Ahmet Ertegun Movies

While professional soccer is still struggling to find a firm foothold in the United States, in the 1970s the North American Soccer League marked the brave first attempt to introduce the game to American sports fans. While most teams had only limited success at best, one did manage to break through to genuine mainstream popularity -- the New York Cosmos. The brainchild of Steve Ross (a passionate soccer fan who was also a major executive at Warner Communications) and Ahmet Ertegun and Nesuhi Ertegun (the founders of Atlantic Records), the Cosmos got off to a rocky start in 1971 (no one was especially happy with the playing field at Randall's Island, and some rowdy fans were known to throw broken glass onto the grass), but things changed in 1975 when the world's most celebrated soccer star, the Brazilian champion Pele, signed with the Cosmos for a five-million-dollar payday. With the arrival of Pele, the Cosmos became a hit with both fans and the media, and the players became the toast of the town, earning their own private table at Studio 54. A number of other international soccer stars were soon lured to the Cosmos, including Franz Beckenbauer, Rodney Marsh, and Carlos Alberto, but with the turn of the decade, the team began losing favor with fans and folded in 1985. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos is a documentary by Paul Crowder and John Dower that looks at the team's remarkable history and includes interviews with many of the Cosmos' star players (with the notable exception of Pele, who declined to participate). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In the early days of rock & roll in the '50s, while the public knew the voices and faces of the folks who snag the tunes, it was often the people behind the scenes who truly held the talent that made a song a hit, and as the sounds of "teenage music" took over the charts, a new breed of young songwriters and producers became giants in the industry. Hit Makers: The Teens Who Stole Pop Music tells the story of the kids (mostly Jewish, mostly from Brooklyn) who wrote the tunes and brainstormed the sessions for some of the biggest hits of the era out of offices in New York City's Brill Building, where music publishing mogul Don Kirschner had the likes of Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and Neil Sedaka under contract. Beginning with the start of the rock era and ending with the rise of hard rock and singer/songwriters at the dawn of the '70s, Hit Makers tells the story of some of the truly unsung heroes of American popular music, complete with interviews from the songwriters and producers, as well as the performers who helped bring their great songs to life. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide