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The Battle for the Bs
1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema
by Blair Davis
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Book Presentation:
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.
About the Author:
BLAIR DAVIS is an assistant professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University. His essays appear in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television and the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, and in such anthologies as American Horror Film, Caligari’s Heirs, and Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear.
Press Reviews:
"The Battle for the Bs is a highly-readable book that shies away from the jargon that often accompanies film theory, which will make it valuable to students studying film history as well as students who want to learn more about mid-twentieth century cultural history."
— Studies in American Culture
"Trenchantly, Blair Davis upends commonplaces about B-movies as marginal, demonstrating instead their centrality to American cinema and, indeed, to mid-century popular culture overall. A rich, rigorous contribution to film history."
— Dana Polan
"Blair Davis has rescued low-budget cinema from scholarly neglect with this excellent and persuasive account, a fine example of superior scholarship."
— David Culbert
"A fascinating study of post-World War II cinema."
— Journal of American History
"The Battle for the Bs is a highly-readable book that shies away from the jargon that often accompanies film theory, which will make it valuable to students studying film history as well as students who want to learn more about mid-twentieth century cultural history."
— Studies in American Culture
"Trenchantly, Blair Davis upends commonplaces about B-movies as marginal, demonstrating instead their centrality to American cinema and, indeed, to mid-century popular culture overall. A rich, rigorous contribution to film history."
— Dana Polan
"Blair Davis has rescued low-budget cinema from scholarly neglect with this excellent and persuasive account, a fine example of superior scholarship."
— David Culbert
"A fascinating study of post-World War II cinema."
— Journal of American History
See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press
> From the same author:
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Dir. Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls
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The Worst We Can Find (2023)
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At a Theater or Drive-in Near You (2016)
The History, Culture, and Politics of the American Exploitation Film
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