From Chinatown and Nixon’s resignation to Hank Aaron and Happy Days, many world changers made their mark 50 years ago. Here are 50 of them

By Joel Stein

BIG FLICKS

Blazing Saddles

Mel Brooks directed and cowrote both this (three Oscar nominations, highest box office of the year) and Young Frankenstein (two Oscar nominations, fourth-highest box office).

Texas Chain Saw Massacre
This low-budget horror movie, which grossed more than $30 million, introduced audiences to the obvious idea that power tools are dangerous. Night Court tie-in: The narration is voiced by a very young John Larroquette.

The Lords of Flatbush
This 1950s-set film helped launch costars Sly Stallone and Henry Winkler, who would go on to play Fonzie—a much cooler name than the one he had in this movie: Butchey Weinstein.

Chinatown
In Robert Towne’s original script, Faye Dunaway’s character isn’t killed. But director Roman Polanski wasn’t a fan of anything close to a happy ending.

Foxy Brown
When Inga DeCarlo Fung Marchand was 15 and looking for her rapper name, she asked Pam Grier if she could use her character’s name from this Blaxploitation film. Unlike Grier in the film, she has not found success through lethal vengeance.

ON THE PLAYLIST

“Waterloo” by ABBA
This song became huge after ABBA sang it to win Eurovision, beating Olivia Newton-John, who came in fourth place. The next year’s winner was “Ding-a-Dong,” by Dutch group Teach-In.

Kiss’ debut album
Peter Criss was the only member of the group who hired a makeup artist for the photo shoot of the cover. Everyone else insisted on doing it himself.

“Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie
He wrote the song for an unmade musical about Ziggy Stardust; it was the last single Bowie did in his distinctive glam rock style.

“Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” by Barry White
A fan of The Simpsons, White recorded a version of this song for the 1993 episode “Whacking Day,” in which he appears as a guest who helps save the snakes that are normally killed during this Springfield holiday. Just trust me: It totally makes sense in the show.

John Denver
He had two songs hit number 1 on the charts that year (“Sunshine on My Shoulders” and “Annie’s Song”). He was also named poet laureate of Colorado and acted on an episode of the police show McCloud. It would be another five years until the Muppets saw his hair, realized he was one of them and invited him on their show.

TV DEBUTS

Little House on the Prairie
In addition to burnishing Michael Landon’s career and launching that of Melissa Gilbert, the show in 1981 featured Jason Bateman, who arrived to play an orphan adopted by the Ingalls family.

Chico and the Man
Originally the show was to star Cheech and Chong. When that didn’t work out, the creator found a comedian named Freddie Prinze.

Good Times
In this Maude spin-off, teenager J.J. was played by 26-year-old comedian Jimmie Walker, who was only eight years younger than John Amos, who played his dad on the Norman Lear sitcom.

Happy Days
The sitcom, starring Ron Howard, ran for 11 seasons on ABC. It originally premiered on the anthology series Love, American Style. When creator Garry Marshall’s kid got into aliens after Star Wars, Marshall wrote a visitor from outer space into the show. He cast Robin Williams, then spun that story into the hit sitcom Mork & Mindy.

Tony Orlando and Dawn
When divorce ended The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, CBS replaced it with this show. Tony Orlando never divorced Dawn, though, since it was not a person but the name of his group.

The Rockford Files
The show was co-created by Stephen J. Cannell, who also made The A-Team, 21 Jump Street and The Commish, among others.

PRODUCTS WE STILL LOVE

Supermarket barcodes
The first item scanned, a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit, is in the Smithsonian, but as a facsimile—a shame, as it would likely still be fresh.

Meow Mix
Its wildly popular—and somewhat annoying—ad jingle consists solely of the word “meow.” Some say the CIA plays it on repeat to wear down prisoners.

Volkswagen Golf
Though it was called the Rabbit when first sold here, the phrase “multiplying like golfs” never caught on.

HISTORY WAS MADE

Richard Nixon’s resignation
In the first Gallup poll after Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, the new president’s approval ratings plummeted from 71 percent to 50.

Skylab
Three American astronauts returned after 84 days in the U.S. space station. When Skylab fell to Earth five years later, NASA was unsure where the debris would land. People bought bull’s-eye T-shirts and cans of “Skylab repellent.” A hotel in North Carolina painted a target on its roof and threw a poolside disco party.

Jerry Springer
Elected to the Cincinnati City Council at 27, Springer resigned after being caught writing a check to a prostitute—a scandal tailor-made for the Jerry Springer Show.

Ted Bundy
He killed at least 11 women in Washington and Utah that year. Earlier, he had been on Seattle’s Crime Prevention Advisory Commission.

Oscars streaker
Cohost David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor when he was rudely interrupted by Robert Opel. Niven’s ad-lib about Opel’s “shortcomings” got big laughs.

Patty Hearst’s kidnapping

The Symbionese Liberation Army, the far-left terrorist group that abducted William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter, took its name from the word “symbiosis” to encompass its plan to unify all progressive causes.

BOOKS

The Power Broker by Robert Caro
Though the biography of Robert Moses is almost 1,300 pages, Caro had cut it by 350,000 words.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Regina King won an Oscar for her role in the 2018 film version of Baldwin’s fifth novel.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Phil Jackson, William Shatner and Tim Allen all said this was the book that most affected them. The bike Pirsig maintained is now in the Smithsonian.

Jaws by Peter Benchley
Benchley, a struggling journalist, got only $1,000 for the first 100 pages, so he wrote the rest in a converted turkey coop. We are all lucky this isn’t a book about being attacked by a wild turkey.

All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
The authors (and their Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee) kept Deep Throat’s identity hidden for 30 years. Their secret source was FBI associate director W. Mark Felt.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
In the novel, le Carré popularized the spy term “mole” and invented others, like “honey trap,” which then continued as real terms used in the espionage community, as in “That honey trap has a mole in the strangest place.”

CULTURE-SHAPING LAUNCHES

High Times
The magazine on all things marijuana was a truly blazing success.

Dungeons & Dragons
Nerd alert! Players include Stephen Colbert, Vin Diesel, Patton Oswalt, Drew Barrymore, Aubrey Plaza and Elon Musk.

Great Adventure
Three years after a Warner Brothers scion built this amusement park in New Jersey, it was bought by Texas’ Six Flags. (The “six flags” are of the nations that once governed Texas.)

People
The magazine was a spin-off of Time magazine’s celebrity-focused People page, which was written in the late 1990s by ... yours truly, Joel Stein!

Tommy John surgery
Following his innovative ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, John pitched until he was the oldest player in the league, tying the record for most seasons in the game. At least one in four major league pitchers now has the surgery.

SPORTS

Rumble in the Jungle is most-watched sporting event
Muhammad Ali debuted his rope-a-dope tactic in Zaire to beat the favored George Foreman by knockout.

Miami Dolphins win second of back-to-back Super Bowls
Larry Csonka carried the ball 33 times, ensuring that we all actually learned to pronounce his name.

Evel Knievel tries to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho
He does not succeed (though he survives). In 2016, stuntman Eddie Braun makes the jump successfully in a replica of the rocket Knievel used.

Lou Brock breaks season record for stolen bases
He also makes the umbrella hat, the Brockabrella, a hit.

Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s home run record
After ending the 1973 baseball season one homer shy of Ruth’s lifetime record, Aaron received so many racist death threats that The Atlanta Constitution pre-wrote his obituary. Undaunted, he finished the job the following year, tying and then surpassing Ruth.

Frank Robinson becomes MLB’s first Black manager
In his very first at bat as Cleveland’s player-manager, he hit a home run.

BEGINNINGS

Jimmy Fallon
As a kid, he and his sister, Gloria, would act out Saturday Night Live sketches with friends.

Amy Adams
An Army brat, she was born to American parents in Vicenza, Italy. Her mom was a semiprofessional bodybuilder; her dad was a nightclub singer.

Mahershala Ali
His mom and maternal grandmother were Baptist ministers; he converted to Islam. His father won $2,500 dancing on Soul Train.

Leonardo DiCaprio
When he was 1, his parents separated. They moved next door to each other in Los Angeles to raise him.

ENDINGS

Monty Python’s Flying Circus
As the show ended in the U.K., PBS started airing it here, in the land of lumberjacks.

Duke Ellington
His son, Mercer, continued to lead the orchestra until he died in 1996. The group won a Grammy in 1988.

Mama Cass Elliot
Born Ellen Naomi Cohen, the singer from the Mamas & the Papas died, at 32, in musician Harry Nilsson’s apartment.

Ed Sullivan
His weekly variety show, which debuted in 1948, had been canceled three years earlier as part of CBS’s “rural purge.”

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