HOLLYWOOD - The year that was.

Like all years, it was a year when Hollywood was both a mirror and a molder of morals and mores. And it was the year film makers turned on to brutal sex via such productions as 9 1/2 Weeks and Blue Velvet.

Television discussed and dramatized sexual themes with a new - sometimes startling - level of sophistication.

It was the year that was. It was the year of the Meese Commission report on pornography and the banning of Playboy, Penthouse and Rolling Stone from such chains as 7-Eleven, K mart and Walgreens. It was also the year recordings by Madonna, Prince and Marvin Gaye were offered as evidence of porn rock in Maryland Senate hearings on a bill making sale of "obscene" recordings to minors a crime.

It was the year movie audiences turned off to violence . . . when Sylvester Stallone's Cobra wasn't the blockbuster it was predicted to be and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Raw Deal and Charles Bronson's Murphy's Law were outright bombs.

It was the year Bobby Ewing's death turned out to be a dream, and Dynasty such a nightmare that producer Aaron Spelling called a press conference to assure the public (and his stockholders) that better Dynasty scripts were on the way.

It was also the year Joan Collins said she'd be leaving the prime-time soap to concentrate on making more miniseries like Monte Carlo. But Monte Carlo aired and bombed, and Collins announced she was signing on for another Dynasty hitch.
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The year that was. Rock star Bob Geldof was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize - again - for his massive Band-Aid charity campaigns for African famine relief.

Ken Kragen didn't round up enough hands to reach across America - but enough to raise $24 million for the nation's poor.

And more than eight months after some 1,250 people started out to march across America with an anti-nuclear message, 400 Great Peace Marchers actually completed that Herculean feat.

The year was when Tom Cruise was Top Gun and many were predicting Paul Newman would be top dog at the Academy Awards; when David Hartman prepared to end his long reign as ABC's Good Morning America host; when Vanna White became successor to Mr. T as a public idol who serves as proof that talent and/or intelligence are not necessary quotients for celebrity.

White parlayed letter-turning, hand-clapping and a vapid smile into a $250,000 autobiography advance, a McDonald's commercial and a 60 Minutes profile. Seriously.

It was the year Pia Zadora proved she was no joke, as did Kitty Kelley, with her startling, muckraking Frank Sinatra biography.

It was the year of the War for the Late-Night Viewer, with Joan Rivers, David Brenner and Dick Cavett among those who waged futile battles to knock Johnny Carson and David Letterman off their wee-hour perches. And it was the year Merv Griffin gave up TV chatter after 23 years.

It was the year Leo the Lion was evicted from the historical Culver City lot where countless MGM movies had been made and stars created; Ted Turner became the owner of the film factory, sold the property to Lorimar, hung on to the library of Metro films --and proceeded to draw roars with his plans for colorizing classic films.

Cannon Films stories dominated industry trade papers; first a constant stream of announcements about projects to be made with big-name personalities, later announcements of a $14.5 million third-quarter loss and the ordering of a special audit.

Rob Reiner's $8 million Stand by Me proved anew that a little picture can score big, and such flops as Cannon's $30 million-plus Pirates release and DEG's $25 million Tai-Pan reminded us there is not necessarily any correlation between cost and quality.

It was the best of years for Paramount (with winners ranging from Top Gun and Australia's Crocodile Dundee to Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Star Trek IV) and for Disney (Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, Tough Guys and The Color of Money).

It was an awful year for Universal, with a trail of losers that stretched from Alan Alda's Sweet Liberty and Robin Williams' The Best of Times to Night, Mother and the $37-million Howard the Duck.

Also for Columbia, which took a bath on Crossroads, John Candy's Armed and Dangerous, Anthony Michael Hall's Out of Bounds and Richard Pryor's JoJo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.

Other major losers for other major studios included Big Trouble in Little China, the $25 million Space Camp, the Sean Penn-Madonna fiasco Shanghai Surprise and Prince's Under the Cherry Moon.

The revolving doors of studio executive suites swung wildly. Frank Price was out at Universal, Leonard Goldberg in at Fox, Guy McElwaine out and David Puttn am in power at Columbia, Jerry Weintraub out and Lee Rich in at United Artists.

Studios raced to buy up theater chains, thus ensuring the theatrical release of films that might otherwise never have made it into movie houses. And thereby assured greater value of such products in the home video market.

Terrorism abroad kept American stars and moviemakers away from the Cannes Film Festival and caused the cancellation of overseas filming and music tours.

It was the year when Pierce Brosnan's hopes to be the new James Bond were pierced by NBC's 11th-hour resurrection of Remington Steele, and Timothy Dalton became Roger Moore's 007 successor.
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It was quite a year.

Mary Tyler Moore and Lucille Ball made ill-fated returns to the sitcom rat race; Andy Griffith, Dennis Hopper, Valerie Harper, Jack Klugman, James Caan, the Monkees, David Crosby and Kim Novak made comebacks; Magnum, P.I. found fresh popularity; Monty Hall stopped making deals; Search for Tomorrow ended its 35-year run. And Playboy Clubs in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago closed their doors for good. That was the way it was.

A terrible Broadway season had a few bright lights: five Tony Awards for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, while the revival of Sweet Charity got four.

James Garner was nominated for an Oscar, and Steven Spielberg wasn't. Spielberg's The Color Purple, in fact, lost all 11 nominations, while Out of Africa took seven awards. And the Oscar-cast drew the lowest ratings ever.

Cagney & Lacey and St. Elsewhere walked away from the Emmys with the most awards, leaving the highly touted Moonlighting out in the cold.

At the Grammys, it was the year of We Are the World and Phil Collins.

NBC continued to dominate television ratings, and reruns of The Bill Cosby Show brought historically high prices. It was the year CBS and ABC faced severe financal difficulties and brought new meaning to the word "cutbacks."

Clint Eastwood became mayor of the hamlet of Carmel, Calif., and Love Boat's Fred Grandy was elected to Congress. Payola allegations forced most major record labels to discontinue the use of independent record promoters.

It was the year of the anti-drug campaign, when everyone from Gumby to Stacy Keach cut anti-drug spots, and Chevy Chase, Jeff Wald and Stevie Nicks were among the celebrities who checked into the Betty Ford drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic.

Priscilla Presley announced her pregnancy with her fiance Marco Garabaldi and her 18-year-old daughter Lisa Marie at her side, and then announced a few months later that she and Marco were planning a Christmas Eve wedding.

Tatum O'Neal and John McEnroe got married; and Ryan and Farrah didn't.

And there was lots of weddings in '86: Steve Martin and Victoria Tennant, Tim Hutton and Debra Winger, Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, Marie Osmond and Brian Blosil, Whoopi Goldberg and David Claessen, Cyndi Lauper and personal manager David Wolff, Tony Danza and Tracy Robinson, Jennifer O'Neill and Richard Alan, Michael Nouri and Vicky Light, Muhammad Ali and Lonnie Williams, producer Paul Maslansky and Sally Hill, Phylicia Ayers-Allen and Ahmad Rashad, Richard Pryor and Flynn Belaine, Michael Pare and Marissa Roebuck, Billy Warlock and Marcy Walker, Rosanna Arquette and James Newton Howard, Irene Cara and stuntman Conrad Palmisano, Heather Locklear and Tommy Lee, Stacy Keach and Malgosia Tomassi, Jim Brolin and Jan Smithers. And Zsa Zsa Gabor's marriage to Frederick von Anhalt, Duke of Saxony, was her eighth.

Among the couples that called it quits: Michael Nader and Robin Weiss, Peggy Lipton and Quincy Jones, Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes, Jackie and Enid Jackson, Patti d'Arbanville and Don Johnson, Gil Gerard and Connie Sellecca, Ted Shackelford and Jan Leverenz, and Ronee Blakley and Wim Wenders.

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What a year.

The baby boom continued strong in 1986.

There were boys for Michael and Cindy Landon, Nick and Rebecca Nolte, CBS Morning News anchor Faith Daniels and husband Dean Daniels, Susan Saint James and Dick Ebersol, Cindy Williams and Bill Hudson, Tatum O'Neal and John McEnroe, the Wil Shriners, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Barbi Benton and George Gradow, Richard and Jeramie Dreyfus, Lindsay Wagner and Henry Kingi, Crystal Gayle and Bill Gatzimos, and Jane Pauley and Garry Trudeau.

And girls for Keith Richards and Patti Hansen, Cristina Ferrare and Tony Thomopoulos, Linda Kelsey and Glenn Strand, Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard, Julia Duffy and Jerry Lacy, Olivia Newton-John and Matt Lattanzi, Bette Midler and Martin von Haselberg, Joey Shawn and Wendy Travolta (making Dick Shawn a first-time grandpa), and John and Rhonda Davidson.

It was a year when AIDS became evermore the modern-day plague, when a sudden weight loss was enough to warrant rumors that an actor was a victim of the disease.

And, like every year, it seemed to be a time when death in every guise took too many from our midst.

Cary Grant, 82; Robert Alda, 72; Brian Aherne, 84; Latin American writer Jorge Luis Borges, 86; former production chieftan David Begelman's wife Gladyce Begelman, 55; Herschel Bernardi, 62; Adolph Caesar, 52; James Cagney, 86; Broderick Crawford, 74; Benny Goodman, 77; "Night Court's" Florence Halop, 63; Ted Knight, 62; Alan Jay Lerner, 67; Gordon MacRae, 74; Vincente Minnelli, 83; artist Georgia O'Keefe, 98; Lilli Palmer, 71; director Jerry Paris, 62; filmmaker Otto Preminger, 80; Donna Reed, 64; Harry Ritz, 78; director Robert Stevenson, 81; comedian Forrest Tucker, 67; Rudy Vallee, 84; director Hal Wallis, 88; Keenan Wynn, 70; Scatman Crothers, 76; and Jerry Colonna, 82.

It was a time of tragedies: Patrick Duffy's parents murdered in Boulder, Mont.; Francis Ford Coppola's son Gian Carlo killed in a boating accident for which Ryan O'Neal's son Griffin was charged and later acquitted with manslaughter; Cloris Leachman and George Englund's 30-year-old son, Bryan, dead of an overdose of ulcer medication; Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme's 23-year-old son, Michael, of a critical heart condition; Glynn Turman's son, Glynn Jr., 21, of a stab wound.

And may we never forget, 1986 was the year seven valiant American pioneers met their death in the space shuttle Challenger on their voyage to outer space.

For good or for bad, it was the year that was.