UID:
almafu_9959228722702883
Format:
1 online resource (275 p.)
Edition:
1st ed.
ISBN:
1-280-49339-9
,
9786613588623
,
0-8135-5324-5
Content:
The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930's created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios—most of which also owned the theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios. In The Battle for the Bs, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950's and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the B's. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950's B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (think Destination Moon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950's and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.
Note:
Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
,
Introduction -- Hollywood in transition: the business of 1950s filmmaking -- The battle begins: Hollywood reacts, poverty row collapses -- The rebirth of the B-movie in the 1950s -- Attack of the independent: American international pictures and the B-movie -- Small screen, smaller pictures: new perspectives on 1950s television and B-movies -- Big 'B', little 'B': a case study of three films -- Notes from the underground : the legacy of the 1950s B-movie.
,
English
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0-8135-5252-4
Language:
English
DOI:
10.36019/9780813553245
