Happy Good Friday to everyone! Hopefully, you are all taking things easy on this statutory holiday. Of course, being a national holiday, I'm doing a special Reminiscings of Youth article today for Urban Contemporary Friday, and you might consider this a sequel or a follow-up to yesterday's ROY posting on that soundtrack from the hilarious "Airplane!" (1980).
Commenter Brian Mitchell and I were exchanging comments for that one earlier today and I realized one big interesting pop culture connection between one of the funniest movies ever made and a short-lived American sitcom that was out at about the same time. In fact, I'll lift a good chunk of my comment to explain things.
Speaking about coincidences regarding planes, I realized that "Airplane!" also had a fairly surprising connection with an American sitcom "Angie" which had a short run from 1979. Robert Hays (Ted Striker) had a co-starring role in that one next to the title character played by Donna Pescow who just happened to dance with John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever". Of course, there was the famous disco scene in "Airplane!" which was accompanied by "Stayin' Alive", the official or unofficial theme for "SNF". And to top it all off, Maureen McGovern who played the nun on "Airplane!" sang the theme song for "Angie".
Indeed, that is indeed McGovern's nun above trying to solace a couple of passengers and failing utterly. That may have been her first foray into acting after starting out in 1967 and being primarily known as a recording artist. She first hit the bright lights when her recording of "The Morning After", the theme song for another serious disaster movie, "The Poseidon Adventure" from 1972, had won her an Oscar. Ironically enough, and to extend the coincidence chain, Leslie Nielsen from "Airplane!" had played the captain of the doomed cruise liner.
According to her bio on Wikipedia, McGovern had still hit some lean times between then and the late 1970s. However, things started looking up with not only the "Airplane!" gig, but also with her recording of "Can You Read My Mind?", the love theme from Richard Donner's "Superman" earlier and then as I mentioned in the comment to Brian, her recording of the theme song for the sitcom "Angie" on ABC.
I did watch a lot of "Angie" during its time between early 1979 and late 1980 because I have to admit that I had a bit of a crush on Pescow, not knowing for many years that she had that pivotal role in "Saturday Night Fever". I also remember that McGovern had another hit in "Different Worlds", the theme song for "Angie" and it was quite popular on the radio as well as each time that an episode aired on the telly. And listening to it again after so long, those happy-go-lucky disco vibes had me swooning a lot. Strangely enough, I started getting memories of Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Sunshower" and "Mignonne" albums as well.
A single was released in June 1979 which hit No. 1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart while it reached No. 18 on the same organization's Top 100. Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox were the songwriters behind "Different Worlds". Considering the title, I would have thought the song could have been great for "Superman" but maybe it was a little too disco for the Man of Steel. 😁
Anyways, I'm not sure on which day "Different Worlds" was released but to see what was hitting the top of the charts at around that time, let's go with June 4th 1979.
1. Judy Ongg -- Miserarete （魅せられて）
2. Southern All Stars -- Itoshi no Ellie （いとしのエリー）
3. Godiego -- Beautiful Name
It seems like 1978~79 must have been a very busy time for Maureen McGovern.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that McGovern appreciated every single moment of those years. :)
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