SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

Abstract

While Disco music was already popular in 1977, the film Saturday Night Fever, released in December of that year, turned it into a mass cultural phenomenon. The film centers around the life of Tony Manero, a working class 19-year-old from Brooklyn who finds local stardom as a dancer at a neighborhood discotheque. The film made John Travolta, who played Manero, a superstar, and the soundtrack album, featuring music by the Bee Gees and other groups, became the best selling album of 1978. The vast commercial success of the film and album helped secure Disco’s place as one of the era’s most popular forms of music.