75th Golden Globe Awards

It was a new decade and a new Hollywood. 1970 was the year when Five Easy Pieces won the New York Critics Award as the best film of the year, and the Hollywood Foreign Press chose an irreverent comedy from an unknown director as the year’s best musical or comedy.

With the line: "Love means never having to say you're sorry”, voted as the #13 all-time movie quote by the American Film Institute, Love Story conquered the world and made even President Nixon weep like a baby. With its five Golden Globes awards out of seven nominations, Arthur Hiller's film marked a change of pace in the drama section, dominated in the previous years by sumptuous historical dramas.

Stanley Kramer’s win for Best Comedy or Musical was neither a critical nor box office success, even though it was based on a best-selling novel.  But the award served as a fitting close to a glorious career of one of Hollywood’s most creative producers.

After the victory of The Lion in Winter in 1968, once again a British historical drama about the king and his kingdom, Anne of the Thousand Days, was a big winner, taking four Golden Globes out of seven nominations. This time around the focus is on Henry VIII of England (Richard Burton) at odds with his wife, Catherine of Aragon (Irene Papas), who has failed to produce a male heir; he discards her in favor of the young and beautiful Anne Boleyn (French actress Geneviève Bujold).

It was a banner year for movies: Rosemary’s Baby, Planet of the Apes, The Lion in Winter, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Faces, Closely Watched Trains, The Odd Couple, Funny Girl, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Night of the Living Dead,  Stolen Kisses, Teorema, The Bride Wore Black, Once Upon a Time in the West, Bullit, Yellow Submarine and The Thomas Crown Affair: All movies that have stood the test if time. And the surprising winner? Oliver!,.

Period pictures featuring real historical characters always enjoyed great popularity, but in the 1960s they literally triumphed at the movies. It is the case of The Lion in Winter, winner of two Golden Globes (Best Drama and Best Actor, Peter O'Toole once more!), out of seven nominations.

Dustin Hoffman has called this Golden Globe winner for best comedy or musical, if not the best film he ever made, certainly the best directed. And in fact, he owes his career to director Mike Nichols, who cast him to play a role which was described as an all-American pretty boy in the novel on which it was based, a role which might’ve gone to Robert Redford.

1968 was Sidney Poitier’s big year: he was the protagonist of two films that made the cinematic history and were both nominated by the HFPA for Golden Globes: In Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Never black and white relations in America were dissected and analyzed as in that season, thanks to those two great films, and of course to the social and political environment, ready for a serious discussion.

Although it was based on a novel by Nathaniel Benchley, the son of famed humorist Robert, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! had the imprint of William Rose. Rose was an American screenwriter who volunteered to join the war effort in England long before Pearl Harbor.

As our valiant guides Jean-Paul Chaillet and Juliette Michaud point out, the iconic image of this decade, may well be that of Marilyn Monroe at the Club del Mar in Santa Monica, radiant in a tight gown with plunging neckline, all smiles as she holds her Henrietta Award statuette, a since-discontinued award she won as the “World Film Favorite” at the 11th Golden Globes. This was also the decade of Grace Kelly (Mogambo) and Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday) while the ranks of the leading men were being filled by a new generation of actors honed at the Actors Studio: Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marlon Brando.