You probably recognize the music from The Godfather; both the film and its music were huge hits in the 1970s.
Having films with Oscar-winning soundtracks isn't a big thing; ever since the Academy Awards started, we've had four or five annual nominees worthy of an award … but it's quite a different thing to have a piece of music from a film make it in the hit parade — a big hit song or instrumental that everyone listens to on the radio.
Throughout the decades there's a big song here or there that is heard widely in broadcast media: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", "Singin' in the Rain", Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" from Modern Times, "Moonglow" from Picnic and a bunch of others.
But it seems the 1960s and '70s in particular, as far as my memory is concerned, had a lot of these big hits that you would hear on the radio all the time: The Godfather; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Born to be Wild; Goldfinger, Around the World in 80 days.
One of the big hits that's almost become a standard in the American jazz repertoire, isn't' even from an American movie. It's from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg), with a score by Michel Legrand. It's starred Catherine Deneuve, and technically it was more of an opera than a typical movie because the dialogue was sung rather than spoken.
The big hit from that 1964 movie is still sung today; it's "I Will Wait for You" (originally titled in French, Je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi) with music and lyrics by Michel Legrand.
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