1970s in film was far less successful. "The Towering Inferno" teamed Steve McQueen and Paul Newman against a fire in a San Francisco skyscraper. The film cost a whopping $14 million to produce (expensive for its time), and won Academy Awards for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Original Song. The same year, the epic "Earthquake" featured questionable effects (camera shake and models) to achieve a destructive 9.9 earthquake in Los Angeles. Despite this, the film was one of the most successful of its time, earning $80 million at box office. By the late 1970s, the novelty had worn off and the disasters had
Faye Dunaway She played the lead role, which was for her "like a dream come true. As with Bonnie, I knew the territory well. Maggie (her character) was a completely wounded soul, a girl who had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks." She next played Paul Newman's girlfriend who is trapped in a burning skyscraper along with several hundred other people in the all-star disaster epic, "The Towering Inferno" (1974). The film became the highest-grossing film of the year, further cementing Dunaway as a top actress in Hollywood. Also in 1974, Dunaway married Peter Wolf, who was the lead