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
Earthquake (1974 film) San Fernando earthquake of February 1971. Director Mark Robson and Lang were intrigued by the idea of creating a disaster on film that would not be confined to an airliner, but rather take place over a large area. Producer Bernard Donnenfeld helped produce the film, but was uncredited. Budgeted at $7,000,000, "Earthquake" found itself in a race against the clock with the bigger-budgeted disaster film, "The Towering Inferno", which was being produced by Irwin Allen ("The Poseidon Adventure") and financed by two studios (20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., a motion picture first). Lang scored a coup when he was