Filming a Technicolor movie back in the 1940s involved using an enormous, bulky camera, which proved cumbersome for its operators outside the studios. These huge cameras contained a beam splitter as well as three film canisters, each devoted to a primary color. The Technicolor company realized how difficult its cameras were to operate, especially on field locations. Technicolor decided to innovate an alternative camera, a far smaller, lighter and simpler one than its standard ones. Once developed, the first movie to fully shoot its feature film using Technicolor's 'Monopack' technology was March 1945's "Thunderhead: Son of Flicka." These more portable cameras using the monopack had one main drawback: they didn't produce as vibrant of a picture as its three-strip cameras.
20th Century Fox had plans to film its outdoor adventure movie, a sequel to its popular 1943 "My Friend Flicka," in Technicolor, facing the arduous task of lugging the massive camera to several locations throughout the West. Once the studio became aware of the new color monopack camera, it hopped on board to secure the new invention for "Thunderhead: Son of Flicka," starring Roddy McDowall, Preston Foster and Rita Johnson,
This monopack technology had its beginnings in the mid-1930s when Technicolor collaborated with Eastman Kodak to research and develop a camera which could shoot on single strip color cinematic film stock. Initially Kodak tried to manufacture a 35mm movie film strip. Not only was it too expensive to produce, but the emulsion was uneven. The two companies decided to film in 16mm, and expand the thinner strip in Technicolor's lab to the projected 35mm width. By the early 1940s they were confident the monopack could deliver a decent color look, and was introduced in the production of 1943's "Lassie Come Home" for its outdoor scenes. "Thunderhead: Son of Flicka" took the technology further by filming the entire movie in and out of the studio by the monopack camera. Technicolor avoided claiming its new system used Kodachrome film, calling it instead "an experiment in monopack," or the "Monopack procedure" or more commonly "Technicolor Monopack." Easily transporting the new color camera similar in size to those regular black-and-white ones to the Oneonta Gorge in Oregon, Hollywood Park Racetrack, Utah's Zion National Park and Duck Creek, Nevada, among other places showed this was going to be the wave of the future in color photography.
Actor Roddy McDowall, 16, picks up where he left off in the first Flicka movie as Ken McLaughin, the son of horse breeder Rob McLaughlin (Preston Foster). Flicka gives birth to a white colt, who is sired by a neighboring racehorse. The rambunctious Thunderhead, a name given by Ken's mom, Nellie (Rita Johnson), because it reminds her of fluffy white clouds, is a confronted by the wild mustang stallion Albino. The aggressive Albino has been stealing other domesticated horses in nearby farms for his own enjoyment.
Thunderhead was an ideal horse to work with, according to McDowall, unlike Flicka in the earlier movie. That horse was ornery to be near, constantly stomping on Roddy's feet. Actor Preston Foster, as Ken's dad, was an accomplished music composer, who, as a big San Diego Padres baseball fan while living in nearby La Jolla, wrote the team's official song, "Let's Go Padres."
"Thunderhead: Son of Flicka" was the second of three films adapted from author Mary O'Hara's trilogy on the horse Flicka. Her third book, 1946's 'Green Grass of Wyoming," was made into a 1948 film of the same name. But the 1945 Flicka sequel would always be remembered as the one whose first extensive use of the Technicolor Monopack pioneered a new era in Hollywood color movies.
