Ben Cahlamer
In 1974, the cinematic and political landscape looked vastly different than today, with an estimated 15,000 theatre screens, compared to today’s approximately 39,000 theatre screens. The news was dominated by the oil embargo, global scandals ranging from Watergate and Nixon to coups in West Germany, Portugal, and Cyprus, along with the beginnings of The Troubles in Ireland. On the inspired front, Isabel Peron would be sworn in as Argentina’s first female president, Hank Aaron would rally to hit his 715th home run surpassing Babe Ruth and after a record 84 days in space, the crew of Skylab 4 returned to earth. Audiences needed hope that the world would see what pervasive greed, the silenced voices of distant peoples, had wrought, and that there were still good people. Audience sentiments had settled on thrills, seeking escape, while wanting relatable characters on the screens to empathize with. They needed a hero, or a heroine, doing daring tasks in service of a script, against incredible odds. Audiences didn’t realize it, but they wanted the ingenuity of Irwin Allen and Jennings Lang to deliver three of the most inspired, escapist disaster films featuring those strong heroes and in-control heroines doing their daring, offering renewed hope set against the geopolitical strife in the last three months of 1974: Airport 1975, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno.
The geopolitical strife of 1974 also demonstrates the economic complexities of making, marketing, and releasing a film. Theatres in 1974 had an average of just one screen, compared to today’s multiplexes. Movies were delivered on celluloid, and there were only so many prints to be shown with limited showtimes each day; studio risk was limited, and more experimentation was on the horizon. At home, consumers didn’t have 300 cable channels to choose from, nor were the communications capabilities to instantly communicate with someone or to be able to watch a movie on demand available. Families made a real effort to select which movies they would attend, especially if the television Movie of the Week featured on ABC, CBS, or NBC wasn’t particularly good, or if there were more depressing news. For reference, the average cost of a movie ticket in 1974 was $1.89 ($12.09 in 2024 dollars), and if you wanted to call your grandmother in Toledo from Los Angeles, the cost of the call would be 10 cents per minute (64 cents in 2024 dollars).
Airport 1975
Universal studio executive Jennings Lang came up through the television ranks when he took on Airport 1975. They had purchased the rights to Arthur Hailey’s novel in the late 1960s and developed an Oscar-winning adaptation of the novel in 1970. Lang hired director Jack Smight and screenwriter Don Ingalls to craft an inexpensively told story, inspired by Airport. At its crux, Airport 1975 is the story of Nancy Pryor (Karen Black), a chief stewardess on a red-eye flight from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles when tragedy strikes the aircraft, forcing Nancy to take control of the stricken plane. This happens as she battles chauvinistic wits with Alan Murdock (Charlton Heston), who thinks he can solve her problems in 30 minutes, but instead realizes that Nancy is a more than capable woman, something an audience in 1974 would desperately want to see.
The production used Washington Dulles International Airport, setting the stage for Nancy’s strength of character. The Eero Saarinen-designed terminal is surrounded by glass on either side with a very tall, swept roof, allowing natural light to showcase Nancy’s resilience, engendering the audience’s hopes. The camera is trained specifically on her steadfastness through the throngs of passengers. Heston towers over Black, yet the two actors hold their own early in the film. John Cacavas’s score underpins the thriller aspect of the danger to the crew and passengers while managing a tenderness in recognizing Nancy’s scared feelings and her derring-do when situations leave her no choice but to act. In the film’s second half, as Nancy is left alone to fly the Boeing 747, Lathrop’s camera shoots the jumbo jet in clear skies over the sun-kissed Wasatch Mountains surrounding Salt Lake City, another call to the hope that Nancy would be successful in keeping the aircraft aloft. Where Airport 1975 opens with a strong image of the Boeing 747 that would carry Nancy and her passengers, the film ends with Nancy and Alan having reconciled, each character recognizing the other’s strengths amidst the resilience of the machine that carries them through. A joint effort between the couple saves the day.
Airport 1975 was released on October 18, 1974, with a budget of just $3 million ($19.1 million in 2024 dollars), grossing $103 million worldwide ($659.1 million). In its first week of release in 144 theatres, it grossed $2.7 million. The relatively small budget was achieved thanks to Lang’s television production mentality of maximizing his dollar, a common theme. Universal financed, marketed, and released the film entirely, and they continued to develop their Airport film series throughout the 1970s bringing more thrills to audiences. Fifty years later, studios are mining their intellectual properties a la Airport 1975, and like Lang, producers are a different breed.
Earthquake
Where Lang and Airport 1975 soared at the box office, Lang’s next assignment, Earthquake, shakes, rattled, and rolled audiences a month later, with a decidedly different path to audiences. Following their success with Airport in 1970 and Twentieth-Century Fox’s success with Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure in 1972, Universal commissioned The Godfather novelist Mario Puzo to write a script where the dangers and thrills were centered on an earthquake that nearly topples Los Angeles. That script languished for a year before Lang picked it up again as a starring vehicle for Charlton Heston, this time playing Stewart Graff, a high-powered architect with a conscious. While his marriage to Remy (Ava Gardner) is on a crumbling fault, Graff believes in very strong foundations for the earthquake-proof buildings he designs for his father-in-law, Lorne Greene’s Sam Royce, and in rekindling a relationship with Genevieve Bujold’s Denise Marshall.
Lang’s represented Universal on Earthquake, with his hiring of director and producer Mark Robson. Robson would find the $6.6 million budget via The Filmakers Group. Universal would market and release Earthquake on November 15, 1974, as studios wrestled with the risks they took releasing films, the budget was large enough that they did not want to finance all of the production’s costs.
The all-star cast also included George Kennedy as Lew Slade, a hot-tempered cop. Richard Roundtree stars as an Evel Knievel-like motorcycle stuntman, Miles Quade. Puzo’s initial treatment and George Fox’s rewrite focused on the crumbling relationships and the heroic efforts to provide for others in a time of need but to realize their places within relationships.
Even though Stewart and Remy’s relationship is on the proverbial rocks, Sam tries to play the father figure. Remy, Sam’s daughter, comes from a world of money and needs to be adored and recognized by Stewart. Stewart wants to make it on his own. The script emphasizes this relationship against the struggling relationships audiences were experiencing in real life, as men started to use their emotional intellect and women pushed for equal recognition. Similarly, Lew struggles with a temper from constant setbacks to collaring criminals who have rights. Throughout the film, he protects Victoria Principal’s Rosa from a deranged National Guard sergeant, Jody Joad the film’s only antagonist. Rosa is an everyday character, and Lew’s protectionist position relates to the audience’s struggles with the police at the time.
John Williams scored the lush, thrilling music for the film, underpinning the variety of relationships and the main thrust of the film—the threat of both the earthquake and its aftermath. Universal used the film to introduce its Sensurround low-frequency bass effect setup to theatres in certain markets. From an experience perspective, audiences sought a thriller with a highly relatable hero (Heston) against overwhelming odds. Universal delivered bang for the audience’s buck with Sensurround, a gimmick that was reproduced for the television release of the movie in 1976 via FM radio. For the first time, audiences could feel the thrills.
Earthquake ends on a far more somber note than Airport 1975, painting a decidedly different picture for Heston as an actor. Both Alan Murdock and Stewart Graff are cut from the same cloth, they share the same archetypes: both know they are in over their heads, and their egos won’t let them see past the bridges of their respective noses. Murdock’s distance from Nancy allows her to prove her value to herself and Alan. For Remy, her entitled nature demanded attention from Stewart, a former pro-bowl football player. Stewart needs to be independent, and he thinks he’ll find that in Denise’s arms, who herself is recently widowed. Denise is as independent as Nancy. When Royce dies, Stewart realizes his only place is by his wife’s side. The heroism in Earthquake works because, even through the thick and thin tribulations of marriage, if the relational foundation is solid, nothing, not even a thrilling 9.9 magnitude earthquake, can shake its way through it.
Though the earthquake in Earthquake isn’t geologically possible, Universal, Lang, and Robson created an event out of the film; with a healthy $6.6 million ($42.2 million in 2024 dollars) budget, earning $167.4 million ($1 billion) worldwide, Earthquake thrilled audiences successfully.
The Towering Inferno
Irwin Allen’s and Fox’s successes with The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 resulted in Universal commissioning Earthquake. Following that success, Allen wanted to direct a thrilling adventure when Warner Bros. purchased the rights to Richard Martin Stern’s The Tower, a novel set in a glass tower with a raging fire burning inside of it. Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson’s The Glass Inferno, a second novel set in a glass tower with a raging fire burning inside, was submitted to Fox.
Allen, the ever-consummate producer that he was, realized that two studios competing at the box office with similar stories would cannibalize either project’s chances of making money. As a producer first, Allen brought Fox and Warners together to co-produce and release The Towering Inferno, a movie whose ego is as big as its virtue on both sides of the camera.
Allen brought screenwriter Stirling Siliphant to the production. Siliphant, who had previously adapted Paul Gallico’s The Poseidon Adventure, took elements and characters from both The Tower and The Glass Inferno to bring 1974 audiences one last thrilling escape. Featuring Paul Newman as Doug Roberts, the building’s architect, and Steve McQueen as the fire chief O’Hallorhan, The Towering Inferno is as much about the competing character arcs and egos as it is the fire that consumes the building.
From its opening shot of a helicopter flying near a northern California coastline, The Towering Inferno promises adventure more than thrills. John Williams’s thrilling opening theme promises as much adventure as it does thrills, as the helicopter ferries a resolute and determined Doug Roberts, on his way back from a job interview, and ready to “burn his black tie.” Roberts, whose principles demand safety systems that go above building codes, is ready to move on from his last project, the Glass Tower in downtown San Francisco. There are just a couple of people he needs to deal with before he can take on his next adventure: the builder, James Duncan (William Holden), and his fiancée, Susan (Faye Dunaway), both of whom are relying on Doug to carry them to their next adventures.
Siliphant injects great barbs between Doug and Duncan early in the film, as Doug defends his decision to move on and Duncan defends his decision to cut costs on the building. Duncan’s response is particularly empty when he admonishes Doug about the increased cost for better electrical systems: “Any decisions were made because I, as the builder, have the right to make those decisions and, god damn it, I followed the code!” Doug, matter-of-factly retorts, “The code’s not enough for this building.” At this moment, the audience feels Doug’s principles and full-on anger toward Duncan with no ego, while Duncan cavalierly evades his responsibility to build safe structures. Similarly, the conversation between Doug and Susan is equally as enlightening – the level of human independence in the early part of the film sets a beautiful contrast for the characters’ need to work together in the later parts of the film, even though none of them agrees.
As wiring problems in the tower become apparent, Doug battles yet another blaze in the form of Richard Chamberlain’s dynamic Roger Simmons. Simmons, who is married to Patty (Susan Blakely) is Duncan’s son-in-law. Further accusations are leveled between Duncan and Roger: “Did you change any of Doug’s electrical specifications?” Roger bluntly replies, “I most certainly did.” Surprised, Duncan responds, “For God’s Sake, why?” Even-keeled, Roger says, “The answer should be obvious, even to you.” Duncan goes on to say that he’s going to hang Roger for this transgression. Siliphant brings Duncan around at the end of the film; by then, it is too little too late to make amends. Duncan tries to hold all of his guests together like the father figure he pretends to be. His lack of responsibility is a foregone conclusion with nearly all of the characters, save for Doug, who, like John McClaine in Die Hard, knew his way around a building and could help people in trouble.
The egos don’t stop with the main cast. Fred Astaire plays Claiborne, a con man who is working his way into Lisolette Mueller’s (Jennifer Jones) bank book, and Robert Wagner as Dan Bigelow, the firm’s public relations officer who secretly beds his secretary, Lorrie (Susan Flannery). Save for Doug, Lisolette, and Susan, none of the characters are particularly likable; none want to take responsibility for their actions, but they want power, and when that power goes out of control, bad things are the result.
Steve McQueen’s O’Hallorhan is the solution to the raging inferno and egos. McQueen’s no-nonsense style of acting gets ladies to clutch their beads and men to listen, even putting Duncan in his place when he visits the Promenade Room to deliver the news that the fire is out of control below them and to start to get people to safety. It would be easy to relate O’Hallorhan to Gerald Ford’s messages of hope following Nixon’s resignation earlier in 1974, with Duncan as an audience shoo-in for the disgraced Nixon.
Even as the inferno rages inside the tower, McQueen and Newman work heroically to save as many people as possible. The Academy Award-winning cinematography constantly thrills us, Williams’ score delights us, and at the end, with the smoldering building behind them, Doug says to Susan, “I dunno. Maybe they should leave it standing, a shrine to all the buillshit in the world.”
The Towering Inferno would reign as box office champ for 1974. It would become the pinnacle of thrilling escapist films, not unlike the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe today. It would become a beacon of studio productions, and despite its ego, it serves as a shrine to the thrillers that came before it and after it. Despite their very best attempts, Allen remained the “king of the world” of the 1970s thrillers and even he couldn’t top himself. That torch would be passed to James Cameron twenty years later with his landmark film, Titanic in 1997, another studio co-production between Fox and Paramount with Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment producing.
Here we are in 2024, well now 2025. Geopolitically, not much has changed in fifty years. Greed still rules the earth, and we trust our elected officials even less. The news cycle runs 24 hours, and we can instantly message anyone, cheaply. The economy is still in the gutter, while women have been better able to assert themselves far more than they could in 1974.
Like we did with these disaster films, we still seek escapism in our movies, only now, with faster, cheaper ways to connect and watch more, instantaneously. We have more screens, in theaters and at home, but we don’t have better movies. Studios learned from Jennings Lang and Irwin Allen as they grappled with finding relatable stories. Although the claim could be made that Kevin Feige’s brand of storytelling is unique in the modern age, it is just an extension of the storytelling work in Airport 1975. Where Earthquake was the event film of late 1974, there are more event films now than a stick shake can be shaken at. The Towering Inferno stands the test of time though because it had ego enough to realize that a shrine is a shrine until it is not.
Suppose The Towering Inferno is a stand-in for the Nixon scandal and Watergate with its ego and political machinations along with a tremendous lack of responsibility and humility, Airport 1975 stands in for Isabel Perón’s installation as Argentina’s first female president and the Skylab crew’s return to earth. In that case, Earthquake represents real relationships and the struggles the average citizen encountered at the time. All three films stand the test of time. Only The Towering Inferno holds its own for the thrill and the hope it suggests.
We can bow at its altar, we can revere the character arcs, the thrills, the dangers, the hope. However, until good people extend an olive branch asking for help when it is needed, we will continue to operate within our bubbles, sucking the air out of each other. These three films served their purpose as a literal shrine to all the bullshit in the world. Will we ever get the message? Eventually, we need to listen to each other and let go of each other when we desire independence to find a different path. Until then, thrill, suspense, and hope bond us to the likes of disaster films Airport 1975, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno.
