I’ve always been a little strangely fascinated with my birthyear. I know that sounds narcissistic, but you’ll have to take my word on this. I don’t collect historical tidbits of the year 1973 for any egotistical reason. It’s just plain old vanilla obsessive compulsive disorder. The following are facts I’ve collected about this year {1} {2}, organized in the following sections:
Table of Contents:
Statistics {3}
- U.S. Population: 211,908,788
- U.S. Life expectancy: 71.4 years
- U.S. Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 41.5
- U.S. Property Crime Rate (per 1,000): 37.4
- World Population: 3.937 billion
People
- Miss America: Terry Anne Meeuwsen (WI)
- Nobel Prize, Peace: Henry A. Kissinger (US); Le Duc Tho (North Vietnam)
Cinema {4} {5}
Academy Awards: Oscar nominated films: “American Graffiti”, “The Exorcist”
Oscar winning film: “The Sting”
At the 1973 Academy Awards, a man named Robert Opal notoriously streaks across the stage, in full view of hundreds of millions of TV viewers, just as co-host David Niven is about to introduce the Best Picture category. To which Niven responded, “Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings.”
At the 1972 Academy Awards (on March 27th, 1973), Sacheen Littlefeather stands in for Marlon Brando and refuses his Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather, to protest the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans. Other great films:
- “The Long Goodbye” (Robert Altman)
- “American Graffiti” (George Lucas)
- “The Sting” (George Roy Hill)
- “Last Tango in Paris” (Bernardo Bertolucci)
John Woo finally got his chance to direct in 1973 when a friend formed a small production company. “At that time, I was pretty poor. So I would sleep in my friend’s office. We got a script and we hired a cast. And the movie was called Farewell Buddy.” (Credited as “action choreographer” was a young Jackie Chan.)
The Jamaican film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, launches the popularity of reggae music in the United States.
After the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar debuted in 1973 — featuring a slo-mo whipping of Christ — Samuel L. Gaber, the Philadelphia regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, wrote, “Director Norman Jewison helped perpetuate the lie that slandered the people in [Jewison's previous film] ‘Fiddler on the Roof’: the charge that the Jews, collectively, killed Christ. From an anti-Semitic stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar, an even more anti-Semitic film was created.”
“La Planè¨te Sauvage” (The Fantastic Planet) was released. A surrealist story based on the Soviet occupation of the Chezc Republic, Fantastic Planet is set in a distant world inhabited by humanoids called “Oms” domesticated by the gigantic “Draags.” Wild Oms however are exterminated by the dozen. One domesticated Om escapes oppression to lead a revolt. The film functions as a metaphor for class struggle.
Footnotes:
- FactMonster’s 1973 data was vital [↩]
- so was Information Please’s Internet Encyclopedia [↩]
- all population data taken from the online U.S. Census Bureau [↩] [↩]
- relied heavily on The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) [↩] [↩]
- also Scifilm [↩] [↩]
0 Comments.