EDITHE BEUTLER, BEAUTIFYING HAWAII WITH COLOR

Cook and Harned’s biography of an artistic pioneer offers glimpses into old Hollywood, Hawaii, and the original method for coloring photographs.

Before the invention of color photography, Edithe Beutler was among the artists who would painstakingly paint over black-and-white images to give them vibrancy and life (“she transformed the images into a different kind of artwork, and she did so with talent, delicacy, and intuition”). Inspired by this methodical and highly artistic process, the authors trace the life of the colorist responsible for striking images of the South Pacific. With little to go on, they have been able to largely reconstruct the life of Beutler (known as “Lovey” to her family). She was born in California in 1892; Beutler’s failed first marriage to a charismatic magician would leave her divorced with two children to support, struggling to find work in San Francisco. It was in this period that she pioneered working as a colorist, opening her first studio and eventually moving on to Hollywood, where she worked with First National Pictures as her daughter Sally simultaneously found fame as a silent film star. Changing times and a tumultuous relationship with her glamorous daughter would lead Edithe to begin working with Kodak and relocate to Honolulu, where she collaborated with Hawaii’s premier photographer, Frank Warren. The authors have intelligently arranged Beutler’s arresting images on the pages, highlighting the depth and beauty of her techniques. The chapters are enriched by fascinating details from the silent film era, a bygone Honolulu, and exotic travels across the world. Many of these textual details come from Beutler’s celebrity daughter or her eccentric husbands rather than Beutler herself. Despite the ample discussions of her technique and the authors’ clear admiration for Beutler as an early 20th-century female artist and entrepreneur (she opened her own color art shop after Warren’s death), she too often feels overshadowed by her daughter Sally, failing to stand out on the page like the wonderful images she created.  

While the text may lack focus, this biography captures a visionary artist’s eye for color.