The Early to Mid 1970s: The Last Gasps of the Golden Era

[AtomicEraTom]

Something similar was said about Lawrence Welk in the 70's. I heard somewhere that he was turning away good musicians, because he could have the pick of the litter of the great ones. How many other places were you going to get a job in a big band of any sort of notoriety? They were out there, but not as plentiful as during the 1940's.

Wispy threads connect us to those times. Doc Severinson said in an interview that he was a very lucky man, getting the job of Johnny Carson's band leader when he did, in 1967. All the great Big Bands that survived from the forties were breaking up in the early seventies and he had his pick of the best musicians in the country.

Was Doc Severinson's the last nationally famous mainstream Big Band? He continued as Carson's musical director until 1992.

Hit the nail on the head right there! Archie and Edith were middle-aged in the 70's and just listen to their stories, clearly the Golden Era was not gone to them.

All you have to do is watch the first few seasons of All In The Family to see that vestiges of the "Golden Era" were still alive and well in the mid 70's.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I agree 100% and have always been a firm believer in this. I adore the early to mid 70s. Too many people lump the 70s with the disco era.

 

[davidraphael]

If it hadn't have been for the early 70s, I may not have got into the golden era.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

The thing I remember most is that those movies weren't presented as "old." You didn't need, the way TCM does today, to have an erudite host to come on and explain why these Films were Important and contextualize them as Cultural Art or any of that stuff. They weren't even "Films," they were *movies,* and they were presented as perfectly viable entertainment, not as musty old museum pieces for enthusiasts and specialists only. Everybody watched them, everybody enjoyed them, everybody was able to relate to them. A 1940s movie viewed in the mid-'70s was seen on the same level as an 80s movie is viewed today: the past, certainly, but not some lost civilization incomprehensible to the viewers without explanations.

Also, the movies were usually unrestored, whitewashed, grainy, and shaky. Terrible "for TV" prints. When I was a child in the mid 80s I *did* watch them as relics from another time -- and that's why I had a huge fascination with them. They actually scared me a little bit, but in an "I'm so fascinated with this" kind of way.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I first learned about projection cue marks from watching crappy TV prints like that. Every TV station would add their own cue to the end of each reel, so just before every commercial break you'd see a blizzard of white flashes, punched circles, chinagraph marks, and sometimes even a big scratchy X across the picture. Kids today got no idea what we put up with.

 

[bulldog1935]

RCA, Dynaco, Sears Craftsman, Schwinn (the short list).
There was a distinction between imports and MUSA items, and made at home was the norm rather than the exception, as today.
There were still laborers in major manufacturing as well as artisans hand-making items for the mass market.
I'll throw this one up again. My old Raleigh bicycle was hand-brazed from lugs and tubing in Nottingham England (S/N date code is May '76, and I've been riding it since fall '76).
It was a $200 bicycle, and the only things custom about it were what I did to it along the way. This was the bicycle boom - the 70s were uneviquivocally the golden age of bicycles. These bikes had more in common with c. 1900 bikes than with c. 2000 bikes.

(I love this poster, Polish lancers and French bicycle soldiers)
They still make some bicycle frames this way, because there are still people who prefer fully lugged hand-brazed steel bicycle frames, for strength, comfort and longevity.
The ones hand-made in Taiwan today are about $800 to $1600 for the frame (only) - hand-brazed in the US, $2500 or so, and complete bikes are $2500-5000.
More perspective - personal computers didn't show up in business offices until the mid-80s.
Before 1974, gas was 24 cents/gallon (there's not even a cent mark on a pc - there is on a typewriter). Even after 1974, gas was 48 cents/gallon.
When I went to high school, everybody drove American cars, except for a few novelty VW Beetles and Simcas. Foreign car meant Triumph and MG.
I shot film at work until 2002. I think you could call the 70s the golden age of cameras, as well.

 

[John in Covina]

Wispy threads connect us to those times. Doc Severinson said in an interview that he was a very lucky man, getting the job of Johnny Carson's band leader when he did, in 1967. All the great Big Bands that survived from the forties were breaking up in the early seventies and he had his pick of the best musicians in the country.

Was Doc Severinson's the last nationally famous mainstream Big Band? He continued as Carson's musical director until 1992.

There was a mini revival of Swing & Big Band in the 80's. As to Doc, they definately had a later Big Band style that had a sense of flourishes reminiscient of Las Vegas. The music was some how more flashy showy than earlier incarnations of big band but they really did big band stuff.

When i think of how the 70's was as written above -the last gasp of the golden era with Vestigial remmnents of what made the golden era golden. I shake my head and think when did that ship crash and burn?

 

[bulldog1935]

when did that ship crash and burn?

as far as offshore manufacturing, I blame Jack Welch of G.E. (the single largest business entity on earth). Sending manufacturing offshore was taboo until he and G.E. chose to do it, then every business had to follow suite in order to compete. As the cost of labor continues to rise in China, though, we should see the trade imbalance begin to equalize and manufacturing jobs return home.
I hope this doesn't take the thread off course, but I was answering the question while assuming it was related to my post.

 

[sheeplady]

as far as offshore manufacturing, I blame Jack Welch of G.E. (the single largest business entity on earth). Sending manufacturing offshore was taboo until he and G.E. chose to do it, then every business had to follow suite in order to compete. As the cost of labor continues to rise in China, though, we should see the trade imbalance begin to equalize and manufacturing jobs return home.
I hope this doesn't take the thread off course, but I was answering the question while assuming it was related to my post.

The fact that Jack Welsh has emerged as a living hero (or at least he is presented that way by many people) has always rubbed me a bit wrong.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I first learned about projection cue marks from watching crappy TV prints like that. Every TV station would add their own cue to the end of each reel, so just before every commercial break you'd see a blizzard of white flashes, punched circles, chinagraph marks, and sometimes even a big scratchy X across the picture. Kids today got no idea what we put up with.

Maybe you can answer me this. I know of the marks you speak of. When I was in school and they would show us reel-to-reel movies there would always be a quick flash of a woman before the movie started. She was usually VERY 60s/70s and always very colourful! What was she?

 

[Gregg Axley]

In the 70's you still saw people smoking a pipe, with tobacco in it I might add.
Gentlemen still wore hats, not so much ballcaps.
And suits still came with a vest, I remember each one my dad buying having a matching one.
Thankfully none of them were as bad as the green, creme, and brown plaid suit I had as a kid. :eeek:

 

[The Good]

I'm aware that the Golden Era generation was still largely in power, still holding influence over how the world was run, as well as the fact that there was nostalgia for earlier times, such as the 1950s with a connection to the TV show Happy Days and movie Grease, as examples. I wonder, did the backlash against disco ("disco sucks," "death before disco," etc) during the early '80s have anything to do with the move towards more casual attire? Someone mentioned here that disco was a pretty "dressed up" subculture compared to the hippie influenced counter culture. I remember reading a post by a member on a different topic in which he said the late '70s disco fad was the last period in which youth embraced dressing up for dancing/parties. Some people still wear suits and sports jackets to clubs nowadays, but it is hardly as unified a phenomenon with the younger generation as those suits at discos were. Was there any other major popular youth movement that picked up on "formal" wear for dancing/parties since disco?

The 1970s was a great period for movies, as well as music. I like a lot of pre-disco funk music and jazz from the period. There is some good disco, however.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maybe you can answer me this. I know of the marks you speak of. When I was in school and they would show us reel-to-reel movies there would always be a quick flash of a woman before the movie started. She was usually VERY 60s/70s and always very colourful! What was she?

She was the Color Timing Lady! When labs print a color film, they need to have a reference point for ensuring that the color values are properly balanced, the reds are red enough, the blues blue enough, and so forth. So, Kodak made this transparency of a colorfully dressed woman and made it part of the Eastmancolor leader -- and when everything was properly balanced, she would match a reference print of that image they had at the lab. If the people threading the projectors were doing it properly you wouldn't have seen her on the screen -- you're supposed to use the numbers on the leader to cue the film past all this technical stuff, but teachers can't be expected to know everything. That's what the A-V Squad is for.

She showed up in 35mm theatrical prints as well as 16mm noncommercial films -- this frame is from a 35mm film, and you can see she's holding up a test board with standard color bars and a grey scale. The lab had the same test board, and it made matching the reference easy. Now, it would have been easy for them to use an easel to hold the test card, and you might think the film technicians were just a bunch of letches for wanting to see a gal do it, but there's a reason why she's there --- they needed a reference for flesh tones as well as primary colors. They could have used some pudgy IATSE guy with a cigar, but, you know, she just happened to be around, lounging out in the lobby, so they thought, why not?

Of course, the ultimate irony of it all is that all those old Eastmancolor prints have long since faded to a sad, feeble pink, and there's nothing left of Color Timing Lady but a pale shadow of her red.

 

[Marla]

Admittedly, I get nostalgic for the early 1970s sometimes. Not as often as the primary decades of the Golden Era, but I wouldn't mind living in 1972 either.

 

[kaiser]

My High School had a dress code up until 1973. Short hair, dress slacks, and dress shirts. This all came to a halt at the beginning of the school year in the fall of 1973. Within a year I had hair down to my shoulders, and was wearing wide bell bottom jeans. Having been born in California and moving to rural Indiana at the age of 10, this whole dress code thing was a massive culture shock to my brother and I. Getting off of the dress code was like going back to our California roots.

There were indeed pockets of the golden era still in America in the 1970's, but it was dying fast. When I look at many photos in my High School year book you can see the change. The so called nerds still had the classical form of dress, the rest of us where in the main stream of fashion.

 

[scottyrocks]

I seem to remember the transit strike of 1980 had an effect on the way people looked at casual dress. That was the first time I remember seeing people, especially women, dressed o business attire, but with sneakers on. I believe that this change enabled people to see that some fashion choices were no longer set in stone, and even if the new choices had seemed ridiculous, they no longer were, in this case, out of a 'need' rather than a choice. And once a snowball starts rolling down a hill . . .

 

[GoldenEraFan]

It wasn't until recently that I found things of the '70s that I started to like. It was when I finally watched "Saturday Night Fever" that I noticed this. Indeed, people still liked to "dress up". Flashy big lapeled 3 piece suits, big collared shirts, leather shoes/boots and heck, I even like the leather jackets of the era. I wouldn't mind dressing like Shaft at all! The movies were excellent, and you could still go and experience seeing a movie in a beautiful (yet poorly maintained) art deco movie palace. The music music was good (I happen to like Disco) and you could turn the TV on and the shows were good, even the commercials! "I'm a pepper, he's a pepper..." None of this Jersey Shore, Housewives or American idol junk. I can't say the same for cartoons at the time though. It was probably the lowest point for American animation, unless it was from Disney or an Independant like Ralph Bakshi it was pretty much the lowest quality, not improving until around 1987 when "The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse" premeired. Even the cars of that era had class. Sure they got 5 MPG and were as big as a city block, but you could still get whitewall tires, chrome and nice colors. As a 3rd generation New Yorker, I hear many stories from my mother of how gritty and dangerous NYC was between the '70s and the '80s, always ending the stories with "It was so much better then. If only I could go back in time and take you with me to see it". I was born in 1990, but I still got to experience some of the leftover '70s grittiness before it was washed clean after 2000. I will say though, though I like these things of the '70s, my heart is still firmly in the Golden Era. I can't stand '70s era haircuts at all. The whole polyester suit craze, or rather clothes for men in generally, all being ill fit with flares in every corner.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As far as movies go, the early and mid 70s were the best period since the '30s for interesting, unusual, provocative pictures. I think "Network," from 1975, is one of the greatest films ever made in the US, and there were plenty of others of similar quality. It was, in a lot of ways, the last gasp for truly adult films from Hollywood -- not adult as in dirty, but adult as in intelligent.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Ah The Colour Timing Lady!!! A mystery solved. I remember one 5th grade teacher would ask us to "wait" for her because she was the other 5th grade teacher (she was trying to be funny...lol)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here, for your entertainment pleasure, is the current Color-Timing-Lady. As you can see, she is a firm believer in 1983 as the apotheosis of civilization.

According to Kodak, her name is "Marcie." It figures.