The Battle for the Bs : : 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema / / Blair Davis.
The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s 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...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013 |
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Place / Publishing House: | New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2012] ©2012 |
Année de publication: | 2012 |
Langue: | English |
Accès en ligne: | |
Description matérielle: | 1 online resource (280 p.) :; 15 photographs |
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Résumé: | The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s 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 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s 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 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come. |
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Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9780813553245 9783110688610 |
DOI: | 10.36019/9780813553245 |
Accès: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Blair Davis. |