Strange Birds

In this tour of the Catalina Bird Park, Frank Eastman names the birds on display, while Marjorie Beebe and Luis Alberni make snappy remarks.

It's shot in Sennettcolor, a two-strip color process that here yields some very nice results showing off the birds' plumage. The real star of the show is a parrot with an extensive vocabulary and singing repertoire.

The Catalina Bird Park, sometimes known as the Catalina Aviaries, was a free attraction in the town of Avalon. It boasted the largest collection of birds in the world. It covered eight acres and cost $400,000 to build, a gift of the Wrigleys. It closed in 1966.

"Strange Birds" is a documentary short made by Mack Sennett for Educational Pictures. It's unusual in that they used an early form of color, 'Sennett Color', a two-color process typical of the era (similar to Cinecolor and Two-Color Technicolor). What I mean by two-color is that unlike later three-color processes (which give a full color picture), the two-color processes result in an odd color range--with orange-red and green-blue being combined to make a crude version of color.

As far as the film goes, it consists of three folks looking at birds at the newly opened California Aviaries Bird Park on Catalina Island. And, as you see the birds, the trio make sarcastic comments, much like the style used in "MSTK3000". Some will no doubt not hate this...but I sure did. Mostly their comments aren't particularly funny and I wish they'd just showed the birds with little, if any, comment.

Overall, while the color restoration looks pretty nice for a two-color process, the content itself is tough to listen to....and makes you long for the days when Sennett made silents!