The Eighties Online

1981 was another banner year at the movies. Many favorite stars from the past were making movies and many great new actors were appearing on the scene.

Some of the little known actors of 1981, such as Denzel Washington, have gone to become “Mega Stars”

Here’s a list of the top 25 box office stars of 1981, some of the top movies of 1981, and promising new actors from that year.

“On Golden Pond” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” are the two movies from 1981 that should be most remembered 27 years later.

So if you’re looking for a movie to rent or download, the movies and stars listed below can be a good place to find one you might have missed or would like to see again.

Top 25 Box Office Stars of 1981

1. Burt Reynolds

“The Cannonball Run”

“Sharkey’s Machine”

2. Clint Eastwood

3. Dudley Moore

“Arthur”

4. Dolly Parton

5. Jane Fonda

“Rollover” Co-Starring Kris Kristofferson

Co Starred in “On Golden Pond” with Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn

6. Harrison Ford

“Raiders of the Lost Ark”

7. Alan Alda

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The 80s decade started off with some movies that have really stood the test of time.

The first year of the 80s, 1980, saw several promising actors that are still going strong well into the 21st century.

The Star Wars franchise was going strong in 1980. And with the release of Empire Strike Back in 1980, Star Wars and the action figures and other merchandise were officially pop-culture.

1980 was a pretty good year at the box office.

The 1980 Academy for Best Film went to “Ordinary People” starring Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and a very young Timothy Hutton.

Robert DeNiro won the Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1980 boxing drama, “Raging Bull”

The Academy Award for Best Actress went to Sissy Spacek for “Coal Miner’s Daughter”

And the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor was awarded to Timothy Hutton for “Ordinary People”

Mary Steenburgen won the Best Supporting Actress award for “Melvin and Howard”

The Top 25 Box Office Stars of 1980 - As Ranked by John Willis Screen World 1981

1. Burt Reynolds

“Smokey and the Bandit II”

“Rough Cut”

2. Robert Redford

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Why would anyone want to murder John Lennon? I don’t have an answer for that. It is tragic that we lost such an artist and human being as John Lennon.

The last day in John Lennon’s short, prolific life was like a death in the family for more than Lennon’s wife and son, Julian.

John Lennon’s murder was, is, and always will be a great loss. When John Lennon was assassinated on Dec 8, 1980, many people, old enough to remember, would recall today exactly where they were, who they were with and what they were doing when they heard John Lennon was killed.

It is interesting to speculate, as a music lover, how much wonderful music Lennon would still be making today.

I listened to the Beatles as early as 1972. I remember spinning “hand me down” vinyl LP’s on my plastic phonograph. I was blessed with copies of The Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour” and the 1966 masterpiece, “Rubber Soul”. They were well played and scratched, but they sounded awesome.

Paul McCartney was going strong in the 1980s, recording hit singles with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, as well as recording several solo hit singles. I’m sure he missed his songwriting partner and childhood friend. And still does.

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It was the beginning of the New World the beginning of the information age. Perhaps never had the mood of a decade reversed itself so totally. The 1980s began with the worst U.S. inflation in 60 years in the deepening dread of nuclear annihilation.

As the 1980s came to an end inflation was making a last and unsuccessful assault on an economy that had found new resources, the Berlin wall was tumbling down, and the Soviet empire was dissolving.

The Cold War was over and the West won!

Ronald Reagan reversed the direction of government policy recasting social programs and cutting taxes. Unmatched by spending reductions, however, those cuts and deficits soaring to unheard-of highs, and the double-digit inflation of 1980 was cured only by double-digit unemployment in 1982.

The economy revived, but an outside share of the benefits seemed to flow to Wall Street. Mergers proliferated wildly, mostly, it seemed, for the enrichment of a few financial manipulators.

But unlike in the irrationally exuberant 1920s, disaster did not strike as it did in the depression that started in 1929. Those stocks fell even faster on October 19, 1987, than the hat in 1929, they bounced back higher than ever, setting the stage for the roaring bull market of the 90s. Something fundamental had happened to the boom and bust cycle of the 20th century.

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