The Numerical Seventies

No matter the decade, the numerical time periods never quite seem to jibe with the cultural ones. The cultural Seventies began on August 8th 1974 with the resignation of Richard Nixon. For this multimedia project to work properly we found we had to adhere to the numerical definitions of the 1970s or make a mess of things.

The Cultural Seventies

The Cultural Seventies began after Richard M. Nixon resigned and left the White House in disgrace with President Ford's potent words, "My Fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." Cultural novelist Tom Wolfe called the Seventies the ME DECADE. Politics, music and the culture turned inward to once again enjoy that profound shallowness we found so pleasing in the Fifties. Though lasting only 7 years - from 1974 to 1981 - the Seventies are remembered fondly for the fun we had doing a few lines before getting out on the dance floor at our local Discos. In 1981 the fun ended with the election of Ronald Reagan who brought us 30 years of a conservative resurgence hating the government, of religious intolerance, deregulation and forever reducing taxes until our ever rising debt, deficit and credit could no longer sustain the bubble which caused the system to implode in the Fall of 2008.

Synopsis of the Seventies Pages

		history television music movies & celebrities books & comedy cars & races sports gadgets & toys

1970 we are bombing Cambodia as we celebrate the first Earth Day while national guard soldiers shoot four students at Kent State University. New York City sees the Hard Hat Riot and police shoot two at Jackson State University. The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of the shenanigans at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Leftists plant a bomb at the University of Wisconsin Sterling Hall which kills one. Timothy Leary is sentenced to 10 years for pot possession and flees the country. 18 year olds get the vote and Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai Massacre. Charles De Gaulle dies, the Aswan High Dam is finished, the UN recognizes the People's Republic of China and in South Korea, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon oversees the marriage of 777 couples in his Unification Church.

1970 television had Norman Lear bring us Archie Bunker in All in the Family with Carroll O'Conner, Jean Stapleton, Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner. Mary Tyler Moore brings us Mary Tyler Moore with Gavin MacLeod, Ed Asner, Ted Knight, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman and Betty White. The Odd Couple with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman comes to television. Public Broadcasting begins with Seaseme Street and the Cookie Monster. The Partridge family makes stars of Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Danny Bonaduce and Susan Dey. Rod Serling has a comeback with Night Gallery and All My Children premiers with Susan Lucci. Flip Wilson is a hit.

1970 music had us listening to Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin die of overdoses and The Beatles are no more. The WHO has a hit with Live as Leeds, the The Grateful Dead has two hit albums with Workingman's Dead and American Beauty as does Led Zeppelin with their II and III albums and the Beatles with Abby Road and Let it Be. Ozzy Osborne is Paranoid, the Carpenters make it big and we hear of the Jackson Five. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have a big hit with the Kent State anthem OHIO on their Deja Vu album. Ray Stevens makes a name for himself with Everything is Beautiful.

1970 movies had us watching Jack Nicholson and Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces, Patton starring George C. Scott, The Great White Hope with James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, Woodstock by Martin Scorsese, Joe makes a star of Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon, The Out of Towners by Neil Simon with Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon and Catch-22 with Alan Arkin. Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss star in Soldier Blue and M*A*S*H makes stars of Robert Altman, Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman and Gary Burghoff. Love Story with Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal makes us cry while Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman makes us laugh.

1970 books had us reading novels such as Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, The Paper Chase by John Jay Osborn, Jr., Deliverance by James Dickey and Jimmy Breslin's The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Ball Four by Jim Bouton is a tell all baseball hit and we first hear of Toni Morrison. Non fiction brings us Papillon by Henri Charrière, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer and Future Shock by Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wins the Nobel Prize, Flip Wilson has the top comedy album with The Devil Made Me Buy This Dress and we first see the comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau.

1970 cars we find the Ford Torino is the car of the year. We see our first Dodge Charger, American Motors Gremlin and Ford Pinto. Al Unser, Sr. wins at Indianapolis, Pete Hamilton wins the Daytona 500 and Bobby Isaac takes the NASCAR honors.

1970 sports gave us Monday Night Football with Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell, and Dandy Don Meredith, the Baltimore Orioles won the World Series, we experienced Super Bowl V called the Blunder Bowl with Chuck Howley, Johnny Unitas and kicker Jim O'Brien. NFL kicker Tom Dempsey sets field goal distance record. Bobby Orr is the star of the NHL with the Boston Bruins. , . New NBA teams include the Buffalo Braves, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Rockets and the Portland Trail Blazers. Smoking Joe Frazier is our top boxer, Jim Plunkett gets the Heisman and Pistol Pete Maravich scores 69 points for LSU.

1970 technology has the crew of Apollo 13 telling Houston, we have a problem. James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise make it home! We see our first BIG MAC ads and hear the Stylophone created by Rolf Harris. British doll Sindy gives Barbi a run, IBM gives us the FLOPPY DISKETTE and we have our first Jumbo Jet in the Boeing 747

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