Kennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center is one of ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration field centers. Since December 1968, Kennedy Space Center has been NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station; the management of the two entities work closely together, share resources, own facilities on each other's property. Though the first Apollo flights, all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from CCAFS, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, the Launch Operations Directorate. Starting with the fourth Gemini mission, the NASA launch control center in Florida began handing off control of the vehicle to the Mission Control Center shortly after liftoff. Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial crew missions and researches food production and In-Situ Resource Utilization for off-Earth exploration.
Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships adding a new launch pad in 2015. There are buildings grouped across the center's 144,000 acres. Among the unique facilities at KSC are the 525 ft tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts dormitories and suit-up area, a Space Station factory, a 3-mile-long Shuttle Landing Facility. There is a Visitor Complex open to the public on site; the military had been performing launch operations since 1949 at what would become Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel and the Missile Firing Laboratory to NASA to become the Launch Operations Directorate under NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal of a manned lunar landing by 1970 required an expansion of launch operations.
On July 1, 1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center. Cape Canaveral was inadequate to host the new launch facility design required for the mammoth 363-foot tall, 7,500,000-pound-force thrust Saturn V rocket, which would be assembled vertically in a large hangar and transported on a mobile platform to one of several launch pads. Therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island. NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles and negotiating with the state of Florida for an additional 87 square miles; the major buildings in KSC's Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, again just a week before his assassination on November 22, 1963. On November 29, 1963, the facility was given its current name by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnson's order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station under the designation "John F. Kennedy Space Center", spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind.
NASA Administrator James E. Webb clarified this by issuing a directive stating the Kennedy Space Center name applied only to the LOC, while the Air Force issued a general order renaming the military launch site Cape Kennedy Air Force Station. Located on Merritt Island, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Miami and Jacksonville on Florida's Space Coast, due east of Orlando, it is 34 miles long and six miles wide, covering 219 square miles. KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is one hour's drive from the Orlando area; the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Because much of the installation is a restricted area and only nine percent of the land is developed, the site serves as an important wildlife sanctuary. Center workers can encounter bald eagles, American alligators, wild boars, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, the endangered Florida panther and Florida manatees.
From 1967 through 1973, there were 13 Saturn V launches, including the ten remaining Apollo missions after Apollo 7. The first of two unmanned flights, Apollo 4 on November 9, 1967, was the first rocket launch from KSC; the Saturn V's first manned launch on December 21, 1968 was Apollo 8's lunar orbiting mission. The next two missions tested the Lunar Module: Apollo 9 and Apollo 10. Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16, 1969, made the first Moon landing on July 20. Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970–1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17. On May 14, 1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A. By this time, the Cape Kennedy pads 34 and 37 used for the Saturn IB were decommissioned, so Pad 39B was modified to accommodate the Saturn IB, used to launch three manned missions to Skylab that year, as well as the final Apollo spacecraft for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975; as the Space
Montana
Montana is a landlocked state in the Northwestern United States. Montana has several nicknames, although none are official, including "Big Sky Country" and "The Treasure State", slogans that include "Land of the Shining Mountains" and more "The Last Best Place". Montana is the 4th largest in area, the 8th least populous, the 3rd least densely populated of the 50 U. S. states. The western half of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller island ranges are found throughout the state. In all, 77 named; the eastern half of Montana is characterized by badlands. Montana is bordered by Idaho to the west, Wyoming to the south, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan to the north; the economy is based on agriculture, including ranching and cereal grain farming. Other significant economic resources include oil, coal, hard rock mining, lumber; the health care and government sectors are significant to the state's economy. The state's fastest-growing sector is tourism.
Nearly 13 million tourists annually visit Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, the Beartooth Highway, Flathead Lake, Big Sky Resort, other attractions. The name Montana comes from the Spanish word Montaña, which in turn comes from the Latin word Montanea, meaning "mountain", or more broadly, "mountainous country". Montaña del Norte was the name given by early Spanish explorers to the entire mountainous region of the west; the name Montana was added to a bill by the United States House Committee on Territories, chaired at the time by Rep. James Ashley of Ohio, for the territory that would become Idaho Territory; the name was changed by Representatives Henry Wilson and Benjamin F. Harding, who complained Montana had "no meaning"; when Ashley presented a bill to establish a temporary government in 1864 for a new territory to be carved out of Idaho, he again chose Montana Territory. This time Rep. Samuel Cox of Ohio, objected to the name. Cox complained the name was a misnomer given most of the territory was not mountainous and that a Native American name would be more appropriate than a Spanish one.
Other names such as Shoshone were suggested, but it was decided the Committee on Territories could name it whatever they wanted, so the original name of Montana was adopted. Montana is one of the nine Mountain States, located in the north of the region known as the Western United States, it borders North South Dakota to the east. Wyoming is to the south, Idaho is to the west and southwest, three Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, are to the north. With an area of 147,040 square miles, Montana is larger than Japan, it is the fourth largest state in the United States after Alaska and California. S. state. The state's topography is defined by the Continental Divide, which splits much of the state into distinct eastern and western regions. Most of Montana's 100 or more named mountain ranges are in the state's western half, most of, geologically and geographically part of the Northern Rocky Mountains; the Absaroka and Beartooth ranges in the state's south-central part are technically part of the Central Rocky Mountains.
The Rocky Mountain Front is a significant feature in the state's north-central portion, isolated island ranges that interrupt the prairie landscape common in the central and eastern parts of the state. About 60 percent of the state is part of the northern Great Plains; the Bitterroot Mountains—one of the longest continuous ranges in the Rocky Mountain chain from Alaska to Mexico—along with smaller ranges, including the Coeur d'Alene Mountains and the Cabinet Mountains, divide the state from Idaho. The southern third of the Bitterroot range blends into the Continental Divide. Other major mountain ranges west of the Divide include the Cabinet Mountains, the Anaconda Range, the Missions, the Garnet Range, Sapphire Mountains, Flint Creek Range; the Divide's northern section, where the mountains give way to prairie, is part of the Rocky Mountain Front. The front is most pronounced in the Lewis Range, located in Glacier National Park. Due to the configuration of mountain ranges in Glacier National Park, the Northern Divide crosses this region and turns east in Montana at Triple Divide Peak.
It causes the Waterton River and Saint Mary rivers to flow north into Alberta, Canada. There they join the Saskatchewan River, which empties into Hudson Bay. East of the divide, several parallel ranges cover the state's southern part, including the Gravelly Range, the Madison Range, Gallatin Range, Absaroka Mountains and the Beartooth Mountains; the Beartooth Plateau is the largest continuous land mass over 10,000 feet high in the continental United States. It contains Granite Peak, 12,799 feet high. North of these ranges are the Big Belt Mountains, Bridger Mountains, Tobacco Roots, several island ranges, including the Crazy Mountains and Little Belt Mountains. Between many mountain ranges are rich river valleys; the Big Hole Valley, Bitterroot Valley, Gallatin Valley, Flathead Valley, Paradise Valley have extensive agricultural resources and multiple opportunities for tourism and recreation. East and north of this transition zone are the expansive and sparsely populated Northern Plains, with tableland prairies, smaller island mountain ranges, badlands.
The isolated island ranges east of the Divide include the Bear Paw Mountains, Bull Mountains, Castle Mountains, Crazy Mountains, Highwood Mountains, Judi
Olsen and Johnson
John Sigvard "Ole" Olsen and Harold Ogden "Chic" Johnson were American comedians of vaudeville, the Broadway stage, motion pictures and television. Their shows were noted for their crazy blackout gags and orchestrated mayhem, their most famous concept, has become show-business shorthand for freewheeling, anything-goes comedy. Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson began as musical entertainers: Olsen played the violin and Johnson played ragtime piano, they met in 1914. Ole and Chic hit it off and joined forces for a vaudeville act. No joke was too old, no song too corny for Ole and Chic, the two engaging comics became a minor sensation in the Midwest. Radio enlarged their audience and led to appearances in early talkie movies for Warner Bros. and two more minor features for Republic Pictures. The movies of the 1930s, were much too confining for Olsen and Johnson's special brand of nut humor. Ole and Chic recited their lines and played off each other well, but their scripts were too formal, leaving the team little room for their nonsensical comedy.
During the summer of 1932, they were featured each week on NBC's Red Network's Fleischmann's Yeast Hour. Based on surviving samples, Rudy Vallee did not interact with them on-air; the intense and fast-paced segments were titled "The Padded Cell of the Air". As 1932 was a presidential election year, they nominated Mickey Mouse for President; the "Padded Cell..." segments are a predecessor of Hellzapoppin'. Comedy teams traditionally had a stooge; however and Johnson both took on the comic role, goodnaturedly chuckling their way through the steady barrage of gunshots, props plummeting to earth, intrusions from other performers and input from the audience. In 1938, they mounted their revue Hellzapoppin. Sophisticated Broadway audiences were unprepared for such chaos: stray props came out of nowhere, comic characters were planted in the audience and disrupted the action and Johnson dashed on and off the stage in crazy costumes and indulged in cheerfully earthy humor, chorus girls lost their skirts, vaudeville acts did their trick specialties.
The show never played the same way twice. On some nights songs would be preempted by jokes, on others jokes would be interrupted by songs. In 1941, Universal Pictures decided to commit Hellzapoppin' to film, with plenty of crazy and sometimes innovative gags: A cab driver goes to hell, with Olsen and Johnson as his reluctant passengers. A serious song by Robert Paige and Jane Frazee is interrupted when a title card crashes on the screen, advising one Stinky Miller to go home. Man-chasing Martha Raye pursues Mischa Auer, who finds himself stripped down to his underwear and running a mock track meet; the film goes out of frame, Olsen and Johnson try to correct the problem themselves. Despite Universal's insistence on a then-customary romance and a'serious plot', somewhat diluting the Olsen and Johnson onslaught, Hellzapoppin' is still fresh and funny. Copyright issues involving the original stage production have forced the film version out of general circulation in the United States, although a European DVD has entered circulation.
The film version treated the show as a work in progress: Olsen and Johnson step out of the picture, argue with the projectionist stop the action to interact with the audience and sabotage their own show within the movie by using movie tricks such as the dissolve wipe. This creative use of the film medium got Hellzapoppin' listed by theyshootpictures.com as one of the 1,000 most innovative films made. Universal made three more comedies with the team. Crazy House had Olsen and Johnson running amok through the Universal studio and evacuating the staff, including Universal regulars Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Johnny Mack Brown, Andy Devine; when Olsen and Johnson present themselves at the head office with the announcement "Universal's number one comedy team is here!", the studio chief replies, "Oh, Abbott and Costello! Send them right in!" In Ghost Catchers and Chic help singer Gloria Jean make her Carnegie Hall debut despite strange happenings in a spooky old house. See My Lawyer was a patchwork of vaudeville acts, with Olsen and Johnson noticeably absent from most of the proceedings.
After completing this last film and Johnson resumed their stage career, mounting variations of Hellzapoppin'. Although Olsen and Johnson were a leading act in vaudeville, their greatest achievement was their "legitimate theater" production of Hellzapoppin. Assembled and produced by Olsen and Johnson, Hellzapoppin opened at New York's 46th Street Theatre on September 22, 1938, ran for 1,404 performances, transferring to the Winter Garden Theatre mid-run; the show had its start in a revue called Monkey Business wherein the team began developing their signature style of observing and commenting on the lunacy taking place around them. The gags and comic premises were borrowed from classic variety entertainment, but Olsen and Johnson put an original spin on the material through their inspired improvisation in live performance. Described as a rule-breaking exercise in hysteria, Hellzapoppin was a comic amalgam of the best—or worst—of vaudeville and burlesque, it gloried with no sketch too lowbrow to be included.
Technically a musical because it included a score by lyricist Charles Tobias and composer Sammy Fain, it was best known for
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain to the level of an adult expert performer. The term wunderkind is sometimes used as a synonym for child prodigy in media accounts. Wunderkind is used to recognize those who achieve success and acclaim early in their adult careers. PET scans performed on several mathematics prodigies have suggested that they think in terms of long-term working memory; this memory, specific to a field of expertise, is capable of holding relevant information for extended periods hours. For example, experienced waiters have been found to hold the orders of up to twenty customers in their heads while they serve them, but perform only as well as an average person in number-sequence recognition; the PET scans answer questions about which specific areas of the brain associate themselves with manipulating numbers. One subject never excelled as a child in mathematics, but he taught himself algorithms and tricks for calculatory speed, becoming capable of complex mental math.
His brain, compared to six other controls, was studied using the PET scan, revealing separate areas of his brain that he manipulated to solve the complex problems. Some of the areas that he and prodigies use are brain sectors dealing in visual and spatial memory, as well as visual mental imagery. Other areas of the brain showed use by the subject, including a sector of the brain related to childlike "finger counting" used in his mind to relate numbers to the visual cortex. Noting that the cerebellum acts to streamline the speed and efficiency of all thought processes, Vandervert explained the abilities of prodigies in terms of the collaboration of working memory and the cognitive functions of the cerebellum. Citing extensive imaging evidence, Vandervert first proposed this approach in two publications which appeared in 2003. In addition to imaging evidence, Vandervert's approach is supported by the substantial award-winning studies of the cerebellum by Masao Ito. Vandervert provided extensive argument that, in the prodigy, the transition from visual-spatial working memory to other forms of thought is accelerated by the unique emotional disposition of the prodigy and the cognitive functions of the cerebellum.
According to Vandervert, in the emotion-driven prodigy the cerebellum accelerates the streamlining of the efficiencies of working memory in its manipulation and decomposition/re-composition of visual-spatial content into language acquisition and into linguistic and artistic precocity. Vandervert has argued that when a child is confronted with a challenging new situation, visual-spatial working memory and speech-related and other notational system-related working memory are decomposed and re-composed by the cerebellum and blended in the cerebral cortex in an attempt to deal with the new situation. In child prodigies, Vandervert believes this blending process is accelerated due to their unique emotional sensitivities which result in high levels of repetitious focus on, in most cases, particular rule-governed knowledge domains, he has argued that child prodigies first began to appear about 10,000 years ago when rule-governed knowledge had accumulated to a significant point at the agricultural-religious settlements of Göbekli Tepe or Cyprus.
Some researchers believe that prodigious talent tends to arise as a result of the innate talent of the child, the energetic and emotional investment that the child ventures. Others believe that the environment plays many times in obvious ways. For example, László Polgár set out to raise his children to be chess players, all three of his daughters went on to become world-class players, emphasizing the potency a child's environment can have in determining the pursuits toward which a child's energy will be directed, showing that an incredible amount of skill can be developed through suitable training, but on the other hand George Frideric Handel was an example of the natural talent... "he had discovered such a strong propensity to music, that his father who always intended him for the study of the Civil Law, had reason to be alarmed. He forbade him to meddle with any musical instrument but Handel found means to get a little clavichord convey'd to a room at the top of the house. To this room he stole when the family was asleep".
Despite his father's opposition, Handel became a skillful performer on the harpsichord and pipe organ. Prodigiousness in childhood is not always maintained into adulthood; some researchers have found. Jim Taylor, professor at the University of San Francisco, theorizes that this is because gifted children experience success at an early age with little to no effort and may not develop a sense of ownership of success. Therefore, these children might not develop a connection between outcome; some children might believe that they can succeed without effort in the future as well. Dr. Anders Ericcson, professor at Florida State University, researches expert performance in sports, music and other activities, his findings demonstrate that prodigiousness in childhood is not a strong indicator of success. Rather, the number of hours devoted to the activity was a better indicator. Rosemary Callard-Szulgit and other educators have written extensively about the problem of perfectionism in bright children, calling it their "number one social-emotional trait".
Gifted children associate slight imperfection with failure
Western (genre)
Western is a genre of various arts which tell stories set in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West centering on the life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter armed with a revolver and a rifle who rides a horse. Cowboys and gunslingers wear Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Recurring characters include the aforementioned cowboys, Native Americans, lawmen, bounty hunters, gamblers and settlers; the ambience is punctuated with a Western music score, including American and Mexican folk music such as country, Native American music, New Mexico music, rancheras. Westerns stress the harshness of the wilderness and set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains; the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a "...mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West". Specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Common plots include: The construction of a telegraph line on the wild frontier.
Ranchers protecting their family ranch from rustlers or large landowners or who build a ranch empire. Revenge stories, which hinge on the chase and pursuit by someone, wronged. Stories about cavalry fighting Native Americans. Outlaw gang plots. Stories about a lawman or bounty hunter tracking down his quarry. Many Westerns use a stock plot of depicting a crime showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution, dispensed through a shootout or quick-draw duel; the Western was the most popular Hollywood genre from the early 20th century to the 1960s. Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939 and it made John Wayne a mainstream screen star; the popularity of Westerns continued with the release of classics such as Red River. Westerns were popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time, including High Noon, The Searchers, Cat Ballou, The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Classic Westerns such as these have been the inspiration for various films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings, such as Junior Bonner, set in the 1970s, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, set in the 21st century. The Western genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original, Native American, inhabitants of the frontier; the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–"frontier justice"–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them; this Western depiction of personal justice contrasts with justice systems organized around rationalistic, abstract law that exist in cities, in which social order is maintained predominately through impersonal institutions such as courtrooms.
The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer a cowboy or a gunfighter. A showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the literary descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. Like the cowboy or gunfighter of the Western, the knight errant of the earlier European tales and poetry was wandering from place to place on his horse, fighting villains of various kinds and bound to no fixed social structures but only to their own innate code of honor, and like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns rescue damsels in distress. The wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture; the Western takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, although some notable examples are more morally ambiguous.
Westerns stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Western films have specific settings such as isolated ranches, Native American villages, or small frontier towns with a saloon. Oftentimes, these settings appear deserted and without much structure. Apart from the wilderness, it is the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West: it is the place to go for music, gambling, drinking and shooting. In some Westerns, where civilization has arrived, the town has a church, a general store, a bank and a school; the American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in the American West that the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier." The term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western
Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello were an American comedy duo composed of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, whose work on radio and in film and television made them the most popular comedy team of the 1940s and early 1950s. Their patter routine "Who's on First?" is one of the best-known comedy routines of all time in the world, set the framework for many of their best-known comedy bits. While they had crossed paths a few times the two comedians first worked together in 1935 at the Eltinge Burlesque Theater on 42nd Street in New York City, now the lobby of an AMC Theatres movie complex, their first performance resulted from Abbott's regular partner becoming ill. Decades when AMC moved the old theater 168 ft further west on 42nd Street to its current location, giant balloons of Abbott and Costello were rigged to appear to pull it. Other performers in the show, including Abbott's wife, encouraged a permanent pairing; the duo built an act by refining and reworking numerous burlesque sketches with Abbott as the devious straight man and Costello as the dimwitted comic.
The team's first known radio broadcast was on The Kate Smith Hour on February 3, 1938. At first, the similarities between their voices made it difficult for radio listeners to tell them apart during their rapid-fire repartee; as a result, Costello affected a childish voice. "Who's on First?" was first performed for a national radio audience the following month. They performed on the program as regulars for two years, while landing roles in a Broadway revue, The Streets of Paris, in 1939. After debuting their own program, The Abbott and Costello Show, as Fred Allen's summer replacement in 1940, Abbott and Costello joined Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1941. Two of their films were adapted for Lux Radio Theater that year, their program returned in its own weekly time slot starting on October 8, 1942 and Camel cigarettes as sponsor. The Abbott and Costello Show mixed comedy with musical interludes. Regulars and semi-regulars on the show included Artie Auerbach, Elvia Allman, Iris Adrian, Mel Blanc, Wally Brown, Sharon Douglas, Verna Felton, Sidney Fields, Frank Nelson, Martha Wentworth and Benay Venuta.
Ken Niles was the show's longtime announcer, doubling as an exasperated foil to Costello, who insulted his on-air wife. Niles was succeeded by Michael Roy, alternating over the years with Jim Doyle; the show went through several orchestras, including those of Ennis, Charles Hoff, Matty Matlock, Matty Malneck, Jack Meakin, Will Osborne, Fred Rich, Leith Stevens and Peter van Steeden. The show's writers included Howard Harris, Hal Fimberg, Parke Levy, Don Prindle, Eddie Cherkose, Leonard B. Stern, Martin Ragaway, Paul Conlan and Eddie Forman, as well as producer Martin Gosch. Sound effects were handled by Floyd Caton. Guest stars included Frank Sinatra, The Andrews Sisters and Lucille Ball. In 1947 the show moved to ABC. During their time on ABC the duo hosted a 30-minute children's radio program on Saturday mornings; the program featured child announcer Johnny McGovern. It finished its run in 1949. In 1940, Universal Studios signed them for One Night in the Tropics. Cast in supporting roles, they stole the show with several classic routines, including the "Who's on First?" routine.
Universal signed them to a two-picture contract. Their second film, Buck Privates, directed by Arthur Lubin and co-starring The Andrews Sisters, was a massive hit, earning $4 million at the box office and launching Abbott and Costello as stars, their next film was a haunted house comedy, Oh, Charlie!. However Buck Privates was so successful that the studio decided to delay its release so the team could hastily make and release a second service comedy, In The Navy, co-starring crooner Dick Powell and the Andrews Sisters; this film out-grossed Buck Privates. Loew's Criterion in Manhattan was open until 5 a.m. to oblige over 49,000 customers during the film's first week. Oh, Charlie was put back into production to add music featuring the Andrews Ted Lewis; the film was released as Hold That Ghost. The duo next made Ride'Em Cowboy, with Dick Foran, but its release was delayed so they could appear in a third service comedy, Keep'Em Flying; this was their last film with Arthur Lubin. All of these films were big hits, Abbott and Costello were voted the third biggest box office attraction in the country in 1941.
Universal loaned the team to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for Rio Rita. During filming, on December 8, 1941, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor and Costello had their hand and foot prints set in concrete at what was "Grauman's Chinese Theatre". Back at Universal they made a spoof of South Sea Island movies. In 1942 exhibitors voted them the top box office stars in the country, their earnings for the fiscal year were $789,026.) The team did a 35-day tour during the summer of 1942 to sell War Bonds. The Treasury Department credited them with $85 million in sales. After the tour the team made It Ain't Hay, from a story by Damon Runyon. Costello was stricken with rheumatic fever upon his return from a winter tour of army bases in March 1943 and was bedridden for six months. On November 4, 1943, the same day that Costel
B movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture, not an arthouse film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature. Although the U. S. production of movies intended as second features ceased by the end of the 1950s, the term B movie continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In its post-Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides of the definition: on the one hand, the primary interest of many inexpensive exploitation films is prurient. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 1950s. Early B movies were part of series in which the star played the same character. Always shorter than the top-billed films they were paired with, many had running times of 70 minutes or less; the term connoted a general perception that B movies were inferior to the more lavishly budgeted headliners.
Latter-day B movies still sometimes inspire multiple sequels. As the average running time of top-of-the-line films increased, so did that of B pictures. In its current usage, the term has somewhat contradictory connotations: it may signal an opinion that a certain movie is a genre film with minimal artistic ambitions or a lively, energetic film uninhibited by the constraints imposed on more expensive projects and unburdened by the conventions of putatively "serious" independent film; the term is now used loosely to refer to some higher-budgeted, mainstream films with exploitation-style content in genres traditionally associated with the B movie. From their beginnings to the present day, B movies have provided opportunities both for those coming up in the profession and others whose careers are waning. Celebrated filmmakers such as Anthony Mann and Jonathan Demme learned their craft in B movies, they are where actors such as John Wayne and Jack Nicholson first became established, they have provided work for former A movie actors, such as Vincent Price and Karen Black.
Some actors, such as Bela Lugosi, Eddie Constantine, Bruce Campbell and Pam Grier, worked in B movies for most of their careers. The term B actor is sometimes used to refer to a performer who finds work or in B pictures. In 1927–28, at the end of the silent era, the production cost of an average feature from a major Hollywood studio ranged from $190,000 at Fox to $275,000 at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; that average reflected both "specials" that might cost as much as $1 million and films made for around $50,000. These cheaper films allowed the studios to derive maximum value from facilities and contracted staff in between a studio's more important productions, while breaking in new personnel. Studios in the minor leagues of the industry, such as Columbia Pictures and Film Booking Offices of America, focused on those sorts of cheap productions, their movies, with short running times, targeted theaters that had to economize on rental and operating costs small-town and urban neighborhood venues, or "nabes".
Smaller production houses, known as Poverty Row studios, made films whose costs might run as low as $3,000, seeking a profit through whatever bookings they could pick up in the gaps left by the larger concerns. With the widespread arrival of sound film in American theaters in 1929, many independent exhibitors began dropping the then-dominant presentation model, which involved live acts and a broad variety of shorts before a single featured film. A new programming scheme developed that would soon become standard practice: a newsreel, a short and/or serial, a cartoon, followed by a double feature; the second feature, which screened before the main event, cost the exhibitor less per minute than the equivalent running time in shorts. The majors' "clearance" rules favoring their affiliated theaters prevented the independents' timely access to top-quality films; the additional movie gave the program "balance"—the practice of pairing different sorts of features suggested to potential customers that they could count on something of interest no matter what was on the bill.
The low-budget picture of the 1920s thus evolved into the second feature, the B movie, of Hollywood's Golden Age. The major studios, at first resistant to the double feature, soon adapted. All established B units to provide films for the expanding second-feature market. Block booking became standard practice: to get access to a studio's attractive A pictures, many theaters were obliged to rent the company's entire output for a season. With the B films rented at a flat fee, rates could be set guaranteeing the profitability of every B movie; the parallel practice of blind bidding freed the majors from worrying about their Bs' quality—even when booking in less than seasonal blocks, exhibitors had to buy most pictures sight unseen. The five largest studios—Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation, Warner Bros. and RKO Radio Pictures —also belonged to companies with sizable theater chains, further securing the bottom line. Poverty Row studios, from modest outfits like Mascot Pictures, Tiffany Pictures, Sono Art-World Wide Pictures down to shoestring operations, made B movies, ot
