First motion pictures went talkie, then everybody got on board the color train, leaving those black and white gems to gather dust because later generations found the lack of color "uncool".
This video shows a side-by-side comparison of the black and white original versus the colorized version of "Smile Darn Ya, Smile" Here's how this Merry Melodies short got it's color:
...in 1992, Ted Turner paid to colorized a batch of black and white Merrie Melodies from 1931-33. This was back before computers were employed to add colors, so the cartoons were shipped to South Korea, traced frame-by-frame (well, almost), new cels were inked and painted and shot under the camera – creating a “color” cartoon from a “worthless” black & white print.
I can't believe they would go through so much trouble just to add color, and the end result looks a bit too wonky to me. But what do you guys think-with digital colorization available now, should we colorize black and white films or not?
--via Cartoon Brew
The idea is ridiculous, of course. The scene composition is so much different between the two formats. It would ruin Citizen Kane and all of Kurosawa's early work, for example.