NitrateVille.com

I love the discoveries I keep making with little 1930's--40's "B" movies, and (if expectations are adjusted), the thrills they
still provide.

Any favorite "B"s?

I'll start with one: "Five Came Back" with Lucille Ball and Chester Morris, and support from John Carradine and C. Aubrey Smith. John Farrow directs. Simple plot: plane crashes in jungle with 12 passengers, cannibals lurk, plane can be repaired-- but can only carry five back. Who stays? Timeless.

Just transferred one from VHS to DVD:

Lederer in the tight little RETURN OF DRACULA.

-Craig

The Columbia pictures WHISTLER series starring Richard Dix. Model B films, mostly directed by William Castle

Bela Lugosi has provided me with endless entertainment in whatever films he was in.

greta

Well, now you're talking my language. Most of my favorite films are "little 'B' movies." Of course, that word "little" can be tricky: do you mean RKO little or Monogram little? There's quite a difference. Five Came Back is definitely a B, but I'm not sure I would call it little in a discussion that would include six-reelers by the likes of Chesterfield, Colony, Puritan, etc. In other words, films that cost, say, $30,000 or less to make. Be that as it may....

Among the major-studio B output one can find many unheralded gems. Among the very best, near the very top of the list, I'd put Street of Chance, a 1942 Paramount adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's first "Black" novel, The Black Curtain. It's an early noir effort, directed by Stuart Heisler, that actually improves on the source material by changing the identity of the killer in a most satisfactory twist ending. I remain amazed that this taut little thriller has never had a commercial video release.

Most of my favorite "little" Warner Bros. pictures aren't really Bs at all; they're programmers that could play either half of a double bill. Of the studio's actual Bs — the pictures whose production was supervised by B-unit honcho Bryan Foy — I'm partial to Jailbreak (1936), a Nick Grinde six-reeler that's a combination whodunit, gangster picture, and prison picture. I'm also fond of Smart Blonde (1937), the first Torchy Blane film and the only one directly adapted from the pulp-magazine series that is its ostensible inspiration. It's an incredibly faithful adaptation of the Black Mask short story "No Hard Feelings" except for changing the demon reporter's gender.

Most B-picture aficionados speak highly of Robert Florey's late-Thirties Paramounts, which move fast and have terrific casts. My favorites are Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and King of Alcatraz (1938), although they're all worth seeing.

For largely sentimental reasons I'm addicted to Universal's Crime Club pictures of the late Thirties, especially the first four: The Westland Case (1937), The Black Doll, The Lady in the Morgue, and Danger in the Air (all 1938). But I like 'em all and at one time had 16mm prints on seven of the eight. Thanks to Bob Birchard, we had the opportunity to screen one of them — The Last Warning (1938) — with its director, Al Rogell. He seemed somewhat trepidatious about seeing it 50 years after making it, but when it had ended and the lights came back up, he said, "Hey, that wasn't a bad little picture!" Preston Foster and Frank Jenks made a great team. The Westland Case, cleverly adapting Jonathan Latimer's "Headed for a Hearse," has what in B-picture terms should be considered a bravura sequence, in which Foster's drunken detective Bill Crane essentially solves the mystery with a stopwatch, a monkey wrench, and a deep-sea diver.

Another top favorite of mine is Whispering Smith Speaks (1935), one of eight George O'Brien Bs produced independently by Sol Lesser for Fox distribution. It's a sprightly romantic comedy with a railroading background. I like this one mainly because it represents George's true personality better than most of his films. And he seemed to have better chemistry with Irene Ware than with most of his B-picture leading ladies.

There are scads of worthy Poverty Row Bs too, although the best of them — like The Sin of Nora Moran (1932) — are more accurately classified as programmers because they often played as single features in big-city "neighborhood houses" and small-town venues. I could write a separate post on those, but most are almost impossible to see unless you know a 16mm collector with beat-up old prints from early TV or rental libraries. And then there are the Westerns....

True story: When I ran the 1985 Cinecon, one of the titles I advertised was the 1930 Street of Chance with William Powell and Kay Francis. At the last minute, when I learned the print would not be available to us, I substituted my 16mm of the above-mentioned 1942 version. At this time it was considered sacrilegious to run movies made after 1940 unless they featured one of the convention guest stars. After the film ended and people began filing out of the screening room, one of our fellow Cinephiles paused as he passed me, exclaiming, "What a great little movie! I never heard of it before!" Right behind him was an obviously disgruntled old-timer who snarled, "If Cinecon's been reduced to playing B pictures from the Forties, I guess I'll have to find another way to spend my Labor Day weekends!"

I have a hard time distinguishing between Bs and programmers. I mean, by definition a Chesterfield release is a B, but which is a 65-minute movie from a major studio with a rising star (or someone they hope will be)? So I'm not going to swear these are one rather than the other. The more important thing is that the ethos and the approach is often similar, no-BS storytelling that gets to the point.

I'll happily watch anything with Charles McGraw in the lead. To me he is a quintessential B actor of the 40s/early 50s, never going to be Bogart* or Mitchum and was soon a supporting player in things like The Birds and Spartacus, but he has a hardbitten appeal and any 70-minute movie with him that TCM plays is bound to be worth that short running time-- The Narrow Margin is the famous one, like Five Came Back celebrated for B virtues in its time, but I like others (Armored Car Robbery, etc.) just as well.

* That's a little joke.

Another thing to look for is rising directors looking to show what they can do. All those early Anthony Mann B noirs-- even his debut with an attempt at a series, Dr. Broadway-- reward their short running times. Likewise Richard Fleischer's Follow Me Quietly, Street of Chance (which is Jack Hively, not Stuart Heisler), Robert Siodmak's Fly By Night, Budd Boetticher's first films like Escape in the Fog, etc.

I saw a lot of the ones Ed mentioned when William K. Everson came to town in the 90s with his films regularly; he did a whole weekend that was nearly all Paramount Bs, half of them Florey's, and I quite agree about King of Alcatraz and Street of Chance in particular. He also showed the 50s remake of Street of Chance, Nightmare, with DeForest Kelley, which is good too (though not as good).

Mike Gebert wrote:I have a hard time distinguishing between Bs and programmers....

A distinction that's always confused me.

Well, at the ends I think it's easy. A Chesterfield movie is a B because it was made to be played on the second B half of a double bill, and sold differently from the A, usually flat fee I believe versus a percentage of the box office. A programmer is a modest movie with a studio's leading stars; Taxi! with James Cagney is a programmer, as it's one of 5 or 6 movies he made that year and modestly budgeted (compared to Yankee Doodle Dandy, say) and so on, but it's not a B because Cagney wasn't a B star, he was an A star and it would have led the bill. But there's a middle ground that can be hard to judge without knowledge of the studios' production setups. Which may be more information than I really feel I need to process a modest sitcom with Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts (another thing I really like, those sweet little dramedies made for mostly rural viewers with unglamorous old pros starring).

To me, though, what both share is a lack of pretension, a feeling of breeziness and getting it done in 70 minutes that is often more appealing than more ambitious and labored As.

I don't really like B-westerns that much, but Roy Rogers' Man From Cheyenne (1942) is a very bizarre one. Film Noir didn't officially exist then, and certainly not in the B-western world. In this film, the villain is a woman who uses her looks to get what she wants from men. Most of the crimes (cattle-rustling and murder) occur at night. It was shot right before the U.S. entered WWII, and has to be the darkest-themed film that Rogers made. The ending is what you would expect from a B-western, but this film is very different from most B-westerns made for kids and rural audiences in the 1940s.

I'll second FIVE CAME BACK. Add SO DARK THE NIGHT.

Mike Gebert wrote: To me, though, what both share is a lack of pretension, a feeling of breeziness and getting it done in 70 minutes that is often more appealing than more ambitious and labored As.

Which is why I love so many of them; for ex., all of Alice White's pictures. But though hers was an A+ personality, was she ever ranked among the A-list stars, if that rating separates programmers from Bs?

entredeuxguerres wrote:

Mike Gebert wrote: To me, though, what both share is a lack of pretension, a feeling of breeziness and getting it done in 70 minutes that is often more appealing than more ambitious and labored As.

Which is why I love so many of them; for ex., all of Alice White's pictures. But though hers was an A+ personality, was she ever ranked among the A-list stars, if that rating separates programmers from Bs?

Would that make the Columbia Whistler pictures programmers then? Even though he was slipping down farther in the studio hierarchy Richard Dix was still a name star and a leading man.

Which is why I love so many of them; for ex., all of Alice White's pictures. But though hers was an A+ personality, was she ever ranked among the A-list stars, if that rating separates programmers from Bs?

Without knowing the details, I would assume her studio considered her an A star for A productions. But they still may have been quick and breezy, as early 30s movies often were, as opposed to MGM super-productions later in the decade.

Series films are, I think, the definition of programmers, since they were turned out like clockwork, X per year. The biggest stars steered clear of them-- The Thin Man being the famous and solitary exception-- but one rung down they were steady work and a chance to be the name above the title for top supporting performers like Basil Rathbone or Peter Lorre, or for stars who had slipped a rung but were still names, like Chester Morris or Dix. In that sense they were exactly like when a fading movie actor moves to TV for their own show.

But then there were A series and B series...

Hat tip to Mike Gebert for correctly naming Jack Hively as Street of Chance's director. But Heisler was also doing some good Bs at Paramount in the early Forties.

What separates Bs from programmers — and this is something a great many otherwise perceptive film buffs and historians fail to realize — is not their themes, genres, or stars' marquee value. It's how they were sold to exhibitors, period. During the Thirties, at RKO, Richard Dix slid down the ladder of stardom from A pictures to programmers to Bs. He retained a modest fan following but the Whistlers were definitely B films and marketed as such.

It's a mistake to think of all series pictures as programmers. The MGM Tarzans were A pictures all the way. The RKO Tarzans were program pictures that could play either half of a double bill. But Weissmuller's Jungle Jims were conceived, produced, and sold as Bs. The Andy Hardys might have been on the bottom half of double bills in some Loews theaters. But they often played solo or topped double bills in small-town houses and second-run theaters. Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes films for Fox were A pictures. His Universal Holmes films were Bs.

Thanks all, for the responses. Lots of good suggestions.

Ed and Mike, you seem to have real enthusiasm for this area. There seem to be a number of books written just on little "B" type films, programmers, etc., but some of these books seem cut and paste jobs.

Are there any really good books on the subject---- The Golden Age of B Movies (McClelland), The B List, Golden Age of B Movies (Miller/Maltin), Big Book of B Movies, Land of a Thousand Balconies?

They all have their merits, but Don Miller's book is the most useful overview. Doug's book goes into more detail on a film-by-film basis, but his selections are skewed toward pictures he liked as a kid and therefore ignores Thirties films that really should have been covered in a book titled The Golden Age of B Movies. The much-praised and overhyped Kings of the Bs is practically worthless; among other things it reprints a piece that absurdly identifies Phantom Lady (1944) as a B. There's some coverage of Bs in the Thirties volume of the History of the American Cinema series, but it's scattershot and heavily skewed in favor of Robert Florey (as reflecting the bias of the author, Brian Taves, who wrote a book on Florey).

Bottom line: The ultimate, definitive book on B movies has yet to be written.

Speaking of Stuart Heisler, Everson also showed two B Paramount horror films he made, Among the Living and The Monster and the Girl. The latter is decent enough as somewhat cheesy horrors go, but the former is a really nice atmospheric (Southern Gothic via the backlot) piece with Albert Dekker in a dual role (one, of course, the crazy twin, or is he?).

Another young-director-on-the-rise one well worth catching is Edward Dmytryk's The Devil Commands, with Karloff; it triumphs over how little horror movies could actually show then with very smart application of the power of suggestion.

Too often these are very hard to find, but one of Monogram's best crime thrillers, Decoy, is on a double bill set in a gorgeous print. If you want to see how good B thrillers could be, or that Detour wasn't the only one, pick this one up.

All that said, Ed's forgotten more than I'll ever know on this subject.

My fave "B" Movie is "GUN CRAZY" (1950) with Peggy Cummins and John Dall. Yet another HUGE revelation to me at about age 14 or 15, watching my tiny Black & White little television set in my bedroom, pushed up close to my bed!!! I used to have to turn the sound right down low so as not to awaken my family, (or indeed let them know I was still awake on a school night). But I remember vividly being rooted to the spot all the way through this exciting movie! I believe it has become a "cult movie" now???? Is that right??? I've not seen it since I was a teenager!

A while ago, when I was researching how the budget of the higher-end Poverty Row film compared to the average major studio B, it was like discovering a whole other Hollywood under the one we know, with its own separate slate of stars, franchises and budgeting system. Columbia, for example, deemed their films AA, A, or B, and budgeted accordingly. Warner Bros had a designated B-unit with (from memory) an annual budget averaging $100,000 per film. The existence of a separate B market was certainly understood by both producers and exhibitors, and from a business point of view, it was just as important as the A market.

An interesting assertion I have read is that the B-directors were considered more important to their studios than the A-directors. From their perspective, having someone who could go away and make a decent film on a limited time and budget without close supervision would have been a tremendous asset. Take Allan Dwan's series of Bs for Twentieth Century Fox in the late 30s - terrifically entertaining, well made pictures by a great director that certainly put paid to the idea of Bs as necessarily inferior to As. Not all B-directors had Dwan's stature, of course, but even those who weren't could do some very decent stuff with what they had.

I sometimes wonder if B directors actually had a degree more autonomy than their A counterparts. The stakes were lower. They were expected to work unsupervised. You can't imagine Dwan making something unusual like A Mile From Heaven (1937) for the A market, for example.

To go back to the question, I find myself more and more interested not only by the major studio Bs but the rush of 'independent' product that emerged in the early 1930s, prior to the consolidation of Republic. Sure, some of it is lousy, but take Manhattan Tower (1932) - which would probably be unknown were it not all over the internet as a free public domain picture - and it shows that some were capable of really nice work.

You beat me to it. Gun Crazy!!!! Absolutely eye-popping. The leads -- hope I spell this correctly -- John Dall and Peggy Cummins -- are wonderful. The single-shot scene of the heist, with the camera in the getaway car -- it makes you feel like Orson Welles dreamed it up, because like Welles, the director, Joseph H. Lewis, had reinvented the method of shooting an action we'd seen in 300 previous films.

I sometimes wonder if B directors actually had a degree more autonomy than their A counterparts.

Perhaps, but only as long as they delivered on schedule. Gunther von Fritsch graduated to the director's chair from shorts at the Val Lewton unit (the epitome of the B unit as free-as-long-as-it-paid-the-bills), had only shot half of Curse of the Cat People by the time the 18-day shooting schedule was done, Robert Wise was promoted from the editing room to do the rest and that was it for old Gunther's major directing career. So Lewton had artistic autonomy, but nobody had the autonomy to not meet the deadline on budget.

Ed Hulse wrote:They all have their merits, but Don Miller's book is the most useful overview. Doug's book goes into more detail on a film-by-film basis, but his selections are skewed toward pictures he liked as a kid and therefore ignores Thirties films that really should have been covered in a book titled The Golden Age of B Movies. The much-praised and overhyped Kings of the Bs is practically worthless; among other things it reprints a piece that absurdly identifies Phantom Lady (1944) as a B. There's some coverage of Bs in the Thirties volume of the History of the American Cinema series, but it's scattershot and heavily skewed in favor of Robert Florey (as reflecting the bias of the author, Brian Taves, who wrote a book on Florey).

Bottom line: The ultimate, definitive book on B movies has yet to be written.

Rather harsh on KINGS OF THE 'B'S, as it was certainly useful when it came out in the 1970s. Admittedly, even then I spotted films mentioned in their director index which shouldn't have been there (it's supposed to be limited to talkies) and the odd mistake, but in its day it was worth having and I still have a copy. If one is building up a library of books on the subject, trial and error is part of the fun, and in addition (particularly due to the likes of Jimbo Berkey) there are so many films available now. Thirty-five years or so back one had a smattering on tv (not much over here in England), but otherwise it depended upon whether you lived in or near a city with a film theatre. I did catch some on college courses and at our local film society, but the latter was due to its treasurer, Cliff Hearn, who promoted films such as FIVE CAME BACK, SEVEN MILES FROM ALCATRAZ, THE STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR, etc.

Otherwise one had to be able to afford to buy or hire them on 8mm / 16mm. Tho' some were cheap to hire, the other costs added up. It's not a bad idea to assemble a small collection of the more affordable books and see what suits, disposing of the less useful ones. Certainly books in this field were a fairly new thing in the 1970s, and pioneering authors did make mistakes, sometimes due to the lack of access to the films of which we now seem to have a spectacular (though by no means complete) choice available at the click of a mouse.