PEOPLE Celebrate the '70s: 1976 Edition

By Meredith Corporation

There were two Olympic Games, a fiercely fought presidential election and the bank-robbery trial of heiress hostage Patty Hearst. Moviegoers could choose between a sweaty, triumphant Rocky and the sweet transvestite of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Stevie, Elton and Diana towered in music, even as American punk took off with the Ramones, and disco took over the radio. Not that rock was dead: Peter Frampton had the top-selling LP. Then there was the tube. With fewer networks than there are today (and the VCR only just arriving), we watched together. Still devoted to the Fonz and Meathead, we also fell for Charlie's Angels. (“They don't smoke, hardly drink and won't do nude scenes. God bless America,” cheered another People reader.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meredith Corporation
• Release date: Aug 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781547859573

Book preview

1976: NEVER A DULL MOMENT

The war in Vietnam had ended. Watergate was behind us. Could America be blamed for just wanting to celebrate a big birthday and relax in front of a corny TV variety show? But the relative calm that swept in with 1976 concerned at least one devoted People reader, who, as the time neared for the annual Most Intriguing People issue, wrote editors to say: Good luck in picking . . . with this dull year, you’ll need it.

Dull? There were two Olympic Games, a fiercely fought presidential election and the bank-robbery trial of heiress hostage Patty Hearst. Dull? Moviegoers could choose between a sweaty, triumphant Rocky and the sweet transvestite of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Stevie, Elton and Diana towered in music, even as American punk took off with the Ramones, and disco took over the radio. Not that rock was dead: Peter Frampton had the top-selling LP. Then there was the tube. With fewer networks than there are today (and the VCR only just arriving), we watched together. Still devoted to the Fonz and Meathead, we also fell for Charlie’s Angels. (They don’t smoke, hardly drink and won’t do nude scenes. God bless America, cheered another People reader.)

Many events of ’76 still resonate today. The Olympics? Back after a pandemic delay. Got an iPhone? Thank two guys who launched Apple in a garage 45 years ago. If you know how a bill becomes a law, you may have learned it from a singing bit of legislation in a cartoon. Wrap dresses? Never out of style. Sylvester Stallone? His Rocky saga lives on with a planned Creed III, to be directed by its star, Michael B. Jordan. Familiar, yes. Dull? Never.

LIZA MINNELLI The Cabaret star was promoting Lucky Lady and in Rome filming with her director father, Vincent.

LEE MAJORS/FARRAH FAWCETT At home with the Six Million Dollar Man and his wife.

DIANA ROSS The Mahogany star had a great husband, three kids and a hit flick.

PENNY MARSHALL/ROB REINER Laverne and the All in the Family star: love and a ratings war.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR The star was single after a second split from Richard Burton.

HENRY WINKLER His Fonz was tops on TV; if only the brainy Yalie could enjoy it.

JIMMY & AMY CARTER All about the future President from Plains, Ga.

PAUL LYNDE He was TV’s most successful nonseries comic, but the game-show regular felt trapped in Hollywood Squares.

MARY TYLER MOORE The Bolshoi’s bicentennial brought ballet fan MTM to Moscow.

LOUISE LASSER Woody Allen’s ex-wife starred in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

STAR TRACKS

CAPTAIN AMERICA Even on the U.K. leg of his 1976 tour (here: London), Elton John dressed for the U.S. bicentennial. July 4 he played Boston with tennis star Billie Jean King, for whom he had written Philadelphia Freedom, joining on vocals.

THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR . . . March 1976 saw one of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue’s last shows. Later in the year she walked out on an abusive marriage and toward solo stardom.

SPRINGSTEEN (BEFORE BROADWAY) The Boss and his E Street Band (Clarence Clemmons on sax and future Sopranos consigliere Steven Van Zandt on guitar) played N.Y.C.’s Palladium.

ANOTHER COUNTRY From the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to . . . London Town. Dolly Parton was among the headliners at England’s International Festival of Country Music.

DATE NIGHT!

OUT FOR THE WIN The night he took home his first Oscar (for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Jack Nicholson celebrated with Anjelica Huston and his daughter Jennifer, 12 (with former wife Sandra Knight). He and Huston dated until what she called a painful breakup in 1990. She later recalled him in People as interesting, amusing, handsome, elusive.

GOLDIE’S GUY Just off playing Warren Beatty’s bubbly gal in 1975’s Shampoo, Goldie Hawn wed Bill Hudson (with Hawn) of CBS’s The Hudson Brothers Show. Son Oliver arrived soon after, and then daughter Kate, before the pair split in 1980.

BEFORE BRANGELINA Jon Voight, of Midnight Cowboy fame, attended an L.A. film festival with his then wife, actress Marcheline Bertrand. Parents of son James Haven and daughter Angelina Jolie, they split the same year, reportedly owing to Voight’s infidelity.

YES, THEY CANNES! First married from 1957 to 1962, then remarried in 1972, Robert Wagner and wife Natalie Wood looked happily recoupled when they handled hosting duties at the