109 Fun Facts About 70s Movies

Who directed The Godfather (1972)?

Francis Ford Coppola shared an Oscar with Mario Puzo for the script they wrote together, yet lost Best Director that night, even as The Godfather took Best Picture.

Who took the stage in Marlon Brando's place when he won Best Actor for The Godfather?

Sacheen Littlefeather, an actress and activist, brushed aside the statuette Roger Moore held out and said Brando could not accept it because of Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans.

The Godfather Part II (1974) made Academy Awards history how?

It was the earliest sequel to win Best Picture and stayed the only one for 29 years, until The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; its six Oscars doubled the original's three.

Who directed Jaws (1975)?

Steven Spielberg directed Jaws at 27; shooting at sea off Martha's Vineyard ran months over schedule, and the film became the highest-grossing release to that point.

Why does the shark appear so little in Jaws?

The mechanical sharks kept malfunctioning at sea, so the director kept the animal out of sight and let John Williams's two-note theme announce it instead.

Which 1973 hit gave George Lucas the leverage to secure the merchandising and sequel rights to Star Wars?

American Graffiti cost $777,000 and became one of the most profitable films on record, so Lucas could pass up a bigger fee for Star Wars and bargain for the sequel and merchandising rights instead.

Star Wars was distributed in 1977 by which studio?

Twentieth Century-Fox backed the film because executive Alan Ladd Jr. believed in George Lucas more than in the project: as Lucas later put it, Ladd invested in him rather than in the film.

Who wrote and starred in Rocky (1976)?

Sylvester Stallone wrote the script in a matter of days and insisted on starring, turning down larger offers; made for about $1 million, Rocky won Best Picture.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) did what at the Oscars for only the second time?

Win the 'Big Five' means taking Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay, as only It Happened One Night had before; Louise Fletcher signed her thanks to her deaf parents from the stage.

Which film beat Star Wars to the Best Picture Oscar for 1977?

Annie Hall won four Oscars to the six of Star Wars, yet took Best Picture, Director and Screenplay; Woody Allen skipped the ceremony to play clarinet with his jazz band, as he did every Monday.

Who plays Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)?

Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran driving a night cab; the film won the 1976 Palme d'Or, and John Hinckley Jr., fixated on it and on Jodie Foster, shot President Reagan in 1981.

Chinatown (1974) is loosely inspired by which real-life events?

The California water wars set Los Angeles against Owens Valley farmers, who dynamited the aqueduct draining their valley; Robert Towne's script turns the fight into a 1930s murder mystery.

In Grease (1978), Sandy is a transfer student from which country?

Sandy comes from Australia; the character was American in the stage show and was rewritten after Olivia Newton-John, who was raised there, was cast.

Which 1977 hit grew from a magazine article about New York clubgoers that its author admitted largely inventing?

Saturday Night Fever came from Nik Cohn's 1976 story 'Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night'; two decades later he admitted his disco king was modelled on a Mod he had known in London.

Who plays Ripley in Alien (1979)?

Sigourney Weaver got Ripley, her first leading film role, after the makers decided that the hero, first conceived as a man, should be a woman; she returned for three sequels.

Apocalypse Now (1979) is loosely based on which novella?

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness supplied the river journey toward a renegade named Kurtz; the film moves it from the Congo to wartime Vietnam and Cambodia.

Which star suffered a heart attack during the Apocalypse Now shoot?

Martin Sheen, then 36, had to struggle to a road to find help when the heart attack struck in the Philippines; he was back on set as Captain Willard within weeks.

The Sting (1973) reunited which two stars of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Paul Newman and Robert Redford play con men for their Butch Cassidy director, George Roy Hill; the film's Scott Joplin score sent 'The Entertainer', a 1902 piano rag, to No. 3 in the 1974 pop charts.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) was adapted from a novel by which author?

Anthony Burgess ended his novel with Alex outgrowing violence, but the American edition cut that final chapter, and Stanley Kubrick's film follows the darker American version.

In The French Connection (1971), Gene Hackman plays a detective with what nickname?

Popeye was the real nickname of Eddie Egan, the New York narcotics detective Doyle is based on; Egan appears in the film himself, playing Doyle's supervisor.

Which French director acts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as scientist Claude Lacombe?

François Truffaut, the New Wave director of The 400 Blows, plays Claude Lacombe, the French scientist leading the UFO investigation, in his only appearance in an American film.

Who directed Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve?

Richard Donner directed Superman, shooting it back-to-back with much of Superman II before he was replaced on the sequel by Richard Lester.

Michael Myers's mask in Halloween (1978) was made from a shop-bought mask of which TV character?

Captain Kirk it was: the mask had been cast from William Shatner's face, and production designer Tommy Lee Wallace widened its eye holes and spray-painted it white.

Who plays Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)?

Gene Wilder plays Wonka in a film Roald Dahl, credited with the script, disowned; among his complaints was that it favoured Wonka over Charlie.

Who was Mel Brooks's original choice to play Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles (1974)?

Richard Pryor helped write the script, but the studio reportedly would not accept him as the star, so the part of Sheriff Bart went to Cleavon Little.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was partly financed by which rock bands?

Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd each put money into the film when no studio would; Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson and record labels such as Charisma also invested.

In The Deer Hunter (1978), the steelworkers are from a town near which city?

Pittsburgh lies just north of Clairton, the characters' steel town, yet none of the film was shot there: mill towns across Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia stood in for it.

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) won Best Picture and acting Oscars for Dustin Hoffman and whom?

Meryl Streep won Best Supporting Actress as Joanna Kramer after rewriting her character's courtroom speech herself; that night she left her new Oscar behind on a bathroom floor.

Dirty Harry (1971) drew on the real case of which murderer?

The Zodiac Killer taunted the San Francisco area with coded letters and threatened a school bus; the film's Scorpio hijacks one, but unlike him the real killer was never identified.

Enter the Dragon (1973) was notable as what for Bruce Lee?

His final completed film opened in Hong Kong six days after Bruce Lee died on 20 July 1973, aged 32; he had set aside Game of Death to make it, and never finished that one.

Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was partly inspired by which real murderer?

Ed Gein, the Wisconsin killer arrested in 1957 who made furniture and masks from human skin, inspired Leatherface's skin mask; the plot itself is fictional.

Carrie (1976), starring Sissy Spacek, was adapted from whose debut novel?

Stephen King threw the first pages of Carrie in the trash; his wife Tabitha fished them out and told him to keep going, and in 1974 it became his first published novel.

Peter Finch won Best Actor for Network (1976) in what circumstance?

It was awarded posthumously: Peter Finch died of a heart attack two months before the ceremony, and his widow Eletha went up to collect the Oscar for his raging anchorman, Howard Beale.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) dramatises a real 1972 robbery of a bank in which New York borough?

Brooklyn's Gravesend district saw the 1972 hold-up; robber John Wojtowicz, the model for Al Pacino's Sonny, was reported to want the money for his partner's gender-affirming surgery.

In All the President's Men (1976), Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play which journalists?

Woodward and Bernstein never quoted Deep Throat telling them to 'follow the money': the line appears nowhere in their book and was written for the film by screenwriter William Goldman.

Who plays the hunchbacked assistant Igor in Young Frankenstein (1974)?

Marty Feldman, the bug-eyed British comedian, plays Igor, who insists it is pronounced 'Eye-gor' and whose hump keeps switching sides.

Animal House (1978) is set at which fictional campus?

Faber College was played by the University of Oregon, whose president said yes because he had once helped turn The Graduate away from Berkeley and did not want to make the same mistake twice.

Mad Max (1979) was the directorial debut of which Australian filmmaker?

George Miller was a hospital doctor in Sydney before he turned director, and the road-crash injuries he had seen in the emergency room shaped the film; Mel Gibson stars as its vengeful patrolman.

Who wrote The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and plays Riff Raff in it?

Richard O'Brien wrote the 1973 stage musical and plays the handyman Riff Raff; the film found its audience as a midnight movie from 1976, when fans began dressing up and talking back to the screen.

George Lucas's 1973 cruising film is set on one night in 1962 in which California city?

The film is set in Modesto, Lucas's hometown in the Central Valley, though it was shot mostly in Petaluma and San Rafael; Harrison Ford has a small role.

Which 1970 tearjerker gave the movies the line that ends 'means never having to say you're sorry'?

Love Story's famous line was mocked two years later in What's Up, Doc?, where Ryan O'Neal, who had spoken it as Oliver, hears it and replies that it is the dumbest thing he ever heard.

George C. Scott won Best Actor for Patton (1970) and did what?

Declined the award: George C. Scott had called the Oscars a 'meat parade' and refused his nomination in advance, but the Academy voted for him anyway.

Which 1974 disaster movie teamed Paul Newman and Steve McQueen?

The Towering Inferno fused two rival skyscraper-fire novels, The Tower and The Glass Inferno, after producer Irwin Allen talked the two studios that owned them into sharing one film.

Cabaret (1972) holds which Academy Awards record?

Most Oscars for a film that did not win Best Picture: Cabaret took eight, including Best Director for Bob Fosse, yet lost the top prize to The Godfather, which won only three.

Which 1970 film, led by Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin, kicked off the decade's disaster-movie genre?

Airport became Universal's highest-grossing film to that point, so three sequels followed; Helen Hayes won an Oscar as its elderly stowaway.

In Smokey and the Bandit (1977), what are the Bandit and Snowman smuggling from Texarkana to Atlanta?

400 cases of Coors beer made the run bootlegging: Coors was then a western brand that was not sold in the East, and the bet gives the Bandit just 28 hours to bring it back to Atlanta.

The ocean liner in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is capsized by a giant wave during a party for which holiday?

New Year's Eve: the wave strikes just after midnight and leaves the SS Poseidon floating upside down, so the survivors' only way out is to climb up toward the hull.

In The Omen (1976), Gregory Peck plays the father of which child?

Damien Thorn is the Antichrist raised by Peck's ambassador after the couple's own baby was said to have died at birth; the child bears a 666 birthmark.

Deliverance (1972) follows four city businessmen canoeing a remote river in which state?

Georgia's Chattooga River, on the South Carolina line, stood in for the fictional Cahulawassee, and novelist James Dickey, who wrote the screenplay, appears on screen himself as the sheriff.

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) is celebrated for interior scenes lit only by what?

Candlelight alone lit those scenes: Kubrick shot them with no electric light, using Zeiss f/0.7 lenses developed for NASA; John Alcott won the cinematography Oscar.

The China Syndrome (1979) opened just twelve days before which real nuclear accident?

Three Mile Island's reactor near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, partly melted down twelve days after the film opened; nobody died, but American utilities ordered no new reactors for years afterwards.

Which former Beatle formed HandMade Films to finance Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)?

George Harrison mortgaged his home to pay for the film after EMI pulled out days before shooting; a Python later called it the most expensive cinema ticket ever bought.

Which song from The Muppet Movie (1979) earned Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher an Oscar nomination?

'Rainbow Connection' opens the film, with Kermit alone on a swamp log picking his banjo; released as a single, the frog's ballad climbed to No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which 1971 film about a young man's romance with a 79-year-old woman began as a UCLA student's master's thesis?

Harold and Maude was Colin Higgins's master's thesis at UCLA; he was working as a film producer's pool cleaner when the script passed through that household to Paramount.

Who directed Al Pacino in both Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975)?

Sidney Lumet came to Serpico as a late replacement after its first director, John G. Avildsen, was fired; two years later he and Pacino reunited for Dog Day Afternoon.

Who plays Tevye the milkman in the film Fiddler on the Roof (1971)?

Chaim Topol, an Israeli actor in his mid-thirties, won the part over Zero Mostel, Broadway's first Tevye, whose larger-than-life style director Norman Jewison feared would swamp the character on screen.

The title of the 1973 prison drama Papillon, starring Steve McQueen, is French for what?

Papillon means butterfly, the nickname Henri Charrière took from his chest tattoo; Dustin Hoffman co-starred as the forger Louis Dega.

Which 1976 sci-fi film is set in a domed city where every citizen must die at 30?

Logan's Run raised the death age from the novel's 21 to 30 and invented Carrousel, a public ritual in which 30-year-olds are destroyed while the crowd believes they are being 'renewed'.

Which director wove 24 main characters into Nashville (1975)?

Robert Altman's sprawling film won its Oscar for a song one of the actors wrote himself: Keith Carradine composed 'I'm Easy' and sang it on screen.

Which Star Wars character was played by Peter Mayhew, a very tall English hospital orderly?

Chewbacca was modelled on George Lucas's own dog, an Alaskan Malamute named Indiana. Mayhew won the part simply by standing up to greet the director.

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, what do squires bang together because the budget ruled out real horses?

Coconut shells made the hoofbeats so memorably that the German release was titled The Knights of the Coconut. The knights simply mime riding while porters trot behind them.

Robert Altman's irreverent 1970 comedy M*A*S*H follows a team of army surgeons through which conflict?

The Korean War is the setting, but Vietnam was the real subtext, and the studio added an opening caption for fear audiences would miss that it was Korea.

In Brian De Palma's Carrie, what do bullies dump on the shy heroine as she is crowned at her prom?

Pig's blood, drained during a farm break-in and balanced in a bucket above the stage, sets off Carrie's telekinetic revenge on the whole gym.

Which group, brought in only during post-production, supplied the biggest hits on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack?

Bee Gees songs made the album the best-selling record in music history until Michael Jackson's Thriller overtook it. Three of their singles from it reached No. 1 in the US.

In The Godfather, where does Michael Corleone take refuge after killing a drug baron and a corrupt policeman?

Sicily is the Corleone family's homeland, and Michael's exile there ends when a car bomb meant for him kills his new bride, Apollonia.

Which dance, its steps spelled out in song, do the castle servants perform in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

The Time Warp sends up dance-craze records by calling out its own moves, and fans at midnight screenings get up and do it along with the cast.

Which black muscle car, driven as a decoy by the outlaw hero, saw sales soar after Smokey and the Bandit?

Pontiac Trans Am sales almost doubled within two years of the film's release, and the company's president promised its leading man a new one every year.

Which Deliverance instrumental, played by a city guitarist and a backwoods boy, became a pop hit?

Dueling Banjos reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973. Its composer, Arthur Smith, had not been credited, so he sued the filmmakers and won.

In Soylent Green, a detective learns that the wafers feeding an overcrowded world are made from what?

Human bodies are the secret ingredient, a twist delivered in the last film of Edward G. Robinson, who died before it reached cinemas.

Which fictional New England beach town is terrorised by a great white shark in Jaws?

Amity was really Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, where locals filled most of the minor roles during a shoot that ran far over schedule.

Which fictional school do Danny and Sandy attend for their senior year in the musical Grease?

Rydell High's exteriors, from the car park to the bleachers and the sports scenes, were shot at the real Venice High School in the summer of 1977.

Which heavyweight champion hands a small-time Philadelphia club fighter a shot at the title in Rocky?

Apollo Creed was first meant for real-life boxer Ken Norton; when he pulled out, the role went to Carl Weathers, who came away from the last fight with a damaged nose.

What is the surname of the cold head nurse who rules the ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Ratched controls her patients through intimidation, and Louise Fletcher landed the part only after the director saw her in Thieves Like Us.

Which fictional detective did Albert Finney play in the all-star 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express?

Hercule Poirot earned Finney a Best Actor nomination, and Agatha Christie called it one of only two screen versions of her books she liked, though his moustache disappointed her.

Which game are American prisoners of war forced to play while their captors bet in The Deer Hunter?

Russian roulette came from an unrelated script about Las Vegas, and the scene was controversial enough that a US network cancelled its plan to air the film.

Which American landmark do haunted strangers sculpt at home in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Devils Tower in Wyoming is the secret landing site, which the army clears of people by faking a nerve-gas spill from a train wreck.

Which classical piece blares from helicopter loudspeakers during an air assault in Apocalypse Now?

Ride of the Valkyries is the battle music of Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, who warms to the attack once he learns a famous surfer is on the boat.

In A Clockwork Orange, the violent young delinquent Alex is devoted to the music of which composer?

Beethoven is ruined for Alex by aversion therapy: after the Ludovico technique, the sound of the Ninth Symphony makes him ill.

Which powerful handgun cartridge does Clint Eastwood's inspector load into his revolver in Dirty Harry?

The .44 Magnum revolver sold faster once the film popularised the Smith & Wesson Model 29, and the next film in the series was titled Magnum Force.

In Every Which Way but Loose, Clint Eastwood's trucker shares his home with Clyde, what kind of animal?

An orangutan named Manis played Clyde, the pet who rides along while his owner roams the American West looking for a lost love.

The 1972 musical Cabaret unfolds around the Kit Kat Klub in which city as the Nazis rise?

Berlin in 1931 is the backdrop, and the film cut all but one song performed outside the club so that the stage became a mirror of German decadence.

Which nickname does a reporter give his secret government informant in All the President's Men?

Deep Throat, played by Hal Holbrook, speaks vaguely and in metaphors, yet promises to keep the Watergate investigation on the right path.

Which commercial space tug carries a crew of seven, and one cat, back toward Earth in Alien?

Nostromo was designed as an 800-foot tug towing a refining platform two miles long and a mile and a half wide.

In the 1978 film Superman, Marlon Brando was paid millions for a brief role as which character?

Jor-El, the hero's father on Krypton, was played by a star who refused to memorise his dialogue, so cue cards were placed around the set.

Which long-dead composer reached a mass audience when The Sting used his tune The Entertainer?

Scott Joplin's rags, adapted for the film by Marvin Hamlisch, produced a chart-topping soundtrack and set off a revival of interest in his work.

Which director of Chinatown also appears in it as the hood who slashes the detective's nose?

Roman Polanski used a specially made knife for the scene, one that could really have cut his leading man if he had held it the wrong way.

In Westworld, Yul Brynner plays a theme-park android that goes haywire and hunts guests, dressed as what?

A gunslinger whose look was copied from Chris Adams, Brynner's own heroic character in The Magnificent Seven, is one of the park's attractions.

Which film starring Richard Roundtree as a private eye won Isaac Hayes an Oscar for its theme song?

Shaft made Isaac Hayes the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Its soundtrack album went on to win two Grammys as well.

In The Wiz, the 1978 musical retelling of Oz, which character did a young Michael Jackson play?

The Scarecrow, stuffed with garbage in this version, came with a bonus: during the shoot Jackson asked Quincy Jones to suggest a producer for his solo album.

Which Mike Oldfield album supplied the eerie piano motif made famous by the horror film The Exorcist?

Tubular Bells was the very first release on Virgin Records, made by a 19-year-old who played almost every instrument himself, and the film sent its sales soaring.

Which director of Halloween also composed and performed its piano score, in just three days?

John Carpenter wrote the music himself after a test screening was judged not scary, building it on a piano melody in an unusual 5/4 time.

In the all-child gangster musical Bugsy Malone, what do the 'splurge guns' fire instead of bullets?

Whipped cream is what the splurge guns fire on screen, but in Alan Parker's directing debut the props really shot ping-pong balls after cream-filled wax balls proved painful.

Which director followed his Oscar-winning The French Connection with the 1973 horror smash The Exorcist?

William Friedkin won Best Director for the first film, then insisted on lesser-known actors for the second, to the studio's consternation.

Which author of the bestselling novel Jaws plays a TV reporter on the beach in its screen adaptation?

Peter Benchley came to regret the fear his story stirred up and spent the last decade of his career campaigning for the conservation of sharks.

Which rock group's star-studded farewell concert did Martin Scorsese film as The Last Waltz?

The Band bowed out at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day 1976, joined by guests including Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton.

Which rumbling sound system, built on huge bass speakers, debuted with the disaster film Earthquake?

Sensurround pumped sub-audible bass waves through large speakers so audiences felt the tremors, an idea chosen over bouncing fake debris off their heads.

Which Dario Argento horror film sends an American ballet student to a German dance academy run by witches?

Suspiria owes its lurid reds to Technicolor: it was one of the last features processed that way, on the one machine left in Rome.

Which German director took Klaus Kinski into the Peruvian rainforest to film Aguirre, the Wrath of God?

Werner Herzog stopped his raging star from walking off the jungle location by threatening to shoot first Kinski and then himself.

Which Italian director's Amarcord, drawn from his 1930s boyhood near Rimini, won the Foreign Language Oscar?

Federico Fellini took the title from a dialect phrase meaning 'I remember', and modelled the young hero on a childhood friend.

Which actor played private eye Jake Gittes in 1974 and asylum rebel Randle McMurphy a year later?

Jack Nicholson was Oscar-nominated for Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail and the first of these roles before he finally won Best Actor for the second.

Which actor played Michael Corleone, honest cop Frank Serpico and a desperate bank robber?

Al Pacino collected five Oscar nominations during the 1970s, four of them for Best Actor, after his first lead role in The Panic in Needle Park.

Which Welcome Back, Kotter star became a film idol as disco dancer Tony Manero and greaser Danny Zuko?

John Travolta's Oscar nomination for the first of those roles, in his mid-twenties, made him one of the youngest Best Actor nominees in the award's history.

Which child star earned an Oscar nomination for Taxi Driver in the same year she made Freaky Friday?

Jodie Foster had been working since a Coppertone advertisement at the age of three, and her two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone.

Which star of The Way We Were won a songwriting Oscar for Evergreen, from her 1976 remake of A Star Is Born?

Barbra Streisand became the first woman honoured as a composer in the Best Original Song category, sharing the award with lyricist Paul Williams.

Which actress played femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown and a ruthless TV executive in Network?

Faye Dunaway had risen to fame as the bank robber in Bonnie and Clyde, and she later called Chinatown possibly the best film she ever made.

Which star of TV's The Saint became the third official James Bond, starting with Live and Let Die?

Roger Moore went on to play 007 in seven films of the official series, more than any other actor, and was 58 when he announced his retirement from the part.

Which daughter of Judy Garland won the Best Actress Oscar as nightclub singer Sally Bowles in Cabaret?

Liza Minnelli came from film royalty on both sides, her father being the director Vincente Minnelli, and she had already been nominated for The Sterile Cuckoo.

Which actor voiced Darth Vader in Star Wars but asked to go uncredited for the first two films?

James Earl Jones dubbed the lines in post-production because the director judged the West Country accent of David Prowse, the man inside the costume, unsuitable.

Which actress played both Connie Corleone in The Godfather and Rocky Balboa's love interest, Adrian?

Talia Shire was Oscar-nominated for both parts: as Best Supporting Actress for The Godfather Part II and as Best Actress for Rocky.