You may have noticed that we've started a little 1981 nostalgia with articles about Pennies from Heaven and . That 'party like it's 1981' feeling will ramp up this week. To give the year some overall context before the Supporting Actress Smackdown fun next weekend (which will conclude this particular mini retrospective), let's talk about that year in time...
The year's two biggest blockbusters competed for Best Picture
Great Big Box Office Hits:
Raiders of the Lost Ark was the year's true behemoth, grossing twice as much as its nearest rival On Golden Pond. The Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire was a sleeper hit and that year's James Bond picture For Your Eyes Only was also hugely popular (though that's no surprise with 007). But otherwise audiences were mostly drawn to comedies in 1981: Arthur (with Dudley Moore), Stripes (with Bill Murray) The Four Seasons (with Carol Burnett) and Cannonball Run (with Burt Reynolds) were all the rage.
Oscar favourites / theories and other cultural touchstones of 1981 after the jump...
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
The year's critical sensation epic Reds (12 noms / 3 wins), populist smash On Golden Pond (10 noms / 3 wins) and biggest sleeper hit Chariots of Fire (7 noms / 4 wins) battled it out for Best Picture with all of them winning major statues. Atlantic City (5 noms) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (9 noms / 4 craft wins) were just happy to complete the Best Picture Nominations mix.
WHAT IF?
What would have been been nominated for Best Picture if Oscar had then the rules they have now, with the nominee list depth determined by the size of each film's voting block? In 1981 the top five were very clear (Picture and Director were a 5/5 match and acting nominations were restricted to the lowest amount of films ever in Oscar's history) so we believe that there wouldn't have been more than 6 or 7 nominees for Best Picture with all that concentrated love centering on just a handful of films. We'd wager a guess that the very popular Arthur (4 noms / 2 wins) was definitely in with an outside chance that the legal drama Absence of Malice (3 noms) would have been the seventh and last additional contender.
Other Possibilities: Some might argue for Ragtime (8 noms) or The French Lieutenant's Woman (5 noms) but we think Arthur and Malice were far ahead of both of those despite lower nomination counts. If you have different theories let us know in the comments. The only other films with multiple nominations for 1981? Pennies From Heaven (3), Only When I Laugh (3) and Dragonslayer (2).
Films That Endured (in some way) That Were Neither Oscar Nominees Nor Blockbusters:
Brian De Palma's Blow Out, John Carpenter's Escape from New York, Peter Weir's Gallipoli, Louis Malles' My Dinner with Andre, Kathleen Turner's legendary debut in Body Heat, and two infamous Razzie winners, the Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest and Bo Derek's take on Tarzan the Ape Man.
Notable films listed as 1981 at IMDb that didn't actually open in US theaters until 1982 or even 1983:
The Evil Dead, Porky's, Mad Max: Road Warrior, international hit Das Boot , and Possession with Isabelle Adjani. (We bring this up because IMDb confuses a lot of people on which year films belong to, pop-culturally speaking)
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 1981
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Body Heat
- Reds
- Atlantic City
- On Golden Pond
- Excalibur
And I'm leaving the other 4 spots open as I revisit films but as a kid I was really into Dragonslayer.
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
As you can see typical covergirls (and boys) were John & Yoko, The Reagans, Meryl Streep, Diana Ross, Steve Jobs, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Meryl Streep, Henry Fonda, and um... cocaine?
Mix Tape (Select Hits of '81):
"Physical" became the biggest hit of Olivia Newton-John already massive career spending 10 weeks at #1 (the song was initially offered to Tina Turner - can you imagine?). Other popular singles that year included "Tainted Love," Soft Cell, "Bette Davis Eyes," Kim Carnes (which would go on to win Record & Song of the Year at the Grammys), "Endless Love," Diana Ross & Lionel Richie, "Jessie's Girl," Rick Springfield, "Celebration," Kool & The Gang, "Queen of Hearts," Juice Newton, "Rapture," Blondie, "Stand and Deliver," Adam Ant, and "The Winner Takes it All," ABBA. Sheena Easton was a superstar out of the gate with the theme song from 1981's Bond movie and a #1 single with "Morning Train (Nine to Five)". She'd go on to win Best New Artist at the Grammys the following February beating The Go-Gos, Adam Ant, James Ingram, and Luther Vandross.
More Music:
Some debut albums of classic bands that dropped that year include "Beauty and the Beat" by The Go-Gos, "Speak and Spell" from Depeche Mode, and "In the Garden" by the Eurythmics. Stevie Nicks and Phil Collins both took a time out from their mega successful bands, Fleetwood Mac and Genesis respectively, to go solo with "Bella Donna" and "Face Value" to huge success.
Oh and MTV launched on August 1st, 1981 totally changing the pop landscape. "Video Killed the Radio Star" was indeed prophetic since the most photogenic singers suddenly had a much easier time becoming sensations and the less gorgeous vocalists the reverse.
Dynasty premiered in January 1981 to strong ratings but it didn't become a top 5 sensation until Season 2
TV:
Dynasty and Hill Street Blues both debuted, incredibly, as "mid-season replacements" (only readers of a certain age will understand the implications of that) and would go on to become hugely popular shows with the latter immediately winning the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in its freshman outing. Other newbie shows that year were Entertainment Tonight (still on), Gimme a Break, The Fall Guy, Simon & Simon, Falcon Crest, Nickelodeon's flagship show You Can't Do That on Television, and Saturday morning mainstay The Smurfs. Famous shows that aired their series finale in 1981 were Charlie's Angels (5 seasons), Eight is Enough (5 seasons), The Waltons (9 seasons), and The Muppet Show (5 season).
One of the things that today's "golden age of television" audiences probably have trouble understanding about TV "back in the day" in 1981 with only 3 network channels (and cable was just getting going) is that audiences for popular shows were huge... it was not a world of a million different niches. Dallas was the #1 show in America in 1981 with an audience of 28.4 million. By comparison the #1 scripted network drama currently is This Is Us with an audience of around 8 or 9 million (enormous by contemporary standards but it wouldn't even land you in the top 40 shows in 1981).
Literature:
Jumanji was all the rage with children's books (and later spawned a film franchise). Best-selling novels included Cujo by Stephen King, The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving, and Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith which all quickly become movies.
In comic books "Days of Future Past," one of the most popular storylines in all of superhero fiction, begins in X-Men and the very popular character "Elektra" debuts in the pages of Daredevil. Both storylines will show up in movies and television shows more than 30 years later.
Tim Curry and Sir Ian McKellen originated "Amadeus" on Broadway. They were both replaced for the feature film adaptation three years later.
Stage:
The Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart (which would become a movie five years later. Amadeus won Best Play and Best Actor at the Tonys and would repeat those same triumphs at the Oscars 3 years later... albeit with a different leading man; Ian McKellen (not yet a film star) was dumped for F Murray Abraham as Salieri for the film version. Tim Curry (who was already a film star) was also nominated for the Tony as the titular character, but would lose to his co-star which is also what happened to Tom Hulce in the film version at the Oscars. (We've no idea why Tim Curry didn't do the film version)
Best Musical went to the tap dance heavy 42nd Street. Future movie star Kevin Kline and former movie star Lauren Bacall took home Tonys that year as well for Pirates of Penzance and Woman of the Year respectively. Meanwhile over in London's West End, Cats began its historic run with a Broadway transfer the following year. Cats didn't vacate London and NYC stages for another twenty years-ish.
Showtunes to Go:
At the end of 1981 Dreamgirls opened on Broadway. And since "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" is overplayed, here's another great song from the musical as performed on Glee for no particular reason. And for a palette cleanser if you hate being reminded of the Glee era, here's Bernadette Peters doing "Not a Day Goes By" from Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along which also opened on Broadway at the tail end of 1981. ICYMI Richard Linklater is making a movie of Merrily We Roll Along now. And he'll be making it for years and years to come.