Scroll through the images below to see some of the most popular television, movies, and musicians of the 1970s.
Entertainment
Factoids
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The first issue of People Magazine released in 1974
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The world trade center, the tallest building in the world, opened in 1973.
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In 1970 the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18
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Richard Nixon was president from 1968 to 1974 when he resigned and Gerald Ford replaced him.
Environmentalists protesting in 1970
The most popular show on television in the 1970s, dealing with the arguments between a conservative man and his liberal son in law.
One of the highest grossing films of all time, The Exorcist became a sociological phenomenon. With lines up to 7 hours long, many movie goers couldn't even sit through more than an hour of the movie without fainting.
The first Italian mobster film made by Italians, and it's two successors caused 'the Godfather effect' meaning that Americans were now talking about Italian American culture. Of course, this movie did still perpetuate the idea that all Italian Americans have ties to the mob, but it portrayed mobsters as real people, not stereotypes: a step in the right direction.
The first movie to celebrate gay culture, this movie, originally a musical, reinvented the musical by focusing on politics and survival instead of happiness and optimism.
Environmentalism
The 1970s were famously filled with hippies and environmentalists, but the environmentalists movement was not just about free love and drugs. It started in the 1960s, when the air in ​Los Angeles was so bad that breathing it was equivalent to smoking two and half packs a day. In January 1969 things got a little more serious, when an oil well of the coast of Santa Barbara erupted, dumping 200,000 gallons of crude oil. Later that same year the Cuyahoga river in Ohio caught fire. It was time for people to wake up. 1970 brought about the decade of "clean-up" and the foundation of earth day, April 22nd, and the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Entertainment in the 1970s was known for extremes. Television shows were aimed at social issues or escapism, and the 1970s is now labeled as the decade when television started to matter. Music in the 1970s had more variety than ever before. You could choose from Funk, Soul, R&B, Pop, Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Disco, and even the beginnings of hip-hop. The 1970s brought us many groundbreaking films that broke box office records and changed movie genres as we know them today.