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While companies such as American International Pictures allowed B-movies to thrive at the box office in the 1950s, the Bs also had a substantial presence on television in this decade, and, even though scholars often cite television’s growing popularity as a primary cause for the demise of such Poverty Row studios as Republic and PRC/Eagle-Lion, B-filmmaking simultaneously influenced certain patterns within the television industry. B-movies played a unique and at times integral role in the development of the television medium in the 1950s, yet few detailed accounts of this interplay exist despite the wealth of scholarly literature comparing the two media in this period. Two case studies will help to illustrate the complex role that B-movies played in television’s early history. The first demonstrates how the sale of B-movies to various stations in the early 1950s established programming patterns that became well entrenched by the time the major studios began offering their films for television broadcast by mid-decade. The second examines how episodes of numerous programs were turned into B-movies for cinematic release, an example of collaboration between the two media that predates most instances of major studio development for the small screen. Media historians frequently describe a significant tension between the film and television industries when chronicling the origins of the latter, with each medium seeking to dominate the entertainment landscape in the early 1950s.1 Despite this seemingly bitter rivalry, various efforts to unite the two industries occurred throughout the decade. Such ventures as “theater television ” (whereby viewers could see special small-screen broadcasts such as sporting events on the big screen at movie theaters) were launched, along with “subscription television” (an early pay-per-view movie service).2 Given that this intermedia rivalry often saw significant cooperation, scholarship in media history such as Christopher Anderson’s Hollywood TV, William Boddy’s 5 Small Screen, Smaller Pictures New Perspectives on 1950s Television and B-Movies 131 THE BATTLE FOR THE Bs 132 Fifties Television, Tino Balio’s Hollywood in the Age of Television, Michelle Hilmes’s Hollywood and Broadcasting, and Kerry Segrave’s Movies at Home: How Hollywood Came to Television has sought to trace the dynamics of this relationship, as well as to explore the holes in the grand narrative of television’s origins. It does not account, however, for some of the more overlooked and unusual parallels between the film and television industries—those in which the B-movie plays a central role. Segrave notes, for example, that in the early years of television programming , the only films available to the small screen “consisted of westerns, B films produced by ‘Poverty Row’ studios such as Republic and Monogram, a few A pictures from independents and some foreign fare, virtually all from the U.K.”3 Part one of this chapter provides nuance to this general overview of film programming patterns by assessing specific films and stations as illustrations of just how significant the Bs were to television’s development as a medium. Part two examines the phenomenon of the made-from-TV movie, a collaborative effort between the two industries arising in the early to mid-1950s. Such films transported television content to the arena of B-movie distribution . The films and programs discussed herein are therefore an unexamined area of negotiation and crossover between the film and television industries in an era in which the two were frequently at odds with one another. Many of the patterns established by the crossover between the Bs and television helped to establish practices that became ingrained in the latter’s programming structure long after such experimental ventures as theater television were abandoned. While B-movies were often considered a mere stepping-stone for television as it awaited Hollywood’s eventual presence, the role of the Bs in television’s early history is far more complex and important than many realize. Part One: Television Broadcasting and B-Movies in the Early 1950s While the major Hollywood studios began selling their films to television in 1955, there was certainly no dearth of films on television in the first half of the decade. Films were shown on the small screen in mass quantities during this period, the majority (but, as will be demonstrated, not all) of them being B-movies. Movies appeared on television almost from the very beginning of the latter medium’s postwar debut. In 1948, British producer Alexander Korda sold twenty...

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