The Battle for the Bs : 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema Paperback / softback
by Blair Davis
Paperback / softback
Description
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.
Information
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Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:260 pages, 15 photographs
- Publisher:Rutgers University Press
- Publication Date:05/04/2012
- Category:
- ISBN:9780813552538
Other Formats
- Hardback from £72.75
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:260 pages, 15 photographs
- Publisher:Rutgers University Press
- Publication Date:05/04/2012
- Category:
- ISBN:9780813552538
