THAT SHOWCASE
It was the decade of flares, platform shoes and unisex fashion. MARION McMULLEN turns the clock back 50 years to revisit the styles and headlines of 1970
THE floppy disc made its first appearance, Edward Heath was Britain’s new Prime Minister and Hollywood star Lee Marvin became one of the unlikeliest pop stars of the year with his gravelly rendition of Wand’rin’ Star from the movie musical Paint Your Wagon.
Fashion was also undergoing a style change and 1970 saw British star Joan Collins open an eight-day festival of pop music and young fashion called Extravaganza 70 at Olympia’s Empire Hall in London.
It offered a colourful start to the new decade, with the nation’s youth embracing everything from bell bottoms to maxi dresses.
Unisex clothing was one of the cutting edge trends with couples being offered matching outfits that included everything from flowery tank tops and open knit stockings to full-length tweed coats with breeches and sweaters in camel coloured wool.
The Paris Fashion Collection that year also included unisex coat dresses and cowboy-style hats.
Arsenal footballer Bob McNab joined the fashion parade by modelling a cashmere suit with a suede trim, while actor Peter Wyngarde – best known as TV’s flamboyant style icon and sleuth Jason King – picked up the fashion award for best-dressed man of 1970.
Even Coronation Street actor William Roache was seen searching women’s dress shops looking for the perfect mini dress, but had no luck saying “London shops have gone almost midi and maxi and the few minis still left aren’t frilly enough”.
The soap actor, who plays Coronation Street stalwart Ken Barlow, was looking for a mini skirt for a stage play called Disorderly Women and ended up buying an outfit costing 17 guineas and cutting it “up” to size.
The long-running soap actually reached its 1,000 episode in 1970, while other telly hits of the year included The Benny Hill Show and This Is Your Life.
Clothes of any kind were discarded though as controversial erotic revue Oh! Calcutta brought nudity to the London stage.
The production, created by British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, ran for nearly 4,000 performances in the West End. Beatle John Lennon and actor and playwright Sam Shepard were among those who wrote some of the sketches.
Australian-born feminist and writer Germaine Greer became a household name in 1970 with the publication of her book The Female Eunuch in which she stated: “Status ought not to be measured by a woman’s ability to attract and snare a man”.
It was also the year when the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18, allowing teenagers to go to the polls for the first time.
The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission had people all over the world praying for the safe return of American astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise as their planned Moon landing was abandoned two days after the launch following problems with an oxygen tank. Jim Lovell later said: “We do not realise what we have on Earth until we leave it.”Story. The big cinema hit of the Meanwhile, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw had cinema audiences sobbing with romantic movie Love year was written by Erich Segal and featured the classic line “love means never having to say you’re sorry”. It was one of the first movies to take more than $100 million at the box office.
The year’s other blockbusters included Robert Altman’s army comedy M*A*S*H, which starred Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, Catch-22 with Alan Arkin and disaster movie Airport with Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin.
The year also saw the birth of British actors Simon Pegg and John Simm, comedian and Pointless quiz host Alexander Armstrong and Rachel Weisz, star of films such as The Mummy and About A Boy. Technology changed with the launch of the floppy disc by American company IBM. The eight inch wide disc allowed people to store computer information in a light, easy-to-carry way and offered a faster alternative to the magnetic tapes and punched cards used previously.
The term jet lag entered the English language for the first time along with black hole, hot pants and pub food.
On the sporting front British golfer Tony Jacklin won the US open while Brazil lifted the football World Cup for the third time, beating Italy 4-1 in Mexico City. It was also the first time the final had been televised live and in colour around the world. American boxer Joe “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier knocked out Jimmy Ellis in New York to become heavyweight champ... and he also embraced the fashions of 1970 by modelling the latest looks for men during a photoshoot at the Leicester Square Empire Ballroom. He could never have predicted that the years to come would go on to be categorised by many fashion writers as the ‘decade that style forgot’.