The Oscar-winning Songs Countdown: 1979 - part 1

It's been a long time since I presented a chapter of the Oscar-winning Songs Countdown. It's one of my favorite countdowns because it combines the two things I love most, music and movies. It also my least favorite, because it's a lot of hard work. But, you know what, I have learned to embrace my contradictions...  😊

One of the highlights of the year was a French gay-themed farce called La Cage Aux Folles (photo above). The film's distributors, United Artists, expected to draw a few bucks in urban markets, but to their amazement, La Cage Aux Folles was a runaway hit all over America. The comedy became one of the highest-grossing foreign language films ever, pulling in over $7 million - it grossed $2 million alone at a tiny Manhattan theater where it ran for 19 months.

For child actors, 1979 was a very good year: Kelly Reno was born and raised on a farm, so it seemed only natural that he was given the lead role in The Black Stallion, an adaptation of the classic children's book of the same name. The film was produced by Francis Ford Coppola's company, Omni Zoetrope - and was an instant hit when it premiered at the New York Film Festival. Caleb Deschanel's photography was especially praised, as well as the performance of a movie veteran who had also begun his movie career as a child actor. Variety wrote, "Mickey Rooney gives his best screen performance in years."

A Little Romance was directed by George Roy Hill, whose biggest hits had been The Sting and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. It was a love affair between two tweens, French Thelonious Bernard and American Diane Lane, barely 14 at the time. She would go on to be one of the most popular ingénues in the 80s. The film also had adult actors, the most prominent being Lord Laurence Olivier. The film was well-received. Georges Delerue's score was especially praised:

The Champ had been a 1931 Oscar-winning movie directed by King Vidor. 48 years later, Franco Zeffirelli remade the film with Jon Voight and Faye Dunaway in the leading roles. The critics were all over the melodramatic family drama taking place in the world of boxing. Young Ricky Schroder stood out among his famous adult fellow thespians: "Schroder projects a comparable emotional range and depth [to the original's Jackie Cooper]," wrote Variety. Also praised was Dave Grusin score:

The ultimate success in child-acting, however, was six-year-old Justin Henry in Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer. Henry was difficult to work with at first - his concentration was terrible. By the third week, he was becoming an actor. The most difficult of all turned out to be the film's protagonist, Dustin Hoffman: He rejected several drafts of the script - and finally said that he would do the film if he was allowed to improvise, have as many extra takes as he desired, and oversee the editing. "I've never let an actor in on the writing or the editing before," responded Benton. "I always thought the actors were hired to ruin the writer's lines." Benton swallowed his pride and Hoffman was in.

To play the wife who walks out on Hoffman, the producers originally wanted Kate Jackson, one of Charlie's Angels, but executive Sherry Lansing suggested relative newcomer Meryl Streep instead. Streep had met Hoffman earlier at an audition, as she reminisced to Time: "He came up to me and said, 'I'm Dustin - burp - Hoffman' and he put his hand on my breast. What an obnoxious pig, I thought."

When Kramer vs. Kramer opened as Columbia's big Christmas release, Charles Champlin, echoing the majority of critics, gave it his blessing in the Los Angeles Times: "Kramer vs. Kramer is as nearly perfect a film as can be." Roger Ebert praised the actors: "Kramer vs. Kramer is a movie of good performances, and it had to be because the performances can't rest on conventional melodrama. Dustin Hoffman's acting is about the best in his career, I think, and this movie should win him an Academy Award nomination and perhaps the Oscar." Also, "Meryl Streep has certainly been having quite a year and has appeared in what seems like half the year's best female roles (so far she's been in The Deer Hunter, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, and Manhattan, and Holocaust on TV). In Kramer vs. Kramer, Benton asked her to state her character's own case in the big scene where she argues for her child from the witness stand. She is persuasive, but then so is Jane Alexander, who plays her best friend, and whose character is a bystander and witness as Hoffman slowly learns how to be a father."

This is a powerful scene from the film:

This is Meryl Streep talking about Dustin Hoffman and the other leading men in her illustrious career:

The public also agreed: Kramer vs. Kramer was the highest-grossing movie in 1979 by far. Yes, there was a time that the highest-grossing movie of the year was neither animated nor sci-fi/based on a comics' character. These are the top 10 highest-grossing films in 1979:

At #2 we find the year's highest-grossing horror movie, The Amityville Horror, while at #3 we find Rocky's sequel, Rocky II. The Amityville Horror had a very effective score, by Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin, of Mission: Impossible fame. Here is a part of it:

There's a lot to say about the movie at #4, Apocalypse Now, but not just now. At #5 was the successful revival of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Jerry Goldsmith's score was a good one. This is the main theme:

Apocalypse Now was probably the second best movie of the year. The best movie of the year, in my opinion, was the 6th highest-grosser, the movie that was a game-changer for the horror genre, Alien. Ridley Scott's masterpiece may be taken for granted today (it shouldn't - it still knocks me off my feet.) Back then it shocked us to no end. Here's one of the film's classic scenes:

The 7th highest-grossing film of the year was Blake Edwards' sexy comedy, simply called 10. It brought back Julie Andrews, made a Hollywood star out of Englishman Dudley Moore, and made a (temporary) international sex symbol out of Bo Derek. The film's score was by Edwards' frequent collaborator, Henry Mancini:

It's Easy to Say was a song from the film. It was a duet between Dudley Moore and Julie Andrews:

This is an instrumental version with Dudley Moore on the piano:

Here are Helen Reddy and Dudley Moore with It's Easy to Say at the Oscars:

The 8th highest-grossing film of the year was another funny comedy, The Jerk, starring Steve Martin, while at #9 was that year's James Bond movie, the space-bound Moonraker. Shirley Bassey sang the theme song for the third time, the only artist to do so more than once:

There were movies based on successful TV series in the 60s as well. Off the top of my head, I can remember movies based on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and on Mission: Impossible. They were nothing more than rip-offs, though: they amounted to longer than usual TV episodes, with the production values of 60s TV, which weren't anything to shout about. The situation began to change in the late 70s, with movies such as the already mentioned Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The Muppet Movie was another such example, a euphoric journey for the young at heart. The 10th highest-grossing film of the year contained many noteworthy songs, penned by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher. This is the instrumental version of Never Before Never Again:

A truly timeless jam is the Kermit the Frog-croaked sing-along, The Rainbow Connection:

"Concentrating exclusively on big-budget films can lead to creative suicide," stated British director Peter Yates. "After The Deep, I had to do something different. And I wanted to make a film about class distinction in America. Coming from England, I was always told that it doesn't exist here. But of course, it does."

Yates found what he was looking for in two scripts by Steve (né Stoyan) Tesich, a Yugoslavian immigrant who had attended Indiana University on a wrestling scholarship. The two scripts were about the annual Little 500 bicycle race between the school's fraternities and the townies - and about the fathers of the townies, who worked in the limestone quarries around Bloomington. It was Yates' idea to combine the two scripts. The new script was called Breaking Away and Yates persuaded Fox to put up the $2.4 million to make the film on location in Bloomington.

The film featured three actors in their mid-20s, Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, and Daniel Stern, who were however quite convincing as 19-year-olds. Only Jackie Earle Haley was age-appropriate for his part. The youngsters were supported by experienced character actors Paul Dooley and Barbara Barrie.

The film was well-received by film-critics: Variety said, "Breaking Away is a thoroughly delightful light comedy, lifted by fine performances from Dennis Christopher and Paul Dooley. The story is nothing more than a triumph for the underdog through sports, this time cycle racing." Time added, "This is the kind of small, starless film that big studios sometimes do not know what to do with." This claim was substantiated by Film Comment, which referred to Breaking Away as the year's "worst-marketed film." Even so, the film managed to make $9 million, which, considering its low ($2.4 million) budget, was actually not bad.

This is the film's trailer:

Patrick Williams scored the film imaginatively, using music such as Rossini's famous overture to Il Barbiere di Siviglia:

Robbie Benson had been a popular child actor in the early 70s - and in 1979 he was transitioning to playing a young adult. Ice Castles was a romance taking place in the world of figure skating and co-starred newcomer Lynn-Holly Johnson. The critics were not fond of the film at all: Janet Maslin of The New York Times scoffed, "Mr. Wrye [the film's director] - who should have been forced to sit through The Turning Point until he got this right - captures skating scenes that are utterly without magic." The theme song, however, Through the Eyes of Love, got some positive attention. After all, it was written by Marvin Hamlisch (music) and Carole Bayer Sager (lyrics) and sung by Melissa Manchester, who delivered her usual powerful work. Here it is:

There are more films to speak of, as well as the nominations and the awards, but not enough time today. So, I will soon return with this story's second part. As my favorite DJ used to say, "stay tuned."