<DIV><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%">The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios—most of which also owned the theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%">In <i>The Battle for the Bs</i>, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (think <i>Destination Moon</i> and <i>I Was a Teenage Werewolf</i>) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%"> </p></div>