37 Iconic Pictures That Show What The West Coast Looked Like In The '70s

Many critics consider the 1970s a golden era of socially conscious filmmaking after the studio system in Hollywood broke down and restrictions on violence, obscenity, and sexual content loosed.

In this "New Hollywood" environment, innovative directors, including Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Barbara Kopple, and Francis Ford Coppola, took advantage of their newfound freedom to create what they believed to be important films, such as Harlan County, USA; Network; The French Connection; Mean Streets; The Godfather; Chinatown, and All the President’s Men.

However, the popular appeal of such projects sometimes paled beside the blockbusters that also emerged in the 1970s. Mass marketing and computer-generated special effects created worldwide fan bases for movies like Star Wars, Jaws, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, and an entire genre known as “disaster films,” including The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.

In addition to popular fare like Happy Days, Eight Is Enough, and prime-time soap operas such as Dallas, television also found an audience for topical shows that addressed relevant social and political issues—a trend that would continue as the emergence of cable TV and VCRs threatened once-dominant broadcast networks.

Though the popularity of personal computers and the internet was still a distant fantasy, much of the modern technology we now take for granted emerged in the 1970s.

The popular video game Pong, for example, came out in 1972, with controls and graphics that now seem incredibly primitive.

The first ATM was introduced to Americans in September 1969 and by 1971, the machines were able to perform multiple functions, such as providing account balances and dispensing cash. (Within the decade they would be common worldwide.)

Digital memory storage was revolutionized during the 1970s when the floppy disc shrunk to a 5-1/4” format, and portable calculators and wristwatches were also radically redesigned.

As you can see from many of these pictures, the fashion of the 1970s put the female body on show like never before. Clothes were soft and clingy and accentuated the figure in its natural form, with much of it requiring little to no structure from undergarments. Pants, suits, and—by the end of the decade—designer denim all became fully acceptable for just about any situation.

Though bold, 1970s fashion also had a featherweight touch. Metallics reigned but were subtle in Lurex and soft coppery tones; color was ever present but leaned toward sherbert hues—no neon just yet.

It was an era of easy-ons and easy-offs for the disco and jumbo jet. In Vogue’s January 1970 issue, an article looked ahead at the new era, decreeing the fashionable verdict: “Shawls, capes, ponchos—anything that can be wrapped, strapped, or rolled around the body is home free in every way.”