A year in the movies

Re: "the new pecking order" and older stars taking a back seat. Some of those stars took it philosophically and basically allowed it to be a reason to retire, but not all. I remember Joan Crawford in particular on one of those afternoon talk shows (Merv Griffin? Mike Douglas?) around that time bemoaning the whole situation very publicly, taking it all personally. Once the old studio heads were out of the way, it's probably been that way ever since. I remember Illiana Douglas not many years ago describing what it's like now taking a meeting in Hollywood with "children" who have no idea of who she is, let alone her grandfather Melvyn or any movies made during the classic era. Oy.

Walter Pidgeon continued working able to transition to significant older roles. So did Frederick March. Women had a harder time- Crawford making TROGG-but bless her determination to keep working.

 I wish her rival had, but it's safe to type that Norma Shearer never really fully recovered from the premature passing of her brilliant benefactor and husband, Irving Thalberg, who died on this day in 1936:

                                                                          www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-sep-14-me-a2anniversary14-story.html

                                                                                             

 On the edge of what Tom Wolfe dubbed the "Me" Decade, a pair of Selective Service System lotteries were conducted, providing ample attrition to the 'police action' in South Vietnam which will stubbornly linger for over five more years. Body counts of NVA regulars and Viet Cong, which were said to have been inflated to give our disgruntled home team something to cheer about, were nightly fare, but still America could not get enough of war. Half of the top ten grossing movies of the year were military related, including a satirical look at the Korean conflict, M*A*S*H, which is at once close and distant to Vietnam in subject matter. For the older, more conservative Americans who found it and CATCH-22 too irreverent there was PATTON which affirmed anachronistic glory and went on to win significant battles at the 43rd Academy Awards. 
 Pushback protests in counter(culture) to the Vietnam War continued. Kent State University saw the use of live rounds by the Ohio National Guard, fatally felling four. There was even a belated protest to the Far East bedlam as seen in the form of an incredibly successful documentary, woodstock, which made extensive use of expensive split-screen. Fred Weintraub, who had become the executive vice president of Warner Bros. that year, didn't dig the gimmick but changed his mind after viewing the work-in-progress of the Who's section:

                                                                                              

 One of the rockumentary's guitar gods, Pete Townshend, will later quip that director Michael Wadleigh had even made the mud look good.

 On the small screen a made-for-TV movie packs USMC gear with a meditative flower child:

                                                                                                                   

 TRIBES is 'just' one of the many teleplays which, perhaps more than any other genre of television in the 1970s, define the decade's set.

 AIRPORT takes off and with it, the disaster movie, though the overbooked drama does not exist in an air pocket alone. There are other films seen in the era which help usher in the genre. A holdover from 1969, MAROONED, tops one of April's weeks at the box office - coincidentally about the same time Apollo 13 will play out a real-life cliffhanger which almost sees the crew becoming marooned themselves!

                                                                                                                  

 A pair of fictional astronauts, played by James Franciscus and Charlton Heston in a reprisal of his Taylor character, meet up in Beneath the Planet of the Apes - note the faddish protest drop here:

                                                                                                                    

 With the surprising success of the second installment combined with Earth Day yield, the dystopian future belongs to heroic Heston. 

 Looking something like the time tripping heroes of Beneath the Planet of the Apes might have encountered, Charlton Heston's BEN HUR chariot is amongst the M-G-M lot's lot that goes to the gavel. Though the gown glory of the mammoth studio has passed, Debbie Reynolds finds the auction intolerable and does her share in trying to preserve its bygone heyday. Her bidding scores include Adrian's ornate ROMEO AND JULIET outfit that he produced for the First Lady of MGM:

                                                                                                     

 One of Norma Shearer's finds, Robert Evans, who originally was tapped for the Irving Thalberg role in "MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES", has since become a wunderkind himself and is now the head of production for Paramount Pictures which will become the number one studio under his supervision thanks to movies such as LOVE STORY which rises to the top of the year's releases. One of its co-stars is married to Evans at the time, Ali McGraw, and the pair are seen here attending the premiere of another success story, Ryan's Daughter, in November of '70:

                                                                                                                           

 The triumph of LOVE STORY in what was no doubt a time of weary cynicism suggests that love, indeed, conquers all.