Boxoffice Pro Fall 2020

sound but the effect that good sound had
at the box office.” When Star Wars opened
in the summer of 1977, only three prints
out of the 40 screens where it played were
Dolby. Lucas, despite distributor 20th
Century Fox’s objections, had insisted
on using Dolby Stereo. As the Star Wars
phenomenon took off, so did the demand
for Dolby. In the first weeks after the
launch of the film, more and more space in
the magazine was dedicated to the installation
of the system in theaters all over
the country. Exhibitors bragged about the
modernity of their theaters and the box office
effects of the technology. A showman
in Louisville was reported as saying that
the Dolby system was “excellent, making
even regular films sound better.” Another
exhibitor in Milwaukee boasted about
recently installing the system, “which
people tell [him] is half the film.”
Dolby Stereo had become a must. For
many, it was the way to fight home entertainment.
Dennis Udovic, a Wisconsin
projectionist writing to Boxoffice Pro
in September 1977, argued, “The basic
movie customers are young people, and
stereophonic sound is right up their alley.”
Two years later, writer John M. Novak
urged exhibitors to abandon the view that
stereo sound was “just another fad” and
advised them to invest in the technology.
“The average theater is 30 years behind
the times in terms of sound quality. … In
competition with the quality of today’s
home stereo components, never mind
what’s in store for tomorrow; the average
theater sound system would lose by
forfeit,” he argued.
The blockbusters, in combination
with multiplexes and technological
innovations, gave new life to the industry
and changed it forever. Ben Shlyen wrote
in March 1976 that good blockbusters
have “caused people, again, to talk
enthusiastically about motion pictures.”
Nevertheless, as waves of blockbusters
overwhelmed theaters, critics—including
Shlyen—pointed out that the lack of diversity,
embodied by the predictable stories
copying the Star Wars and Jaws formulas,
coupled with long runs could eventually
hurt the market. It was not enough to have
big films. They needed to be good as well.
Many articles in Boxoffice Pro warned
of the importance of protecting smaller,
high-quality films. One writer in Knoxville,
in a 1976 review of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry
Lyndon, declared, “It takes a lot of guts
to assemble a film of this magnitude to
compete with today’s made-for-money
movies.” The exhibition landscape was
indeed very different from what it was in
the early 1970s, with its independent New
Hollywood productions.
Sex, Censors, and Videotapes
The end of the 1970s was radically
different in another respect. The first half
of the decade did not only see the height
of New Hollywood and blaxploitation—it
was the heyday of sexploitation. MPAA
“Competition may come
and go, but the movie
theater goes on forever.”
Fall 2020
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