The 43rd Golden Globes took place at the Beverly Hilton on January 24. And while the Friday evening ceremony was hosted by two of Hollywood’s most “traditional” stars, Charlton Heston and Donna Mills, the event highlighted romance that was seen as anything but traditional at the time.

It seemed like Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple and Héctor Babenco’s adaptation of Manuel Puig’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman were all anyone could talk about at the time.
Nominated for four Golden Globes, including Best Drama, Kiss of the Spider-Woman was the first time many people saw two men kiss onscreen in a mainstream film.
The Color Purple also served up other firsts: Whoopi Goldberg was the first Black woman to win a Best Actress – Drama Golden Globe, and audiences saw two women, in particular two Black women, kiss on screen in a major film production.

The groundbreaking scene was actually a very toned-down version of what fans of the book might have expected, as Spielberg explained to Entertainment Weekly.
“There were certain things in the [lesbian] relationship between Shug Avery and Celie that were very finely detailed in Alice’s book, that I didn’t feel we could get a [PG-13] rating,” he said. “And I was shy about it. In that sense, perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Shug and Celie because I did soften those. I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.”
Additionally, the two Golden Globe winners for Best Television Series — Murder, She Wrote in the drama category and The Golden Girls in the comedy or musical category — also defied gender norms, in terms of age recognition and a general acknowledgment of which female-driven stories were worth telling. The cult-like status of The Golden Girls among many millennial and Gen-Z fans proves that Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia’s stories are still among the most enjoyable and relatable to watch.