"B" Movies; an informal survey of the American low-budget film 1933-1945

New York: Curtis Books. Near Fine. (c.1973). First Edition. Softcover. [a nice tight copy with minor handling wear and some light age-toning to the spine]. (The Curtis Film Series) Series Mass Market PB (B&W photographs) As much a history of the various 'Poverty Row' studios that churned out B- films as of the films themselves,this excellent work remains one of the best on its subject. Reprinted several times, this is the original low-budget, cheaply-produced paperback -- the first entry, I believe, in the "Curtis Film Series," produced under the general editorship of Leonard Maltin. As Maltin noted in an introductory comment to the 1987 reprint, although the original "was released with a minimum of fanfare -- or distribution -- word of it spread throughout the film buff community like wildfire; here, in a modest little paperback, was the most comprehensive history of B movies ever published -- a gold mine of facts and observations the likes of which had never been seen before. Its reputation has endured over the years, and since it went out of print, it has become one of the most sought-after titles in the field of film literature." The bindings on the mass-market editions of the Curtis Film Series books were notoriously prone to cracking, so it's unusual to find a copy of this title in such good nick; this one was almost certainly never read. .