Saturday Night Fever gets its world premiere and launches a musical juggernaut
In a 2008 interview on BBC Radio 4 Robin Gibb confessed to making it through only the first 30 minutes of the world premiere and to never having seen the rest of the picture in the decades that followed.Millions of Americans did however make it through the film that made a movie star out of 23-year-old John Travolta and propelled the already famous Mr.Gibb along with his brothers Maurice and Barry to a level of superstardom rarely achieved before or since.
The film of course was Saturday Night Fever a pop-cultural juggernaut that had its world premiere at Manns Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on this day in 1977.Well-cast well-acted and well-directed Saturday Night Fever earned positive reviews from many critics including the late Gene Siskel who called it his favorite film ever.But whatever its other cinematic merits even the films strongest proponents would agree that it was the pulsing disco soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever that made it a work of lasting historical significance.
From its iconic opening sequence featuring John Travolta strutting down a Bay Ridge Brooklyn sidewalk to the tune of the Bee Gees Stayin Alive to its unforgettable dance numbers set in the fictional 2001 Odyssey discotheque the music complemented the action in Saturday Night Fever as perfectly as if it were written for the movie even though most of it wasnt.In fact other than Stayin Alive and Night Fever every song that appeared in Saturday Night Fever had been written recorded and in some cases released before the film ever went into production.Among those songs were The Trammps Disco Inferno (1976) KC and the Sunshine Bands Boogie Shoes (1975) Walter Murphys A Fifth of Beethoven (1976) and the Bee Gees own You Should Be Dancin (1976).
Two songs the Bee Gees wrote shortly before hearing about Saturday Night FeverIf I Cant Have You and How Deep Is Your Lovewould be among the four 1 pop hits launched by the movies landmark soundtrack album.How Deep Is Your Love was the debut single from the album released fully a month before the movie itself and hitting 1 on the Billboard pop chart just a week after the movies opening.This now-familiar approach to marketing a movie through its soundtrack and vice versa was highly innovative at the time.
Indeed the promotional synergy between the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and movie is widely credited with helping to revolutionize both movie and music marketing.
