Blockbuster
While Hollywood might be reeling from the aftermath of the devastating fires earlier this year, the show must go on. The Oscars, the annual awards presented by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, are the most prestigious wards in the film industry and normally to get the attention of the judges, actors, directors, and producers need to be associated with a blockbuster.
Blockbuster was first used in the American press in the early 1940s in an altogether different context. As the technology of warfare improved during the Second World War, the Royal Air Force developed a range of High Capacity (HC) bombs. They had very thin casings allowing them to carry around three-quarters of their weight in explosives, compared with around 50% in most general purpose bombs. The early HC bombs weighed 4,000 lbs and as the war progressed they reached up to 12,000 lbs.
The first aircraft to carry these bombs operationally were Wellingtons during a strike on Emden in April 1941 and they went on to become the standard payload of RAF night bombers who would sometimes bomb Berlin twice in one night. The size of the bombs required some modifications with the bomb beam removed and a slot cut into the bomb doors. The bomb protruded slightly through it and, upon release, just fell through the hole.
HC bombs were a formidable weapon, packed with enough explosive to destroy an entire street or a large building. As the press became aware of their devastating effects, they dubbed them “blockbusters”. Shortly afterwards, the term stared to be applied to films, the magazines Variety and Motion Picture Herald hailing Bombardier, starring Pat O’Brien and Randolph Scott, as “the block-buster of all action-thrill-service shows” in May 1943. With the Marines at Tarawa was described the following year in an advertisement as hitting “the heart like a two ton blockbuster”.
However, it was not until 1948 that the term blockbuster was regularly applied to films, used in an article by Variety about big budget films. By the early 1950s it was common parlance amongst publicists and trade journals to refer to a film that was both big in spectacle and scale and anticipated to do well at the box office as a blockbuster. The Daily Mirror in December 1950 predicted that Samson and Delilah, starring Heddy Lamare and Victor Mature amongst others, would be “a box office block buster”.
The Golden Age of the blockbuster was not until the mid-1970s, heralded in by films such as Jaws and, two years later Star Wars, both breaking box office records and enjoying lengthy runs of over year. Their phenomenal success backed by advertising blitzes encouraged other studios to release big budget epics around July 4th.
Blockbusters and the silver screen, now common terms when discussing films, have fascinating origins.
