Yesterday, I did a round-up of movies, TV, and music available on this weekend in 1984. As a comparison, I thought looking at the same weekend from 1974 would be interesting. Tracking this information down was a little more difficult than with 1984, but I found most of what I needed in the June 23, 1974 edition of the NY Times.

Back in the 1970s (and probably particularly in NYC), movies stayed in theaters a lot longer than they do now. There was no home video market then…you either saw the movie in the theater or you missed it. This is a list of some of the movies available for viewing in theaters that weekend in NYC:

The Sting

The Exorcist

Parallax View

The Sugarland Express

The Conversation

Chinatown

Papillon

The Great Gatsby

The Sting, Papillon, and The Exorcist had been out since late 1973, The Great Gatsby since March, and The Sugarland Express (Spielberg’s directoral debut) and The Conversation since April. Only Parallax View and Chinatown had just opened. Interestingly, the year’s top-grossing film, Blazing Saddles, which opened in February, didn’t appear anywhere on the movie listing pages of the Times that week.

The top 10 on the Billboard chart for that week were:

Billy, Don’t Be A Hero - Bo Donaldson And The Heywoods

You Make Me Feel Brand New - The Stylistics

Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot

The Streak - Ray Stevens

Be Thankful For What You Got - William DeVaughn

Band On The Run - Paul McCartney & Wings

If You Love Me (let Me Know) - Olivia Newton-John

Dancing Machine - Jackson 5

Hollywood Swinging - Kool & The Gang

The Entertainer - Marvin Hamlisch/The Sting

And on TV that weekend, a number of classic shows, all reruns except for 60 Minutes:

Brady Bunch

Sanford and Son

Good Times

Upstairs, Downstairs

The Odd Couple

All in the Family

M*A*S*H

Mary Tyler Moore

60 Minutes

BTW, the entire copy of the Sunday Times was fascinating to page through. The ads for cigarettes, hand-held calculators, and color televisions, real estate listings, job openings, book listings, the NY Times Magazine, car ads, etc.