Integrative Arts 10
The 'B' Film
The B movie was a direct response by Hollywood to the falling
cinema audiences of the early Depression years. Where previously
audiences had paid to see a single feature supplemented with
shorts and cartoons, they were now treated with two features, one
of which was a low-budget supporting film --insert the B.
In October of 1935 two of the big New York theater chains, RKO
and Loew's (the holding company for MGM), adopted the double
feature in all of their principle theaters. This was a crucial
moment in the development of the B film industry. Within a year
75% of all theaters in America were featuring double bills.
All the major studios had their own B units, headed by men who knew every aspect of the low-budget film business. Of course Bs from the major studios reflected their particular house style. Warner's recycled their G-men series. Paramount offered their typical fast-paced melodramas et al. The giant, MGM dressed up their Bs that would have passed for As elsewhere.
The early 1930s witnessed a rapid growth of "poverty row" independent studios. Most were absorbed by their marginally bigger rivals. Surviving was Monogram, Mascot, and Consolidated, citadels of the independent Bs. They too were eventually taken over when Herbert Yates expanded Republic Pictures.
The Bs provided useful proving grounds for aspiring young directors. William Wyler, a graduate of low-budget silent Westerns was making cornball comedies at Universal. George Stevens, Edward Dmytryk, Fred Zinnemann, and two of the great Film Noir directors; Jacques Tourneur and Jules Dassin honed their craft in the B units.
Young hopefuls were put through their paces in the B factories. We find Richard Denning and Dennis Morgan in King of Alcatraz (1938); Glenn Ford and Richard Conte in Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence (1939); Susan Hayward in Sis Hopkins (1941); and Jane Wyman in Crime by Night (1944).
The Bs could also provide a relatively dignified rest home for stars whose careers were on the slide: Warner Baxter ended his days with Columbia's Crime Doctor series; Richard Arlen found a regular berth in the Pine-Thomas actioners of the 40s and early 50s; Richard Dix found the Whistler films.
In 1948 a historic judgment delivered by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ruled that by owning their own theaters, the major studios were in violation of anti-trust laws, dooming the Bs. By 1953 movie attendance was again on the decline. It remained for television though to deliver the "coup de grâce", providing a constant stream of 30 minute Westerns and thrillers which effectively undercut the appeal of the second feature.
This section of the Palace is dedicated to the essence that
surrounded the making and distribution of the great B films.
B-Pictures, Then and Now
As a child I had my list of cherished movies. The list was quite
long and did not include the likes of "The Lost Weekend, The
Best Years of Our Lives, Gentleman's Agreement, Western Union,
All About Eve," or any what my Father referred to as
"serious" films! While I can now appreciate them all,
at the time these "serious" films bored me beyond
tears. When forced to accompany my parents to one of these somber
displays, I grew weary and often fell asleep. I can vividly
recall awaking in the middle of particularly long dramatic
interchange, I think it was Jimmy Stewart's celebrated filibuster
scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"? I could not
understand how they could sit through these films. They hardly
got up to visit the snack bar. It was dreadful!
To me the best movies starred Johnny Mack Brown, Wild Bill
Elliot, William Boyd, and John Wayne before he became "The
Duke". While my friends were solid Roy Rogers fans. I liked
Gene Autry, in part because my Father convinced me that he was
the better for having served in the Army during World War II.
Besides, I preferred his singing to Roy Rogers', I still love his
singing. Anyway, I discernibly recall the veneration of joy I got
as the lights dimmed with the first appearance of the beloved
"A Republic Picture" logo. I especially loved the
Westerns where the heroes drove jeeps and cars, and skippered
airplanes. They used radios, and even a contraption that looked
alarmingly like an early Television set. It was all so
captivating, period paradox not withstanding. There was a theater
in my neighborhood that advertised "Two New Westerns, every
three days". And for a dime admission, it was great! Never
mind that they often featured such dinosaurs as Hoot Gibson, Tom
Mix, Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, and the ever popular LeRoy Mason. I'm
talking about the great "B-Pictures." A notoriety that
I did not understand until I was well into my teens, and by then
Television had rendered them passé and ludicrous .
Every Saturday though, during those idyllic years the Loews and Ambassador downtown, the Fox, and St. Louis on Grand avenue held Saturday matinees. They featured the films of "Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis," or maybe something else from Arthur Lubin like "Francis the Talking Mule." These films were considered a step up from the B's playing at the neighborhood theaters. The Saturday matinee's also offered the "serial". "King of the Rocket Men, Batman and Robin, Don Winslow of the Coast Guard, The Adventures of Captain Marvel," were just a few of the 10 to 15 episode cliffhangers that came into vogue during Hollywood's "Golden Era", and lasted until the invasion of Television in the mid-1950's. Choosing a particular theater to attend depended on the serial being featured. Of course, once into a particular cliffhanger, one had to show up every week until the hero had once and for all conquered the villain. I loved those great old B-Pictures. I refer to them as the Classic B's.
I was the first one on my block to buy a VCR, in fact I bought two of them, that way I could copy all of my old favorites. I couldn't wait to start building my own private collection. I could watch them whenever the mood struck. Could life get any better? Of course I had seen few of them since the venerable days of my youth. B-Pictures rarely appear on Television anymore, and I had only adolescent recollections to guide me. So off I went. To my shock and dismay I could not understand why it was so difficult to sit through my cherished oldies? My mind kept drifting. I would loose track and I often dozed off. Try as I might I could not remember what I found so romantic about them? I never did build that private collection.
Perhaps we are best left with our youthful memories. Lately though, I find myself again interested in the classic B's. Sometimes on a Saturday morning I can find a gem or two on AMC or that fuzzy channel that runs the old serials. Like Thomas Wolfe, I may not be able to go home again. But I can still have fun with the great old B's. One matter is certain, "they don't make'em like that anymore."
Michael Mills, 1996
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The Last Chapter
Having already witnessed the death throes of pulp fiction and the
glorious days of radio adventure, it was another minor traumatic
experience to watch the serial fade into obscurity. After more
than forty years of continuous production, no longer would
anxious youths run to their favorite theaters to watch
bigger-than-life heroes tackle supreme apostles of evil.
There were several important reasons for the death of the
serials. Chief among these, of course, was the problem of
economics. In the early days serials could be turned out
relatively inexpensively, most of them being primarily shot
outdoors. However, as the years progressed and production costs
rose, the serial format began to look less and less appealing to
the cost-conscious producer. And serials, on the whole, never
really created that much revenue. The average episode was rented
to a theater for only a few dollars as an incentive to take
additional features from the producing company. Those few dollars
did mount up eventually, but as the years progressed the number
of theaters running serials dwindled from thousands to a matter
of hundreds.
When serials had reached a new peak of popularity in the early forties, it was thought that there would always be a market for the weekly adventures. Unfortunately, the people who believed this had not reckoned on television. With the growth of that all-seeing eye, youngsters could now watch complete action adventures right at home. Adventure series like "Dick Tracy, Sky King, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, The Gene Autry Show, The Roy Rogers Show, The Lone Ranger," etc., provided the young viewers with all the action material necessary to keep them satisfied.
There was an additional problem that confronted the serial-makers, Serials had always been filled with assorted violence and mayhem. Now the mothers and professional psychologists were beginning to attack the Saturday cliff-hangers on a rather broad front, claiming they were inducing every conceivable form of nervous ailment from extreme trauma to ringworm. The same rather vague reasons proffered by the same rather vague people caused serials to be canceled when they were shown on television in later years. All this, of course, was despite the fact that the serials provided a basic moral truth: "good always triumphs over evil." There were never any delicate shadings of purpose in the serials. The villains were all bad and deserved the violent fates decreed them, and the heroes were all good and deserved the right to mete out justice. Now, of course, we are told that life is not all good or all bad but spans the complete range between the two. I think I would have hated to believe, many years ago when I sat in my favorite theater watching The "Adventures of Captain Marvel", that the Scorpion was a victim of a deprived childhood and that he wore his mask as an act of visual hostility towards a society which found no place in its overall scheme for him and his kind. Now that would have really given me a trauma.
Universal Pictures, whose serial-production history went back into the earliest days of silent films, was the first studio to realize the chapter plays had had it. The studio which had turned out such superior action fare as "Flash Gordon, Ace Drummond, Buck Rogers", and so many favorites of the late thirties now found its market too limited for the costs involved and canceled further production after 1946 It was, perhaps, just as well, for the quality of their productions had slipped to the point where there was so little action and excitement that it was more of a chore than a pleasure to watch them. Universal had always stressed in their serials plot rather than action, and some of their serials were so talky that you simply couldn't follow what was going on half the time. When "Mysterious Mr. M" brought the Universal serial line to a close, fans viewed the demise with mixed emotions. The plot of Mysterious Mr. M found federal agent Grant Farrell (Dennis Moore) assisting a local plainclothesman (Richard Martin) in solving the disappearance of a famous inventor specializing in undersea devices. After thirteen dull episodes the mystery man turned out to be exactly who viewers thought it was in chapter one.
Feeling was more pronounced when Republic finally threw in the towel with "King of the Carnival" in 1955. Even at the end, though economy was all too evident, there was still enough interest (this final serial did have a mystery man) and excitement to satisfy the viewer who was not spoiled by those earlier action classics. Republic, unlike Universal and Columbia, had stockpiled nearly fifteen years of wonderful special effects built especially for their serials and features by Howard Lydecker and his special-effects department. Unlike the cheap newsreel footage constantly integrated in serials at Universal, these spectacular miniatures seemed as thrilling in 1955 as they bad in 1945 or earlier. Spliced into new footage, admittedly slower and more routine, the chapter endings were still appealing and continued to bring audiences back week after week. In the. great days of the studio as many as seven writers were involved in writing the fast-moving screenplay for a single serial (Captain America), and chapters ran up to sixteen or seventeen minutes each, with first episodes running as long as thirty minutes. The final thirteen serials turned out by the studio were written entirely by one writer, Ronald Davidson, and the running time per episode had been reduced to a standard thirteen minutes with a twenty-minute first chapter. The great days of free-swinging fights in which complete sets were demolished were a thing of the past. Fights were now done in small, cramped sets with the stunt men moving at a pace considerably slower than in years gone by. "King of the Carnival" found high-wire acrobats Harry Lauter and Fran Bennett on the trail of a counterfeiting ring operating in the circus in which they were employed. The mystery man was either seen roaming around in a clown costume or heard giving instructions to his henchmen via a two-way radio. Again, there was only one likely suspect for the mystery man. In an exciting finale, the villain is unmasked and plunges to his death after a thrilling chase, thus ending his reign of terror and bringing to a close the serial output of Republic Pictures Corporation.
Columbia decided to ring down their final curtain with the customary cheapness expected from them; they chose a Western, "Blazing the Overland Trail", and a very routine one at that. The pedestrian plot found evil Rance Devlin (Don C. Harvey) planning to create a private army to take over the territory. Opposing him were Lee Roberts and Dennis Moore (Moore had the dubious distinction of appearing in the final serials of both Universal and Columbia). The film was so full of stock from earlier serials and features that it was hard to accept it as a new attraction. Spencer Gordon Bennett, who had directed more sound serials than any other director, including the thrill-packed "Secret Service in Darkest Africa, The Masked Marvel, Haunted Harbor", and others, for Republic, and over twenty assorted titles for Columbia, seemed a fitting choice to bring the life of the serial, now in its terminal stage, to a peaceful and routine end. Released in 1956, Blazing the Overland Trail climaxed an uninterrupted flow of silent and sound serials which totaled more than five hundred titles spanning a period of forty-odd years.
Except for occasional screening on television, or a very rare re-issue to theaters, the younger generation is unable to see and enjoy these wonderful products of a vanished era. It is really a pity, for every child should be allowed to enjoy his own precious Days of Thrills and Adventure while those fleeting days of youthful escapism are still available to him.
Alan G. Barbour: Saturday Afternoon at the Movies, 1986
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