Saturday Night Fever (1977) was as much an event as a motion picture. It transcended its own astounding popularity and served to define the popular culture of a generation. John Travolta (1954–) became a major movie star playing Tony Manero, a tough but likable nineteen-year-old Italian American street kid from the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, New York. By day, Tony is yet another neighborhood minimum-wage slave, toiling as a clerk in a paint store. By night, he comes alive. He is the star attraction at the 2001 Odyssey, a neighborhood discotheque (dance club), where his slick moves on the dance floor to a pulsating disco (see entry under 1970s—Music in volume 4) beat have earned him respect. At its core, Saturday Night Fever is a coming-of-age story as Tony slowly realizes that the boundaries of his future are way beyond Bay Ridge.

Travolta's star was born...