This week we take a trip back down memory lane to the decade of the 70’s and specifically 1977. So what was it like as far as the cost of living and what were the news and entertainment highlights forty four years ago? As always, we begin with the cost of living.
The yearly average income for 1977 was just $15,000 a year, the average cost of a new 3 bedroom house was $49,000 and if you rented, the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment was $230. a month. As for cars, the average price for a brand new one was $3,700. You could go high end and get a Cadillac DeVille for an expensive $8,000, and the cost of a gallon of gas then was 65 cents. You could buy a new stereo set for $250, women’s boots were in fashion and cost less than $20. Food wise Nabisco Oreos were 89 cents, Florida oranges were 10 for 99 cents, Van Camps Pork n’ Beans 4 cans for 99 cents and boneless chicken breasts, $1.49 a lb. As for some of the news headlines……Jimmy Carter is elected President….. In July New York City suffers a blackout that will last more than 24 hours due to lightning strikes from thunderstorms……..The Trans Alaskan pipeline opens and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City are completed….. The computer age begins as the first Apple II computers go on sale…….The first commercial flight of the Concorde jet liner goes from London to New York…… Voyager I and Voyager II are launched unmanned to explore the outer solar system……NASA space shuttle makes its first test flight off the back of a 747 jetliner successfully.
In the world of entertainment some of the big hits from Hollywood include Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Rocky, Smokey and the Bandit, Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In music the hit makers would include Stevie Wonder, The Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, The Eagles, Barbra Striesand and Wings. The big hit TV shows included Hawaii Five-O, All In the Family, Happy Days, Barnaby Jones, Little House on the Prairie and The Rockford Files. Among the celebrities we lost the biggest to shock the world was “The King” Elvis Presley, actor/comedian Charlie Chaplin, actress Joan Crawford, comedian Groucho Marx, singer Bing Crosby and jazz pianist Errol Garner.
In the porn world, big productions were still being done in New York but a shift was starting towards the west coast. Some new advances in technology allow for some new camera techniques. More new faces and stars begin to emerge on the porn scene. 1977 also provides excellent adult fare including the one we look back at today, “Barbara Broadcast”.
Barbara Broadcast – Crescent Films – 1977 – Director – Radley Metzger – Cast – Annette Haven, C.J. Laing, Sharon Mitchell, Constance Money, Jamie Gillis, Bobby Astyr, Alan Marlowe and others.
When you come out with a great porn film like “The Opening of Misty Beethoven” that has everything and more a porn film should have, what do you do for a follow up? Leave it to Radley Metzger to find the answer with this film. It is totally different, humorous, fantasy, off the wall and works mainly because of the characters who make up the ensemble in this film.
The story that Metzger weaves in this offering centers around a woman named Barbara Broadcast, who is modeled after former hooker Xaviera Hollander. She is a former hooker who has turned author and is exquisitely played by Annette Haven. She is met at a restaurant by a reporter ( C.J. Laing) who is there to do an in depth story about her life and what made her what she is today. It doesn’t take long for this serious interview to turn into a lot more. The reason is in this upscale restaurant the menu isn’t one with a variety of food dishes, but one of sex instead. What begins to take place between customers and staff becomes very unnerving to Laing, but as she tries to do the interview, what is taking place as she tries to maintain her professionalism it gets her mind and body working. We see the various sexual acts start to take place as they are ordered from the menu and carried out by the wait staff.
The sex scenes in this film leave nothing to the imagination and it is a different look from today. The women have real boobs, unshaved pussies, no tattoos to speak of and guys without the hard body look of today. The sex that takes place in the restaurant has just about everything, blow jobs, facials, screwing in every position and a variety of combinations that take place throughout the film. Eventually our journalist, Laing, finds herself not being able to handle this interview the way she had hoped. Laing finds herself attracted to a waiter and they go off to the kitchen for one of the best scenes in the film. There is a lot of humor in the dialogue throughout, some of it actually ad libbed by the performers, but it all works very well in this very different restaurant setting.
The camera work is well crafted offering some very good angles and visuals of the action that takes place. It is also interesting to note this film was shot in a one time, well known restaurant in the Royal Manhattan Hotel in New York City. It had been shut down and was going on the auction block so the film company was able to secure its use for the film. Because there is so much that goes on, the story tends to get lost at times. Thanks to a very solid and professional cast, a good delivery of lines with quick humor and explosive sex in a real setting, rather than a studio, this is a porn classic that is very much recommended.
Like many of the classics, it has been reissued in sharp DVD form with some great extras added. Radley Metzger was one of early porn’s top directors and “Barbara Broadcast” was another of his award winning films that deserves its place as a classic from porn’s golden age. It is interesting to note that the film, plus cast members Annette Haven, C.J. Laing, Sharon Mitchell, Constance Money and Jamie Gillis are all rightfully enshrined in both the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame.
Art Koch, National Features & DVD Editor, NightMoves Magazine and AAN