Vintage '84: Travel Back in Time...

1984 is our "Year of the Month", as we work towards the Supporting Actress Smackdown on the last Sunday in the month (more on that soon). So let's steep ourselves in that year that was a bit. It was an Olympics year (Los Angeles in summer, Sarajevo in winter), the Ethiopian famine alarmed the world and prompted that "Do They Know It's Christmas" music world response, the first Apple Macintosh went on sale, TV brought us the premiere of the ubiquitous Wendy's commercial "Where's the beef?", several franchises that still won't go away debuted in early forms, for better and worse (The Terminator, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers), the first MTV Video Awards was held, featuring Madonna's historic "Like a Virgin" performance, and there were two sudden confusing celebrity deaths (35 year old comedian Andy Kaufman to cancer -- which later prompted hoax theories -- and 26 year old beefcake superstar Jon-Erik Hexum who died of an accidental gunshot on the set of his TV show).

Indiana Jones becomes a franchise | Madonna, Kathleen Turner, and Daryl Hannah all become superstars, Geraldine Ferraro is first female VP candidate, and Rob Lowe is the hot new boytoy

Marinate in the Juices of 1984 via Movies, Music, Theater, and Television after the jump...

1984 IN MOVIES

Oscar: Amadeus  (11 nominations), A Passage to India (11 nominations), The Killing Fields and Places in the Heart (7 nominations each) and A Soldier's Story (3 nominations) were our best pictures nominees

...but if there'd been 10 nominees? My guess is they would have added titles in this order... Broadway Danny Rose (2 nominations, but major ones) and The Natural (4 nominations) for sure and then either The River (4 nominations + a special prize) or Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan Lord of the Apes (3 nominations) for the final slot but perhaps genre bias would have kept the Tarzan film out? (Despite five tech nominations for the 'why?' sequel 2010, it never felt like a particularly well liked title.)

The "pop" smashes that year -- Romancing the Stone, Beverly Hills Cop, Splash, Karate Kid, (a couple of which we'll be talking about this month) - got stuck at one nomination each except Footloose and Ghostbusters with 2. None of them were getting anywhere near Best Picture even though most of them are still popular in their particular ways 32 years later. 

Golden Globe: (drama) Amadeus*, The Cotton Club, The Killing Fields, Places in the Heart, A Soldiers Story (comedy/musical) Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Micki + Maude, Romancing the Stone*, and Splash

 
Top Box Office Hits:

1. Beverly Hills Cop 
2. Ghostbusters
3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
4. Gremlins
5. The Karate Kid
6. Police Academy
7. Footloose
8. Romancing the Stone
9. Star Trek III: Search for Spock
10. Splash
11. Purple Rain
12. Amadeus... yes lengthy Oscar bait dramas used to sometimes be huge hits.

Nathaniel: Because 1984-1986 is when I really became a movie mad nut, my lists from the 80s are always strange combinations of what I loved as a kid and what I love now in retrospect so who knows but I loved and sometimes still love: Amadeus,  The Terminator, Romancing the Stone, Splash, Greystoke, Choose Me, What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Birdy, Places in the Heart, This is Spinal Tap, Gremlins and Another Country

1984 IN TELEVISION

Most Popular Shows:
Dynasty, Dallas, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, The A-Team, Simon & Simon, Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest... the 80s were the era for the prime-time soap as you can see there. The single biggest ratings draw of the year though was Farrah Fawcett in the domestic abuse TV movie The Burning Bed.

Debuting Series: The Cosby Show, Who's The Boss?, Miami Vice, Murder She Wrote, Charles in Charge, E/R, Muppet Babies, and Punky Brewster Series Finale of Long-Running Programs: Captain Kangaroo, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, One Day at a Time, Happy Days, and Three's Company

Emmy Winners of 84 - photo via LA Times

Emmy Winners
Drama Series: Hill Street Blues had its fourth consecutive win beating Cagney & Lacey, Fame, Magnum PI, and St Elsewhere  - the exact same lineup as the year before; Drama Actor: Tom Selleck, Magnum PI (only win for this show); Drama Actress: Tyne Daly, Cagney & Lacey (2nd of 4 wins); Drama Supporting Actor: Bruce Weitz, Hill Street Blues (6 nominations for this role, only win); Drama Supporting Actress: Alfre Woodard, Hill Street Blues (1st Emmy nomination and 1st win - many more would follow but not for this show); Comedy Series: Cheers enjoyed its second consecutive win (of an eventual four, non-consecutive) beating Buffalo Bill, Family Ties, Kate & Allie, and Newhart; Comedy Actor: John Ritter, Three's Company (only win for this character with spotty nominations); Comedy Actress: Jane Curtin, Kate & Allie; Comedy Supporting Actress: Pat Harrington, One Day at a Time (his only nomination for this character); Comedy Supporting Actress: Rhea Perlman, Cheers (1st of 4 wins for this show); MINISERIES: Concealed Enemies; TV MOVIE: Something About Amelia starring Glenn Close & Ted Danson

1984 IN THEATER

Did you see this recent tribute to Harvey Fierstein/"La Cage Aux Folles" by Ginger Minj from RuPaul's Drag Race? Just marvelous. Fierstein is the greatest... seeing him tearing up watching this is heaven.

Tony Awards
Musical: La Cage Aux Folles wins (the year following Fierstein's win in Best Play for Torch Song Trilogy) beating Baby, The Tap Dance Kid and Sondheim's classic Sunday in the Park with George; Actress, Musical: Chita Rivera in The Rink; Actor Musical: George Hearn in La Cage Aux Folles; Featured Actress Musical: Lila Kedrova in Zorba; Featured Actor Musical: Hinton Battle in The Tap Dance Kid; Play: The Real Thing  triumphs over Glengarry Glenn Ross, Noises Off, and Play Memory; Actress, Play: Glenn Close in The Real Thing  (right in between her 2nd and 3rd consecutive Oscar nominations for The Big Chill and The Natural); Actor Play: Jeremy Irons in The Real Thing; Featured Actress Play: Christine Baranski in The Real Thing; Featured Actor Play: Joe Mantegna in Glengarry Glenn Ross

Other New Plays: David Rabe's Hurlyburly,  August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and Charles Busch's Lesbian Vampires of Sodom all premiered this year, too.

1984 IN MUSIC

Top Singles of the Year 

1. "When Doves Cry" - Prince *Oscar Win - Best Song Score*
2. "What's Love Got To Do With It" - Tina Turner 
3. Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson "Say Say Say"
4. "Footloose" - Kenny Loggins *Oscar nominated* 
5. "Against All Odds" - Phil Collins *Oscar nominated* 
6.  "Jump" - Van Halen
7. "Hello" - Lionel Richie
8. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" - Yes
9. "Ghostbusters" - Ray Parker *Oscar Nominated* 
10. "Karma Chameleon" - Culture Club
11. "Missing You" - John Waite
12. "All Night Long (All Night)" -Lionel Richie
13. "Let's Hear it For the Boy" - Deniece Williams *Oscar nominated*
14. "Dancing in the Dark" - Bruce Springsteen
15. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" - Cyndi Lauper
16. "The Reflex" - Duran Duran
17. "Time After Time" - Cyndi Lauper
18. "Jump (For My Love)" - The Pointer Sisters
19. "Talking in Your Sleep" - The Romantics
20. "Self Control" - Laura Branigan

Grammy Wins (held in February 85)
Album: Lionel Richie's single-machine LP "Can't Slow Down" inexplicably beat four true miracle albums "She's So Unusual" by Cyndi Lauper, "Purple Rain" by Prince, "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen and "Private Dancer" by Tina Turner; Record/Song of the Year: "What's Love Got To Do With It"; Best New Artist: Cyndi Lauper beat Corey Hart, Sheila E, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and The Judds; Curiosity: Ben Kingsley also won a Grammy this year for Gandhi audio recordings so he can EGOT if he ever wins an Emmy (4 nominations thus far) and a Tony (zero nominations but he's been on Broadway twice... albeit decades and decades ago)

Pulitzer: Bernard Rands for "Canti del Sole"

Music Video of the Year (according to MTV Video Music Awards)
Cars "You Might Think". This song is currently a revived earworm thanks to its bizarre new prevalence on CBS's inexplicable but highly watchable Braindead show starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and a bunch of Broadway stars.

1984 IN LITERATURE

Best Sellers: (no particular order) "The Witches of Eastwick" (John Updike), "The Aquitaine Progression" (Robert Ludlum), "Full Circle" (Danielle Steele), "The Talisman" (Stephen King & Peter Straub), "Who Killed the Robins Family" (Bill Adler & Thomas Chastain), "....and Ladies of the Club" (Helen Hooven Santmeyer), "First Among Equals" (Jeffrey Archer), "The Fourth Protocol" (Frederick Forsyth), "The Butter Battle Book" (Dr Seuss), "Lincoln" (Gore Vidal), "Heretics of Dune" (Frank Herbert), "The Haj" (Leon Uris), "Tough Guys Don't Dance" (Norman Mailer)

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction: "Ironweed" (William Kennedy); Drama: "Glengarry Glenn Ross" (David Mamet); Biography "Booker T Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 (Louis R Harlan); Poetry: "American Primitive" (Mary Oliver); Non-Fiction "The Social Transformation of American Medicine" (Paul Starr)

Eagle Awards for Comics
Best New Title "Power Pack" (Louise Simonson for Marvel Comics); Group Book: "The New Teen Titans" (Marv Wolfman for DC)

Comments

[/3rtful]

Your Gizmo gif is from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).

[Peggy Sue]

Wow! I'm glad I was around.

They really knew how to make good popcorn movies back then.

I strongly recommend watching all the 80s Tony Awards on YouTube. Classic.

[mark]

So many memeories,This is a great article,gr8 research.

The River is one of my faves of 84 and better than the other 2 fard films,don't knwo why but if remember correct it was the first time I saw an Adult film,lusted after Gibson was overawed by Sissy.

32 years of Madonna WOW.

[rick]

What fun this was to remember all of this and relive many, many memories that were tucked away in my mind...

[Jono]

This decade was particularly vivid. In hindsight, magazines had such power. Everything now is diffuse with random web searches or forgettable posts.

[LadyEdith]

I love the breadth and depth of your research, really well done!
Romancing the Stone, Tina Turner, Madonna - so many things I still like.
Sad that the Internet has robbed magazines of the power they once had.
An image on Time or Vanity Fair really meant something.

[mark]

LadyEdith is right about the dimisishing power of magazines,only Kim K has made a splash in recent years and who is she really.no one I am remotely interested of her husband Heading West..

[Edward L.]

Dallas and Dynasty, The A-Team, Simon and Simon (!)... Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... Fun times from childhood. And as a teenager: Romancing the Stone and Beverly Hills Cop, Amadeus and A Passage to India, Broadway Danny Rose, Stop Making Sense. A bunch that still mean a lot to me. And the music! Not quite my era for pop music yet (that'd be late '80s), but still tonnes of '80s classics. Plus one of my favourite novels csme out in 1984: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner. Looking forward to this month's retrospectives.

[Paul Outlaw]

This was also the year "little" Cynthia Nixon made history by appearing in two shows on Broadway at the same time: The Real Thing at the Plymouth and Hurlyburly at the Barrymore, two blocks away from each other.

[Mike Troutman]

I know movies are more your thing then music, but need to mention 1984 also so the release of the smiths self title, talking head's stop making sense, the replacement's let it be, and REM's reckoning

[Craver]

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE losing to La Cage is such a travesty. It even won the Pulitzer in 1985.
Young Mel Givson is hawt.
#BaranskiOrBust

[Dave in Hollywood]

Wasn't Cynthia Nixon in Amadeus too?

I remember Lionel Richie beating out those other four miracle albums as you call them. It was puzzling then and it's puzzling now, except that the Academy is always full of older boring voters.

[Sawyer]

Follow Drew Barrymore on Instagram. Her 80s and 90s photos are everything.

[Paul Outlaw]

@ Dave in Hollywood:

Yes, and Amadeus opened in September '84 at Loew's Tower East, around the corner from The Real Thing.

[NewMoonSon]

Alfre was an Oscar nominee that year (for 1983's Cross Creek) and she's won three more Emmys from a staggering 18 nominations. She is the Meryl Streep of TV!

[joel6]

Wonderful review of the highlights of the year. At first I thought that was Diane Lane on the American Film cover, I never realized how much she and the young Kathleen Turner resembled each other.

I remember that Something About Amelia was a huge controversial TV event with its focus on parental incest. Glenn Close was only doing features at the time and Ted Danson was near the peak of his Cheers fame so their participation really kicked up the attention on the film and they both did extensive publicity to raise awareness of the problem which up until then was rarely if ever mentioned. It helped that it was an excellent, if tough to watch, film.

Love the GIF's of Tina Turner and Bruce Springsteen. Oh for the days when you could turn on MTV and have it be a video jukebox with only the VJ's interrupting the music.

[Marsha Mason]

I take absolutely any excuse to listen to... you take my.... you take my... "Self Control"!

[Edward L.]

And how could I forget one of my favourite albums, especially as you mentioned it in the post - Born in the USA!

[forever1267]

I was 16 that year, so all of this was my life back then!

[cal roth]

It's strange that both most handsome men of the 70's and the 80', Travolta and Gibson, turned out to be total freaks.