December 14, 1977: "Saturday Night Fever" Premieres

John Travolta as Tony Manero

December 14, 1977: Saturday Night Fever premieres, launching the disco phenomenon to new heights. John Travolta, already known for playing Vinnie Barbarino, one of the "Sweathogs" on the Brooklyn-set ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, sticks with type: He plays Tony Manero, a Brooklyn kid who works at a paint store, and forgets his troubles by dressing up and dancing at a discotheque.

The story was based on "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," a mostly fictional article by music writer Nik Cohn, published in New York magazine in June 1976. By that point, disco music had already been a phenomenon for about a year, boosted by such hit songs as "The Hustle" by Van McCoy.

Saturday Night Fever was never going to become the biggest film released in 1977 -- Star Wars already had that wrapped up -- but it became the biggest moneymaking film in calendar year 1978. People were attracted to the music, to the clothes, and to Travolta himself.

The film's soundtrack became, until Michael Jackson's Thriller came along, the biggest-selling album in history. It was dominated by The Bee Gees, brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb -- especially Barry, their main songwriter and lead singer. The hopped-up "Stayin' Alive" became the disco song, although "Night Fever" stayed atop the charts longer. Barry noted that The Bay City Rollers had already hit Number 1 with a song titled "Saturday Night," so he didn't want to write a song with that title. Both of those songs hit Number 1. So did the ballad "How Deep Is Your Love." So did "If I Can't Have You," which the brothers wrote for Yvonne Elliman.

"More Than a Woman" also hit the Top 5 for The Bee Gees. Disco group Tavares had also had a hit with the song, and their version was also included on the soundtrack. 

Also included were some established hits: "Jive Talkin'," which hit Number 1 for The Bee Gees in 1975; "You Should Be Dancing," which hit Number 1 for the Bee Gees in 1976; "A Fifth of Beethoven," Walter Murphy's disco reworking of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Symphony No. 5," which also hit Number 1 in 1976; The Trammps' "Disco Inferno," which also hit Number 1 in 1976; and "Boogie Shoes," a recent hit for KC and the Sunshine Band.

One major advantage that disco had was that it was inclusive. It was open to men and women, whites and blacks, Anglos and Latinos, straights and gays. All you had to do was be able to fool someone into thinking you were good-looking and able to dance. And, with all the booze and cocaine flying around in the discos, that wasn't that hard.

And at least going out to discos meant that you had to dress up. Unless you were going to a gay disco, in which case you would wear hardly anything. Not that I would know...

By the end of 1978, people were getting sick of disco. Enough was enough. On July 12, 1979, the Chicago White Sox teamed up with local disc jockey Steve Dahl to host "Disco Demolition Night": Between games of a doubleheader, disco records would be blown up on the field. But fans charged the field, chanting, "Disco sucks!" and rendered the field unplayable. With the White Sox having already lost the 1st game to the Detroit Tigers, the umpires forfeited the 2nd game as well.

In 1980, the spoof film Airplane! had pilot Ted Striker, played by Robert Hays, parody Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. As the stricken plane he pilots makes its final approach to the airport, it flies low enough to tear off the antenna of a radio station whose disc jockey had just proudly said his station was "where disco will never die!"

In 1983, Travolta starred in a sequel, titled Staying Alive, in which Tony Manero began to make it as a professional dancer, but the film was a flop. The timing was doubly bad: Not only had disco been pushed out by New Wave and synth-pop, but Flashdance had been released 3 months earlier, so Staying Alive was seen as a pale copy of not one film, but two. It is the oldest film to have a zero percent rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes, compared to the 82 percent of Saturday Night Fever. (Flashdance is only at 35 percent, as it, too, was seen as an SNF copy, with star Jennifer Beals being attractive enough to almost save it.)

UPDATE: In 2023, Travolta parodied his role by playing Santa Claus in a commercial for Capital One bank, copying some of the scenes from the movie, with Donna Pescow also appearing in it.

And it took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There was too much overwrought music, including disco; and, at the same time, not enough of it.

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December 14, 1977 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 8 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Indiana Pacers, 101-98 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Golden State Warriors, 108-104 at the Rutgers Athletic Center (now the Jersey Mike's Arena) in Piscataway, New Jersey. Rick Barry, who had played for the Nets in their ABA days on Long Island, scored 37 points in defeat for the Warriors.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 108-99 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Julius "Dr. J" Erving scored 31 in defeat.

* The Seattle SuperSonics beat the Detroit Pistons, 102-92 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Gus Williams scored 37 points.

* The Kansas City Kings beat the Denver Nuggets, 124-98 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Houston Rockets, 113-91 at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Chicago Bulls, 116-108 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.

* And the Phoenix Suns beat the Buffalo Braves, 113-103 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. Billy Knight score 36 in defeat for the Braves, who became the San Diego Clippers the next season, and the Los Angeles Clippers in 1984.

There were 4 games in the NHL:

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the St. Louis Blues beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-2 at the Checkerdome, as the St. Louis Arena was then known.

And there were 3 games in the World Hockey Association. This was an experimental season in which the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia each sent a touring team to be a league member:

* The New England Whalers beat the Soviet team, 7-2 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Cincinnati Stingers beat the Indianapolis Racers, 3-1 at the Riverfront Coliseum (now the Heritage Bank Center) in Cincinnati.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Czechoslovakia team, 6-1 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton. (This was a year before the debut of Wayne Gretzky, so he didn't score any of those goals.)