![\"detour-250.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/detour-250.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
From DB:<\/p>\n
The Film faculty and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin\u2014Madison are a close-knit bunch. Keeping in touch via email, we exchange ideas about teaching and research, as well as passing along gossip and peculiar things that appear on the Internets. Our community includes grad students and alumni from several generations. The youngest are taking courses now; the most senior were here in the early 1970s, and they still have all their marbles.<\/p>\n
Over three days earlier this month, there was a lightning round of exchanges on B films. With the permission of the participants, I\u2019m posting highlights of the correspondence here because it exemplifies one way in which the Web can advance film studies.<\/p>\n
Most film writing on the web comments on current films or video releases. Nothing wrong with that. But if you\u2019re a researcher into film, you also want to talk about history. It\u2019s rare to find an online debate about historical evidence and alternative interpretations of that evidence.<\/p>\n
So to scratch my academic itch, I give you mildly edited extracts from our UW cyber-dialogue. You\u2019ll see some hard-working professors practicing imaginative pedagogy, and you\u2019ll find ideas for research and teaching. You\u2019ll also see, I hope, that film studies can make progress by asking precise questions and refining them through inquiry and critical discussion.<\/p>\n
Note to film scholars: Blogs are seldom cited in academic writing, but if you intend to use this material in your own research, it would be courteous to mention these esteemed sources, as they mention others.<\/p>\n
To be a B, or not to be a B<\/span><\/p>\n First, a little background. Today sometimes we call low-budget films or just poor quality movies \u201cB movies.\u201d But across the history of Hollywood the term had a more specific meaning. You can find a primer at GreenCine<\/a>, but here’s a little more industrial context.<\/p>\n During the heyday of the studio system, most theatres ran double bills\u2014two movies for a single ticket (along with trailers, news shorts, cartoons, and the like). Very often the main feature, or A picture, was a high-budget item with major stars from a significant studio. The B film was low-budget, ran to only 60-80 minutes, and showcased lesser-known players. A B tended to be distributed for a flat fee rather than a percentage of the box office.<\/p>\n (I\u2019ve just distinguished Bs in terms of its level of production; as you\u2019ll see from the dialogue, we can think of them in other ways too.)<\/p>\n MGM, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century-Fox, and other major companies made B pictures as well as As. Often the B film was part of a series. Fox had Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan, MGM had Andy Hardy and Dr. Kildare. Since the most powerful studios owned theatres as well, the B film filled out the double bill with company product. Moreover, the Bs allowed studios to make maximum use of the physical plant. Sets built for an A picture could be used for a B, and actors idling between big projects could take small parts in Bs. Bs could also serve as training ground for stars, crews, and directors who might move up.<\/p>\n Still other studios, the so-called Little Three, hovered between A and B status. Universal, Columbia, and RKO were smaller companies, and some of their A pictures might have been considered really B\u2019s, in terms of budget and resources. This is one theme of the conversation that follows.<\/p>\n As the major studios cut back production after the war, many B pictures were made as independent productions. Double bills in the US persisted into the 1960s, and Roger Corman and other producers turned out B-films for drive-ins, declining picture palaces, and rural theatres. Still, the prime years of B films were the 1930s-early 1950s. They have always been an object of admiration for cultists; recall that Godard dedicated Breathless<\/em> to Monogram. Important directors like Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher started in B production. Several Bs, notably noirs and horror films, are staples of cable and home video.<\/p>\n Want to know more? Here’s some essential reading: Tino Balio’s The American Film Industry<\/em><\/a>, rev. ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History<\/em><\/a> (London: British Film Institute, 2005); Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn, eds., Kings of the Bs: Working within the Hollywood System<\/em><\/a> (New York: Dutton, 1975).<\/p>\n Now to the question of the day.<\/p>\n \n Day 1: What do I teach?<\/span><\/p>\n It all began on 6 February. (Cue harp music and dissolve here.) Paul Ramaeker<\/strong> of the University of Otago asked an innocent question\u2026.<\/p>\n OK, so I am running a grad seminar (or, more precisely, our closest equivalent- a 4th<\/sup> year Honours course) on Classical Hollywood Cinema. I want to spend time on the industry, obviously, which raises questions about what to screen for those weeks. I thought an A pic and a B pic. For the A, I was thinking about Robin Hood<\/em>. For the B, I\u2019m not sure, but I had for other purposes been considering a double bill of The Black Cat <\/em>and I Walked with a Zombie<\/em>. Now, the latter, I know, is a B pic; but is The Black Cat<\/em> a B? It\u2019s about an hour, which suggests a B and it\u2019s not got a lot of sets. But it\u2019s got Lugosi and Karloff, who surely were two of Universal\u2019s bigger stars at the time, right? So which is it?<\/p>\n Any other good B pic recommendations are welcome.<\/p>\n The replies came fast. First, from Jane Greene<\/strong> of Denison University:<\/p>\n I do the same thing in my history class and I’ve found that Casablanca<\/em> and Detour<\/em> work well. It helps that most students have heard of Casablanca<\/em> and a surprising number have seen it. You can point out how this “timeless classic” was very much a product of collaboration, how the star system, budget and schedule determined the look of many scenes, and it also allows you to discuss censorship… I mean self-regulation. (See Richard Maltby’s “Dick and Jane Go to 3.5 Seconds of the Classical Hollywood Cinema” in a little-known book called Post-Theory<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Aljean Harmetz’s The Making of Casablanca<\/em> is coffee-table-y, but she did consult tons<\/em> of production and publicity material and there are reproductions of production documents (script pages, even a Daily Production Report!).<\/p>\n Leslie Midkiff DeBauche<\/strong> of UW\u2014Stevens Point also shared a teaching technique.<\/p>\n I teach the 1930s with a colleague in the History Department and we like to create a whole program: News Parade of 1934<\/em> from Hearst Metronome News; Three Little Pigs<\/em> (1933), followed by the first half of a documentary called “Encore on Woodward” about the Fox Theater opening in Detroit. It opens in 1929 and is wonderful–it has clips of late silents like Seventh Heaven<\/em>, sound comes, and we end it after a woman remembers how her boyfriend proposed to her, in the balcony, during Robin Hood<\/em>. We usually show the 1936 (I think, it could be 1934) year-in-review newsreel that is on the Treasures of the Archive From Notre Dame comes Chris Sieving<\/strong> on RKO:<\/p>\n In researching Lewton last year I found a few sources that argue vehemently that the Lewton-Tourneur-Wise-Robson horror films were not B films, but more like nervous As: budgets were decent, prestige factor was high, occasional name stars (like Karloff).<\/p>\n Another veddy interesting and perhaps more “authentic” B film, besides Detour<\/em>, is Stranger on the Third Floor<\/em> (1940). It contains some very bizarre and magical Peter Lorre acting, plus some people call it the “first” film noir. (Speaking of film history myths that need debunking…)<\/p>\n Lea Jacobs<\/strong>, doyenne of Film Studies here in Madison interjects:<\/p>\n When I teach the B film I like to show Detour<\/em> and Moon Over <\/em>Harlem<\/em> (now out on DVD). The latter has two really amazing scenes in a movie made for less than $10,000. But maybe that is too Ulmer heavy. Anyway you can’t go wrong with I Walked with a Zombie<\/em>.<\/p>\n Kevin Heffernan<\/strong> of Southern Methodist University weighs in.<\/p>\n The Black Cat<\/em> is an A picture, I think. All of the Universal horror movies ran between 65-71 mins, so this is just under their average. Also, names above the title usually point to an A, and I’m virtually certain the movie would have played a percentage (rather than a flat fee) in its initial engagement. I would imagine that a Universal horror picture sold well in subsequent run as a component in double bills, so they would be sort of de facto B pics in some situations.<\/p>\n And it is worth mentioning to your students, as Elder Goodman [Douglas] Gomery pointed out years ago, that the Deanna Durbin musicals were much more financially successful for Laemmle et cie<\/em> than the horror movies. They’re all out on video now. Ghastly, unwatchable, wretched.<\/p>\n Lea Jacobs<\/strong> replies:<\/p>\n Universal is one of the little three in 1934, and, unlike today, when horror films command high budgets and garner big returns, in the 1930s horror films and sci fi were the stuff of serials and the bottom half of the double bill. I would have to see a contract before I believe it played for a percentage. One way, apart from that, to decide, is to look at where it opened in New York, how long it played and where it played subsequently in the key cities.<\/p>\n Doug Gomery<\/strong>, Resident Scholar at the University of Maryland, is succinct on I Walked with a Zombie<\/em>:<\/p>\n RKO in the 1940s was a low budget studio and Floyd Odlum owned it. Odlum went cheap after his experiment with the likes of Citizen Kane<\/em>. So it was B pure and simple. It\u2019s now 5:30 on the same day, but are our eager scholars tired? You have to ask?<\/p>\n Lea Jacobs<\/strong> follows up:<\/p>\n It is pretty safe to assume that most Universals in the 1930s were in the B range–their films were shown on the bottom of the double bills in theaters owned by the Majors. Even in the 1920s one reads Variety<\/em> complaining about the cheapness of Universal’s product. A far cry from when it was taken over by Doug\u2019s favorite Lew Wasserman.<\/p>\n Jim Udden<\/strong> of Gettysburg College jumps in, invoking the founder of film-industry studies at UW, Tino Balio:<\/p>\n So was Black Cat<\/em> more often one of these “featured” features, or was it usually the bottom half of the double bill, as Lea says? Maybe this is an AB pic? Lea Jacobs<\/strong> replies:<\/p>\n Yes, Jim, I agree, a researchable question that I don’t have time for either. But a distinction that can be made, without research (or prior to it) is one between A\/B at the level of production planning and budget and A\/B at the level of distribution. Sometimes relatively “cheap” films were marketed as As (Variety<\/em> usually complains about this its reviews!). Thus, to be really certain of how a film lines up, you have to look at both the budget ranges at the studio at the time of the films’ production, and the distribution pattern, including, of course, whether it was distributed for a percentage or flat fee.<\/p>\n Kevin Hagopian<\/strong>, Penn State University, comes rolling in at 10:30 pm.<\/p>\n * The trouble with some of the great B\u2019s, like The Black Cat<\/em>, Detour<\/em>, and I Walked with a Zombie<\/em> is that they\u2019re so good that they don\u2019t give a sense of the real purpose of the \u201cB,\u201d which was to hold down half of a double bill, and amortize overhead at the studios over a larger number of opportunities for revenue \u2013 that is, individual films. A comparison of scenes from an A film and a B film using the same standing sets does this nicely; I use the RKO New York street set, visible in Citizen Kane<\/em> and Stranger on the Third Floor<\/em>, as an example. (A great visual example I\u2019d like to make would be Lewton\u2019s Ghost Ship<\/em>, which is said to be a script written for an existing ocean liner set, but I haven\u2019t seen that set in another RKO film as yet.)<\/p>\n *I\u2019ve often done a clip show that involves:<\/p>\n A. Clips from films like the Lewtons, or the Schary-Rapf films at MGM (like Pilot #5<\/em> and Joe Smith, American<\/em>), or one of the series films, like a Maisie film. These films show that the resources of a big studio, such as talent, standing sets, skilled cinematography and editing departments, etc, could generate a film that, while it might have been double feature fodder, still maintains a sense of `quality\u2019 that, perhaps, studios wanted to maintain for purposes of brand equity. C. Clips from minor studio \u201cB\u201d westerns, ala Buck Jones. REALLY gets the point across about the relationship between production expenses and expected grosses; clearly, these films were made on a precise calculus. As films, of course, they\u2019re nowhere near as interesting as the Lewtons or RKO \u201cB\u2019 noirs like The Devil Thumbs a Ride<\/em>, but they work, particularly when students can\u2019t really tell the difference between a Buck Jones, a Tom Mix, or a Three Mesquiteers \u2013 that\u2019s sort of the point. Peter Stanfield\u2019s work on \u201cB\u201d Westerns, however, shows how the signifying practices of the B Westerns, production values aside, could be truly divergent from anything in the A film canon, and worth studying. But in defense of my students, being trapped in a screening room with a true B Western at full length can be a grueling experience.<\/p>\n *A handout listing the films produced in a single given year by one studio, grouped by genre, and with A or B indicated in each case. 1939 is a good year to do this with, as it contains some of the few studio films students have even ever heard of. They can see how certain studios specialized in certain genres, and how B\u2019s supported A\u2019s in the production calendar.<\/p>\n *Finally, by way of an outro, of course, talking about modern equivalents of B films, and even arguing whether such equivalents exist in the film or cable marketplaces. (Jim Naremore\u2019s chapter on direct to video \u201cerotic thrillers\u201d in his wonderful book on noir, More than Night<\/em>, can be very helpful here.)<\/p>\n Our researchers retire from the field. But not for too long.<\/p>\n Day 2: Diving for Dollars<\/span><\/p>\n Brad Schauer<\/strong>, Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison fires this off at 9:33 CST on 7 February:<\/p>\n Wow, what a digest I received this morning! With all this B movie talk, I couldn’t resist adding my $.02.<\/p>\n The Black Cat<\/em> is a tricky case – it was worth flipping through some of the secondary sources to investigate (Senn 1996; Weaver, Brunas, and Brunas 1990, Soister 1999). In a sense, it’s a clear B. The budget was about $90K and was scheduled for a two-week shoot. Compare this to next year’s Bride of Frankenstein<\/em>, which cost $400K and took Whale about six weeks to film. Plus, Black Cat<\/em> has all the wonderful hallmarks of a quintessential B: lurid storyline, short running time, sometimes incomprehensible narrative (due in this instance to censorship), etc.<\/p>\n And it was devalued by the critics because of its genre and the concomitant transgressive material (the flaying scene is still shocking).<\/p>\n However, the film was also a big hit for Universal, its top moneymaker for 1934. Looks like it brought in rentals around $250K – which isn’t a lot, but it suggests a percentage release, at least in its initial run. Variety<\/em> also said it had “box office attraction” because of the current popularity of Lugosi & Karloff, teamed for the first time. Someone would have to investigate its distribution patterns to be sure, but it kinda looks like a B picture that was sold as an A, as Lea suggested. Maybe Universal knew it could throw a cheap movie out there and it would succeed based on the popularity of the genre and the stars. It’s a kind of precursor to all those low-budget, highly-profitable horror films like Halloween<\/em> and Saw<\/em>. So for me it’s about 4\/5th B, 1\/5th A.<\/p>\n Would I show it as an example of a B? As Kevin Hagopian mentioned, it’s really much too good to be a truly representative example, but students will probably like it more than a Dr. Kildare movie or something. If you really want to sock it to them, dig into the Sam Katzman filmography. Try one of the Jungle Jims or the Lugosi Poverty Rows.<\/p>\n David already mentioned the real gems of the studio Bs, the Motos. The Chans are great too. (I can even watch the Monogram Chans, although the Karloff Mr. Wongs can be a real slog.) As far as other mystery series go, the Universal Holmes films are extremely well done, the Dick Tracys, Perry Masons, and Torchy Blaines are a lot of fun, and I have a soft spot for the Falcon films due to AMC early morning reruns in my childhood. The Kitty O’Day mysteries are on my “to watch” pile, but I’m not optimistic. Follow Me Quietly<\/em> (1949) also comes to mind as a great B-noir.<\/p>\n And also, the Thin Man<\/em> movies weren’t really Bs. Not responding to anyone – just needed to get that out there. Closer to Bs would be MGM’s Sloan mystery knockoffs, which are fun too (especially Fast and Furious<\/em>, which is fortunate enough to have Rosalind Russell).<\/p>\n Whew, thanks for reading if you made it this far.<\/p>\n As a new day dawns on Texas, Kevin Heffernan<\/strong> has more thoughts.<\/p>\n My assertion that Black Cat<\/em> was an A referred to my understanding of the terms of its first-run distribution . But I actually had little evidence, I have discovered, as I looked over my notes on the movie from Tino’s seminar a few years back.<\/p>\n Lea and Doug’s observations about Universal’s “Little Three” status and the general role its horror pictures played in the larger patterns of distribution seem spot on to me and of course became more prevalent (inflexible, even) in the post-Laemmle years. The only exception to this that I can think of was Son of Frankenstein<\/em>, which was U’s entry in the superproduction cycle of 1938-39 (stars on loan from other studios, spectacular production design, initial plans to shoot in Technicolor, etc), but that movie was really the last gasp of the A horror pic at the studio, I think.<\/p>\n And at 10:10 AM CST Lea Jacobs<\/strong> is back at the keyboard.<\/p>\n I guess Brad has the last word on The Black Cat<\/em>. Nothing like doing the research.<\/p>\n Doug Gomery<\/strong> adds in re MGM B-pictures:<\/p>\n Nicholas Schenck was no great man, but he ran Loew’s\/MGM from 1927 to 1954. To him the Thin Man<\/em> series were Bs from his studio. Remember block booking? These simply made MGM a more attractive package. The question of A v. B is at its heart a budget decision and then a release one. The New York-based men, like Schenck, made those decisions.<\/p>\n Day 3: B Mania Subsides; some answers, more questions<\/span><\/p>\n 8 February: Brad Schauer<\/strong> revisits Nick and Nora:<\/p>\n Another reason they don’t seem like Bs to me is that they were consistently among the top grossers for MGM in the ’30s. But so were the Andy Hardys, you might argue, and they’re clearly Bs.<\/p>\n Except…from what I could tell from analyzing the distribution patterns of the ’35-’36 season (not done this morning, don’t worry), After the Thin Man<\/em> played in major first run theaters, and hardly ever with a second feature until it hit the nabes (neighborhood theatres). It was distributed like a big deal A, and you can sense the exhibs’ excitement in the trade press that another Thin Man<\/em> installment was coming out.<\/p>\n Finally, we can look at the running times. MGM’s Bs were sometimes longer than other studios, but the first sequel After the Thin Man<\/em> is nearly two hours long. Compare that to MGM’s Sloan mysteries (Thin Man<\/em> knock-offs), which clock in at 75 minutes each.<\/p>\n So, like The Black Cat<\/em>, the Thin Man<\/em> films seem an unusual case. The first installments may have been budgeted as Bs, but as the series caught on, it was treated like an A property, both in terms of production and distribution – compared to the Andy Hardy films, for instance, whose budgets remained quite low for the entire series.<\/p>\n Although I think the Hardy films were often exhibited as the top of a double feature, but that’s another story.<\/p>\n I kinda feel like lecturing on this stuff this morning instead of the continuity system, although I’m not sure the students will want to hear about distribution patterns at 8:30 a.m.<\/p>\n This is very interesting, Brad. I wonder if any of this could be correlated with William Powell and Myrna Loy’s salaries? That is, maybe the series made them stars (I am pretty certain that they were not prior to the first of the series). Higher budgets for later Thin Man<\/em> films might have been a function, not only of more expensive settings and shooting practices, but also of MGM raising the stars\u2019 pay.<\/p>\n Anyway, it might be worth looking at the publicity attached to the two stars over the course of the series and see if it increased and if it changed. I don’t know of any source that would tell you what they were paid (at least any source that can be trusted) although contracts might exist at AMPAS.<\/p>\n And then, of course, there is the question of whether or not the cutting rate went down over the course of the series…<\/p>\n This last remark refers to an email entry of my own<\/strong>, sent about the same time:<\/p>\n I have another idea about how to spot a B. It isn’t infallible, but it might serve as an index. I\u2019m thinking Average Shot Length.<\/p>\n Oho, you think, here we go again. But hear me out.<\/p>\n And 6.0 second ASL.<\/p>\n We found in our Hollywood book [The Classical Hollywood Cinema<\/em>], and pretty reliably since, that during the 1930s-1950s the Hwood norms ranged from 8-11 seconds per shot. But those samples were drawn, I increasingly realize, from mostly A pix, because in the vast initial filmography we compiled, what we found in archives tended to be A pix. Only William K. Everson had a substantial collection of B titles on our first list, more even than the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n So maybe Bs tend to be cut faster? Here are some other ASLs from the 1930s, from B or B+ items: Murder by an Aristocrat<\/em>, 6.3 seconds; Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase<\/em>, 6.8; Indianapolis Speedway<\/em>, 5 seconds; Tarzan the Ape Man<\/em>, 6.6 seconds; Tarzan Finds a Son<\/em>, 3.6 seconds!<\/p>\n From the 1940s: Parole Fixer<\/em>, 6.6 seconds; Chain Lightning<\/em>, 6.3; Framed<\/em>, 6.3.<\/p>\n Now this mini-sample has skewing problems of its own–lots of mystery and action pictures. We’d need to test it with other genres. Can there be fast-cut musicals? (Actually, yes; Footlight Parade<\/em>.) Comedies? (Yeah, Duck Soup<\/em>.) Melodramas? (Yep, Mr. Skeffington<\/em>.) Still, I don’t have enough from any genres to say much of substance. As for our two big horror examples, The Black Cat<\/em> falls in the A-picture range (8.5 seconds), while The Raven<\/em> is much faster cut (5.7 seconds).<\/p>\n And what about the real Bs–the Westerns from Monogram et al? Plenty of them play on TCM and we have tons sitting in the Wisconsin Center for Theater Research, but I confess to having watched only a handful and never counted shots. Also, films with lots of stock footage (travel, racetracks, jungle animals, etc.) tend to be cut faster…and we know that Bs use lots of stock footage.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hurricane-express-mascot-32-2002.jpg\" "\\"hurricane-express-mascot-32-200\\"")
<\/a>Other companies concentrated wholly on making B pictures. The most famous of these so-called Poverty Row studios are Monogram, Republic, Mascot, and Producers Releasing Corp. Besides turning out stand-alone Bs, the Poverty Row studios specialized in serials, like Don Winslow of the Navy<\/em> and Hurricane Express<\/em> (1932, Mascot, with John Wayne, right).<\/p>\n![\"black-cat-silhouette-300.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-silhouette-300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/detour-b-2002.jpg\" "\\"detour-b-200\\"")
<\/a>And, if yer willing to go Poverty Row for yer B Film, Detour<\/em> just rocks. It’s so obviously re-using 2-3 sets and locations, has the foggiest scene ever shot, and long voiceovers that sound deep and poetic and take up half the film. The kids love<\/em> it. And it could ease you gently into the waters of film noir, should you wish to go that way (and I bet you do).<\/p>\n
\nI set of DVDs and the feature we use is It Happened One Night<\/em>. What the students like best though is the popcorn and the give-a-ways between the parts of the program: Nancy Drew<\/em> and Superman<\/em>, a bag of groceries with food items from 1930s–turns out to be current student food–Bisquick, Snickers, Jiffy peanut butter,Ritz crackers. The grand prize bank night equivalent is an A on the final exam. They freak! It is like they won big money.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-one-sheet-2002.jpg\" "\\"black-cat-one-sheet-200\\"")
<\/a>I would think The Black Cat<\/em> is a B, not only because of running time but because of genre. When I was researching the distribution of B’s at RKO I was surprised by the way the horror films made by Val Lewton’s unit at RKO (many justly celebrated today) were treated as the lowest of the low–opening alongside films with titles like Boy Slaves<\/em> at the small Rivoli or Rialto theaters in New York for very short runs, and later booked in and out of theaters nationally on an ad hoc basis. See my article, \u201c<\/span>The B Film and the Problem of Cultural Distinction,\u201d Screen<\/em> 33, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 1-13. I also think that Universal simply wasn’t making many A films in 1934, even with their recognizable stars.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-poster-small2.jpg\" "\\"black-cat-poster-small\\"")
<\/a>Great movies, Paul! “Cries of pleasure will be torn from” your students (as they were from our hero in S\/Z<\/em>).<\/p>\n
\nThen Hughes bought it after the war and dabbled with his strange way of doing things.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-32.jpg\" "\\"black-cat-3\\"")
<\/a> Tino does discuss this issue in Grand Design<\/em>. According to him, Frankenstein<\/em> and Dracula<\/em> are clearly A pics, part of Universal’s strategy to break into the first-run market, since, as we all know, they had very few theaters of their own. But Black Cat<\/em> is only one third the budget of Frankenstein, according to the figures in IMDB.com. Does that make it a B pic? Perhaps. Yet it seems to me that this film could still have been marketed and released like the initial Universal Horror films, riding on their coat tails, so to speak, but with less actual money invested in the production.<\/p>\n
\nThis to me, sound like a researchable topic! (I myself have not time for this, unfortunately\u2026)<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/dick-tracy-2002.jpg\" "\\"dick-tracy-200\\"")
<\/a>
\nB. Clips from fairly awful B\u2019s, like the Dick Tracys or Tim Holt Westerns at RKO, which show what could happen when questions of production value were not attended to quite so scrupulously, simply because, given the films\u2019 titles, they were likely to draw from a market which did not make attendance decisions in the same way as patrons of, say, Pilot #5<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"black-cat-1-200.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-1-200.jpg\")
![\"black-cat-2-200.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-2-200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/blackcat-2003.jpg\" "\\"blackcat-200\\"")
<\/a>Thanks for the info, Brad. Yes, Black Cat<\/em> is a curious hybrid case. For a “truer” example of a Karloff\/Lugosi B from Universal, see The Raven<\/em> from the following year–most notably in its use of fairly minimal, obviously left-over sets (nothing like the very bold production design of Black Cat<\/em>). And, although I recall that Kristin is a Lew Landers fan (didn’t she call him “lightly likeable at least” in Breaking the Glass Armor<\/em>?), his name was somewhat synonymous with quotidian program pictures in the 30s and 40s.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/thin-man-11.jpg\" "\\"thin-man-1\\"")
<\/a>Now about the Thin Man<\/em> series. In the essay on film budgets at MGM that appeared a few years back, I recall that these films were in the “B” range for MGM (about $250,000). (See H. Mark Glancy, \u201cMGM Film Grosses\u20141934-1948: The Eddie Mannix Ledger,\u201d Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television<\/em> 12, 2, 1992: 127-144.) This is a lot of money relative to what other studios were spending on B films, of course, but all of MGM budget ranges were high relative to the other majors (the average MGM A was between $700,000 and $1 mil as I recall). So I agree that the Thin Man<\/em> films are elegant and well dressed and don’t fit anyone’s conception of a B, but at least when considered from the perspective of film budget categories at MGM, wouldn’t these count as Bs? Or, put another way, what would<\/em> you count as an MGM B?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/thin-man-21.jpg\" "\\"thin-man-2\\"")
<\/a>Real quick about the Thin Man<\/em>s before I run to lecture: I know I was being a bit contentious when I said they weren’t Bs. Lea and Prof. Gomery are absolutely right that if you go by budget, they’re Bs…at least initially. But by the time we get to Another Thin Man<\/em> (1939), the budget is up to $1.1 mil, only a couple of Gs less than Ninotchka<\/em>. 1944’s Thin Man Goes Home<\/em> is budgeted at $1.4 mil, only about $500K less than Meet Me in St. Louis<\/em> (!).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/the-thin-man-poster1.jpg\" "\\"the-thin-man-poster\\"")
<\/a>Lea Jacobs\u2019<\/strong> fingers fly over the keyboard a few moments later:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/devil-2501.jpg\" "\\"devil-250\\"")
<\/a>Last night I watched THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE, a 62-minute RKO item from 1952, directed by Felix Feist. Laurence Tierney is the most recognizable name in it, and if you know him only from RESERVOIR DOGS, you might not<\/em> recognize him. Good suspense, very few sets (lots of car driving with background process plates), familiar character actors wandering in to do a bit part (including Harry Shannon, aka Charles Foster Kane’s father). A surprisingly violent twist at one point. Even the title<\/em> tells you you’re watching a B.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/lifeboat1.jpg\" "\\"lifeboat\\"")
<\/a>Interestingly, of major directors I’ve sampled, Hitchcock’s ASLs come closest to the ‘B’ touch. Selznick famously told Hitchcock to slow down the pace because his British films were too “cutty”; was there an unspoken belief that fast cutting was a little downmarket if you were making A pictures? Hitchcock sometimes cut fairly fast (until Rope<\/em> and Under Capricorn<\/em>, of course): 6.4 seconds for Lifeboat<\/em> (on right), 7.3 for The Paradine Case<\/em>, 6.8 for Notorious<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/detour-c1.jpg\" "\\"detour-c\\"")
<\/a>Wow! Thanks to everyone for their input on this; now I just have to sort through everyone’s arguments and make a judgment call (given the degree of controversy over the question). I have to say, though I have now been convinced to use Detour<\/em> as one of my screenings for that week, so as to have an example of Poverty Row, it would seem that either Black Cat<\/em> or Zombie<\/em> would work (as well as a Moto, which I hadn’t thought of at first), not least because there is some element of ambiguity in both cases that would be fodder for discussion.<\/p>\n![\"black-cat-rite.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/black-cat-rite.jpg\")
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