There is a nice mixture of characters in The White Tower. However, by 1949,Dmytryk was a victim of HUAC and Ted Tetzlaff took over.Ĭlaude Rains,Alida Valli,Glenn Ford, Lloyd Bridges on the Queen Mary crossing the Atlantic This must have been an expensive project for RKO.They had it in mind to film James Ramsey Ullman’s novel in 1947, and Edward Dmytryk was to direct,with Paul Lukas and Lilli Palmer as the stars. This may be a few months away.” I wasn’t aware of RKO being a studio that ever filmed outside the US, but for The White Tower, the cast and crew were taken to Europe and the Swiss Alps.Second Unit filming with climbing experts and doubles was also done near Mont Blanc in France. We have recently been supplied with a colour version by the BBC, which we plan to use when we replenish stock,re-launching it as a colour version of the film. Is it simply cost? I contacted Odeon Entertainment and this was their reply: “The Master copy we were supplied with by RKO was a Black and White version which we decided to go ahead and produce DVD’s from.

I’ve seen The White Tower several times on BBC TV – in glorious color – and I would love to know why its only commercial release in the UK is in B&W.

Described by Odeon as ‘digitally restored and remastered’,the one important fact they omitted was that this Technicolor film was being manufactured in black and white. I’ve always enjoyed RKO’s The White Tower starring Glenn Ford, Alida Valli and Claude Rains and was pleased when Odeon Entertainment brought it out on dvd in their Hollywood Studio Collection.

The white tower (film)