Scope and Content Note
The papers of Herbert Thomas Kalmus (1881-1963) span the years 1904-1963, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1927-1963. The collection consists of correspondence and financial papers chiefly concerning Kalmus's personal affairs and finances, but also includes business papers concerning Technicolor, Inc., Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, and Technicolor Limited. Also in the papers are photographs, writings, printed material, diaries (small appointment books) and drafts of his memoir Mr. Technicolor (1993). Parts of the memoir were dictated by Kalmus onto Audograph discs. Transcripts of these recordings are in the papers.
Financial files in the collection include bills and receipts, insurance files, real estate investment records, correspondence and documentation on the maintenance of Kalmus's principal estates at Centerville, Massachusetts, and Bel Air, California (homes on Siena Way and Bel Air Road), and correspondence with his secretaries, particularly Alice R. Gallagher and Florence Harris. Contracts, employee time records, minutes, and some financial records are in the various Technicolor files.
Most of the correspondence is personal and includes many letters to and from distant relatives and friends. Kalmus contributed to many causes and especially to Roman Catholic charities and institutions. Included in the papers are letters from Cardinals Francis Spellman and J. Francis A. McIntyre and Archbishop Terence Cook of New York. There is correspondence related to Kalmus's acquisition and disposition of his art collection. Correspondence with Florence Troland Flynn concerns the development of monopack color film by her late husband Leonard T. Troland. Other correspondence and related material concerns the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Stanford Research Institute. Legal papers and newspaper clippings document the highly publicized separation and divorce settlement between Kalmus and his first wife and business partner, Natalie Kalmus.