Every once in a blue moon (or, I guess in black and white it would be a grayish-white moon), I will do that. The major reason is nostalgia. We did not get a color TV until 1976, so all of DS was b&w for me. And sometimes it does appear better in b&w, a bit more atmospheric, just like the series did before it switched to in-living-color.
I've got two b&w vs. color TV stories, speaking of that. Back in the mid-sixties, our next-door neighbors were the first ones in the neighborhood to get a color TV. There was a great deal of excitement, especially since the movie, The Song of Bernadette, was going to make its first TV appearance (it was made in the early '40's, and starred Jennifer Jones and Vincent Price). As a matter of fact, the advanced publicity about the airing of the film was one of the reasons why our neighbors purchased that fancy color TV set. This was something really big - the movie being on television, I mean - in our neighborhood because it was primarily Catholic, and those old enough to have seen it during its theatrical run 25 years earlier had not seen it since. So the night of its broadcast, we all piled into their house, the lady-of-the-house spending the entire day cooking up treats, the man-of-the-house going down earlier to the local tavern (run by my uncle and aunt) to pick up crates and crates of beer and soda. We all waited in anticipation as the broadcast began, the 20th-Century-Fox logo appearing, the credits rolling. It was only then that those who saw it almost a quarter-century earlier remembered.
The Song of Bernadette was filmed in black and white.
Well, we stayed and watched it anyway, eating all the treats, the kids downing the soda while the grown-ups enjoyed the beer. My dad would let me sip the foam off the top of his beer to my mother's disapproving glare.
Like I said, we got our first color set way later in 1976. Ironically, it was pretty much for the same reason our neighbors got theirs more than a decade earlier, causing that sensation. Gone With the Wind was making its first commercial showing on TV. Fortunately, that one was filmed in color. But to digress a bit, I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz when it was aired annually, to a big broohaha (Danny Kaye would host). Of course, I'd only seen it completely in black and white that whole time, until 1976. I was utterly amazed during the horse-of-a-different-color scene in the Emerald City. The horse actually kept changing colors. Nineteen-years-old, and I never knew that until then.
Gerard
