Leopold Godowsky, Jr
Leopold Godowsky, Jr. was a notable American violinist and inventor, born on May 27, 1900, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of renowned pianist Leopold Godowsky, Sr., and was raised in an intellectually stimulating environment that included visits from influential figures such as Albert Einstein and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Young Godowsky developed an early interest in music and photography, which led to a collaboration in color photography with his friend Leopold Mannes. After studying at the University of California, Los Angeles, Godowsky became a prominent musician, performing with major symphony orchestras.
His most significant contribution came from his work in developing Kodachrome, a groundbreaking three-color film process that revolutionized color photography. This invention provided high-quality, easy-to-use film that gained popularity among both amateur and professional photographers. Godowsky continued to refine Kodachrome while also pursuing his musical career, marrying Frances Gershwin, sister of famed composers George and Ira Gershwin. He passed away on February 18, 1983, in New York City. Godowsky and Mannes were later inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame, and their work continues to impact the fields of photography and film to this day.
Leopold Godowsky, Jr.
American photographic technician and musician
- Born: May 27, 1900
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: February 18, 1983
- Place of death: New York, New York
Godowsky, along with Leopold Mannes, invented Kodachrome film, which has been widely regarded as the best color film available for still and slide photography as well as for home movies.
Primary field: Photography
Primary invention: Kodachrome color film
Early Life
Leopold Godowsky, Jr. (goh-DOW-skee) was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 27, 1900. Leopold Godowsky, Sr., was a famous pianist who at the time of his son’s birth was the head of the piano department at the Chicago Conservatory. Young Leopold’s mother was Freida Saxe. Shortly after his son’s birth, Godowsky moved his family to Berlin, Germany, where he performed and taught music until the outbreak of World War I, when the family moved back to the United States and settled in were chosen. The Godowsky home was visited by many celebrities, including Albert Einstein and Sergei Rachmaninoff, so young Leopold enjoyed the influence of many of the great minds and musicians of the day. While a young boy, Leopold began studying the violin.
While in high school, he met Leopold Mannes. Mannes, who later became a concert pianist, and young Godowsky became fast friends. In 1917, while still in high school, they went to see an early color movie, Our Navy. The boys were very disappointed by the quality of the color, and they began tinkering with improving color photography. They built a movie projector and fitted it with three lenses, each with a different color filter. They then took black-and-white movies and projected them through the red, blue and yellow filters to produce a color film. The boys received a patent for their invention, but it was too cumbersome to be of any commercial use.
Life’s Work
After high school, Godowsky moved to the West Coast, where he attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), to study physics and chemistry as well as violin. Mannes went to the East Coast to study physics and piano at Harvard University. After graduation, Godowsky became a soloist and first violinist with the Los Angeles and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras and also performed with his father, while Mannes moved to New York City. Although separated by a continent, the two continued their friendship and their joint interests in music and improving color photography.
In 1922, Godowsky moved to New York City, where he teamed up with Mannes, and they began performing together. They now finally had an opportunity to collaborate on their color photography research. They worked in their apartments, where in their bathrooms they could achieve total darkness for developing film. Unable to see their watches, they timed the developing process by whistling the last movement of Brahms’s C-minor Symphony, pacing the music with a metronome set at two beats per second.
Later that year, Mannes traveled to Europe to perform as a soloist. On his way there, he chanced to meet a senior partner of the investment firm Kuhn, Loeb and Co., and told him about his color photography research. After Mannes returned to New York, the firm sent one of its associates, Lewis L. Strauss, to Mannes’s home to further investigate their work. Impressed, the firm offered to invest in their project.
With money in hand, Godowsky and Mannes could step up their color photography experiments. They built a laboratory to work in, and within a year they were able to receive patents for their work. Eastman Kodak became interested in their film and offered them a contract to move to the Kodak research facilities in Rochester, New York, to continue their development of their film. Three years later, Godowsky and Mannes had a commercially viable three-color emulsion process for home movie film ready to be marketed. This film, Kodachrome 16mm film, was put on the market in 1935. It was followed the next year by Kodachrome 25mm still and 8mm movie films. Their associates jokingly commented that Kodachrome had been invented by “God and Man,” a reference to the first three letters of each of their names.
Kodachrome used three layers of black-and-white film. Each layer was suspended in a different colored filter material such that each layer was sensitive to either red, green, or blue. This was the first time that color film had been introduced as an integral tripack film. When the film was processed, color dyes replaced the silver halides. This developing process allowed the film to have thinner layers than older color films, resulting in sharper pictures.
After inventing Kodachrome, Mannes returned to his music career. Godowsky, however, while also returning to performing, continued to work on improving Kodachrome in his own laboratory in Westport, Connecticut, until the 1950’s.
Despite Godowsky’s success as the inventor of Kodachrome, his first love was always music. He continued his family’s musical tradition when he married Frances “Frankie” Gershwin, the younger sister of George and Ira Gershwin. Frankie had been the first of the Gershwin siblings to perform publicly. After her marriage to Godowsky, she continued her artistic bent as a painter and a sculptor. In 1975, she returned to singing, recording an album titled For George and Ira. The Godowskys had four children: Alexis Gershwin, Leopold Godowsky III, Georgia Keidan, and Nadia Natali. All four enjoyed the arts, with Leopold III following in this grandfather’s footsteps by becoming a concert pianist.
Godowsky died in Manhattan, New York City, on February 18, 1983. Godowsky and Mannes were inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005. Boston University’s Photographic Resource Center gives an award for color photography biennially in honor of Godowsky.
Impact
The careers of Godowsky and his partner Mannes demonstrate that individuals can dedicate their lives to one vocation and at the same time can have an unrelated but important avocation as inventors. Godowsky’s passion was music, but his fascination with color photography and his desire to produce a quality, affordable film kept him persevering for eighteen years. His college education included music as well as the chemistry and physics that would inform his research on color photography.
The fruit of their labors was an easy-to-use film with exceptional quality and color accuracy that was equally popular with amateur and professional still and movie photographers. Kodachrome’s superior dark-storage longevity allowed amateur photographers to preserve family photo albums and home movies for generations. Folk singer Paul Simon wrote about his appreciation of the qualities of the film in his hit song “Kodachrome.”
Perhaps more important, the storage longevity has permitted the archiving and preservation of thousands of historic images ranging from color movie footage of World War II events to Steve McCurry’s National Geographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, the “Afghan Girl.” In February, 2000, footage taken by George Jefferies of John F. Kennedy ninety seconds before he was assassinated was found and was still in excellent condition. The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas, has this footage on display.
Godowsky and Mannes were first inspired to work on color photography after viewing a disappointing color movie in 1917. Their first goal was to produce a method to make improved commercial color movies. However, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation developed Technicolor in 1922, and it was this invention that went on to be widely used by the motion-picture industry.
Bibliography
Collins, Douglas. The Story of Kodak. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. An extensive history of Kodak. Includes information on Kodak cameras with illustrations and also features the development, different types, and uses of Kodachrome film.
Coote, J. H. The Illustrated History of Colour Photography. Surrey, England: Fountain Press. 1993. A beautifully illustrated book that discusses the many types of color processes, with an emphasis on film.
Hirsch, Robert J. Exploring Color Photography: A Complete Guide. London: Laurence King, 2005. One chapter recounts the history of color photography, including information on color films available before the invention of Kodachrome, and the invention of Kodachrome.
Kattelle, Alan D. Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897-1979. Nashua, N.H.: Transition Publishing, 2000. Included in this history are chapters on George Eastman and his Kodak Company and the role Kodachrome played in revolutionizing the home movie industry.