1977

George Lucas’ space opera Star Wars, made for $11 million, was released in theaters in mid-summer and grossed nearly $200 million on its first release, topping Jaws as the highest earning film to date and generating an astoundingly lucrative merchandising campaign.  The sci-fi film featured the first use of an animated 3-D wire-frame graphic, and extensively used CGI.

Director John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever  created a disco-dancing craze, popularized disco music, made a star of John Travolta, and the extremely popular songs by the BeeGees encouraged the future popularity of movie soundtracks.

Andre Blay established the first video distribution company to license, market and distribute half-inch videotape cassettes (both Betamax and VHS) to consumers. He offered the first group of fifty best-selling movies to the public through a direct-mail sales operation called the Video Club of America.  The first three films to debut on home tape were The Sound of Music (1965), Patton (1970) and M*A*S*H (1970) – expensively-priced at about $50-$75 per cassette tape copy.  George Atkinson of Los Angeles began to advertise the rental of 50 Magnetic Video titles of his own collection in the Los Angeles Times, and launched the first video rental store, Video Station.  Atkinson was threatened with a lawsuit for renting the videos, but quickly discovered that U.S. copyright law gave him the right to rent and resell videos he owned. Within five years, he franchised more than 400 Video Station stores across the country.

43 year-old Polish director Roman Polanski had sex with a 13-year-old girl following champagne (and allegedly, quaaludes) in actor Jack Nicholson’s hot tub in his LA home. Polanski pleaded guilty to a single count of unlawful sexual intercourse with the minor but fled to France in February, 1978 before his sentencing.

We said good-bye to several icons of the silver screen: Charlie Chaplin; Elvis Presley; Groucho Marx; Howard Hawks; and Joan Crawford.  We also lost Henri-Georges Clouzot; Peter Finch; William Castle; Roberto Rossellini; Jean Hagen; Zero Mostel; Bing Crosby; and Jacques Tourneur.  Roberto Begnini, Mel Gibson, Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver made their film debuts.

The Atari 2600 gaming system and the Apple II computer were released.  The U.S. turned the Panama Canal over to Panama.  President Jimmy Carter pardoned Viet Nam draft evaders.  The Trans-Alaskan Oil Pipeline was completed.  Spain held its first elections since 1936 just before the Spanish Civil War began.

Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” was named the number one song of 1977 by RPM Magazine. The Shadow Box by Michael Christofer won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  There was no Pulitzer for Literature awarded.  Time Magazine’s Man of the Year was Anwar Sadat.

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The list of films released in 1977 that I will pick from is here.  Suggestions and warnings are welcome.  There is a lot of strength at the top but I find it suspicious that so many of the List films are not highly rated.