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USA

1980

1/1 -

Sherry Lansing is appointed president at 20th Century-Fox, the first time that a woman has occupied such a position with a major studio. [MORE] [ADD}

3/1 -

Peter Yates' Breaking Away is awarded the best film award by the 35-member National Film Society of Film Critics.  Woody Allen's Manhattan and Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer are runners-up. [MORE] [ADD}

3/1 -

Alfred Hitchock learns from the British Consul that he has received a knighthood in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list. [MORE] [ADD}

1/2 -

A record admission price of $7.50 is charged for first-run screenings of Bob Guccione's $17 million film Caligula at the Penthouse East Theater in New York. [MORE] [ADD}

8/2 -

Paul Schrader's American Gigolo is released.   Richard Gere plays Julian Kay, a slick high-class gigolo who finds himself lured into a murder plot just as it seems he has found redemption with Lauren Hutton. [MORE] [ADD}

8/2 -

William Friedkin’s Cruising is released after a difficult shoot that encountered demonstrations from the gay community, and amidst pressure for its R rating to be replaced by an X rating.   Al Pacino stars as an undercover cop hunting a killer amongst the gay community. [MORE] [ADD}

17/2 -

Wise Blood, John Huston’s satirical look at obsessive religion, is released.   Adapted from Flannery O'Connor's novel, the film stars Brad Dourif, Harry Dean Stanton and Daniel Shor. [MORE] [ADD}

7/3 -

Coal Miner's Daughter, Michael Apted’s biopic of country music star Loretta Lynn, is released.    Sissy Spacek stars in the title role, fighting drug addiction and marital breakdown as her star rises.   Tommy Lee Jones co-stars as her husband, Dolittle, and Beverly D’Angelo is Patsy Cline. [MORE] [ADD}

11/3 -

Francis Ford Coppola acquires the Hollywood General Studios for $6.7 million after three months of negotiations.   He renames the studio Zoetrope, intending to make it a ‘complete, fully integrated film studio with the best features of the studios of the 1930s and 1940s.’ [MORE] [ADD}

Mar -

Polygram Pictures is formed. [MORE] [ADD}

14/4 -

Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer wins the Best Picture Award at this years Academy Awards ceremony. [MORE] [ADD}

29/4 -

British film director Alfred Hitchcock dies of renal failure at the age of 80 at his Bellagio Road home in Bel Air, where he had lived with his wife Alma since 1942. [MORE] [ADD}

21/5 -

The Empire Strikes Back, the second part of George Lucas’s space epic, is released.   Lucas relinquishes direction of the film to Irvin Kershner, while the special effects are created by Lucas’s own Industrial Light and Magic Co.   The saga takes a darker tone in this second episode, in which principal cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher reprise their roles from the original, and is considered by many to be the best in the series. [MORE] [ADD}

23/5 -

Stanley Kubrick’s stylish adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling horror novel The Shining is released.   Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a frustrated novelist who holes up as the winter caretaker in the isolated Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies with his family (Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd). [MORE] [ADD}

9/6 -

Richard Pryor is reported to be in critical condition after suffering serious burns when freebasing a mix of cocaine and ether. [MORE] [ADD}

17/6 -

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining grosses $7,763,426 at 747 cinemas across North America I in three days – the biggest opening day/weekend for any film in Warner Bros. history. [MORE] [ADD}

18/7 -

The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller’s first film since 1972, is released.   Lee Marvin, Robert Carradine and Mark Hamill star. [MORE] [ADD}

25/7 -

Brian de Palma’s slasher movie Dressed to Kill invokes the wrath of feminists upon its release who picket cinemas at which it is showing in protest against its misogynistic aspects and violence towards women.  Michael Caine, Nancy Allen and Angie Dickinson star. [MORE] [ADD}

17/9 -

Negotiations between unions and producers resume after a 12-day break. [MORE] [ADD}

19/9 -

Ordinary People, Robert Redford’s directorial debut, is released.   An adaptation of an unpublished novel by Judith Guest, the film stars Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland whose relationship is strained by the nervous breakdown of their son, Timothy Hutton. [MORE] [ADD}

19/9 -

Jonathan Demme’s Melvin and Howard is released.   The film is based on an allegedly true incident when Melvin Dummer gave a lift to a tramp on a Nevada highway who turned out to be eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.   Upon Hughes' death, Dummer produced a will naming him as the sole heir to Hughes’ billions.   Paul Le Mat stars as Melvin with Mary Steenburgen as his stripper wife and Jason Robards as Hughes. [MORE] [ADD}

26/9 -

Woody Allen’s $10 million budget Stardust Memories is released.   Charlotte Rampling Jessica Harper and Marie-Christine Barrault co-star with the funny man. [MORE] [ADD}

23/10 -

The Screen Actors Guild signs a new, three-year contract with film producers following one of the longest strikes Hollywood has known.   The contract reflects the importance to SAG’s members of ancillary rights to the video and cable television markets. [MORE] [ADD}

12/10 -

Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie) wins an American release through Francis Ford Coppola under the title Every Man for Himself (aka Slow Motion). [MORE] [ADD}

4/11 -

Former actor Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States.    Reagan’s last film was The Killers, made in 1964. [MORE] [ADD}

14/11 -

Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, a gritty biopic of former world middleweight champion Jake La Motta, is released.   Robert de Niro portrays the New York fighter from his youth to bloated middle age, piling on 55lbs in real life to do so.   Kathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci also star. [MORE] [ADD}

19/11 -

United Artists cut the running time of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate down from 225 minutes to 148 after devastating reviews from the critics.   Having exceeded its $11 million budget by $24 million, it is unlikely to recoup its losses and threatens to become the most expensive flop of all time. [MORE] [ADD}

31/12 -

Veteran film director Raoul Walsh dies at his home in Simi Valley, California, at the age of 93.  [MORE] [ADD}

– Pioneer introduces the Laser Disc player.    [MORE] [ADD}

– Tobacco group Philip Morris allegedly pays $42,000 for its Marlboro Cigarettes logo to appear 22 times in the forthcoming Superman II. [MORE] [ADD}

Other Films of Note

The Blues Brothers (John Landis) [MORE] [ADD}

Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) [MORE] [ADD}

The Elephant Man (David Lynch) [MORE] [ADD}

Fame (Alan Parker) [MORE] [ADD}

The Fog (John Carpenter) [MORE] [ADD}

Popeye (Robert Altman) [MORE] [ADD}