title: B movie

text: Considerations beside cost made the line between A and B movies ambiguous. Films shot on B-level budgets were occasionally marketed as A pictures or emerged as sleeper hits: one of 1943's biggest films was "Hitler's Children", an RKO thriller made for a fraction over $200,000. It earned more than in rentals, industry language for a distributor's share of gross box office receipts. Particularly in the realm of film noir, A pictures sometimes echoed visual styles generally associated with cheaper films. Programmers, with their flexible exhibition role, were ambiguous by definition. As late as 1948, the double feature remained a popular exhibition mode—it was standard policy at 25% of theaters and used part-time at an additional 36%.


title: B movie

text: The leading Poverty Row firms began to broaden their scope; in 1947, Monogram established a subsidiary, Allied Artists, to develop and distribute relatively expensive films, mostly from independent producers. Around the same time, Republic launched a similar effort under the "Premiere" rubric. In 1947 as well, PRC was subsumed by Eagle-Lion, a British company seeking entry to the American market. Warners' former "Keeper of the Bs", Brian Foy, was installed as production chief.


title: B movie

text: In the 1940s, RKO stood out among the industry's Big Five for its focus on B pictures. From a latter-day perspective, the most famous of the major studios' Golden Age B units is Val Lewton's horror unit at RKO. Lewton produced such moody, mysterious films as "Cat People" (1942), "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943), and "The Body Snatcher" (1945), directed by Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, and others who became renowned only later in their careers or entirely in retrospect. The movie now widely described as the first classic film noir—"Stranger on the Third Floor" (1940), a 64-minute B—was produced at RKO, which released many additional melodramatic thrillers in a similarly stylish vein.


title: B movie

text: The other major studios also turned out a considerable number of movies now identified as noir during the 1940s. Though many of the best-known film noirs were A-level productions, most 1940s pictures in the mode were either of the ambiguous programmer type or destined straight for the bottom of the bill. In the decades since, these cheap entertainments, generally dismissed at the time, have become some of the most treasured products of Hollywood's Golden Age.


title: B movie

text: In one sample year, 1947, RKO produced along with several noir programmers and A pictures, two straight B noirs: "Desperate" and "The Devil Thumbs a Ride". Ten B noirs that year came from Poverty Row's big three—Republic, Monogram, and PRC/Eagle-Lion—and one came from tiny Screen Guild. Three majors beside RKO contributed a total of five more. Along with these eighteen unambiguous B noirs, an additional dozen or so noir programmers came out of Hollywood.


title: B movie

text: Still, most of the majors' low-budget production remained the sort now largely ignored. RKO's representative output included the Mexican Spitfire and Lum and Abner comedy series, thrillers featuring the Saint and the Falcon, Westerns starring Tim Holt, and Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller. Jean Hersholt played Dr. Christian in six films between 1939 and 1941. "The Courageous Dr. Christian" (1940) was a standard entry: "In the course of an hour or so of screen time, the saintly physician managed to cure an epidemic of spinal meningitis, demonstrate benevolence towards the disenfranchised, set an example for wayward youth, and calm the passions of an amorous old maid."


title: B movie

text: Down in Poverty Row, low budgets led to less palliative fare. Republic aspired to major-league respectability while making many cheap and modestly budgeted Westerns, but there was not much from the bigger studios that compared with Monogram "exploitation pictures" like juvenile delinquency exposé "Where Are Your Children?" (1943) and the prison film "Women in Bondage" (1943). In 1947, PRC's "The Devil on Wheels" brought together teenagers, hot rods, and death. The little studio had its own house auteur: with his own crew and relatively free rein, director Edgar G. Ulmer was known as "the Capra of PRC". Ulmer made films of every generic stripe: his "Girls in Chains" was released in May 1943, six months before "Women in Bondage"; by the end of the year, Ulmer had also made the teen-themed musical "Jive Junction" as well as "Isle of Forgotten Sins", a South Seas adventure set around a brothel.


title: B movie

text: In 1948, a Supreme Court ruling in a federal antitrust suit against the majors outlawed block booking and led to the Big Five divesting their theater chains. With audiences draining away to television and studios scaling back production schedules, the classic double feature vanished from many American theaters during the 1950s. The major studios promoted the benefits of recycling, offering former headlining movies as second features in the place of traditional B films. With television airing many classic Westerns as well as producing its own original Western series, the cinematic market for B oaters in particular was drying up. After barely inching forward in the 1930s, the average U.S. feature production cost had essentially doubled over the 1940s, reaching by the turn of the decade—a 93% rise after adjusting for inflation.


title: B movie

text: The first prominent victim of the changing market was Eagle-Lion, which released its last films in 1951. By 1953, the old Monogram brand had disappeared, the company having adopted the identity of its higher-end subsidiary, Allied Artists. The following year, Allied released Hollywood's last B series Westerns. Non-series B Westerns continued to appear for a few more years, but Republic Pictures, long associated with cheap sagebrush sagas, was out of the filmmaking business by decade's end. In other genres, Universal kept its Ma and Pa Kettle series going through 1957, while Allied Artists stuck with the Bowery Boys until 1958. RKO, weakened by years of mismanagement, exited the movie industry in 1957.


title: B movie

text: Hollywood's A product was getting longer—the top ten box-office releases of 1940 had averaged 112.5 minutes; the average length of 1955's top ten was 123.4. In their modest way, the Bs were following suit. The age of the hour-long feature film was past; 70 minutes was now roughly the minimum. While the Golden Age-style second feature was dying, "B movie" was still used to refer to any low-budget genre film featuring relatively unheralded performers (sometimes referred to as "B actors"). The term retained its earlier suggestion that such movies relied on formulaic plots, "stock" character types, and simplistic action or unsophisticated comedy. At the same time, the realm of the B movie was becoming increasingly fertile territory for experimentation, both serious and outlandish.


title: B movie

text: Ida Lupino, a leading actress, established herself as Hollywood's sole female director of the era. In short, low-budget pictures made for her production company, The Filmakers, Lupino explored taboo subjects such as rape in 1950's "Outrage" and 1953's self-explanatory "The Bigamist". Her best known directorial effort, "The Hitch-Hiker", a 1953 RKO release, is the only film noir from the genre's classic period directed by a woman. That year, RKO released "Split Second", which concludes in a nuclear test range, and is perhaps the first "atomic noir".


title: B movie

text: The most famous such movie, the independently produced "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955), typifies the persistently murky middle ground between the A and B picture, as Richard Maltby describes: a "programmer capable of occupying either half of a neighbourhood theatre's double-bill, [it was] budgeted at approximately $400,000. [Its] distributor, United Artists, released around twenty-five programmers with production budgets between $100,000 and $400,000 in 1955." The film's length, 106 minutes, is A level, but its star, Ralph Meeker, had previously appeared in only one major film. Its source is pure pulp, one of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, but Robert Aldrich's direction is self-consciously aestheticized. The result is a brutal genre picture that also evokes contemporary anxieties about what was often spoken of simply as the Bomb.


title: B movie

text: The fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, along with less expressible qualms about radioactive fallout from America's own atomic tests, energized many of the era's genre films. Science fiction, horror, and various hybrids of the two were now of central economic importance to the low-budget end of the business. Most down-market films of the type—like many of those produced by William Alland at Universal (such as "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954)) and Sam Katzman at Columbia (including "It Came from Beneath the Sea" (1955))—provided little more than thrills, though their special effects could be impressive.


title: B movie

text: But these were genres whose fantastic nature could also be used as cover for mordant cultural observations often difficult to make in mainstream movies. Director Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), released by Allied Artists, treats conformist pressures and the evil of banality in haunting, allegorical fashion. "The Amazing Colossal Man" (1957), directed by Bert I. Gordon, is both a monster movie that happens to depict the horrific effects of radiation exposure and "a ferocious cold-war fable [that] spins Korea, the army's obsessive secrecy, and America's post-war growth into one fantastic whole".


title: B movie

text: "The Amazing Colossal Man" was released by a new company whose name was much bigger than its budgets. American International Pictures (AIP), founded in 1956 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff in a reorganization of their American Releasing Corporation (ARC), soon became the leading U.S. studio devoted entirely to B-cost productions. American International helped keep the original-release double bill alive through paired packages of its films: these movies were low-budget, but instead of a flat rate, they were rented out on a percentage basis, like A films.


title: B movie

text: The success of "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" (1957) thus brought AIP a large return—made for about $100,000, it grossed more than . As the film's title suggests, the studio relied on both fantastic genre subjects and new, teen-oriented angles. When "Hot Rod Gang" (1958) turned a profit, hot rod horror was given a try: "Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow" (1959). David Cook credits AIP with leading the way "in demographic exploitation, target marketing, and saturation booking, all of which became standard procedure for the majors in planning and releasing their mass-market 'event' films" by the late 1970s. In terms of content, the majors were already there, with films about juvenile delinquency such as Warner Bros.' "Untamed Youth" (1957) and MGM's "High School Confidential" (1958), both starring Mamie Van Doren.


title: B movie

text: In 1954, a young filmmaker named Roger Corman received his first screen credits as writer and associate producer of Allied Artists' "Highway Dragnet". Corman soon independently produced his first movie, "Monster from the Ocean Floor", on a $12,000 budget and a six-day shooting schedule. Among the six films he worked on in 1955, Corman produced and directed the first official ARC release, "Apache Woman", and "Day the World Ended", half of Arkoff and Nicholson's first twin-bill package. Corman directed over fifty feature films through 1990. As of 2007, he remained active as a producer, with more than 350 movies to his credit. Often referred to as the "King of the Bs", Corman has said that "to my way of thinking, I never made a 'B' movie in my life", as the traditional B movie was dying out when he began making pictures. He prefers to describe his metier as "low-budget exploitation films". In later years Corman, both with AIP and as head of his own companies, helped launch the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Robert Towne, and Robert De Niro, among many others.


title: B movie

text: In the late 1950s, William Castle became known as the great innovator of the B movie publicity gimmick. Audiences of "Macabre" (1958), an $86,000 production distributed by Allied Artists, were invited to take out insurance policies to cover potential death from fright. The 1959 creature feature "The Tingler" featured Castle's most famous gimmick, Percepto: at the film's climax, buzzers attached to select theater seats unexpectedly rattled a few audience members, prompting either appropriate screams or even more appropriate laughter. With such films, Castle "combine[d] the saturation advertising campaign perfected by Columbia and Universal in their Sam Katzman and William Alland packages with centralized and standardized publicity stunts and gimmicks that had previously been the purview of the local exhibitor".


title: B movie

text: The postwar drive-in theater boom was vital to the expanding independent B movie industry. In January 1945, there were 96 drive-ins in the United States; a decade later, there were more than 3,700. Unpretentious pictures with simple, familiar plots and reliable shock effects were ideally suited for auto-based film viewing, with all its attendant distractions. The phenomenon of the drive-in movie became one of the defining symbols of American popular culture in the 1950s. At the same time, many local television stations began showing B genre films in late-night slots, popularizing the notion of the midnight movie.


title: B movie

text: Increasingly, American-made genre films were joined by foreign movies acquired at low cost and, where necessary, dubbed for the U.S. market. In 1956, distributor Joseph E. Levine financed the shooting of new footage with American actor Raymond Burr that was edited into the Japanese sci-fi horror film "Godzilla". The British Hammer Film Productions made the successful "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) and "Dracula" (1958), major influences on future horror film style. In 1959, Levine's Embassy Pictures bought the worldwide rights to "Hercules", a cheaply made Italian movie starring American-born bodybuilder Steve Reeves. On top of a $125,000 purchase price, Levine then spent on advertising and publicity, a virtually unprecedented amount.


title: B movie

text: "The New York Times" was not impressed, claiming that the movie would have drawn "little more than yawns in the film market ... had it not been [launched] throughout the country with a deafening barrage of publicity". Levine counted on first-weekend box office for his profits, booking the film "into as many cinemas as he could for a week's run, then withdrawing it before poor word-of-mouth withdrew it for him". "Hercules" opened at a remarkable 600 theaters, and the strategy was a smashing success: the film earned in domestic rentals. Just as valuable to the bottom line, it was even more successful overseas. Within a few decades, Hollywood was dominated by both movies and an exploitation philosophy very much like Levine's.


title: B movie

text: Also playing rounds during this time was K. Gordon Murray, known for distributing international matinee fare like the 1959 Mexican kids' movie "Santa Claus".


title: B movie

text: Despite all the transformations in the industry, by 1961 the average production cost of an American feature film was still only —after adjusting for inflation, less than 10% more than it had been in 1950. The traditional twin bill of B film preceding and balancing a subsequent-run A film had largely disappeared from American theaters. The AIP-style dual genre package was the new model. In July 1960, the latest Joseph E. Levine sword-and-sandals import, "Hercules Unchained", opened at neighborhood theaters in New York. A suspense film, "Terror Is a Man", ran as a "co-feature" with a now familiar sort of exploitation gimmick: "The dénouement helpfully includes a 'warning bell' so the sensitive can 'close their eyes.'" That year, Roger Corman took AIP down a new road: "When they asked me to make two ten-day black-and-white horror films to play as a double feature, I convinced them instead to finance one horror film in color." The resulting "House of Usher" typifies the continuing ambiguities of B picture classification. It was clearly an A film by the standards of both director and studio, with the longest shooting schedule and biggest budget Corman had ever enjoyed. But it is generally seen as a B movie: the schedule was still a mere fifteen days, the budget just $200,000 (one tenth the industry average), and its 85-minute running time close to an old thumbnail definition of the B: "Any movie that runs less than 80 minutes."


title: B movie

text: With the loosening of industry censorship constraints, the 1960s saw a major expansion in the commercial viability of a variety of B movie subgenres that became known collectively as "exploitation films". The combination of intensive and gimmick-laden publicity with movies featuring vulgar subject matter and often outrageous imagery dated back decades—the term had originally defined truly fringe productions, made at the lowest depths of Poverty Row or entirely outside the Hollywood system. Many graphically depicted the wages of sin in the context of promoting prudent lifestyle choices, particularly "sexual hygiene". Audiences might see explicit footage of anything from a live birth to a ritual circumcision. Such films were not generally booked as part of movie theaters' regular schedules but rather presented as special events by traveling roadshow promoters (they might also appear as fodder for "grindhouses", which typically had no regular schedule at all). The most famous of those promoters, Kroger Babb, was in the vanguard of marketing low-budget, sensationalistic films with a "100% saturation campaign", inundating the target audience with ads in almost any imaginable medium. In the era of the traditional double feature, no one would have characterized these graphic exploitation films as "B movies". With the majors having exited traditional B production and exploitation-style promotion becoming standard practice at the lower end of the industry, "exploitation" became a way to refer to the entire field of low-budget genre films. The 1960s saw exploitation-style themes and imagery become increasingly central to the realm of the B.


title: B movie

text: Exploitation movies in the original sense continued to appear: 1961's "Damaged Goods", a cautionary tale about a young lady whose boyfriend's promiscuity leads to venereal disease, comes complete with enormous, grotesque closeups of VD's physical effects. At the same time, the concept of fringe exploitation was merging with a related, similarly venerable tradition: "nudie" films featuring nudist-camp footage or striptease artists like Bettie Page had simply been the softcore pornography of previous decades. As far back as 1933, "This Nude World" was "Guaranteed the Most Educational Film Ever Produced!" In the late 1950s, as more of the old grindhouse theaters devoted themselves specifically to "adult" product, a few filmmakers began making nudies with greater attention to plot. Best known was Russ Meyer, who released his first successful narrative nudie, the comic "Immoral Mr. Teas", in 1959. Five years later, Meyer came out with his breakthrough film, "Lorna", which combined sex, violence, and a dramatic storyline. "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1965), made for about $45,000, ultimately became the most famous of Meyer's sexploitation pictures. Crafted for constant titillation but containing no nudity, it was aimed at the same "passion pit" drive-in circuit that screened AIP teen movies with wink-wink titles like "Beach Blanket Bingo" (1965) and "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" (1966), starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Roger Corman's "The Trip" (1967) for American International, written by veteran AIP/Corman actor Jack Nicholson, never shows a fully bared, unpainted breast, but flirts with nudity throughout. The Meyer and Corman lines were drawing closer.


title: B movie

text: One of the most influential films of the era, on Bs and beyond, was Paramount's "Psycho". Its in earnings against a production cost of $800,000 made it the most profitable movie of 1960. Its mainstream distribution without the Production Code seal of approval helped weaken U.S. film censorship. And, as William Paul notes, this move into the horror genre by respected director Alfred Hitchcock was made, "significantly, with the lowest-budgeted film of his American career and the least glamorous stars. [Its] greatest initial impact ... was on schlock horror movies (notably those from second-tier director William Castle), each of which tried to bill itself as scarier than "Psycho"." Castle's first film in the "Psycho" vein was "Homicidal" (1961), an early step in the development of the slasher subgenre that took off in the late 1970s. "Blood Feast" (1963), a movie about human dismemberment and culinary preparation made for approximately $24,000 by experienced nudie-maker Herschell Gordon Lewis, established a new, more immediately successful subgenre, the gore or splatter film. Lewis's business partner David F. Friedman drummed up publicity by distributing vomit bags to theatergoers—the sort of gimmick Castle had mastered—and arranging for an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida—the sort of problem exploitation films had long run up against, except Friedman had planned it. This new breed of gross-out movie typified the emerging sense of "exploitation"—the progressive adoption of traditional exploitation and nudie elements into horror, into other classic B genres, and into the low-budget film industry as a whole. Imports of Hammer Film's increasingly explicit horror movies and Italian gialli, highly stylized pictures mixing sexploitation and ultraviolence, fueled this trend.


title: B movie

text: The Production Code was officially scrapped in 1968, to be replaced by the first version of the modern rating system. That year, two horror films came out that heralded directions American cinema would take in the next decade, with major consequences for the B movie. One was a high-budget Paramount production, directed by the celebrated Roman Polanski. Produced by B horror veteran William Castle, "Rosemary's Baby" was the first upscale Hollywood picture in the genre in three decades. It was a critical success and the year's seventh-biggest hit. The other was George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", produced on weekends in and around Pittsburgh for $114,000. Building on the achievement of B genre predecessors like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in its subtextual exploration of social and political issues, it doubled as a highly effective thriller and an incisive allegory for both the Vietnam War and domestic racial conflicts. Its greatest influence, though, derived from its clever subversion of genre clichés and the connection made between its exploitation-style imagery, low-cost, truly independent means of production, and high profitability. With the Code gone and the X rating established, major studio A films like "Midnight Cowboy" could now show "adult" imagery, while the market for increasingly hardcore pornography exploded. In this transformed commercial context, work like Russ Meyer's gained a new legitimacy. In 1969, for the first time a Meyer film, "Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!", was reviewed in "The New York Times". Soon, Corman was creating nudity-filled sexploitation pictures such as "Private Duty Nurses" (1971) and "Women in Cages" (1971).


title: B movie

text: In May 1969, the most important exploitation movie of the era premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Much of "Easy Rider"s significance owes to the fact that it was produced for a respectable, if still modest, budget and released by a major studio. The project was first taken by one of its cocreators, Peter Fonda, to American International. Fonda had become AIP's top star in the Corman-directed "The Wild Angels" (1966), a biker movie, and "The Trip", as in taking LSD. The idea Fonda pitched combined those two proven themes. AIP was intrigued but balked at giving his collaborator, Dennis Hopper, also a studio alumnus, free directorial rein. Eventually they arranged a financing and distribution deal with Columbia, as two more graduates of the Corman/AIP exploitation mill joined the project: Jack Nicholson and cinematographer László Kovács. The film (which incorporated another favorite exploitation theme, the redneck menace, as well as a fair amount of nudity) was brought in at a cost of $501,000. It earned in rentals. In the words of historians Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, "Easy Rider" became "the seminal film that provided the bridge between all the repressed tendencies represented by schlock/kitsch/hack since the dawn of Hollywood and the mainstream cinema of the seventies."


title: B movie

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new generation of low-budget film companies emerged that drew from all the different lines of exploitation as well as the sci-fi and teen themes that had been a mainstay since the 1950s. Operations such as Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Cannon Films, and New Line Cinema brought exploitation films to mainstream theaters around the country. The major studios' top product was continuing to inflate in running time—in 1970, the ten biggest earners averaged 140.1 minutes. The Bs were keeping pace. In 1955, Corman had a producorial hand in five movies averaging 74.8 minutes. He played a similar part in five films originally released in 1970, two for AIP and three for his own New World: the average length was 89.8 minutes. These films could turn a tidy profit. The first New World release, the biker movie "Angels Die Hard", cost $117,000 to produce and took in more than at the box office.


title: B movie

text: The biggest studio in the low-budget field remained a leader in exploitation's growth. In 1973, American International gave a shot to young director Brian De Palma. Reviewing "Sisters", Pauline Kael observed that its "limp technique doesn't seem to matter to the people who want their gratuitous gore. ... [H]e can't get two people talking in order to make a simple expository point without its sounding like the drabbest Republic picture of 1938." Many examples of the blaxploitation genre, featuring stereotype-filled stories about African Americans and revolving around drugs, violent crime, and prostitution, were the product of AIP. One of blaxploitation's biggest stars was Pam Grier, who began her film career with a bit part in Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (1970). Several New World pictures followed, including "The Big Doll House" (1971) and "The Big Bird Cage" (1972), both directed by Jack Hill. Hill also directed Grier's best-known performances, in two AIP blaxploitation films: "Coffy" (1973) and "Foxy Brown" (1974).


title: B movie

text: Blaxploitation was the first exploitation genre in which the major studios were central. Indeed, the United Artists release "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970), directed by Ossie Davis, is seen as the first significant film of the type. But the movie that truly ignited the blaxploitation phenomenon was completely independent: "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (1971) is also perhaps the most outrageous example of the form: wildly experimental, borderline pornographic, and essentially a manifesto for an African American revolution. Melvin Van Peebles wrote, co-produced, directed, starred in, edited, and composed the music for the film, which was completed with a loan from Bill Cosby. Its distributor was small Cinemation Industries, then best known for releasing dubbed versions of the Italian "Mondo Cane" "shockumentaries" and the Swedish skin flick "Fanny Hill", as well as for its one in-house production, "The Man from O.R.G.Y." (1970). These sorts of films played in the "grindhouses" of the day—many of them not outright porno theaters, but rather venues for all manner of exploitation cinema. The days of six quickies for a nickel were gone, but a continuity of spirit was evident.


title: B movie

text: In 1970, a low-budget crime drama shot in 16 mm by first-time American director Barbara Loden won the international critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival. "Wanda" is both a seminal event in the independent film movement and a classic B picture. The crime-based plot and often seedy settings would have suited a straightforward exploitation film or an old-school B noir. The $115,000 production, for which Loden spent six years raising money, was praised by Vincent Canby for "the absolute accuracy of its effects, the decency of its point of view and ... purity of technique". Like Romero and Van Peebles, other filmmakers of the era made pictures that combined the gut-level entertainment of exploitation with biting social commentary. The first three features directed by Larry Cohen, "Bone" (1972), "Black Caesar" (1973), and "Hell Up in Harlem" (1973), were all nominally blaxploitation movies, but Cohen used them as vehicles for a satirical examination of race relations and the wages of dog-eat-dog capitalism. The gory horror film "Deathdream" (1974), directed by Bob Clark, is also an agonized protest of the war in Vietnam. Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg made serious-minded low-budget horror films whose implications are not so much ideological as psychological and existential: "Shivers" (1975), "Rabid" (1977), "The Brood" (1979). An "Easy Rider" with conceptual rigor, the movie that most clearly presaged the way in which exploitation content and artistic treatment would be combined in modestly budgeted films of later years was United Artists' biker-themed "Electra Glide in Blue" (1973), directed by James William Guercio. "The New York Times" reviewer thought little of it: "Under different intentions, it might have made a decent grade-C Roger Corman bike movie—though Corman has generally used more interesting directors than Guercio."


title: B movie

text: In the early 1970s, the growing practice of screening nonmainstream motion pictures as late shows, with the goal of building a cult film audience, brought the midnight movie concept home to the cinema, now in a countercultural setting—something like a drive-in movie for the hip. One of the first films adopted by the new circuit in 1971 was the three-year-old "Night of the Living Dead". The midnight movie success of low-budget pictures made entirely outside the studio system, like John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" (1972), with its campy spin on exploitation, spurred the development of the independent film movement. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), an inexpensive film from 20th Century Fox that spoofed all manner of classic B picture clichés, became an unparalleled hit when it was relaunched as a late show feature the year after its initial, unprofitable release. Even as "Rocky Horror" generated its own subcultural phenomenon, it contributed to the mainstreaming of the theatrical midnight movie.


title: B movie

text: Asian martial arts films began appearing as imports regularly during the 1970s. These "kung fu" films as they were often called, whatever martial art they featured, were popularized in the United States by the Hong Kong–produced movies of Bruce Lee and marketed to the same audience targeted by AIP and New World. Horror continued to attract young, independent American directors. As Roger Ebert explained in one 1974 review, "Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they're brought in at the right price. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can't get more conventional projects off the ground." The movie under consideration was "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". Made by Tobe Hooper for less than $300,000, it became one of the most influential horror films of the 1970s. John Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978), produced on a $320,000 budget, grossed over worldwide and effectively established the slasher flick as horror's primary mode for the next decade. Just as Hooper had learned from Romero's work, "Halloween", in turn, largely followed the model of "Black Christmas" (1974), directed by "Deathdream"s Bob Clark.


title: B movie

text: On television, the parallels between the weekly series that became the mainstay of prime-time programming and the Hollywood series films of an earlier day had long been clear. In the 1970s, original feature-length programming increasingly began to echo the B movie as well. As production of TV movies expanded with the introduction of the "ABC Movie of the Week" in 1969, soon followed by the dedication of other network slots to original features, time and financial factors shifted the medium progressively into B picture territory. Television films inspired by recent scandals—such as "The Ordeal of Patty Hearst", which premiered a month after her release from prison in 1979—harkened all the way back to the 1920s and such movies as "Human Wreckage" and "When Love Grows Cold", FBO pictures made swiftly in the wake of celebrity misfortunes. Many 1970s TV films—such as "The California Kid" (1974), starring Martin Sheen—were action-oriented genre pictures of a type familiar from contemporary cinematic B production. "Nightmare in Badham County" (1976) headed straight into the realm of road-tripping-girls-in-redneck-bondage exploitation.


title: B movie

text: The reverberations of "Easy Rider" could be felt in such pictures, as well as in a host of theatrical exploitation films. But its greatest influence on the fate of the B movie was less direct—by 1973, the major studios were catching on to the commercial potential of genres once largely consigned to the bargain basement. "Rosemary's Baby" had been a big hit, but it had little in common with the exploitation style. Warner Bros.' "The Exorcist" demonstrated that a heavily promoted horror film could be an absolute blockbuster: it was the biggest movie of the year and by far the highest-earning horror movie yet made. In William Paul's description, it is also "the film that really established gross-out as a mode of expression for mainstream cinema. ... [P]ast exploitation films managed to exploit their cruelties by virtue of their marginality. "The Exorcist" made cruelty respectable. By the end of the decade, the exploitation booking strategy of opening films simultaneously in hundreds to thousands of theaters became standard industry practice." Writer-director George Lucas's "American Graffiti", a Universal production, did something similar. Described by Paul as "essentially an American-International teenybopper pic with a lot more spit and polish", it was 1973's third-biggest film and, likewise, by far the highest-earning teen-themed movie yet made. Even more historically significant movies with B themes and A-level financial backing followed in their wake.


title: B movie

text: Most of the B-movie production houses founded during the exploitation era collapsed or were subsumed by larger companies as the field's financial situation changed in the early 1980s. Even a comparatively cheap, efficiently made genre picture intended for theatrical release began to cost millions of dollars, as the major movie studios steadily moved into the production of expensive genre movies, raising audience expectations for spectacular action sequences and realistic special effects. Intimations of the trend were evident as early as "Airport" (1970) and especially in the mega-schlock of "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), "Earthquake" (1973), and "The Towering Inferno" (1974). Their disaster plots and dialogue were B-grade at best; from an industry perspective, however, these were pictures firmly rooted in a tradition of star-stuffed extravaganzas. "The Exorcist" had demonstrated the drawing power of big-budget, effects-laden horror. But the tidal shift in the majors' focus owed largely to the enormous success of three films: Steven Spielberg's creature feature "Jaws" (1975) and George Lucas's space opera "Star Wars" (1977) had each, in turn, become the highest-grossing film in motion picture history. "Superman", released in December 1978, had proved that a studio could spend on a movie about a children's comic book character and turn a big profit—it was the top box-office hit of 1978. Blockbuster fantasy spectacles like the original 1933 "King Kong" had once been exceptional; in the new Hollywood, increasingly under the sway of multi-industrial conglomerates, they ruled.


title: B movie

text: It had taken a decade and a half, from 1961 to 1976, for the production cost of the average Hollywood feature to double from $2 million to $4 million—a decline if adjusted for inflation. In just four years it more than doubled again, hitting $8.5 million in 1980 (a constant-dollar increase of about 25%). Even as the U.S. inflation rate eased, the average expense of moviemaking continued to soar. With the majors now routinely saturation booking in over a thousand theaters, it was becoming increasingly difficult for smaller outfits to secure the exhibition commitments needed to turn a profit. Double features were now literally history—almost impossible to find except at revival houses. One of the first leading casualties of the new economic regime was venerable B studio Allied Artists, which declared bankruptcy in April 1979. In the late 1970s, AIP had turned to producing relatively expensive films like the very successful "Amityville Horror" and the disastrous "Meteor" in 1979. The studio was sold off and dissolved as a moviemaking concern by the end of 1980.


title: B movie

text: Despite the mounting financial pressures, distribution obstacles, and overall risk, many genre movies from small studios and independent filmmakers were still reaching theaters. Horror was the strongest low-budget genre of the time, particularly in the slasher mode as with "The Slumber Party Massacre" (1982), written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown. The film was produced for New World on a budget of $250,000. At the beginning of 1983, Corman sold New World; New Horizons, later Concorde–New Horizons, became his primary company. In 1984, New Horizons released a critically applauded movie set amid the punk scene written and directed by Penelope Spheeris. "The New York Times" review concluded: ""Suburbia" is a good genre film."


title: B movie

text: Larry Cohen continued to twist genre conventions in pictures such as "Q" (a.k.a. "Q: The Winged Serpent"; 1982), described by critic Chris Petit as "the kind of movie that used to be indispensable to the market: an imaginative, popular, low-budget picture that makes the most of its limited resources, and in which people get on with the job instead of standing around talking about it". In 1981, New Line put out "Polyester", a John Waters movie with a small budget and an old-school exploitation gimmick: Odorama. That October "The Book of the Dead", a gore-filled yet stylish horror movie made for less than $400,000, debuted in Detroit. Its writer, director, and co-executive producer, Sam Raimi, was a week shy of his twenty-second birthday; star and co-executive producer Bruce Campbell was twenty-three. It was picked up for distribution by New Line, retitled "The Evil Dead", and became a hit. In the words of one newspaper critic, it was a "shoestring "tour de force"".


title: B movie

text: One of the most successful 1980s B studios was a survivor from the heyday of the exploitation era, Troma Pictures, founded in 1974. Troma's most characteristic productions, including "Class of Nuke 'Em High" (1986), "Redneck Zombies" (1986), and "Surf Nazis Must Die" (1987), take exploitation for an absurdist spin. Troma's best-known production is "The Toxic Avenger" (1984); it's hideous hero, affectionately known as Toxie, was featured in three sequels, an upcoming reboot and a TV cartoon series. One of the few successful B studio startups of the decade was Rome-based Empire Pictures, whose first production, "Ghoulies", reached theaters in 1985. The video rental market was becoming central to B film economics: Empire's financial model relied on seeing a profit not from theatrical rentals, but only later, at the video store. A number of Concorde–New Horizon releases went this route as well, appearing only briefly in theaters, if at all. The growth of the cable television industry also helped support the low-budget film industry, as many B movies quickly wound up as "filler" material for 24-hour cable channels or were made expressly for that purpose.


title: B movie

text: By 1990, the cost of the average U.S. film had passed . Of the nine films released that year to gross more than at the U.S. box office, two would have been strictly B-movie material before the late 1970s: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Dick Tracy". Three more—the science-fiction thriller "Total Recall", the action-filled detective thriller "Die Hard 2", and the year's biggest hit, the slapstick kiddie comedy "Home Alone"—were also far closer to the traditional arena of the Bs than to classic A-list subject matter. The growing popularity of home video and access to unedited movies on cable and satellite television along with real estate pressures were making survival more difficult for the sort of small or non-chain theaters that were the primary home of independently produced genre films. Drive-in screens too were rapidly disappearing from the American landscape.


title: B movie

text: Surviving B movie operations adapted in different ways. Releases from Troma now frequently went straight to video. New Line, in its first decade, had been almost exclusively a distributor of low-budget independent and foreign genre pictures. With the smash success of exploitation veteran Wes Craven's original "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984), whose nearly cost it had directly backed, the company began moving steadily into higher-budget genre productions. In 1994, New Line was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System; it was soon being run as a midsized studio with a broad range of product alongside Warner Bros. within the Time Warner conglomerate. The following year, Showtime launched "Roger Corman Presents", a series of thirteen straight-to-cable movies produced by Concorde–New Horizons. A "New York Times" reviewer found that the initial installment qualified as "vintage Corman ... spiked with everything from bared female breasts to a mind-blowing quote from Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice"".


title: B movie

text: At the same time as exhibition venues for B films vanished, the independent film movement was burgeoning; among the results were various crossovers between the low-budget genre movie and the "sophisticated" arthouse picture. Director Abel Ferrara, who built a reputation with violent B movies such as "The Driller Killer" (1979) and "Ms. 45" (1981), made two works in the early nineties that marry exploitation-worthy depictions of sex, drugs, and general sleaze to complex examinations of honor and redemption: "King of New York" (1990) was backed by a group of mostly small production companies and the cost of "Bad Lieutenant" (1992), , was financed totally independently. Larry Fessenden's micro-budget monster movies, such as "No Telling" (1991) and "Habit" (1997), reframe classic genre subjects—Frankenstein and vampirism, respectively—to explore issues of contemporary relevance. The budget of David Cronenberg's "Crash" (1996), , was not comfortably A-grade, but it was hardly B-level either. The film's imagery was another matter: "On its scandalizing surface, David Cronenberg's "Crash" suggests exploitation at its most disturbingly sick", wrote critic Janet Maslin. Financed, like "King of New York", by a consortium of production companies, it was picked up for U.S. distribution by Fine Line Features. This result mirrored the film's scrambling of definitions: Fine Line was a subsidiary of New Line, recently merged into the Time Warner empire—specifically, it was the old exploitation distributor's arthouse division. "Pulp Fiction" (1994), directed by Quentin Tarantino on an budget, became a hugely influential hit by crossing multiple lines, as James Mottram describes: "With its art house narrative structure, B-movie subject matter and Hollywood cast, the film is the axis for three distinct cinematic traditions to intersect."


title: B movie

text: By the turn of the millennium, the average production cost of an American feature had already spent three years above the mark. In 2005, the top ten movies at the U.S. box office included three adaptations of children's fantasy novels, one extending and another initiating a series ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "", respectively), a child-targeted cartoon ("Madagascar"), a comic book adaptation ("Batman Begins"), a sci-fi series installment (""), a sci-fi remake ("War of the Worlds"), and a "King Kong" remake. It was a slow year for Corman: he produced just one movie, which had no American theatrical release, true of most of the pictures he had been involved in over the preceding decade. As big-budget Hollywood movies further usurped traditional low-rent genres, the ongoing viability of the familiar brand of B movie was in grave doubt. "New York Times" critic A. O. Scott warned of the impending "extinction" of "the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures" of the B picture.


title: B movie

text: On the other hand, recent industry trends suggest the reemergence of something like the traditional A-B split in major studio production, though with fewer "programmers" bridging the gap. According to a 2006 report by industry analyst Alfonso Marone, "The average budget for a Hollywood movie is currently around $, rising to $ when the cost of marketing for domestic launch (USA only) is factored into the equation. However, we are now witnessing a polarisation of film budgets into two tiers: large productions ($120–) and niche features ($5–20m). ... Fewer $30– releases are expected." Fox launched a new subsidiary in 2006, Fox Atomic, to concentrate on teen-oriented genre films. The economic model was deliberately low-rent, at least by major studio standards. According to a "Variety" report, "Fox Atomic is staying at or below the mark for many of its movies. It's also encouraging filmmakers to shoot digitally—a cheaper process that results in a grittier, teen-friendly look. And forget about stars. Of Atomic's nine announced films, not one has a big name". The newfangled B movie division was shut down in 2009.


title: B movie

text: As the "Variety" report suggests, recent technological advances greatly facilitate the production of truly low-budget motion pictures. Although there have always been economical means with which to shoot movies, including Super 8 and 16 mm film, as well as video cameras recording onto analog videotape, these media could not rival the image quality of 35 mm film. The development of digital cameras and post-production methods now allow even low-budget filmmakers to produce films with excellent, and not necessarily "grittier", image quality and editing effects. As Marone observes, "the equipment budget (camera, support) required for shooting digital is approximately 1/10 that for film, significantly lowering the production budget for independent features. At the same time, [since the early 2000s], the quality of digital filmmaking has improved dramatically." Independent filmmakers, whether working in a genre or arthouse mode, continue to find it difficult to gain access to distribution channels, though digital end-to-end methods of distribution offer new opportunities. In a similar way, Internet sites such as YouTube have opened up entirely new avenues for the presentation of low-budget motion pictures.


title: B movie

text: Likewise, from the year 2000 onward, the acceleration and implementation of computer generated imagery continued at an unprecedented rate. This lent to the creation of effects that would otherwise prove too costly using traditional methods. Certain genres in particular, such as disaster or creature features, saw increasing use of CGI. Consequently, this trend spurred a boost in B-grade productions targeted to a mass audience. In this vein, film companies, such as The Asylum, or channels, such as Syfy, made a concerted effort towards the development of B-grade movies with some even making such films a key part of their business model. Often, however, many of such were produced in an effort to capitalize on the success of more established features. Moreover, this new direction likewise garnered involvement from veteran B-movie filmmakers such as Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski.


title: B movie

text: The terms "C movie" and the more common "Z movie" describe progressively lower grades of the B movie category. The terms "drive-in movie" and "midnight movie", which emerged in association with specific historical phenomena, are now often used as synonyms for "B movie".


title: B movie

text: The C movie is the grade of motion picture at the low end of the B movie, or—in some taxonomies—simply below it. In the 1980s, with the growth of cable television, the C grade began to be applied with increasing frequency to low-quality genre films used as filler programming for that market. The "C" in the term then does double duty, referring not only to quality that is lower than "B" but also to the initial "c" of "cable." Helping to popularize the notion of the C movie was the TV series "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (1988–99), which ran on national cable channels (first Comedy Central, then the Sci Fi Channel) after its first year. Updating a concept introduced by TV hostess Vampira over three decades before, "MST3K" presented cheap, low-grade movies, primarily science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, along with running voiceover commentary highlighting the films' shortcomings. Director Ed Wood has been called "the master of the 'C-movie in this sense, although "Z movie" (see below) is perhaps even more applicable to his work. The rapid expansion of niche cable and satellite outlets such as Sci Fi (with its Sci Fi Pictures) and HBO's genre channels in the 1990s and 2000s has meant a market for contemporary C pictures, many of them "direct to cable" movies—small-budget genre films never released in theaters.


title: B movie

text: The term Z movie (or grade-Z movie) is used by some to characterize low-budget pictures with quality standards well below those of most B and even C movies. Most films referred to as Z movies are made on very small budgets by operations on the fringes of the commercial film industry. The micro-budget "quickies" of 1930s fly-by-night Poverty Row production houses may be thought of as Z movies "avant la lettre". The films of director Ed Wood, such as "Glen or Glenda" (1953) and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959)—the latter frequently cited as one of the worst pictures ever made—exemplify the classic grade-Z movie. Latter-day Zs are often characterized by violent, gory or sexual content and a minimum of artistic interest; much of which is destined for the subscription TV equivalent of the grindhouse.


title: B movie

text: Psychotronic movie is a term coined by film critic Michael J. Weldon—referred to by a fellow critic as "the historian of marginal movies"—to denote the sort of low-budget genre pictures that are generally disdained or ignored entirely by the critical establishment. Weldon's immediate source for the term was the Chicago cult film "The Psychotronic Man" (1980), whose title character is a barber who develops the ability to kill using psychic energy. According to Weldon, "My original idea with that word is that it's a two-part word. 'Psycho' stands for the horror movies, and 'tronic' stands for the science fiction movies. I very quickly expanded the meaning of the word to include any kind of exploitation or B-movie." The term, popularized beginning in the 1980s with publications of Weldon's such as "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film", "The Psychotronic Video Guide", and "Psychotronic Video" magazine, has subsequently been adopted by other critics and fans. Use of the term tends to emphasize a focus on and affection for those B movies that lend themselves to appreciation as camp.


title: B movie

text: B-television is the term used by the German media scholar in her article "From the True, the Good, the Beautiful to the Truly Beautiful Goods—audience identification strategies on German "B-Television" programs" as an analogy to "B-movie" to characterize the development of German commercial television, which adopted "the aesthetics of commercials" with its "inane positiveness radiated by every participant, the inclusion of clips, soft focus, catchy music" as well as "promotion of merchandise through product placement". Schumacher notes that after 1984 deregulation German public television passed its climax and became marginalized. Newly established commercial stations, operating without the burden of societal legitimacy, focused solely on profitability. To establish and maintain viewer loyalty these stations broadcast reality shows, sensational journalism, daily soap operas, infotainment programs, talk shows, game shows and soft pornography. In his article Schumacher mentions "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by an American cultural critic Neil Postman, who formulated the thesis of television programming as a derivative of advertising, creating "a species of information that might properly be called disinformation—misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing".


title: B movie

text: Like Postman, Schumacher notes that contemporary television advertisement often chooses to reinforce brand loyalty rather than promoting product. This reverse marketing approach is used by television broadcasters to advertise the stations themselves. Schumacher lists three specific principles: grabbing the viewers' attention, establishing emotional involvement with the audience, and maintaining the viewers' interest as the cornerstones to acquiring and maintaining market share. A commercial RTL station described such a building of viewers' loyalty in positive terms: "RTL has discovered something entirely new for television. The viewer".


title: B movie

text: Schumacher argues that viewer loyalty is established primarily through the representation of familiar emotional situations and the everyday problems of the viewers, which means that private stations broadcast predominantly private affairs. Further development of this approach led to creation of reality TV shows, which generate new realities by intervening directly in the actual life of its participants. Such personalisation and dramatization of television precipitated the "Fall of Public Man", in words of Richard Sennett.


title: B movie

text: The strategy of creating viewer loyalty through emotional sensations is reflected in scandalous "special news" that "favor sex and crime topics and employ highly affective commentary style, a clip aesthetic as well as a musical accompaniment borrowed from the crime film genre". As an example, Schumacher mentions "Real Personal", a talk show about human sexuality that was televised by NBC five times a week during 1990s. "The title itself encapsulates the message of 'B-TV': real people and their 'real' problems are the focus here", contemplates Schumacher.


title: B movie

text: Mentioning the highly successful entertainment programs of David Letterman and Jay Leno, Schumacher proclaims that a talk show host, seen daily on the television screen, becomes almost a part of the family. "Spreading not only inanity, but also a sense of security", the host "provides a fixed portion of our daily routine" along with a daily soap opera, daily infotainment show or a daily game show.


title: B movie

text: "Appeals to viewer emotions and the active participation of the consumer enhance the ability of 'B-TV' to exploit the market", concludes Schumacher.


title: B movie

text: Erik Henriksen from "Portland Mercury" used the term "B-TV" when he reviewed "Stargate Atlantis" television series to describe the kind of show that is not "genuinely great", but one that "just works—albeit in a vaguely embarrassing and silly way—at entertaining the audience, at stringing along the same characters from week to week, at churning out boilerplate plots that are nonetheless peppered with just enough originality and uniqueness to make them enjoyable and fun and distracting."


title: Neopronoun

text: Neopronouns are a category of neologistic English third-person personal pronouns beyond "he", "she", "they", "one", and "it". Neopronouns are preferred by some non-binary individuals who feel that neopronouns provide options to reflect their gender identity more accurately than conventional pronouns.


title: Neopronoun

text: Neopronouns may be words created to serve as pronouns, such as "ze/hir", or derived from existing words and turned into personal pronouns, such as "fae/faer". Some neopronouns allude to they/them, such as "ey/em", a form of Spivak pronoun.


title: Neopronoun

text: A survey by The Trevor Project in 2020 found that 4% of LGBT youth surveyed used neopronouns. The Gender Census, an online community survey, reported in 2021 that "xe/xem/xir" were the most popular neopronouns among those surveyed, used by 8.5% of its 44,583 respondents (recruited via Tumblr, Twitter, and other social media platforms).


title: Neopronoun

text: Singular they had emerged by the 14th century as a third-person pronoun, about a century after the plural "they","" and is first attested in the 14th-century poem William and the Werewolf. Newer pronouns were not coined until much later.


title: Neopronoun

text: One of the first instances of a neopronoun being used was in 1789, when William H. Marshall recorded the use of "ou" as a pronoun. "Thon" was originally a Scots version of "yon" and means "that" or "that one". In 1858, it was introduced as a gender-neutral pronoun by the American composer Charles Crosby Converse. "Ze" as a gender-neutral English pronoun dates back to at least 1864. It was added to the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" in 1934 and removed from it in 1961. In 1911, an insurance broker named Fred Pond invented the pronoun set "he'er, his'er and him'er," which the superintendent of the Chicago public-school system proposed for adoption by the school system in 1912, sparking a national debate in the US, with "heer" being added to the Funk & Wagnalls dictionary in 1913. The "Sacramento Bee" used the gender-neutral "hir" for 25 years from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1970, Mary Orovan invented the pronoun "co/coself", which gained use in a cooperative community in Virginia called the Twin Oaks Community, where it was still in use as of 2011. In 1996, Kate Bornstein used the pronouns "ze/hir" to refer to a character in their novel "Nearly Roadkill". In a 2006 interview, transgender activist Leslie Feinberg included "ze/hir" as a preferred pronoun (along with "she/her" and "he/him", depending on context), stating, "I like the gender neutral pronoun 'ze/hir' because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met." The "Oxford English Dictionary" added an entry for "ze" in 2018 and entries for "hir" and "zir" in 2019.


title: Neopronoun

text: There has been some conflict over neopronouns, with opposition to the idea in both the cisgender and transgender communities. Many people find them unfamiliar and confusing to use. Some have said that use of neopronouns, especially noun-self pronouns, comes from a position of privilege, makes the LGBT+ community look like a joke, or that the attention placed on neopronouns pull focus away from larger, more important issues, such as transphobic bullying, the murder of trans people, and suicide.


title: Neopronoun

text: People who are supportive of neopronouns state that they are helpful for genderqueer individuals to find "something that was made for them" and for neurodivergent people, who may struggle with their gender identity. Some magazines and newspapers have published articles on neopronouns that are generally in support of them, detailing how to use them and be supportive of those who do.


title: Neopronoun

text: Noun-self pronouns are a type of neopronoun which involve a noun being used as a personal pronoun. Examples of noun-self pronouns include "vamp/vampself", "kitten/kittenself", and "doll/dollself". Noun-self pronouns trace their origins to the early 2010s on the website Tumblr.


title: Raj Babbar

text: Raj Babbar (born 23 June 1952) is an Indian Hindi and Punjabi film actor and politician belonging to Indian National Congress. three-time member of the Lok Sabha and a two-time member of the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. He was the President of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee.


title: Raj Babbar

text: Babbar was born in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, in a Punjabi family on 23 June 1952, but he hails from Tundla, Firozabad. He did his initial schooling from Mufid-E-Aam Inter college, Agra.He is an alumnus of the 1975 class of the National School of Drama and graduate from Agra College.


title: Raj Babbar

text: He trained in the Method school of acting at NSD, which is involved in Street Theatre. After his training in New Delhi, he moved to Mumbai and started his film career with Reena Roy, one of the well-known actresses of that time. He gained notoriety for his horrific portrayal of a rapist in the movie "Insaaf Ka Taraazu", in which he assaulted the heroine Zeenat Aman, and later her sister, and in the end, is shot and killed by the heroine.


title: Raj Babbar

text: He became a consistent feature of the B. R. Chopra banner; in "Nikaah" with Deepak Parashar and Salma Agha and in "Aaj Ki Aawaz" with Smita Patil.


title: Raj Babbar

text: He also achieved success in Punjabi cinema as he gave remarkable performances in "Chann Pardesi" (1980), "Marhi Da Deeva" (1989), and "Long Da Lishkara" (1986) – three art house movies with serious themes treated in a realistic manner, and this was an innovation for the Punjabi films field. He also acted in the hit Punjabi films "Aasra Pyar Da" (1983), "Mahaul Theek Hai" (1999), "Shaheed Uddham Singh" (2000), "Yaaran Naal Baharan" (2005), "Ek Jind Ek Jaan" (2006), "Apni Boli Apna Des" (2009) and "Tera Mera Ki Rishta" (2009). He appeared in several movies as an antagonist in movies like "Insaf ka Tarazu" (1980), "Saazish" (1988), "Aankhen" (1993), "Dalaal" (1993), "The Gambler" (1995), "Andaz" (1994), "Yaarana" (1995), "Barsaat" (1995), "Ziddi" (1997), "Gundagardi" (1997), "Daag the Fire" (1999), "Indian" (2001) and many more, some movies became successful, but some were commercial flops.


title: Raj Babbar

text: He has also acted in television. He appeared in the introductory episodes of the famous Indian TV series "Mahabharat", as king Bharat, "Bahadur Shah Zafar" (1986), as Akbar, alongside the then debutant Juhi Chawla, and also in his home production series; "Maharaja Ranjit Singh" (2010), all telecast on Doordarshan. In 2014 and 2015, He acted in the serial telecast on Life OK; "Pukaar - Call For The Hero", directed by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, with Rannvijay Singh, Adah Sharma and Shubhangi Latkar.


title: Raj Babbar

text: Raj Babbar entered politics by joining Janata Dal in 1989, which was led by V. P. Singh. He later joined Samajwadi Party and was elected as a Member of the Parliament of India three times. From 1994 to 1999 he was a member of the Rajya Sabha. He was re-elected in the 14th Lok Sabha elections for his second term in 2004. He was suspended from Samajwadi Party in 2006. Later he joined Indian National Congress in 2008 and was elected for his fourth term as Member of Parliament in 2009, by defeating Dimple Yadav, wife of Akhilesh Yadav and daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he contested from Ghaziabad and lost to General V. K. Singh. He was appointed as the president of Uttar Pradesh congress committee (UPCC), but in 2019 elections he couldn't even manage to save his own seat and lost to Rajkumar Chahar of the Bharatiya Janata Party by a huge margin of 4,95,065 votes.


title: Raj Babbar

text: Raj Babbar, in the capacity of Congress spokesman, created controversy in 2013, by stating that Rs.12 is sufficient for a common man to get a full meal in Mumbai, which drew severe criticism. He also said that a poor person in India can get full meals two times a day, within Rs. 28 to 32 and opposition parties termed Raj Babbar's statement laughable. Later, he regretted his comments. In July 2013, he compared Narendra Modi to Adolf Hitler, which also created controversy.


title: Raj Babbar

text: Raj Babbar married Nadira Zaheer, daughter of noted theatre personality Sajjad Zaheer. Arya Babbar and Juhi Babbar are his children from Nadira. Then he married the actress Smita Patil who gave birth to their son Prateik Babbar. He has two younger brothers, Kishan and Vinod (deceased) and four younger sisters.


title: Raj Babbar

text: He launched his own home production; Babbar Films Pvt. Ltd. along with his brother Kishan. Under this, he has produced two feature films, "Karm Yodha" (1992) and "Kash Aap Hamare Hote" (2003), and the serial "Maharaja Ranjit Singh (TV series)" (2010).


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Mario Lemieux (; ; born October 5, 1965) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. He played parts of 17 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Pittsburgh Penguins between 1984 and 2006, and he assumed ownership of the franchise in 1999. Nicknamed "The Magnificent One", "Le Magnifique" and "Super Mario" after the fictional character of the same name, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. A gifted playmaker and fast skater despite his large size, Lemieux often beat defencemen with fakes and dekes.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Drafted first overall by the Penguins in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft, Lemieux led Pittsburgh to consecutive Stanley Cup championships in 1991 and 1992. Under his ownership, the Penguins won additional titles in 2009, 2016, and 2017. He is the only man to have his name on the Cup both as a player and owner. He also led Team Canada to an Olympic gold medal in 2002, a championship at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, and a Canada Cup in 1987. He won the Lester B. Pearson Award as the most outstanding player voted by the players four times, the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player (MVP) during the regular season three times, the Art Ross Trophy as the league's points leader six times, and the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoffs MVP in 1991 and 1992. He is the only player to score one goal in each of the five possible situations in a single NHL game, a feat he accomplished in 1988. At the time of his retirement, he was the NHL's seventh-highest career points scorer with 690 goals and 1,033 assists. He ranks second in NHL history with a 0.754 career goals-per-game average, behind only Mike Bossy (0.762). He ranks second in NHL history with a 1.129 career assists-per-game average, behind only Wayne Gretzky (1.320). He also ranks second in NHL history with 1.883 points-per-game average, behind only Wayne Gretzky (1.921).


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux was never able to play a full season, and during his career he played in 70 or more games in a season on only six occasions; four of those seasons were before the age of 25. Lemieux's career was plagued by health problems that limited him to 915 of a possible 1,430 regular season games between the opening of the 1984–85 campaign and the final game of 2005–2006. Lemieux's NHL debut was on October 11, 1984 and his final game took place on December 16, 2005. His numerous ailments included spinal disc herniation, Hodgkin's lymphoma, chronic tendinitis of a hip-flexor muscle, and chronic back pain so severe that other people had to tie his skates. He retired on two occasions due to these health issues, first in 1997 after battling lymphoma before returning in 2000, and then a second and final time in 2006 after being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Lemieux also missed the entire 1994–95 season due to Hodgkin's lymphoma. Despite his lengthy absences from the game, his play remained at a high level upon his return to the ice; he won the Hart Trophy and scoring title in 1995–96 after sitting out the entire previous season. He was on pace for 188 points, but only played in 70 games. He was also a finalist for the Hart Trophy when he made his comeback in 2000. In 1999, he bought the then-bankrupt Penguins and their top minor-league affiliate, the American Hockey League's (AHL) Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, and was the team's principal owner until selling controlling interest in the team to Fenway Sports Group in 2021. However, he remains part-owner and chairman of the board.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The Hockey Hall of Fame inducted Lemieux immediately after his first retirement in 1997, waiving the normal three-year waiting period; upon his return in 2000, he became the third Hall of Famer (after Gordie Howe and Guy Lafleur) to play after being inducted. Lemieux's impact on the NHL has been significant: Andrew Conte of the "Pittsburgh Tribune-Review" called him the saviour of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and after Lemieux's retirement, Wayne Gretzky commented that "You don't replace players like Mario Lemieux ... The game will miss him." Bobby Orr called him "the most talented player I've ever seen." Orr, along with Bryan Trottier and numerous fans, speculated that if Lemieux had had fewer health issues, his on-ice achievements would have been much greater. In 2017, he was named one of the "100 Greatest NHL Players"And wont during the 2017 winter classic the award voted by the NHL fans of the Greatest NHL moment in history with he' 5goals game in 5 diffenrents way. In 2004, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux was born in Montreal to Pierrette, a stay-at-home mom, and Jean-Guy Lemieux, an engineer. He and his older brothers Alain and Richard grew up in a working class family in the Ville-Émard district. He began playing hockey at age three in his basement; before using real equipment, he and his brothers used wooden kitchen spoons as hockey sticks and bottle caps as pucks. His father created a rink on the front lawn so that the boys could practice as much as possible, and according to family legend, the family sometimes packed snow onto the living room carpet so the brothers could practice indoors when it was dark.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The young Lemieux was a teammate to future NHLers Marc Bergevin and J. J. Daigneault on the same minor ice hockey team from Ville-Émard. Lemieux and Daigneault played together with RJ Donnelly and Gail Swann in the 1977 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament. Cornish and Swann also competing in the 1978 tournament.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux started his career with the Laval Voisins of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). When he was drafted at age 15, he declared that he would break league records. He made the request to coach Jean Bégin to play on a forward line with Jacques Goyette during the 1983–84 QMJHL season. The combination was successful, as Lemieux broke the league record for points in a season with 282 (133 goals, 149 assists) in 70 games. In his last game of the regular season, Lemieux needed three goals to tie Guy Lafleur's record of 130 goals; he scored six goals and added six assists in a 16–4 victory. During the playoffs, he scored 29 goals and earned 52 points in 14 games, and led his team to a berth at the 1984 Memorial Cup. His appearance at the Canadian junior ice hockey national championship was highly anticipated, but Lemieux was held to only two goals and three assists as the Laval Voisins lost all three games.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Although he played in the 1983 World Junior Hockey Championships, Lemieux did not play for the Canadian Juniors in 1984 because he disliked how coach Dave King treated him in the previous tournament. He also did not want to break up his junior season. He finished his QMJHL career with 562 points (247 goals, 315 assists) in three seasons. Before the 1984 NHL Entry Draft, Lemieux announced that he wanted to play for whoever drafted him. He and his agent were deadlocked with the Pittsburgh Penguins and could not negotiate a contract. Because of this, when the Penguins called his name as the first overall draft pick, he did not shake general manager Eddie Johnston's hand or don the Penguins jersey, which is NHL tradition. He claimed he was upset about the contract negotiation, and said that "Pittsburgh doesn't want [him] bad enough." Even though the draft was held in Montreal, over 3,000 fans viewed a broadcast in Pittsburgh's Civic Arena—a typical Penguins game drew fewer than 7,000 fans at the time. After the draft, Johnston signed Lemieux to a two-year contract for $600,000, plus a $150,000 bonus for signing.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: At the start of Lemieux's career, the Penguins were in financial turmoil and there were rumors of relocation. The team had declared bankruptcy after the 1974–75 season, and by 1983, they were averaging fewer than 7,000 fans per game—less than half of the Civic Arena's capacity. They had not made the playoffs since 1982, and had not had a winning season since 1979.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: He debuted on October 11, 1984 against the Boston Bruins, and on his first shift, he stole the puck from Hall of Fame defenceman Ray Bourque and scored a goal with his first NHL shot against Pete Peeters. Later that season, Lemieux played in the NHL All-Star Game and became the first rookie to be named the All-Star Game's Most Valuable Player. Despite missing seven games during the season, Lemieux scored 100 points and won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the rookie of the year.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The next season, Lemieux finished second in league scoring with 141 points, behind Wayne Gretzky's NHL-record 215 points. He won the Lester B. Pearson Award as the NHL's best regular-season player as voted by his peers. Lemieux missed 17 games of the 1986–87 NHL season—his point production slipped, and the Penguins once again failed to make the playoffs. However, he played in the Canada Cup during the summer of 1987 and set a tournament record 11 goals in 9 games; his last goal, which clinched the Canadian victory, broke a tie with the Soviet team with 1:26 remaining in the third period. Lemieux cited his Canada Cup experience as the reason for his elevated play later on, stating, "Remember, I was only 21 years old at the time. To be around guys like Wayne [Gretzky] and Mark Messier and Paul Coffey ... was a tremendous learning experience."


title: Mario Lemieux

text: By the 1987–88 season, Wayne Gretzky already won seven consecutive Art Ross Trophies for leading the league in points. That season, fuelled by his Canada Cup experience, Lemieux scored 168 points and won his first NHL scoring title. He also won his first Hart Memorial Trophy as the league's Most Valuable Player to his team, and the All-Star Game MVP award after a record-setting six-point game. Despite Lemieux's success, the Penguins finished one point out of the playoffs. They did, however, have their first winning record in nine years.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: In the 1988–89 season, Lemieux led the league with 114 assists (tied with Gretzky) and 85 goals for 199 points; he is the only player to approach Gretzky's mammoth 200+ point seasons. Lemieux finished the season a close second to Gretzky in voting for the Hart Trophy, and set several milestones and records in the process, becoming the second player to score 70+ goals in two seasons, the fourth player to score 50 goals in 50 games, and the only player to score 13 shorthanded goals in one season. Buoyed in part by Lemieux's performance, the Penguins made the playoffs for the first time in seven years.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Perhaps the defining moment of Lemieux's season was on December 31, 1988, in a game against the New Jersey Devils. In that game, Lemieux scored eight points and became the only player in NHL history to score a goal in all five possible game situations in the same game: even-strength, power-play, shorthanded, penalty shot, and empty-net. Lemieux had another five-goal, eight-point performance in a 10–7 victory during the postseason against the Philadelphia Flyers on April 25, 1989. He tied the NHL record for most goals and points in a postseason game, most goals in a postseason period (four in the first), and most assists in a postseason period (three in the second). However, the Penguins lost the series 4–3.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: During the 1989–90 NHL season, Lemieux scored at least one point in 46 consecutive games before he ended the streak by leaving a game due to injury. The streak's length was second only to Gretzky's 51-game streak. Lemieux won his third All-Star Game MVP with a four-goal performance. Although he missed 21 games, he finished fourth in the league in scoring with 123 points (45 goals, 78 assists). The Penguins did not qualify for the playoffs.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux's back injury progressed into a herniated disc, which subsequently developed an infection. On July 11, 1990, Lemieux underwent back surgery to fix the disk, and he missed 50 games in the 1990–91 NHL season. In his absence, the Penguins acquired players Joe Mullen, Larry Murphy, Ron Francis, and Ulf Samuelsson in hopes of becoming serious contenders for the Stanley Cup. Despite significant back pain, Lemieux scored 16 goals and 28 assists for the playoff lead, and led the Penguins over the Minnesota North Stars for their first Stanley Cup. Lemieux won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' most valuable player. His 44 playoff points rank second only to Gretzky's 47 in 1985.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: One of the most famous goals in NHL history is the goal Lemieux scored in the second period of game two. Receiving the puck between the Penguins' blue line and the centre line, Lemieux skated solo into the North Stars zone facing two defencemen and the goalie by himself. Lemieux skirted the puck through one of the defenders' (Shawn Chambers) legs, skated around him, forced the goaltender to commit left, then switched the puck to his backhand side and sliding the puck in before crashing into the net himself. The brief video of the goal has been since featured on recent Stanley Cup promo ads by the NHL (played in reverse), as well as the opening montage of "Hockey Night in Canada" broadcasts.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux played only 64 games in his injury-plagued 1991–92 season. Despite missing several games, he won his third Art Ross Trophy with 131 points. During the second game of the Patrick Division finals, the New York Rangers' Adam Graves slashed and broke Lemieux's left hand; Lemieux missed five games, but still led the playoffs with 16 goals and 18 assists. The Penguins swept the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals to earn their second consecutive Stanley Cup, and Lemieux won the Conn Smythe Trophy for the second consecutive postseason. Lemieux racked up an astonishing 78 combined points during the 1991 and 1992 playoffs, a two-year total second only to Gretzky's 82 points as his Oilers won their first and second Stanley Cup titles in 1984 and 1985.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The Penguins started the 1992–93 season well, and Lemieux set a franchise record with at least one goal in twelve consecutive games, from October 6 to November 1. He was on pace to challenge Gretzky's records of 92 goals in one season (1981–82) and 215 points in one season (1985–86), until January 12, 1993, when he made the announcement that he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. He received aggressive radiation treatments which caused him to miss two months of play. When Lemieux returned, he was 12 points behind Buffalo's Pat LaFontaine in the scoring race.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On the day of his last radiation treatment, Lemieux flew to Philadelphia to play against the Flyers, where he scored a goal and an assist in a 5–4 loss. Before the game Lemieux earned a standing ovation from Philadelphia fans—a rare occurrence for any visiting player, much less a Pittsburgh athlete. With Lemieux back, Pittsburgh won an NHL record 17 consecutive games to finish first overall for the first time in franchise history and the team's 119 points are still a franchise record. Lemieux scored at an incredible pace, notching an average 2.67 points per game—the third-highest points-per-game for a season, behind only Wayne Gretzky's 1983–84 and 1985–86 averages of 2.77 and 2.69 points per game, respectively. Lemieux won his second straight and fourth overall scoring title, finishing with 160 points (69 goals, 91 assists) in 60 games, beating out LaFontaine by 12 points despite playing in 24 fewer games. Throughout the season, Lemieux scored at least one point in 54 of his 60 games played.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The Penguins dispatched the New Jersey Devils in the first round in five games, but were upset by the New York Islanders in seven. After the season, Lemieux was awarded his second Hart Trophy, as well as the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, given to the player who best exemplifies perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On July 23, 1993, Lemieux underwent his second back surgery, this time to repair a herniated muscle. He missed the first ten games of the season to recover from surgery and missed an additional 48 games due to the injury. After the season, he announced that he would take a leave of absence because of fatigue brought on by his radiation treatment. Lemieux returned for the 1995–96 season and on October 26, 1995, against the New York Islanders, he scored his 500th career goal in his 605th game. Lemieux reached 500 goals at the second fastest rate. Only Gretzky achieved the plateau faster scoring 500 goals in 575 games. Lemieux finished the season with 69 goals and 92 assists to lead the league and then became the seventh player to win three Hart Trophies and the fourth player to win five Art Ross Trophies. Despite his return, the Penguins fell to the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final in seven games.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The next season, Lemieux, playing against the Vancouver Canucks, scored his 600th career goal in his 719th game, and went on to put up his tenth career 100-point season, both the second-most in history after Wayne Gretzky's 600 goals in 718 games and fifteen 100-point seasons. In his last game against his hometown Montreal, Lemieux tied an NHL record for most goals in a period, with four goals in the third. Lemieux won his sixth scoring title with 122 points (50 goals, 72 assists). On April 6, 1997, Lemieux announced that he planned to retire following the playoffs. The Penguins were eliminated in five games by the Eric Lindros-led Philadelphia Flyers during the first round. Lemieux scored one goal and earned an assist in his final game. Despite the typically hostile Philadelphia crowd, Lemieux skated around the ice following the final horn and received a standing ovation. Upon his first retirement, Lemieux became the only player to retire from the NHL with a greater than 2 points per game average (1494 points in 745 games). On November 17, 1997, Lemieux was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, becoming the ninth player in history to have the mandatory three-year waiting period waived.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The Penguins' free-spending ways of the early 1990s came at a high price. Through most of the 1990s, Penguins' owners Howard Baldwin and Morris Belzberg mismanaged the team, owing over $90 million to various creditors. As a consequence, the Penguins asked Lemieux and other prominent players to defer their salaries. The team was also forced to make several trades to stop the bleeding, most of which backfired.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The situation became so dire that the Penguins were forced to declare bankruptcy in November 1998. For most of the 1998–99 NHL season, it looked like the Penguins would either move out of town or fold altogether. At this point, Lemieux stepped in with an unusual proposal to buy the team. Years of deferred salaries, adding up to $32.5 million, had made him the Penguins' largest creditor. He proposed to convert $20 million of his deferred salary into equity, with another $5 million in cash, enough to give him controlling interest. He also promised to keep the team in Pittsburgh. The U.S. bankruptcy court gave preliminary approval to Lemieux's bid on June 24 Lemieux later said that he would have put in a bid even if he had not been owed the deferred salary. The NHL's Board of Governors approved his application for ownership on September 1, 1999. Two days later, after Lemieux cut a deal with Fox Sports Pittsburgh (the Penguins' TV broadcaster) and Spectacor Management Group (which operated the Civic Arena), the court gave final approval to Lemieux's reorganization plan, allowing him to formally assume control. This made the then-retired star the first former NHL player to become majority owner of his former team. Lemieux assumed the posts of president, chairman and CEO of the Penguins.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux's plan was designed to pay everyone the organization owed. In fact, the bankruptcy court approved his bid in part because of the prospect that the debt would be fully retired—a rare feat, considering that unsecured creditors typically get only pennies on the dollar. In his first season as principal owner Pittsburgh went from a loss of $16 million from the previous season into a small profit of $47,000. Ticket sales increased after Lemieux's takeover and even more after his comeback in 2000, also improving team finances. In August 2005, the "Post-Gazette" reported that the Penguins had indeed fully paid the principal it owed to each of its creditors, both secured and unsecured. Lemieux was given much of the credit, according to the article, for his insistence that everyone owed be paid. He later relinquished the president's and CEO's posts to Ken Sawyer, but remained chairman and principal owner. In January 2006, Lemieux confirmed the team was for sale, but would consider offers only from those who would keep the team in Pittsburgh.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Late in 2000, there were rumours that Lemieux was attempting a comeback. Upon announcing his comeback, Lemieux also signed a "career spanning deal" with Nike to wear their equipment on the ice, and to endorse their products off the ice. This deal would include Lemieux endorsing their line of footwear and their golf equipment. It is said that the deal was worth $500,000 (US) a season and would remain in effect for the rest of his career. At the press conference confirming his return, Lemieux indicated part of his reason was that his only son Austin, then four, wanted to see his father play.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On December 27, 2000, he returned to the NHL against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The game was nationally broadcast on ESPN2 in the US and on "Hockey Night in Canada". Lemieux proved that his scoring touch had not disappeared by scoring a goal and three points, including an assist 33 seconds into the first shift of his return. While Jaromír Jágr remained captain of the Penguins, Lemieux was named captain of the North American All-Stars during the midseason All-Star game in Denver, Colorado. Despite playing in only 43 games in 2000–01, Lemieux scored 76 points to finish 26th in scoring, finishing the season with the highest points-per-game average that season among NHL players. In fact, he had the highest points-per-game average amongst NHL players for the entire period from his 2001 return until his final retirement in 2006. Lemieux was one of the three finalists for the Hart Memorial Trophy and Lester B. Pearson NHLPA awards and earned a selection on the postseason NHL All-Star second team.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux led the Penguins in the postseason and led in playoff scoring for much of it. His team surprised many by going to the Eastern Conference finals, knocking off the higher-seeded Washington Capitals and Buffalo Sabres along the way in six and seven games, respectively. The Penguins lost in five games to the top-seeded New Jersey Devils, as their players held Lemieux and Jágr without a goal that series. Lemieux finished Game Five in the penalty box after slashing the Devils' John Madden; afterwards Lemieux signed his stick and handed it to a young fan.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Before the start of the 2001–02 season, Pittsburgh was forced to trade most of their expensive players, so the team plummeted to the bottom of the NHL and missed the playoffs in each of the next four seasons. Lemieux again resumed the captaincy, as Jaromír Jágr was sent to the Washington Capitals. However, Lemieux only appeared in 24 games, partially due to injuries that would also plague him for the next three seasons. He also skipped some Penguins games in 2001–02 so he could be in condition to play what would be his only chance at the Olympics in his career. However, Lemieux played only one more game after the Salt Lake City Olympics before being out for the rest of the season due to a nagging hip problem, leading one Pittsburgh columnist to demand that Lemieux apologize for making Team Canada his priority.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Radio show host Mark Madden said he would donate $6,600 to the Mario Lemieux Foundation if the hockey great ever scored off a faceoff. On December 23, 2002, the Penguins played the Buffalo Sabres in Pittsburgh and Lemieux, who was aware of the challenge, made good on it when he scored the game-winning goal right off a faceoff during the third period.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: In 2002–03, at the age of 37, Lemieux led the NHL in scoring for most of the season but missed most of the games towards the end of the schedule and finished eighth in scoring with 91 points in only 67 games. Lemieux missed all but ten games during the 2003–04 season.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: After the lock-out concluded, Lemieux returned to the ice for the 2005–06 season. Hopes for the Penguins were high due to the salary cap and revenue sharing, which enabled the team to compete in the market for several star players. Another reason for optimism was the Penguins winning the lottery for the first draft pick, enabling them to select Sidney Crosby. Lemieux opened up his home to Crosby to help the rookie settle in Pittsburgh, and served as Crosby's mentor.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux's unique status as player and owner placed him in a potential conflict of interest with respect to NHL labour negotiations. Because he was also an owner, Lemieux was no longer a member of the National Hockey League Players Association, although he still paid union dues to maintain his pension. By agreement with the NHLPA, Lemieux was paid the average league salary of about $1.4 million and it was from this amount that his union dues were calculated and deducted. He did not vote in owners' meetings, delegating this role to a Penguins vice-president. He suggested that the NHL adopt a salary structure similar to the National Football League, which has a hard salary cap. Lemieux and fellow NHL team executive Gretzky brought the parties together in a last-ditch effort to save what remained of the 2004–05 season, but no agreement was reached and the season was lost.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On January 24, 2006, Lemieux announced his second and permanent retirement from professional hockey at the age of 40. This followed a half-season in which he struggled not only with the increased speed of the "new NHL" but also with atrial fibrillation, which caused him to experience irregular heartbeats. Although he had put up points at a pace that most NHL forwards would be very content with (22 points in 26 games) in his last season, Lemieux still remarked that "I can no longer play at a level I was accustomed to in the past."


title: Mario Lemieux

text: In October 2006, Lemieux's ownership group announced that it had reached an agreement to sell the Penguins to Research In Motion Chairman and Co-CEO Jim Balsillie. However, Balsillie unexpectedly rescinded his offer two months later after an apparent dispute with the NHL Board of Governors over purchasing conditions, despite Balsillie having earlier pledged to the Board that he would not relocate the team. Lemieux was offended that Balsillie had pulled out at last minute and initially refused to return Balsillie's deposit, saying that it was in breach of their agreement.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On March 13, 2007, Lemieux's ownership group announced a final agreement for a new multi-purpose arena, eventually to be named Consol Energy Center, to be built across the street from Mellon Arena. The deal keeps the Penguins in Pittsburgh for at least 30 years. Lemieux was instrumental in negotiating this deal, despite outside efforts to move the team to Kansas City. It was later revealed that Lemieux did visit Kansas City only to put pressure on the city and state to push through plans for the new arena.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The Penguins returned to the playoffs, losing in five games to the Ottawa Senators in 2007, and making the Finals in 2008 where they lost in six games to the Detroit Red Wings. On June 12, 2009, Lemieux won his third Stanley Cup title, this time as an owner as the Penguins won a rematch with the Red Wings in the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals, in seven games. In 2015, Lemieux and Ron Burkle hired Morgan Stanley to explore the possibility of selling the Penguins. On June 12, 2016, the Penguins defeated the San Jose Sharks in the 2016 Stanley Cup Finals, in six games, to give Lemieux his fourth Stanley Cup, his second as an owner. Almost exactly a year later, on June 11, 2017, Lemieux won his third Stanley Cup as an owner upon the Penguins six-game defeat of the Nashville Predators.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux played for Canada in the 1983 World Junior Championships (bronze medal), 1985 World Championships (silver medal), 1987 Canada Cup (championship), 2002 Winter Olympics (captain, gold medal) and the 2004 World Cup of Hockey (captain, championship).


title: Mario Lemieux

text: At the 2002 Winter Olympics, having been selected by Gretzky to captain the roster, the then-36-year-old Lemieux led the Canadian men's team into Salt Lake City, United States. The team had failed to win a gold medal at the Olympics in fifty years but were still considered favourites to win. Lemieux was second to Joe Sakic in team scoring with six points in five games, and led the team to gold by defeating the United States 5–2 in the final game. Lemieux showcased his amazing hockey intelligence during the gold medal game against the United States. With Team Canada trailing 1–0 in the first period, Lemieux made one of the most famous and savvy plays in Olympic hockey history. After a cross-ice pass from Lemieux in the neutral zone, Canadian defenceman Chris Pronger carried the puck across the blue line into the American zone, and fired a pass across the zone. Lemieux then faked like he was receiving the pass and proceeded to take a shot at the net, all while letting the puck slide through his legs, knowing he had forward Paul Kariya streaking behind him. Lemieux's fake caused American goalie Mike Richter to lunge in Lemieux's direction, and thus created a wide-open net for Kariya to fire the puck in, as he received the pass from Pronger after Lemieux let it go to Kariya. During the tournament, his hip injury required several painkilling injections to keep him on the ice, and he only played one more NHL game after the Olympics before being lost for the season.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: He would then play in his final international event, once again captaining Team Canada to victory in the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, where he'd be Team Canada's fourth leading scorer, despite being 38 years old, having injuries, and playing in just 10 NHL games that year. Lemieux was also selected by team Canada for the 2006 Winter Olympics, but declined due to health.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: The youngest of three sons of Jean-Guy and Pierrette Lemieux, he was raised by his stay-at-home mother, and his father, who was a construction worker.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Early in his career, Lemieux smoked, at one point consuming a pack of cigarettes daily. He gave up the habit, perhaps due to Hodgkin's Disease.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Mario Lemieux married Nathalie Asselin on June 26, 1993. They have four children: Lauren (born April 1993), Stephanie (born 1995), Austin Nicholas (born 1996), and Alexa (born 1997). Austin was born prematurely, weighing just two pounds, five ounces, but he is perfectly healthy today, and played college hockey at Arizona State University. The family lives in the affluent Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley. Lemieux also had a second home in Quebec near Mont-Tremblant which was built starting in 2009, costs US$20 million, and came to be known as the Chateau Fleur de Lys; he put the house up for sale in 2018.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: Lemieux has opened his home to young Penguins stars such as Marc-André Fleury and Sidney Crosby until they settled into the Pittsburgh area, as he did with Jaromír Jágr following the 1990 NHL Draft when he lived in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He is a naturalized American citizen, and on March 30, 2007, Lemieux, a registered Republican, contributed $2,300 to Democratic US Senator Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign fund. In the past, he has also made contributions to the re-election fund of Republican former US Senator Rick Santorum.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On June 17, 2009, Lemieux was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec by then-Quebec Premier Jean Charest.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: On September 3, 2010, Lemieux was made an Officer of the Order of Canada from then-Governor-General Michaëlle Jean.


title: Mario Lemieux

text: In 1993, the same year he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, Lemieux created the Mario Lemieux Foundation to fund medical research projects. Additionally, the foundation supports other organizations, including the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Leukemia Society, the Lupus Foundation and the Children's Home of Pittsburgh. In 2007, he was among the well-known athletes who founded Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization which helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and inspires non-athletes to volunteer and support the community.