1970s Flashback

ICONIC IMAGES FROM HOLLYWOOD'S LAST GOLDEN AGE

Ron Hogan's new film-history book, The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane! American Films of the 1970s (Bulfinch), should be required reading for directors and others who would, for example, dare mess with a classic that had Shelley Winters saving Gene Hackman from drowning on a capsized ocean liner.

Hogan's collection is full of a fan's notes and facts about trivial pursuits, such as the battle between Paul Newman and Steve McQueen for top billing in The Towering Inferno.

"Peter Biskind'sEasy Riders, Raging Bulk is a great book, but the 70s films I remember wanting to see as a kid were Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Star Wars. I wanted to look back at everything that was going on in the 70s," says Hogan.

The pages contain shout-outs to the ultra-cool actors who helped define the decade, from Warren Oates behind the wheel of a GTO in Two-Lane Blacktop to George Kennedy hauling his wellmarbled self around the Alps in The Eiger Sanction. And it is chockablock with memorable dialogue, most notably the line plucked as the book's title—a reference to the moment in Airport 1975 when sexy stew Karen Black takes the helm of the crippled jumbo jet.

JOHN BRODIE