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I was in high school and college and graduate school for the entire decade of the 1970s and let me tell you, most movies and TV shows of today get it very wrong. Naturally, I’m talking about the fashions/home decor/hair styles/make-up. You know, the stuff I live for.
Sorority Sisters, that wonderful book of mine out June 5 (JUNE 5!) gets it dead right. I lived in the 1970s. I know what we wore and how we wore it and I take the time in the book to set the record straight.
For example:
Bras were entirely optional.
Wonder bras? Laughable. No 1970s woman was going to put herself through that. Of course, the late 70s was the era of the perm, so we weren’t all that smart.
Green eyeshadow? Are you insane? If a woman wore blue eyeshadow she was quietly mocked and encouraged to move to the taupe/brown family.
Hairspray? No way. That was for moms.
Patterned fabrics? Patterns were popular. That’s true. Mostly plaids, but flowers and mod prints? That was the late 60s, not the mid 70s. We did wear vests, lots and lots of vests.
Why do I bring all this up? I just saw Dark Shadows with the always amazing Johnny Depp and boy howdy, did they get the costumes/hair/make-up wrong. The movie takes place in 1972 and I suppose, being generous, that they might have gotten some of it right, but not much. And I’m still being generous.
The photos of Charlie’s Angels, that knock-it-out-of-the-park hit of the 1970s proves my point. Their hair, make-up, clothes—that’s what we women of the 1970s looked like. The Dark Shadows version? That’s late 1960s, baby.
Get with the program, Hollywood. I’m available for (paid) consultations if you need help.
What do TV shows and movies get wrong that drives you nuts?
67 Comments on “The Spectacular 1970s”
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Charlie’s Angels… One of the best shows ever… They had nothing but their guns and the Charlie machine, still kicked butt and solved all the crimes… i watched reruns and adored them!!!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 6:11 am.
Love the outfits and the hairstyles on Charlie’s Angels. I saw Cheryl Ladd in person once—the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. The screen doesn’t do her justice.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:18 am.
How was “Dark Shadows” Claudia? Remember the stick pins from the late 70′s? the top had the initial of your first name and the bottom had the initial of your last name. Remember huge eyeglasses where again we put little gold initials in the bottom right hand corners? LOL those were the days!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 6:25 am.
Dark Shadows was good, not great, imho. I wasn’t a fan of the TV show and I think that’s what made the difference. The things I didn’t like about the show, I didn’t like in the movie.
But Depp was, as always, magnificent. He is an actor who has no boundaries and will go wherever the script takes him. It’s awe-inspiring.
OMG!!! I remember those stick pins!! I’d forgotten completely!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:18 am.
I never watched the show (was in Thailand then), but I try to watch everything Depp does, so I may see it.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 3:24 pm.
Considering that I watch select shows with television and mostly either horror movies or action hero movies I am not much of a help but I really hate the what was done to True Blood, that’s why I haven’t seen anything past the first season.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 6:30 am.
Oh, really? What did they do? Get something wrong?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:19 am.
Claudia, I also grew up during the sixties and the seventies (born in 195) but I can’t say I watch any shows on TV in which the time settings are wrong – probably because I don’t watch all that much and mostly view thrillers, set in today’s world.
But I do remember I went to school in 1972 wearing blue hotpants with a yellow and red butterfly on it, with assorted panties (blue, red or yellow!) and a t-shirt that rather hugged my breasts! Believe it or not, but that was allowed at our school!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 6:41 am.
Remember body suits? LOL Is that what they were called? The tight shirts with the snaps at the crotch, so the shirt would stay tucked in?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:20 am.
My company still makes great bodysuits – full back and thong. I’m wearing one today.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:05 am.
No kidding!!! That’s wonderful. I’ll bet the new versions are more comfy than the old ones.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:20 am.
Sure do – and I still have some from those times! I don’t wear off clothes and now I have regained my size of those years, I can wear them once more.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 1:19 pm.
I hate when a character is supposed to be from Newark, NJ but pronounces both syllables. It’s “Nork” rhymes with dork to us locals.
Can I get an “amen” dBrown and Suzanne?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 7:55 am.
NO! I had no idea!!! That’s a great tidbit to know.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:21 am.
I meant Suzy Q. Suzanne, you can pronounce it new-ark.
And 2 words about the 70s : banlon (sp?) shirts.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:58 am.
That’s a new one on me. What were those?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:21 am.
Tacky synthetic material. You can google them. But I misspoke. I meant Qiana shirts. My dad used to wear them in his band.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 1:51 pm.
The 70′s was the decade I grew up in. I watch some of the shows and they are good memories and stress relievers for me.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 8:07 am.
It doesn’t seem that long ago, does it?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:21 am.
I too grew up in the 70′s and really dislike it when they make it look so cheesy. Even The Brady Bunch was filmed during 1972 and there are reruns of this everywhere! Charlie’s Angels was a fun show while Kate Jackson was on it – I liked the original three as you show in your photos. Once she left the dynamics all changed.
I stopped watching House when they had the same four or five doctors doing every test and procedure. Really, there are no other doctors in the hospital and they also run the MRI machine? Extras can’t cost that much to pay in Hollywood…
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 8:16 am.
I love hearing that about House. I don’t know much about hospitals, but it does amaze me that these top flight doctors are doing the tests. Where are all the technicians?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:23 am.
I think my attention to detail must be lacking because I can’t think of anything.
I went to high school at the height of the Grunge phase. I avoided it as much as I could, but thank goodness it didn’t last long.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 8:21 am.
Thank goodness.
I know that Karen Rose, past goddess, couldn’t bear to watch Castle because it got all the police details wrong. Since she writes romantic suspense, she’d know. Me? I don’t see the errors. Ignorance is bliss!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:24 am.
Mostly it’s the books turned into movies that drive me wacky. While I know that often, to work as a movie, some things need to be changed from the book, far too often it’s some of the best parts that are made unrecognizable. The only movies that I’ve seen that did well were the LOTR movies and The Green Mile. One that completely wrecked the story was Prince Caspian, they completely changed it and not for the better. The thing is, there are ways I know of that would have worked for getting around the slow boring bits, but nooo, they have to take out good stuff and put in crappy stuff that never happened in the story.
Minor peeve along the same vein.. publishers need to give the cover artist good descriptions of the story, so that the pics on the front go with the story. Too many times you get the wrong hair color etc. (one book I have is set in a magical, alternate world, I swear the cover on the copy I have has electrical outlets in the background.. those don’t exist in that world!)
People who turn books into movies have even less excuse because by then the book has been out for ages; I swear in the Chronicles of Narnia Lucy is mentioned as being golden-haired (blonde), but every movie I’ve seen makes her a brunette and a darker brunette at that… grrr. National Velvet bugged my sis, the horse was and named Piebald because it was a piebald which means it has large black and white splotches of color, but not the horse in the movie. Looking at the wiki I see they went even crazier with the changes than that, but that’s one of the most obvious ones.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 8:34 am.
I agree so completely about LOTR–in many ways, the movies were better than the books! More narrative drive.
And YES about the story character and visual character not matching. Insane. Why do they do that????
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:59 am.
I, too, agree that the LOTR movies are better than the books. So many people are horrified when I say that. But it’s true, Peter Jackson used the narrative in the story, and cut the stuff that was irrelevant to the story.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 1:18 pm.
He cut a lot of the world building, the songs and stuff, and that was fine with me. I loved the books, but they read very slowly for today’s audience.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 2:36 pm.
Back in the day when HGTV actually showed a G show I used to watch and make sure that the landscape design and plant information was right. I quit doing that because they quit showing any garden shows on that station. Okay, my rant is over. Other than that I don’t pay too much attention. Once in a while I see someone with the wrong eye closed when shooting a gun. I don’t remember a whole era being done wrong though.
I cannot wait for SORORITY SISTERS!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 8:54 am.
Sweet! Thank you. I’m getting nervous!
LOL at the one eye closed. That kind of thing drives me crazy.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:00 am.
Remember how clean and pretty all the old western series were… no one was dirty or sweaty in those… Rawhide, Bonanza, The Rifleman….
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 9:03 am.
ROFL YES!! The clean west. It’s funny now, but we just accepted it then.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:01 am.
LOL, I was thinking the same thing, but then again, you kind of needed the 60′s to make Barnabas strolling through town and not being noticed plausible.
Dont get me started on what they get wrong. As far a clothing goes and budgets for the jobs these people have it’s laughable.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 9:16 am.
Exactly! Hire me! At least I do it right, and I’m sure the budget was a skyscraper.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:01 am.
I go nuts a lot of times during westerns but that’s because I’ve done so much research. Until Dances with Wolves all Native Americans were one big happy family. Ha.
I have to say that I spend a lot of my time while watching HELL ON WHEELS saying, “that’s right. Yep. Uh-huh.” Which is probably why I loved it.
I must also admit that I wore green eye shadow. And I WAS mocked by my boyfriend’s sister. Lovely girl.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 9:25 am.
ROFL
The green eyeshadow gang. Yep. I can see it.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:02 am.
I dont usually do that, but I do sometimes find myself wondering, How did they get that shot? How did they do that? How did they make that happen? Stuff like that. Drives my husband and son crazy! LOL
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:05 am.
Now that you mention it, I sometimes find myself thinking, who’s point of view is this shot from?
Crazy, the things we think. I suppose what it *really* means is that my attention has wandered, and that’s never good!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:03 am.
i was born in 75 but the reruns of all in the family and sanford and son crack me up at how they talked and just told it like it was. now a days people be like OMG HE CANT SAY THAT
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:16 am.
Oh, I remember that show! It was very bold for its time—and it’s still bold! We are more politically correct today. No one thought about that then.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:04 am.
The way Southern accents are portrayed onscreen drives me crazy. I usually chalk it up to willful ignorance of the moviemakers. However, the worst case I ever remember was when Wayne Rogers (a Jasper, Alabama native) was portraying a father from Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was horrible and he knew better than that!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:37 am.
OMG. I couldn’t agree with you more. Now that I’ve lived in the south for 20+ years I find myself listening to Hollywood productions and thinking, “Where on earth is *he* supposed to be from?” No place on earth, as far as I can tell. You really get an ear for the south after living here.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:06 am.
Oh absolultely!! Sometimes it just drives me nuts. I’m a born and raised Texan and sometimes they have ‘Texans’ with an Alabama accent, or a ‘Tennesseean’ with a Georgia accent… Again, with the size of the budget, there is really no excuse that they can’t research this stuff better.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:19 am.
And then there’s the generic “it sounds kind of southern to talk this way” but it doesn’t sound like anyone who comes from any, actual southern place!!!
So annoying. So inexcusable.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:22 am.
I was the first to wear a maxi dress in junior high. I felt so fashionable. I had big bushy hair to complete the outfit
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:55 am.
Me, too!! Of course, I was in high school (because I’m OLD). All the boys teased me, saying, “Your hem fell down!”
Barbarians. Fashion idiots.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:07 am.
For me, it’s not just the style (including hair, makeup, clothes, shoes, jewelry…all of it), it’s the slang that was used and just total lack of PC-ness. I mean, watch All in the Family, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times…. I always loved Charlie’s Angels, too. I was born in 1970, so when my friends/cousins/nieces/nephews would play stuff like this, I would always be Kelly (Jaclyn Smith). Everyone else was fighting to be Jill, but I wanted to be Kelly. I think Jaclyn Smith is one of the most lovely women I’ve ever seen…she still is lovely.
Considering the over the top budget of all of these films and TV shows nowadays, it’s really inexcusable that they don’t put a little more effort into it….
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:07 am.
You said it. Inexcusable. It’s not as if there aren’t people old enough in the Hollywood area who can actually remember any time period and be on hand to get it right.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:08 am.
Dazed and Confused got the 70′s just right. The tube socks with Adidas and shorts. High waisted, bell bottoms. Guys with those horrid fake silk shirts with city scrapes and crap on them. The music. The cars and hair. The stoners and jocks.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:12 am.
Oh, I’ll have to watch that. I’ve never seen it, but it sounds perfect!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 11:23 am.
I was born in 1983, so I am a young one and have absolutely no memory of the 70′s.
I live in willful ignorance and just assume the clothes are correct whenever I watch anything that has to do with that era.
Things that drive me nuts:
I do hate it when they make a book into a movie and then they leave out some very small thing from the book that makes the plot make so much more sense. For instance, in the movie for the Prisoner of Azkaban, they never once mention who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were, even though they present the Marauder’s Map… I just… It would have taken 30 seconds to explain that Prongs was Harry’s dad and that the other 3 guys were his best friends from school and it would explain why Harry thinks that the patronus is his father and not his own. ANYWAY. I hate when tiny details like that are left out and it leaves a hole in the movie version of the story.
I also hate when people get technology related things totally wrong, like on crime shows when they “enhance” an image recorded with a crappy security system and now they can read the license plate. It doesn’t work that way. There are lots of other technical things that are wrong in movies or on TV, but that one in particular annoys me. I don’t mind it in sci-fi, since in the future, anything is possible (in other words, I can suspend my disbelief) but if they are trying to use contemporary technology and can’t even do a basic Google search for how something works, it irritates me.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 1:55 pm.
I know exactly what you mean about technology. Hollywood makes it seem like anything is possible with the right know-how. Never mind that it’s technically impossible. I don’t get that at all. Write it differently!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 2:42 pm.
I was born in 1973. I remember my older brother wearing short shorts with knee socks, and thinking that he looked stupid. That’s a fashion that doesn’t need to be repeated. As for myself I remember wearing lots of plaid and wearing Addidas.
I LOVE fashion, especially the 30s thru the 50s. I’ve seen a few WWII shows where the fashion is slightly off. The characters are wearing the 1970s do the 1940s fashion – the fabrics wrong (polyester instead of rayon or faille); the fabric print is wrong (especially floral prints); the cut slightly off. The shoes, the shoes. I collect and wear 1940s shoes, which are the most comfortable and well-made shoes that I own. The shoes will be off with someone in 1943, wearing a pair of New Look shoes, which is off by a few years.
I, also, think when I watch American actors using an English accent that it must irritate the English because the American English accent has no dialect. I’ve, also, noticed that’s true of English/Scottish/Australian actors when they use an American accent. It has no dialect. They sound like news broadcasters who work to eliminate any kind of accent.
Continuity issues drive me crazy – using songs 2-3 years before they were released; digital watches in the Victorian era; a cup in the right hand in one frame, but in the left on the next frame. They have people who are supposed to catch this stuff, but it always seems like something slips through.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 2:14 pm.
Something else that drives me nuts. Labor scenes. All the women push with their faces, not their bodies, and yet, the babies are all born with about 3 pushes.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 3:11 pm.
I pushed with my face (and everything else) for my 1st delivery. Broke blood vessels in my eyes. Soooo pretty.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 4:19 pm.
You poor woman. I hope they didn’t last long. One summer I gave my sister a black eye while we were playing catch (she looked away right as a threw the baseball). The black eye went away faster than the popped blood vessels in her eye. I felt so bad.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 4:27 pm.
My vision was blurry! It was awful. I think they healed in about a week, maybe two.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 5:04 pm.
Since I was born in the 70s, I do not remember anything about it.
My family has a towing company. Rarely does tv or movies show a vehicle being towed or unlocked correctly.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 2:20 pm.
LOL I would NEVER have noticed this!!! Amazing, when you add it all up, how much they get wrong!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 2:47 pm.
You are I are sisters at heart.
The shoes!! The shoes are always off, and while I don’t own any 1940s era shoes, the high heels look so much more comfy than the ones today–more support, sturdier construction.
Interesting comment about missing dialect. I was reared to believe that English should be spoken without any dialect or regional influences. I wonder how unique a perspective that is?
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 2:46 pm.
Aw, that’s nice of you to say. I think we are, too, sisters at heart.
I could wear my 40s heels – 3-4″ high – all day long and not have sore feet at the end of the day. I can’t say that’s true of any of my modern heels. I’ve an amazing cobbler who keeps my shoes in tip top shape. Every time I bring a new pair in for a minor repair or shine, he tells me that new shoes aren’t as well made and of the same quality as my 40s shoes.
My parents never said anything really about having an accent or not, but it’s something that I was aware of – so I worked on not having an accent. I’ve noticed that when I go home to Montana, that there’s a bit of an accent that my mom denies the existence of, lol.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 4:43 pm.
LOL I don’t think I have any accent either. Some people tell me I’m wrong about that.
I beat them up.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 5:05 pm.
I don’t know if I’ll notice the differences. I was in Thailand at the time, and we were behind the U.S. fashion-wise, so I may very well have worn clothes that were more sixties. I just don’t remember. You know me–I don’t remember clothes very well!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 3:28 pm.
That’s why you have me around.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 4:20 pm.
I wonder if the people responsible for the look of Dark Shadows came to Tim Burton with something more accurate, and he rejected their ideas. ‘Cause honestly, I can’t imagine a Tim Burton movie that wouldn’t require hairspray!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 4:23 pm.
After I got home from the movie, I looked up info about the series and it shot from the mid-60s to 1971. I wondered if that’s where the look came from!
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 5:06 pm.
That makes sense! Clearly, the people in the movie were not on the cutting edge of 1972 fashion.
Posted on May 16, 2012 at 6:02 pm.
i unfortunately wasnt born in that era to experience it first hand but find your blog really interesting. im doing mine on 70s sitcoms.. feel free to join and comment on my posts : )
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:23 am.