The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-budget Cinema

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people contributed to the realization of this book—first and foremost my wife, Erin Davis, who has never known a time when I was not working on this project in some capacity, and whose love makes everything in life better. Leslie Mitchner has been a fantastic editor, and I am very thankful for all of her help and guidance. Paul Heyer has been an incredible mentor and friend for many years and taught me how to be a better student and scholar (and how to shoot a recurve bow and throw a boomerang, and many other useful skills). Dana Polan has been extremely encouraging of this project since its early stages, offering many suggestions that made this a better book. Thank you to David Culbert and my other anonymous reader, whose comments and suggestions proved extremely valuable to the revision process, as did those of Paul St. Pierre. Mary Francis has my gratitude for helping me place this work at Rutgers University Press. Thanks are due to numerous supervisors and colleagues at several institutions : Will Straw, Darin Barney, and Marc Raboy at McGill University; Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson at Concordia University; Jen Marchbank, Robert Anderson, and Jan Walls at Simon Fraser University; Steffen Hantke at Sogang University; Scott Preston, Murray Linton, and Allan Reid at the University of New Brunswick. I draw on the interviews of Tom Weaver at several points and am grateful for his diligence in conducting them. I am also indebted to those who have gone before me in the study of B-movies, including Don Miller, Jeffrey Sconce, Eric Schaeffer, Kevin Heffernan, Brian Taves, Wheeler Dixon, Mark Thomas McGee, Charles Flynn, and Todd McCarthy, among others. Special thanks to David Taylor for the Ramar lobby cards. Chapter 5 contains material that was revised and expanded upon from two previously published essays: Blair Davis, “Small Screen, Smaller Pictures: Television Broadcasting and B-Movies in the Early 1950s,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28, no. 2 (June 2008): 219–238; and Blair Davis, “Made-from-TV-Movies: Turning 1950s Television Into Films,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 29, no. 2 (June 2009): 197–218. Reprinted with permission. ix Much love and appreciation to my family and friends: my father, Stephen Davis; Allison and Graham Knights; Mhairi and Steve MacKenzie; Rita and George Thorpe; Rob, Sheena, and Shannon Maybin; Kelly and Greg Pombert; Carole Akazawa; Guy Neill. Finally, this book is dedicated to the memory of my Mum, Mrs. Wilma Davis, whose love and support helped me get to where I am today. The news that this book would be published brought her great joy, and she is dearly missed. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x The Battle for the Bs ...