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The History of American Cinema: 1969

July - December

8/7 -

The Kinney National Service conglomerate acquires Warner Bros-Seven Arts, whose name is changed to Warner Communications. [ADD]

14/7 -

Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s Easy Rider is released after winning the Best director award at Cannes earlier in the year. They co-star as hippie bikers on a quest to find the real America. Jack Nicholson appears as a drunken lawyer who joins them on the road. [ADD]

25/7 -

Alf Silliman Jr’s 3D soft-core porn film The Stewardesses is released. The $100,000 budget film grosses between $25 and $30 million, making it one of the most profitable films ever made. [ADD]

28/7 -

MGM challenge Kirk Kerkorian’s attempt to purchase $15 million of the company shares. The purchase is financed by Transamerica, which already owns United Artists. [ADD]

30/7 -

John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy is released. Jon Voight stars as a country boy who comes to New York to become a stud, but falls in with Dustin Hoffman’s seedy Ratso Rizzo. The film receives an X rating for its nudity and sexual content. [ADD]

8/8 -

Roman Polanski’s actress wife, Sharon Tate, is murdered in her home in the Hollywood Hills by Charles Manson and his followers. Tate’s guests, producer Voyteck Freykowsky, his girlfriend Abigail Folger and hair stylist Jan Sebring are also killed. Polanski is in England preparing a film. [ADD]

10/8 -

Despite his attempt to buy MGM shares with funding from Transamerica being foiled in the courts, Kirk Kerkorian acquires 24% of MGM for $80 million through alternative sources of finance. He then sells $60 million worth. [ADD]

15/8 -

Warner Bros are at Yasker’s Farm near the upstate New York town of Woodstock to film the rock concert taking place there. [ADD]

18/9 -

Paul Mazursky’s sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is released. The film stars Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon, Robert Culp and Natalie Wood. [ADD]

23/9 -

George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is released. Paul Newman and Robert Redford star as the likeable villains in this comedy-western, while Katharine Ross provides the love interest. [ADD]

29/9 -

Jerry Lewis holds a press conference in New York to announce the formation of his new chain of cinemas in association with Network Cinema Corp. His aim is to open 750 cinemas by 1974. [ADD]

14/11 -

Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas found American Zoetrope "to work with the most talented youngsters in all aspects of the cinema, using the latest in technology." [ADD]

18/11 -

Elia Kazan's adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement, starring Kirk Douglas, Deborah Kerr and Faye Dunaway, is released. It receives a blasting from the critics. [ADD]

Nov -

The Technicolor Corporation of America introduces a new method of using videotape with 2,000 scan lines for the production of feature films. [ADD]

16/12 -

Gene Kelly’s $24 million adaptation of the stage musical Hello Dolly! is released. Barbra Streisand stars as the matchmaker in search of a rich husband (Walter Matthau). [ADD]

22/12 -

Director Josef von Sternberg dies of a heart attack in a Hollywood hospital at the age of 75. [ADD]

– Warner Bros sell their pre-1948 film library to United Artists. [ADD]

– 20^th Century-Fox make a loss of $36.8 million in 1969. [ADD]

– Durwood Theatres opens the first six-screen multiplex cinema and changes its name to American Multi-Cinema (AMC). [ADD]

– The Parade’s Gone By, Kevin Brownlow’s book about the silent movies, is published  [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 1969

Alice’s Restaurant (Arthur Penn) [ADD]

Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan) [ADD]

The Reivers (Mark Rydell) [ADD]

The Sterile Cuckoo (Alan J. Pakula) [ADD]

Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse) [ADD]

Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen) [ADD]

Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (Abraham Polonsky) [ADD]

Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock) [ADD]

True Grit (Henry Hathaway) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1969