Apologies for the sparse posting this week. I’ve been frantically revising my first chapter, as I enter the home stretch of the dissertation. But since Chapter 1 is on industrial history in the classical period, a side thought arose: how much of our sense of Hollywood is skewed by the relative unavailability of B films? For those unfamiliar with Hollywood’s history (and, perhaps, like me came of age in an era of multiplexes), B films refer to something more specific than “bad movie”; they are the bottom bill of a double feature, a practice in sway in the 30s and 40s. Studios set up special units for the Bs, which with cheaper budgets, fewer stars and shorter shooting schedules often (not always) did come across as aesthetically rudimentary. In any case, about 75 percent of Hollywood’s product were B movies, if you include Poverty Row productions. Yet very few of those films are easily accessible today. Sure, B horror films and film noirs have been released and are cult favorites (nothing wrong with that… I’m anxiously awaiting a chance to see I Walked With a Zombie and My Name is Julia Ross). But the 1930s Bs in particular are nearly impossible to see. (If you have suggestions of ones available, let me know). I don’t even know how many have prints still extant. It does color the understanding that film scholars have of film history. On one hand it makes sense to discuss the differences between different As (genre, politics, textuality): after all, to the extent that audiences discriminated, they chose movies based on the A feature. On the other hand, the As were hardly the whole story, and the larger picture of cinematic history is still neglected.
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