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If anyone wonders what made John Travolta a superstar, all you have to do is watch his early films, but especially writer/director James Bridges’ 1980 film Urban Cowboy. Sure, it’s a silly, cheap romantic melodrama, but after Travolta played two very similar characters in the blockbusters Saturday Night Fever and Grease, Urban Cowboy provided him with the role of Bud Davis. Bud is a good ol’ Texas country boy who travels to Houston to work in the oil fields, and falls in love at Gilley’s nightclub—the biggest honky tonk in the world. Urban Cowboy made Travolta a Country-Western cross-over star and made thousands want to hang out in country bars, learn to dance two-step and ride a mechanical bull.
Travolta’s love interest in the film is a simple country gal, Sissy (played with great passion by Debra Winger), who comes off initially as kind of tough; but no sooner than a few days after meeting at Gilley’s, Bud and Sissy are wed and settled in their new trailer court home.
Conflict arises when Bud learns to master a mechanical bull bar ride and Sissy thinks she can do it as well. Bud forbids Sissy from showing off on the ride and when Wes Hightower (Scott Glenn), a menacing tattooed ex-con offers to teach Sissy riding techniques, Bud becomes livid and threatens to seek companionship with a rich city gal named Pam, who comes to Gilley’s looking to bed herself a “real cowboy”. Petty jealousy, broken hearts, tears in the beer melodrama ensues, with lots of good country tunes supplied by the Charlie Daniels Band, Mickey Gilley, Bonnie Raitt, many who perform right on Gilley’s stage.
Urban Cowboy was an early ‘80s cultural phenomenon; it did for country-Western music what Saturday Night Fever did for disco in the ‘70s.
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