1974 – Musical or Comedy: American Graffiti
If ever there was a watershed movie George Lucas’s would top the list: American Graffiti went from un-releasable to becoming one of the benchmark movies of the decade, establishing George Lucas as a visionary to be reckoned with, and becaming a launching pad for more future movie stars than any film in history: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, MacKenzie Phillips, Bo Hopkins, Harrison Ford, Kathleen Quinlan, Kay Lenz, Suzanne Sommers, all of whom went on to notable careers. Lucas - who would, of course, follow it up with Star Wars- had a hard time interesting any studio in the project.