Why the Gold?

[ZapBrannigan]

Re. my use of "chartreuse" I am certain I read somewhere in various "green shirt" threads here, that Theiss called it "apple green." I must say I like the color palette among the characters when Kirk wears green. It was a good thought spoiled by that unpredictable fabric, velour.

It wasn't really the fabric. I was confused by this for a long time:

- The green appears yellow under both natural sunlight and bright studio lights. So it wasn't caused by the spectra of certain lamps.

- The effect is seen in person, so it wasn't "a film stock thing" as William Ware Theiss claimed.

- The effect survived the third season switch from velour to synthetic double-knit fabric.

That just leaves the dye. Theiss bought white fabric for the uniforms and dyed it. Something in the particular lime green dye he used, probably at the molecular level, cause the green-to-yellow effect as the lighting got brighter.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I just had a flashback to an old 80s (or early 90s) sitcom where one of the characters was a Trekkie on his way to a convention and he was wearing a purple TOS tunic. When asked why purple, he replied that that was the color worn by the ship's janitorial staff. Anyone remember what this is from?

It was an episode of "Laverne and Shirley" after the show jumped to the 60s and the characters all moved to LA. IIRC, The character was one of the gals boyfriend, who had a bit part on an episode of "Star Trek."

 

[Green Shirt]

Since our family didn't get color tv till 1975, I didn't know for years that the color appeared yellow onscreen. All I knew was the color was green from the Omega Glory Viewmaster and the pic of Kirk on the early versions of the Enterprise model kit. Its a funny color anyway because the tunics sometimes changed from yellow to green and back again in some episodes of TNG and at times in the NuTrek movies.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Also, if nothing else, the old Lincoln Enterprises catalogs listed the patches--and those catalogs pre-date the Technical Manual.

Is it in there? I always thought Franz Joseph named the Command division, like Plynch says.

It's not addressing uniforms specifically, but this is what TMoST says about divisions (p. 205):

Organizationally, the crew members are assigned to one of the three principal operating divisions: Science, Engineering and Ships Services, and Command.
​

Got it, thanks. We always knew FJ made extensive use of TMoST. And now a little more than I thought.

 

[Green Shirt]

When the insignia patches were first sold by Lincoln, weren't they advertised as the leftovers from the "original" batch actually used on the show? I bought a set in the early 70s, but they were likely reproductions by then. Love the prices BTW, wish I had bought more of the stuff.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Here's a publicity photo (correction: now a still) of Nimoy & Kirk which shows how their uniforms (as well as Nimoy's makeup) were supposed to look like.
http://www.costumecostumecostume.com/KirkSpockShirts.jpg

That's about as slightly green
As I have ever, ever seen
Anything be slightly green.
Too bad about that fabric sheen.

 

[JT Perfecthair]

I understand that fabrics can appear to the eye to be different colors under different lights and that in the studio the supposed green tint of the command shirt looks gold on your tv set. I can measure this effect by how often I arrive at work with socks that are both black to me at home but get to work under the fluorescent lights and one is black and one is definitely navy blue.

Doesn't this effect stop when the material is viewed in natural sunlight? Away from artificial lights and in sunlight, a material has a "true" color. Yet I have seen a variety of publicity photos over the years taken outside with what must be a large number of different cameras with different types of film in them, they all show Kirk in a gold shirt.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Even looking at the pictures that people are using to demonstrate its greenness, it still looks predominantly yellow/gold to me...just with a greenish tint.

By contrast, the green color of the wraparound tunic is pretty obvious.

Whatever the costumer's intent, if it looked yellow/gold on camera, I'd say that's what the color was in the fictitious setting. George Reeves may have worn a brown and gray costume for black and white television, but Superman was always wearing red and blue.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

As I believe action figures to be the bellwether of reality, Kirk's shirt is gold.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

The weird thing is, I've seen the looks-green-on-camera "wraparound" shirt in person and it looked sort of a dull gold.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Any one else have the Joker's hair look orange when viewing the Batman TV show back in the 60s and 70s? A related phenomenon?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I understand that fabrics can appear to the eye to be different colors under different lights and that in the studio the supposed green tint of the command shirt looks gold on your tv set. I can measure this effect by how often I arrive at work with socks that are both black to me at home but get to work under the fluorescent lights and one is black and one is definitely navy blue.

Doesn't this effect stop when the material is viewed in natural sunlight? Away from artificial lights and in sunlight, a material has a "true" color. Yet I have seen a variety of publicity photos over the years taken outside with what must be a large number of different cameras with different types of film in them, they all show Kirk in a gold shirt.

This is different. The shirt dye had two colors in it rather than one "true" color. The green component of the dye reflected in any light, meaning you could see it in low light, but it was a pale shade of green. The yellow component was dormant in low light and became visible (returned a reflection) only in bright light. And in bright light, the yellow component of the dye overpowered the pale green.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Any one else have the Joker's hair look orange when viewing the Batman TV show back in the 60s and 70s? A related phenomenon?

Yes and I don't know.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The last time I saw some Batman episodes, it had been corrected. Somehow Romero's Joker with green hair looked wrong.

 

[plynch]

The last time I saw some Batman episodes, it had been corrected. Somehow Romero's Joker with green hair looked wrong.

In a lot of these pics, it does look brown/orange; must be how the film faded: http://bit.ly/14u1tOS

 

[neoworx]

Even looking at the pictures that people are using to demonstrate its greenness, it still looks predominantly yellow/gold to me...just with a greenish tint.

By contrast, the green color of the wraparound tunic is pretty obvious.

Whatever the costumer's intent, if it looked yellow/gold on camera, I'd say that's what the color was in the fictitious setting. George Reeves may have worn a brown and gray costume for black and white television, but Superman was always wearing red and blue.

Well put. I own a "Phase II" command shirt made by Theiss in 1976 to match the third season color so that they could reuse old uniforms with new and they would look consistent. While it is definitely not a true "gold". neither is it remotely "lime". The problem in defining the color is that it is simply odd. It is not a "pure" color in any way shape or form and any difference in lighting – indoor, outdoor, florescent, incandescent, bright, subdued, etc – shifts its color. But the thing to take away is that it is NEVER truly green, only "green-ish". Chartreuse is the closest descriptor though I would qualify it and call it "gold chartreuse".

Here's what mine looks like under the bright lights I used for the photos, not unlike studio lighting:

There can't be any doubt that the producers knew the shirt filmed primarily as a gold color – they weren't blind. And since every portrayal of the color since the show first aired is "gold" of some type (think Mego action figures) I think that puts it to bed.

Note that there are some colors that simply cannot be accurately photographed due to the fact that film can't record the same spectrum that our eyes can see. Florescent colors, for instance, can't be captured correctly on film. They always look drastically different than the way we see them. The command color is an example of this effect, though not as extreme.

As for Kirk's truly green wraparound, I chalk that up to "he's the captain". Theiss made no effort to make it the same color as the regular command shirts so his intent is clear to me – make the captain stand out.

 

[plynch]

Once I posted a thread or post about why, early on, in preproduction, doing screen tests, they saw the shirts photographed gold . . . why they didn't fix it so they got the green they were after.

People guessed they had too much chartreuse velour to start over. Ok.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Once I posted a thread or post about why, early on, in preproduction, doing screen tests, they saw the shirts photographed gold . . . why they didn't fix it so they got the green they were after.

People guessed they had too much chartreuse velour to start over. Ok.

I think we'd all agree, you can never have too much chartreuse velour.

But that's a great point. They knew about the lime-green dye's weirdness from the time they did costume tests for "The Cage." Carrying on with that dye for "The Corbomite Maneuver" and onward could only be deliberate. They liked its unique quality.

 

[Commishsleer]

I was wondering if anyone here has actually seen one of the command shirts used on set in real-life. Are they on display anywhere?

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Even looking at the pictures that people are using to demonstrate its greenness, it still looks predominantly yellow/gold to me...just with a greenish tint.

By contrast, the green color of the wraparound tunic is pretty obvious.

Whatever the costumer's intent, if it looked yellow/gold on camera, I'd say that's what the color was in the fictitious setting. George Reeves may have worn a brown and gray costume for black and white television, but Superman was always wearing red and blue.

Well put. I own a "Phase II" command shirt made by Theiss in 1976 to match the third season color so that they could reuse old uniforms with new and they would look consistent. While it is definitely not a true "gold". neither is it remotely "lime". The problem in defining the color is that it is simply odd. It is not a "pure" color in any way shape or form and any difference in lighting – indoor, outdoor, florescent, incandescent, bright, subdued, etc – shifts its color. But the thing to take away is that it is NEVER truly green, only "green-ish". Chartreuse is the closest descriptor though I would qualify it and call it "gold chartreuse".

Here's what mine looks like under the bright lights I used for the photos, not unlike studio lighting:

There can't be any doubt that the producers knew the shirt filmed primarily as a gold color – they weren't blind. And since every portrayal of the color since the show first aired is "gold" of some type (think Mego action figures) I think that puts it to bed.

Note that there are some colors that simply cannot be accurately photographed due to the fact that film can't record the same spectrum that our eyes can see. Florescent colors, for instance, can't be captured correctly on film. They always look drastically different than the way we see them. The command color is an example of this effect, though not as extreme.

As for Kirk's truly green wraparound, I chalk that up to "he's the captain". Theiss made no effort to make it the same color as the regular command shirts so his intent is clear to me – make the captain stand out.

Aha! As I said, the action figures are the bellwether of reality!

This reminds me of the early film stocks about 100 years ago that required the actors to wear bizarrely-colored makeup for their faces to photograph with a "natural" look.