![In my head, Mickey Rooney will always be young and wearing a cloth cap.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/mr-with-horse.jpg)
The death this week of Mickey Rooney got me to thinking about old movies.
I remember watching Mickey Rooney films as a child. They were in black and white and most seemed to feature horses. Or Elizabeth Taylor. Or both.
I started to think about my favourite black and white films.. started googling and then I made a startling discovery – many of my favourite B&W films are actually in colour.
![A wonderful film with a young Elizabeth Taylor - in my head it is in black and white.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/elephant-walk.jpg)
I watched a lot of old movies as a child with my parents. We lived in a small bush town in Australia and only had two TV channels. Our TV was pretty old – my Dad wouldn’t buy a new-fangled colour TV when the old one worked just fine. After all – the colour on the screen didn’t change the content. Australia got colour TV in 1975 – but our family got it much later than that.
It turns out that many of the films that I fell in love with in black and white – classics like Ben Hur and Cleopatra and Breakfast at Tiffany’s are actually all in colour. I have the DVDs and tend to watch these old films when I am feeling poorly… and although the picture in front of me is colour – in my head, they are still black and white.
Some old films have been ‘colourised’ through modern technology to improve them. But the less said about that the better.
So here is a list – my favourite black and white films (the ones that really were in black and white).
![To Kill A Mockingbird – a brilliant adaptation of a favourite book. Traces of Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch can be found in all the heroes I write.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gregory-peck.jpg)
![Sabrina – who could forget Audrey Hepburn in that gorgeous Givenchy gown.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/sabrina.jpg)
![Casablanca – If I hadn’t fallen for Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina – this would have done it for me. And Ingrid Bergman was sublime.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/casablanca.jpg)
![The Ghost and Mrs Muir – There was a TV show adapted from this film. But good as that was, nothing matched the amazing chemistry between Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/g-and-mrs-m.jpg)
![liberty valance](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/liberty-valance.jpg)
![Bringing Up Baby – with the beautiful Katherine Hepburn and the ever so charming Cary Grant. The leopard was cute too.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/b-up-b.jpg)
![Roman Holiday – Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Need I say any more?](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/roman-holiday.jpg)
![Wuthering Heights – the Merle Oberon / Laurence Olivier version of course.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/wh-h.jpg)
![Psycho. Hitchcock had to get in this list for creating the world's most famous house.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/psycho.jpg)
![The Day The Earth Stood Still gets on my list, not so much for itself (I am talking here about the Michael Rennie version of course – let’s not even think about the Keanu Reeves re-make) but to represent all those lovely old B&W Sci Fi and Horror films. Looking back now, they really were terrible… but how I loved them!](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/dtess.jpg)
So now I am thinking, if I turn the colour off on my TV –what would happen if I watched some recent films in B&W – would a monochrome World War Z have the same terror for me? Would Nicole Kidman be as haunting in B&W as Ingred Bergman was? Would I fall for a B&W Hugh Jackman the way I did for Gregory Peck?
![The answer - yes. So – that’s all my evenings this week spoken for.](https://janetgover.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/hj.jpg)