Here is a very obscure Grand National Picture filmed in an early 2-color process. 20 years ago, I had the good fortune of owning a 35mm nitrate color print of this film under its original title: "We're in the Legion Now"
Reginald Denny had a long career in silent pictures, talkies and tv. Always the inimitable English gentleman, he plays off the illiterate and bumbling Vince Barnett very well, as a couple of American gangsters on the run wind up in Morocco in the French Foreign Legion. They're in the stockade more than they are out during the story as it unfolds. Barnett appeared in countless films as comic relief in westerns, gangster pictures and comedies.
Since most of the Grand National library dispersed to the four winds in the 1940s, it is unclear if this picture survives in its original color version. Hirlicolor was a play on words using the name of George Hirlman, an executive and producer at the studio. The actual color process is Magnacolor aka Cinecolor, which utilized 2 basic colors to combine to make the picture, unlike Technicolor's later 3-color process. The result is a pleasant warm color tone you would associate with the sun on the desert. Late 1940s 16mm television prints were printed in black & white.
