The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema

Abstract

During their adolescence in the 1950s, the contemporary filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas drew their inspiration from popular science fiction B-films of the era. Classic science fiction and horror films such as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) are the subject of Blair Davis's fascinating study of post–World War II cinema. Defining the B-film as low-budget popular entertainment alternatives to mainstream studio productions, Davis provides a financial and production history rather than cultural narrative. Thus, Davis, an assistant professor in the College of Communications at DePaul University, asserts, The Battle for the Bs is an attempt to steer discussions of the B-movie away from taste-based cultural assessments of its seemingly questionable aesthetics and move toward a fiscally oriented understanding of how and why these aesthetics were formed. (p. 15) Davis argues that in the 1930s, B-films were the second films in the studio double-feature programming of the depression period. The industry changed with the 1948 Supreme Court decision that banned studios from requiring exhibitors to accept block booking of films (United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.). The major film studios responded to this decision and the challenge of television by curtailing production and focusing on big-budget A-films with new technological innovations such as Cinemascope unavailable on the small screen. However, with the expansion of venues such as drive-in theaters, exhibitors, especially in smaller markets, faced a shortage of films, and B-features were produced to fill the void.