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
Steve McQueen filmography highest-grossing films of the year, marking a comeback for McQueen. The following year, he featured alongside Dustin Hoffman in the prison film "Papillon" playing Henri Charrière, a prisoner convicted of murder who makes an escape attempt with fellow convict Louis Dega (Hoffman). McQueen's performance earned him his fourth and final Golden Globe Award nomination in the Best Actor category. He then starred alongside Paul Newman as a SFFD chief in the disaster drama "The Towering Inferno" (1974). McQueen received $12 million for acting in the film, making him the highest-paid actor in the world up to that point. The film