Odd sentiments to me because, really, which actresses of the 70s were better than Dunaway? Fonda has certainly outlasted Faye, much as Hepburn outlasted Davis. But Fonda, who had been so delicious in the 60s, was so uptight on screen in the 70s; chasing after Redgrave on who could be the most pretentious activist-actress. I mean, who else was there the 70s -- Mia Farrow?
Whose career was worse than Dunaway's after the 70s?... But I agree she was one of the best in the 70s because she made two films which were considered instant classics,
Network and
Chinatown.
Three Days of the Condor is excellent too.
Eyes of Laura Mars isn't good but entertaining and a bit campy. However there was also a series of failures between 1979 and 1984:
The Champ, The First Deadly Sin, Mommie Dearest, The Wicked Lady, Ordeal By Innocence and
Supergirl. That's a lot and it didn't start with
Mommie Dearest. With
Barfly in 1987 she begun a second career in independent or foreign productions, occasionally good as
Don Juan de Marco or
The Rules of Attraction but mostly uninteresting. As good as she was in
Chinatown where she had at least some warmth I found her often too distant or cold as a person which was perfect for
Network though.
She appeared in a pretty good episode of Columbo in the 1990s which was one of the better instalments of the rebooted series.
I liked that too. Indeed one of the better episodes and one in which she showed a gentler side.
Dunaway and Barbra Streisand were the only two who were consistently stars through the whole decade; Fonda barely worked from 1972 to 1977, Redgrave took too many smaller character parts, Glenda Jackson kind of petered out over halfway through, Mia Farrow got lost in the shuffle, I guess you could make a claim for Ellen Burstyn or Diane Keaton (even if she was mostly tied to Woody Allen and Godfather films at the time). Marsha mason had that run of successful films written by her husband late in the decade.
There were also Jill Clayburgh and Liv Ullman for arthouse films. Catherine Deneuve was a star not just in France from the 1960s until recently but especially in the 70s.
But you all forgot the biggest female star of the 1970s: Mrs. SHEILA ALLEN! Not the British actress but the one who appeared in everything her husband, producer and director Irvin Allen filmed. Starting in his 1960s schlocky TV series
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and
Land of the Giants as Sheila Mathews she was a living casting couch for him I guess. She was Allen's muse and the 1970s disaster movies are not imaginable without her:
The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno (
as "the mayor’s way-too-many-close-ups-for-the-size-of-her-role wife")
When Time Ran Out...
If you think about how would Miss Piggy dress as Lana Turner think of 1970's goddess Sheila Mathews Allen (1929-2013) in Towering Inferno. Perfection!
Sheila also appeared in one episode of
Falcon Crest as "Michael's Secretary" (boring Ranson not hot Sharpe) but at that point Dunaway had to fight Supergirl - so who came out as the winner?
F.l.t.r: Jennifer Jones (trying to look like Liz Taylor in 1981) , Faye Dunaway knows her dress can't compete with the pink tornado that fits Sheila Allen.
And no, I don't like Ghostbusters, Back To The Future and E.T.
I'd rather watch SUPERGIRL and THE LONELY LADY. At least they're honestly bad.
I think
Ghostbusters and
Supergirl are both boring but the FX in the latter are worse. I love
E.T. and
The Lonely Lady. Pia Zadora's award speech scene should be in the Oscar clip reels with other masterpieces as Henry Fonda in
Grapes of Wrath, Bette Davis in
All About Eve or Divine in
Polyester. I don't know why the haters doubted Zadora's Golden Globe win for another movie. She was great in
Butterfly where her acting impressed Orson Welles. Can anyone imagine Meryl Streep doing a better job than Zadora did with that part in
Lonely Lady? No! That was a powerful
manifesto ("adapted from
Harold Robbins' 1976 novel of the same name, believed to have been based on Robbins' memories of
Jacqueline Susann") before the hashtag for metoo was invented.