Anyway, the seats that some folks are throwing around with movable armrests seem to be pre-1980 and limited to Braniff Airlines.
The consensus over there is these are the types of first class seats that they remember from the 1980s. I believe them because these folks are hyper-travelers. (The next two pics were lifted from a third site, Airliners.Net)
United 737
Delta 727
.
National airlines, had seats that had armrests that went up on certain aircraft, but they went out of business in 1980:
The above twitter comment is referring to this seat, that is supposed to come from a TWA L1011. I can't find anything backing that up, except for a random picture on Flickr. Note there are no seatbelts and no seat recline, which is odd for a first class seat. I think this is the "lounge seat" mentioned in my earlier post.
I hear you saying that any seats on a commercial airlines first class section would not have had armrests that raised at the time in question 30+ years ago...approx. 1985ish.