It is true that some early Technicolor films were timed to be somewhat less saturated. The Kino BD of A Star is Born was taken from an original IB and it looks quite muted.

That said, animation historian Thad Komorowski has seen an original print and posted an image on his blog. It's the Silly Song sequence, it has a golden cast over the entire scene. I don't know if that was the timing of the whole film, or just that scene.

Would the 40s/50s reissue trailer give any clues. It seems to be from an IB source, and it does date back to the 40s (the version officially available has the RKO credit scratched out, and so dates to when Buena Vista reissued it themselves in the 50s). I remember it looking gold-ish too.