What’s Playing At The Movies – Ads From The Daily News 1974
That’s Entertainment Alongside Porn
Because I own some old newspapers that report historic events, I was looking at the New York Daily News of August 27, 1974 announcing the death of Charles Lindbergh on the front page. Turning the pages my attention was drawn to the movie advertisements.
The ads are simple, frequently without captivating graphics and usually lacking even brief summaries of the plot of the movies. Besides giving the theatres and times they were playing at, these ads were supposed to attract potential viewers with the title, the stars or a reviewers blurb.
The disarray of the motion picture industry in the seventies is evident in the variety of films playing at theaters.
Adjacently advertised next to one another are Deep Throat; The Devil In Miss Jones; The Longest Yard and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. Two X-rated and two R-rated films.
Deep Throat (1973) was the first “mainstream” pornographic film. It was considered a crossover; in that many people who would never consider attending an X-rated film would go see it. Celebrities such as Warren Beatty, Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Martin Scorsese, and Vice President Spiro Agnew admitted viewing the film. That and curiosity would fuel public interest. With a budget of $47,500 Deep Throat would gross over $30 million, an enormous amount of money at the time. There are inexact estimates that Deep Throat eventually earned over $600 million.
There are many people who find violence even more objectionable than sex. Director Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) was originally given an X-rating but that was changed to an R. So you might think that given the title- Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia is an even more extreme example of violence. But it’s not.
Burt Reynolds comedy The Longest Yard was the 11th highest grossing film of 1974 taking in $43 million.
An Oscar nominated Best Picture for 1974, Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson sits below ads for another pair of X-rated Marilyn Chambers films; Behind The Green Door and Resurrection of Eve.
Above those porn ads is an ad for the re-release of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969).
For The Masses
Looking for family fare, filmgoers could see Lucille Ball starring in Mame. As the ad notes “Plus 2nd Feature At Most Theatres.” Good idea, considering the main feature ended up being a flop.
They used to show films at Radio City Music Hall. In this case it’s a film that I never heard of –The Girl From Petrovka,. starring Goldie Hawn playing the Russian title character, and Hal Holbrook. The film was a critical and financial failure. Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune said of Hawn, “There is no way she can handle a Russian accent. Her dialect floats from the Volga to the Mississippi during a single sentence.”
The paper’s layout inappropriately juxtaposes the porn film Carnival Sisters right next to an ad for the G-rated That’s Entertainment!. Would a prospective movie-goer interested in one of these films be interested in the other?
The ad taking the most space is for the comedy Uptown Saturday Night.
With its all-star cast of Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte, Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor, the film did well at the box office. Directed by Poitier, Uptown Saturday Night elevates its cast with good material and avoids the “Blaxploitation” craze of the seventies.
For a different audience who wanted Blaxploitation, there was always a steady stream of films like Black Samson. The plot: A righteous nightclub owner Samson (Rockne Tarkington) arms himself with a quarterstaff and a pet African lion named Hoodoo,and does his best to keep his neighborhood clean of crime and drugs.
If you’re wondering if any of these advertised films were box office smashes – the answer is no. Not one was in the top 10.
The top five grossing films in 1974 were: Blazing Saddles; The Towering Inferno; Young Frankenstein; Earthquake and Airport 1975.
While there were many more theatres in New York City in the seventies than today, there were no multiplexes.
The price of a movie ticket was generally between $1.50 to $3.00.
And while people lament the “old days” of the great films of the seventies, yes there were many great films. But there were just as many bad films made then as today. It’s just that Hollywood now seems to avoid compelling cinema in favor of uninspired CGI, superhero dreck. Besides a handful of films, great movies are far and few between.
