Daddy-O was a Drive-In B Sensation |
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If you have movie-loving friends and/or family of a certain age, you most probably know someone who has cherished memories of a box office phenomenon known as the B Movie.
For the uninitiated, the term 'B-movie' originated in the early1930s to distinguish the low-budget productions made by the major studios with cut rate cast and crews from their more expensive 'A List-Movies.' The term extended to include the so-called Poverty Row studios along Gower Street (Gulch) in Hollywood, Republic and Monogram among them, that made cheapies exclusively.
The advent of the B movie was Hollywood's direct response to the sharply falling motion picture box office of Depression Era America. Up until the infamous 1929 stock market crash that prompted the classic VARIETY banner headline from October 30, 1929: WALL STREET LAYS AN EGG, audiences paid to see a single motion picture, garnished with cartoons and a short subject film. The hardscrabble Depression days made audiences demand more, and Hollywood answered with the B movie. The price of admission expanded to include two motion picture features, one of which was a low-budget supporting feature – the B movie.
As a box office phenomenon, the B-movies outlived the Great Depression by 30 years. In post-war America, the program format of many drive-in theaters was to 
Before Little Joe, Landon was a Pubescent Frankenstein |
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play B movie double bills exclusively.
Action, adventure, comedy, drama, suspense, musicals: the B-movie spanned all of the popular motion picture genres of their day. During the 1950s, the B was often an inexpensive teenage epic, DADDY-O, or ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK, or a science fiction skein. Some Bs combined both genres, Michael Landon's I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN is a prime example. I WAS A TEENAGE MUTANT FROM OUTER SPACE is another. Exploitation movies were great fodder for B movies. DAMAGED GOODS, HIGH SCHOOL HELLCATS, and BIG DOLL HOUSE being among them. A few 1950s and 1960s' B movies even made a half-hearted attempt at social significance. There was Susan Kohner in I PASSED FOR WHITE and Christopher Jones' WILD IN THE STREETS.
Cheesy dialogue , cliché characters, predictable situations, and waning stars were all trademarks of a B-grade epic. The Bs were also knowN for on-the-cheap special effects such as dry ice-generated fog and aluminum pie tins masquerading as flying saucers. Anything released by American Internal Pictures or the UK's Hammer Films was a B. If the picture was directed, produced, written by, or starring Roger Corman, Ed Woods, Jr., or Vera Hruba Ralston it was a B movie.
At one time, all of the major studios had their own B movie division. Heading the B movie units 
Zsa Zsa was QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, Dahlings |
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were men who knew everything, or nearly everything, about making movies on a shoestring budget. Independents Monogram, Mascot, Liberty, Chesterfield, and Invincible produced B movies exclusively. Eventually these independent minors were absorbed into Republic Pictures when, in 1935, Herbert Yates foreclosed on debtor production companies, folding them into his Republic Pictures empire, the King of B movie studios.
In addition to giving customers more bang for their box office buck, the Bs were a great training ground for artists and technicians who later advanced to major Hollywood glory. Young stars were often introduced to the movie public in B pictures: Glenn Ford, Susan Hayward, and Jane Wyman, just to name three. Likewise the B movie frequently launched directors who went on to become A-class Hollywood legends. Just for openers, let's name George Stevens, William Wyler, Fred Zinnemann, and Edward Dmytryk.
A major blow was dealt to the Bs when, in 1948, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ruled that the major studios, by owning their own theaters, were in violation of anti-trust laws. Still, in one form or another, the B movies held on until the advent of home video.
Most Match Flickers know the B movie by its 21st Century name: These days, B movies are simply known as "the direct to video" release.
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Does advertising, public taste, or overindulged stars determine a movie's box office fate? Christoper Stone explores what's going on behind the box office.
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| Christopher Stone |
Christopher Stone is the author of the international best seller Re-Creating Your Self. With Mary Sheldon, he co-authored three highly successful hardcover books of guided meditations.
He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.
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