Zenith porthole "color"

[Jeffhs]

It seems to me that those color filter sheets usually worked well for only one picture on a TV screen. When the scene changes, since the colors in the filter don't, you get all kinds of color distortions, until or unless (!) another scene appears that fits the color bands in the filter. There was an episode of the ABC-TV series "Happy Days" in the '70s in which the Cunninghams tried one of these filters on their old B&W TV; yup, you guessed it, the filter worked after a fashion, but for only one image. The next image to show on their TV was an unholy mess of color, until the filter was inverted; even then the "color" picture didn't look right.

The motel another poster mentioned that advertised in the early '50s "color TV in every room" very likely used these filters on their B&W sets as well. This dodge may have kept them out of trouble as far as truth in advertising was concerned, but probably just barely, as the color pictures produced by these filters in front of a B&W screen were terrible--as I mentioned above. However, I guess that was the best these motels could do in those days without charging an arm and a leg for the rooms, as they would have had to do if they had "real" color televisions, probably RCA CTC2s, 3s, 4s or such, in them. The only motels that would have had true electronic color TV in their rooms in the '50s (especially the early part of the decade) would have had to be very upscale ones, with room rates affordable only by oil barons.