Kodachrome and the Rise of 16mm Professional Film Production in America, 1938–1950

This essay argues for the importance of Kodachrome in stimulating direct 16mm professional film production in the late prewar and early postwar periods. Introduced for amateurs in 1935, Kodachrome became viable for professional work in 1938, when Kodak developed a successful means of duplicating 16mm Kodachrome film for release prints. Despite the traditional preference for 35mm in professional production—even for films destined primarily for 16mm nontheatrical screening—16mm Kodachrome emerged as an attractive and economical alternative for color at a time when fully successful 35mm color derived only from the very costly and cumbersome three-strip Technicolor process.