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25-611: The Woods Theatre was built by theatrical producer Albert H. Woods . He had opened the Eltinge Theatre in New York City to host his Broadway productions, and wanted a similar venue in Chicago for his road companies. The Woods opened on March 11, 1918, with a production of Friendly Enemies . It was designed in a Neo-Gothic style by the firm Marshall and Fox , which also designed such still-extant Chicago structures as

50-462: A memorial service attended by many prominent theater personalities, his remains were cremated. Woods produced a number of bedroom farces , which critics and local authorities often saw as pushing the boundaries of propriety. In several instances Woods encountered legal troubles as a result. In 1909, Woods staged The Girl from Rector's , Paul M. Potter 's adaptation of Loute , a French farce by Pierre Veber . The plot portrays several couples in

75-471: A sex comedy written by Avery Hopwood that featured risque dialog and a strip poker scene. On November 3, 1921, Woods and Hopwood were called to the chambers of William McAdoo , the Chief Magistrate of the New York City's magistrates' court, to respond to complaints about the play. Woods would not make any changes to address the complaints, so McAdoo held a formal hearing and ruled that the play

100-472: A tangle of adulterous affairs, and the play was considered indecent by many critics. Prior to opening on Broadway, preview performances were scheduled in Trenton, New Jersey . After the first matinee, a group of 25 local clergy complained to Trenton police the play was immoral. The police shut the play down and did not permit any further performances. In April 1910, Woods began a production of The Girl with

125-573: A trip to Europe in 1911 he bought the US rights to the world's first full-color feature film , The Miracle . which eventually premiered in New York 1913. Also in 1911 he starting building the Eltinge Theatre on 42nd Street, named after his star, Julian Eltinge . By May 1911 a run of The Fascinating Widow starring Eltinge at the Boston Theatre was expected to have receipts of $ 500,000 by

150-531: The National Register of Historic Places , it was demolished in 1990. The demolition was part of a controversial urban renewal project. Beginning with the demolition of the Garrick Theatre on Randolph, many of Chicago's classic theaters were demolished either because of disuse or disrepair. The Woods was located on the parcel directly northwest of the controversial Block 37 , which once housed

175-749: The Roosevelt and United Artists theaters. The site of the Harris and Selwyn (later Cinestage and Michael Todd, then Dearborn Cinemas) is now occupied by the Goodman Theatre Center. Block 37, which remained vacant until 2005, is southeast of the Goodman site. Movies that held their premieres at the Woods Theatre included: Albert H. Woods Albert Herman Woods (born Aladore Herman ; January 3, 1870 – April 24, 1951)

200-529: The Technicolor three-strip process firmly established itself as the major-studio favorite. About a third of the films are thought to be lost films , with no prints surviving. Some have survived incompletely or only in black-and-white copies made for TV broadcast use in the 1950s. The earliest attempts to produce color films involved either tinting the film broadly with washes or baths of dyes, or painstakingly hand-painting certain areas of each frame of

225-543: The Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz ." When he became successful, Woods continued to emphasize his humble roots and was known for his folksy manner with everyone. He greeted patrons at the Eltinge as "sweetheart". Upon being introduced to King George V , Woods addressed the monarch (who was older than him) as "kid" and took the opportunity to promote one of his productions, declaring it to be "a regular show". Woods

250-664: The Blackstone Theatre (later renamed the Merle Reskin Theatre ) and the Drake Hotel . The ten-story building included the theater at the ground level and offices above. The Woods converted to show movies in 1932. It later became the flagship venue for Essaness Theatres , which moved its headquarters into the building. Starting in the 1950s, the building featured an unusually large marquee facing Dearborn Street. The facade and its marquee can be seen in

275-637: The Sheldon Davis comedy Try and Get It in August 1943, critics expressed hope that it would revive his flagging career, but it closed in less than a week. It was his final production. Although Woods continued to read scripts and attempt to generate interest, he was unable to stage any productions after 1943. He died on April 24, 1951, in his residence at the Hotel Beacon in New York. The once wealthy former producer ended his life bankrupt. After

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300-565: The Whooping Cough , an adaptation of a French farce that features a woman who spreads whooping cough by kissing numerous men. At the urging New York Mayor William Jay Gaynor , the New York City Police Commissioner attempted to suppress the play due to its risqué content. The commissioner contacted the theater's management company and threatened that if the play was not stopped, he would refuse to renew

325-404: The film with transparent dyes. Stencil -based techniques such as Pathéchrome were a labor-saving alternative if many copies of a film had to be colored: each dye was rolled over the whole print using an appropriate stencil to restrict the dye to selected areas of each frame. The Handschiegl color process was a comparable technique. Because transparent dyes did not impact the clarity or detail of

350-439: The image seen on the screen, the result could look rather naturalistic, but the choice of what colors to use and where was made by a person, so they could be very arbitrary and unlike the actual colors. Edward Raymond Turner 's process, tested in 1902, was the first to capture full natural color on motion picture film, but it proved to be mechanically impractical. A simplified two-color version, introduced as Kinemacolor in 1909,

375-531: The parade scene of the 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off . In its later years the quality of the venue declined. In 1982, the management had to pay for medical treatments when a patron was bitten by a rat during a show. By 1988, the Woods had become the last of the Chicago Loop movie houses. It closed on January 8, 1989, after a screening of Hellbound: Hellraiser II . After being considered for entry in

400-429: The prosecution. As the obscenity case proceeded, the city's Commissioner of Licenses threatened to revoke the theater's operating license if the production continued, but a New York state appeals court ruled that he did not have the legal authority to revoke a theater license once it had been granted. Although Woods won the legal proceedings and the play was a hit, it was considered immoral by many critics. Woods

425-485: The theater's operating license. Woods got an injunction from the New York Supreme Court that prevented the authorities from interfering with the show directly, but it did not compel them to renew the license for the theater. Left with no home for his production, Woods was forced to shut it down. In 1921, Woods again encountered problems with New York City censors when he produced The Demi-Virgin ,

450-569: The time it finished. From c1912 he took over the leases of a large number of Berlin theatres including what became the Ufa-Palast am Zoo , to put on 'Kino-Vaudeville' shows (a mix of variety acts imported from the US interspersed with silent films). He was also involved with the American millionaire Joe Goldsoll in the building of the German capital's first free-standing purpose-built cinema,

475-512: Was The Evil That Men Do in 1903. His work on Broadway escalated after the popularity of the touring melodramas declined. Woods had a stable of favorite playwrights, most notably Owen Davis , who he worked with for several years on melodramas such as Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model . When Woods turned to producing regular Broadway shows, he focused on bedroom farces , starting with The Girl from Rector's in 1909. During

500-460: Was a Hungarian-born theatrical producer who spent much of his life in the USA. He produced over 140 plays on Broadway , including some of the most successful shows of the period, sometimes under the name of the production company 'Al Woods Ltd.' . Woods built the Eltinge Theatre on Broadway , named for one of his most successful and profitable stars, the female impersonator Julian Eltinge . Woods

525-427: Was at his peak in the 1920s, producing such hits as Ladies' Night (1920), The Demi-Virgin (1921), The Green Hat (1925), The Shanghai Gesture (1926) ( filmed in 1941 ), and The Trial of Mary Dugan (1927). However, he lost most of his fortune in the early 1930s and never fully recovered. In the 1930s his only major hits were Five Star Final (1930) and Night of January 16th (1935). When Woods staged

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550-665: Was born in Budapest , Hungary to a Jewish family, but his family brought him to the United States as an infant. He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan . As a child he would skip school to go to theatrical shows, where he developed the goal of becoming a producer himself. Woods formed an early partnership with Sam H. Harris and Paddy Sullivan, running tour companies of popular melodramas, starting with The Bowery After Dark . His first Broadway production

575-399: Was obscene, describing it as "coarsely indecent, flagrantly and suggestively immoral, impure in word and action." Woods was placed on bail , and the case was sent to the grand jury for an indictment on a misdemeanor charge of staging an obscene exhibition. The grand jury heard the case on December 23, 1921, but dismissed it that same day, even though it had heard only witnesses favoring

600-430: Was personally condemned by prominent rabbi Stephen S. Wise , who said the involvement of a Jewish producer with "theatrical filth" hurt the reputation of Jews generally. Woods produced over 140 plays on Broadway. List of early color feature films This is a list of early feature-length colour films (including primarily black-and-white films that have one or more color sequences) made up to about 1936, when

625-486: Was successful until 1915, but the special projector it required and its inherent major technical defects contributed to its demise. Technicolor , originally also a two-color process capable of only a limited range of hues, was commercialized in 1922 and soon became the most widely used of the several two-color processes available in the 1920s. Beginning in 1932, Technicolor introduced a new full-color process, " Process 4 ", now commonly called "three-strip Technicolor" because

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