long time. I didnt want to hear anything that dates it.

It also helps that colorization is much more sophisticated than it once was. When the technique first came into wide use in the 1980s, the results were often hard to look at unnatural and distracting and the outrage was loud and widespread. By the time CBS began applying colorization to I Love Lucy a few years ago, the complaints had faded considerably, though purists still voice their displeasure occasionally under YouTube excerpts. Stanton Rutledge, who oversaw the colorization for the d**k Van d**e episodes, said digital tools and other improvements have made a big difference in quality and thus in acceptance.

For this project, he said he began by listening for any color references in the dialogue when Alan mocked Robs striped tie in the toupee episode, did he mention a color? (He didnt.) He then developed concepts for the various scenes that quiz show is loud; Alans office, subdued and then ran them by the ultimate authorities, Mr. Reiner and Mr. Van d**e.

When Id send them color stills of the design I was working on, they were like, Yes; thats exactly what it looked like, he said. Then a team of artists would apply those color schemes to high-definition versions of the source film.

I spent more time on Marys outfits because I grew up being in love with her as a kid, Mr. Rutledge confessed. In that apology scene, he was unable to determine the original color of Lauras dress, so he could have made it navy blue, or deep green, or purple. The red dress just popped out to me more than some of the others, he said. Not a cherry red, but it was I cant even put a name to it, but it looked good on her.

The dress is indeed striking, but not too striking. The ultimate goal, Mr. Rutledge said, is that you can watch the show and not even think about it being colorized.

Colorization was once so inflammatory a subject that Congress addressed it in the National Film Preservation Act of 1988. There are still vigorous discussions, especially on social media, but they are less about putting the genie back in the bottle and more about the hows and whys.

It is becoming more accepted in a lot of applications, said Dana Keller, who has a business colorizing still photographs, History in Color. The tools are better, and so are the artists, he said.

They are using their skills to eliminate the distraction of colorization as being an obvious alteration, he said in an email interview, and as a result, bring these historical scenes to life with a natural realism that hopefully connects the viewer to the past in a new way.

He also suggested that while tinkering with film or photography in which an artist chose to work in black and white is understandably a sensitive issue, colorizing something that was black and white out of practical necessity (like a rapidly produced sitcom) is less of a flash point.

I think the risk of offending is a bit lower, he said. On the other hand, depending on who you ask, some people can view a colorized historical photo as a blatant misrepresentation of history or deliberate violation of a historical record. But, clearly, you cant please everybody, no matter how well done a colorization is.

Mr. Reiner said it actually became possible for The d**k Van d**e Show to switch to color during its five-season run, but he stuck with black and white for that most basic of reasons.

We realized it would cost like $16,000 a show, he said, and we would never have gotten profits from the series.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/arts/television/the-d**k-van-d**e-show-in-color-see-it-on-sunday.html