Career
Originally a catalog model, then an art student, Kalmus made sure that costumes, sets and lighting were adjusted for the camera"s sensitivities. She was generally regarded as a nuisance, but her services were contractually part of Technicolor"s services. In her attempts to keep colors from being rendered improperly onscreen, she was accused of going to the other extreme of mildness.
She wrote: "A super-abundance of color is unnatural, and has a most unpleasant effect not only upon the eye itself, but upon the mind as well." She recommended "the judicious use of neutrals" as a "foil for color" in order to lend "power and interest to the touches of color in a scene." Producer David O. Selznick complained in a memo during the making of Gone with the Wind:
Director Vincente Minnelli recalled of making Meet Maine in Saint Louis, "My juxtaposition of color had been highly praised on the stage, but I couldn"t do anything right in Mistress
Kalmus"s eyes." Director Allan Dwan was more blunt: "Natalie Kalmus was a bitch."
Her association with Technicolor was severed in 1948 when she named the corporation as a co-defendant in an alimony suit against Herbert Kalmus, when it appeared he was about to remarry. She sued unsuccessfully for separate maintenance and half his assets of Technicolor, Incorporated.
In 1950 she licensed her name for a line of designer television cabinets made by a California manufacturer.
