“We’ve got a fire here!”
40 years ago Irwin Allen’s classic “The Towering Inferno” came to NBC for the first time on television.
The Titanic of a great big multi-storied building is given its inaugural opening, only for a fire to break out, and people be trapped in high rise floors without a means of escape.
It has an all-star cast:
Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlin, Robert Wagner, Susan Blakely, OJ Simpson, and Robert Vaughn. As in “The Poseidon Adventure”: Who will survive?
The 1974 disaster epic was expanded from its theatrical running time of 165 minutes by adding about 20 minutes worth of footage not seen in the original release. It was presented over two nights in two 2-hour blocks on Sunday 2/17/80 (following the premiere of Walt Disney Productions’ “Escape To Witch Mountain”), and the conclusion on Monday 2/18/80. In a move that was VERY rare at the time the film was repeated only 3 months later in May of 1980, again in two parts.
Usually they would wait at least a year for the next broadcast, or much more, but “The Towering Inferno” got an almost immediate repeat just 3 months later, and naturally ALSO in a sweeps month (November, February and May were considered sweeps months by the networks back then, if they still are). That second showing was on Friday 5/2/80 and Saturday 5/3/80. It would have its third, and final, network showing on Sunday 3/21/82 and Monday 3/22/82, all three showings being in two parts, unlike some other films that were shown in two parts that would later get showings in a 3-hour edited time-slot.
“The Towering Inferno” is only the second of Irwin Allen’s disaster films, but only it and “The Poseidon Adventure” can be called classics, since the next film “The Swarm” in 1978 (which premiered on Tuesday of the previous week on NBC on 2/12/80 in a three hour broadcast, also expanded from 116 minutes to 144 minutes for its first TV presentation) would start the funeral for the disaster film.
Those first two are all-time all-star classics.