|
B Movies In The 1950s
The 1950s mark a significant change in the definition of the B movie. The transformation of the film industry due to court rulings that brought an end to many long-standing distribution practices as well as the challenge of television led to major changes in U.S. cinema at the exhibition level. These shifts signaled the eventual demise of the double feature that had defined much of the American moviegoing experience during Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s. Even as the traditional bottom-of-the-bill second feature slowly disappeared, the term ''B movie'' was applied more broadly to the sort of inexpensive genre films that came out during the era, such as those produced to meet the demands of the burgeoning drive-in theater market. Fadeout of the classic B In 1948, a Supreme Court ruling in a federal antitrust suit against the leading Hollywood studios, the so-called Big Five, outlawed block booking and led to the divestiture of the majors' theater chains over the nex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
B Movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music). However, the U.S. production of films intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s. With the emergence of commercial television at that time, film studio B movie production departments changed into television film production divisions. They created much of the same type of content in low budget films and series. The term ''B movie'' continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In its post-Golden Age usage, B movies can range from lurid exploitation films to independent arthouse films. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allied Artists Pictures Corporation
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called allies. Alliances form in many settings, including political alliances, military alliances, and business alliances. When the term is used in the context of war or armed struggle, such associations may also be called allied powers, especially when discussing World War I or World War II. A formal military alliance is not required for being perceived as an ally—co-belligerence, fighting alongside someone, is enough. According to this usage, allies become so not when concluding an alliance treaty but when struck by war. When spelled with a capital "A", "Allies" usually denotes the countries who fought together against the Central Powers in World War I (the Allies of World War I), or those who fought against the Axis Pow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
B-actor
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music). However, the U.S. production of films intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s. With the emergence of commercial television at that time, film studio B movie production departments changed into television film production divisions. They created much of the same type of content in low budget films and series. The term ''B movie'' continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In its post-Golden Age usage, B movies can range from lurid exploitation films to independent arthouse films. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Seven Year Itch
''The Seven Year Itch'' is a 1955 American romantic comedy film directed by Billy Wilder, from a screenplay he co-wrote with George Axelrod from the 1952 three-act play. The film stars Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, who reprised his stage role. It contains one of the most iconic pop-culture images of the 20th century – Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown upwards by a passing train. The titular phrase, which refers to a waning interest in monogamous relationship after seven years of marriage, has been used by psychologists. Plot Richard Sherman is a middle-aged publishing executive in New York City with an overactive imagination, whose wife, Helen, and son, Ricky, are spending the summer in Maine. When he returns home from the train station with the kayak paddle Ricky accidentally left behind, he meets an unnamed woman, who is a commercial actress and former model. She rents the apartment upstairs while in town to make television spots for a bran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Country Girl (1954 Film)
''The Country Girl'' is a 1954 American drama film written and directed by George Seaton and starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and William Holden. Adapted by Seaton from Clifford Odets' 1950 play of the same name, the film is about an alcoholic has-been actor/singer struggling with the one last chance he has been given to resurrect his career. Seaton won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay. It was entered in the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Kelly won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role, which previously had earned Uta Hagen her first Tony Award in the play's original Broadway production. The role, a non-glamorous departure for Kelly, was as the alcoholic actor's long-suffering wife. Plot In a theatre, auditions are being held for a new musical production titled ''The Land Around Us''. Director Bernie Dodd watches a number performed by fading star Frank Elgin and suggests that he be cast in the leading role. This is met with strong opposition fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness. As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as ''The Racket (1928 film), The Racket'' (1928), ''Hell's Angels (film), Hell's Angels'' (1930), and ''Scarface (1932 film), Scarface'' (1932). He later acquired the RKO Pictures film studio in 1948, recognized then as one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RKO Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy holding, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bowery Boys
The Bowery Boys are fictional New York City characters, portrayed by a company of New York actors, who were the subject of 48 feature films released by Monogram Pictures and its successor Allied Artists Pictures Corporation from 1946 through 1958. The Bowery Boys were successors of the East Side Kids, who had been the subject of films since 1940. The group originated as the Dead End Kids, who originally appeared in the 1937 film ''Dead End.'' Origins The Dead End Kids The Dead End Kids originally appeared in the 1935 play ''Dead End,'' dramatized by Sidney Kingsley. When Samuel Goldwyn turned the play into a 1937 film, he recruited the original "kids" from the play—Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, and Bernard Punsly—to appear in the same roles in the film. This led to the making of six other films that shared the collective title "The Dead End Kids". The Little Tough Guys In 1938, Universal launched its own tough-kid series, "Little Tou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bomba, The Jungle Boy
''Bomba the Jungle Boy'' is a series of American boys' adventure books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate under the pseudonym Roy Rockwood. and published by Cupples and Leon in the first half of the 20th century, in imitation of the successful Tarzan series. Twenty books are in the series. The first 10 (published from 1926–1930) are set in South America, where Bomba, a white boy who grew up in the jungle, tries to discover his origin. The second set of 10 books (published from 1931–1938) shift the scene to Africa, where a slightly older Bomba has jungle adventures. The first editions all used the same cover illustration on their dust jackets; only the title would differ from book to book. A common theme of the Bomba books is that Bomba, because he is white, has a soul that is awake, while his friends, the dark-skinned natives, have souls that are sleeping. Richard A. Lupoff, in his book ''Master of Adventure'', a study of the works of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Howard Hughes")
