ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the years between 1962 and 1980 are commonly understood as a period when, with few notable exceptions, the alcoholic stood out in the cold. In this respect the decades of the 1960s and 1970s can be regarded as an interregnum, or a time between filmic reigns when a rupture in Hollywood's treatment of drinking and the alcoholic occurred. Alcohol (and drugs, always equivocal spirits; Gilmore, 1987) became even more so during this time period. The chapter analyzes five films that reproduce components of the "classic" image of the alcoholic: Fat City (1972), Lady Sings the Blues (1973), A Woman under the Influence (1974), W. C. Fields and the author (1976), and A Star Is Born (1976). These five films barely capture the variety of ways alcoholics, alcoholism, and drunkenness was treated in the 1960–1980 period. However, they do reveal how variants on the preclassic and "classic" paradigm prevailed.
