Talk:Realart Pictures Inc.

"B-pictures"

Opening the section "History" is this: "When Universal Pictures became Universal-International in 1946, new studio head William Goetz discontinued the studio's popular B-pictures - comedies, musicals, mysteries, westerns and serials - to begin...." Aside from technical doubts (dash/hyphen usage, U-I italicized), the central meaning is off. What Goetz was not B production, but the Saturday kiddie matinee department. Serials were no more, yes, but only a certain kind of Western—the cheap-as-serials juvenile "cowboy hero" type—was also discontinued. These were epitomized by Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd. Universal had never been able to find a replacement in this sub-genre for Buck Jones since his death in a nightclub fire in the early 40s, and who had been no genuine competition for Rogers, Autry or Boyd. The proof that this was all that was discontinued is that no one has ever suggested that Universal's Francis the Talking Mule and Ma and Pa Kettle films of the 1950s were anything but Bs. Some have labelled their last few Abbott and Costello comedies, their sci-fi thrillers (Tarantula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and others), and their Audie Murphy Westerns of that same decade Bs as well. Does anybody want to dispute this, or should I go on and rewrite that sentence? --Tbrittreid (talk) 21:46, 26 March 2010 (UTC)