When 'Star Wars' Was An Event | From the Vault

Celebrate May the Fourth with Memories of Discovering 'Star Wars' in 1977

Using today’s vernacular to describe something from the past: Movies just hit different when I was a kid.

I came of film-watching age in the mid-1970s in the heyday of the Walt Disney live-action films when we cut our cinematic teeth on high-quality gems like Escape to Witch Mountain or The Apple Dumpling Gang. Trips to the movies were reserved for events like a weekend at Grandma’s or a sleepover with your cousin, and if adult parties are being honest, they were used for babysitting. Drop the kids off at the mall theater, leave them with some popcorn money, and engage in retail therapy while the kiddies settle back for the adventures of Pete and his dragon.

I really didn’t see that many movies as a kid. Like I said, it was different. Parents didn’t take their families to the movies to watch a film together. (Not the ones in my house, anyway.) I’d venture to say we didn’t see more than one a year. At that time, we had five TV stations, and VCRs and cable movie channels weren’t even in our dreams yet. You had one shot to see a movie, and that was it. Maybe it would show up on TV on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon years later, but aside from watching The Wizard of Oz every Thanksgiving, movies were a one-and-done affair. And due to the quality of the kids’ movies at that time, they were largely forgettable anyway.

Back then, there were kids’ movies and adult movies, and ne’er the twain shall meet. My dad did not see The Cat from Outer Space, and I did not see The Sting. (The rare exception to this was when we had a family outing to a drive-in to see Jaws the same summer we went to the beach for the first time, which was the worst parenting idea of all time.) In my small suburban town, there was an old movie theater in what used to be considered the downtown and it was reincarnated as a “dollar show” where they showed second-run movies. On one glorious night, my dad dragged me along with him to see American Graffiti. I won’t pretend that I understood the film or its plot, but it was an honest-to-God grownup movie that seemed very similar to Happy Days, a TV show that was consuming American life at that point . . . and seeing a Happy Days-esque film on a big screen with a giant tub of popcorn with my dad was a moment not soon forgotten.

June of 1977 rolled around and it set itself up to be my greatest summer yet. For starters, I hit double digits. While this afforded me exactly zero privilege in the world, being ten felt a lot older than being nine. I was ready for big things and big things were indeed coming. That summer began a year of what I still think of as My Own Personal Golden Age of Cinema and thus began my lifetime love affair with the movies.

That summer, my uncle took my cousin, my sister, and me to see the big new movie that everyone was talking about: Star Wars. And there was no messing around with the mall theater. We were going to the Showcase by-God Cinemas on Springdale Pike. There’s no way to adequately convey the excitement about this because it seems trivial now in an era of surround sound and stadium-tiered recliner seats. The Showcase Cinemas had four screens. FOUR! And it was a stand-alone building in a part of town I had never been to. This was living large. We loaded up in the green GTO and headed to the theater and were met with complete devastation: it was sold out. This was also prior to online ticket sales. You see, in 1977, one just had to show up at the box office and hope for the best. It was no can do for Star Wars that night. We were crushed. But Uncle Eddie had taken charge of three children that night – two of whom had ADHD – and he was not about to entertain us himself. So he made us a promise to see Star Wars the next weekend and we bought tickets to another show. (Incidentally, that’s what we called them then. Not movies. Not films. Shows.)

The consolation prize? Smokey and the Bandit. It was a fair trade. That movie came out amid the CB radio and trucker craze in the mid-70s and there was nobody hotter than Burt Reynolds at that time. We hooted and hollered and clapped when the 1977 Trans Am jumped the bridge, and we laughed when Buford T. Justice emerged from the truck stop bathroom with toilet paper stuck to his sunglasses. It was a big time and I still have a nostalgic fondness for that film. If I’m channel-surfing and it’s on, I’ve gotta watch.

But I digress.

Uncle Eddie was a man of his word and we piled back in the GTO the following weekend for round two of our quest to see Star Wars and this time we were successful. There we sat in the uncomfortable seats with the popcorn and the Jujyfruits and the big pop and when the lights went down, we could hardly contain ourselves. What happened for the next two hours completely blew our minds and changed our lives. The second that opening scroll started rolling on the screen seemingly from over our heads, we literally turned around to see where it was coming from. We had NEVER seen anything like that. And that was just the beginning. Everything we saw and heard was new. The special effects. The John Williams score. The droids. The land cruiser. The light sabers. WHAT IS HAPPENING??? The ADHD children didn’t blink for the entirety. The closing credits rolled and the audience erupted into applause. It was a new day.

There are many film moments that take my breath away every time, but none more so than the moment Darth Vader walks through the mist on that ship. My God -- my heart still races when I watch that scene. There was a viral clip a couple years ago of a little girl dressed as Rey watching a parade of Star Wars characters at Disney World. As they passed, they came right to her and she waved at them all. Darth Vader walked right up and stood inches from her and she didn’t even flinch. I nearly passed out. We went to hear the Columbus Symphony play the live score along with a screening of The Empire Strikes Back a couple years ago and someone dressed as Darth Vader came walking through the crowd in the lobby and I broke out in a cold sweat.

I’m sorry for the Star Wars fans in the generations behind me.

There are just some things about those films you can never understand. You’ve grown up with special effects. You really can’t grasp that NOTHING had ever looked or sounded like that before. The anticipation of waiting for The Empire Strikes Back was agonizing. I can’t recall another sequel I’ve longed for in quite that way. And, boy – it did not disappoint. I’ve watched a million more films since then and there has never been a bigger plot twist than learning Darth Vader is Luke’s father. I can’t even put it into words. This was way before the internet and spoiler alerts. A couple hundred of us walked into that theater not knowing our minds were about to be blown and we collectively gasped. (If you’re a sci-fi nerd, watch the early 2000’s run of Battlestar Galactica and report back to me when you get to the second biggest plot twist of all time. Only this time, you can hit pause and sit with your disbelief. With Empire, we just had to gasp and then move on with life.)

There was no going back after that. I was Darth Vader for Halloween. My cousin had Star Wars sheets and curtains. When Return of the Jedi was released on Wednesday, May 25 the year of our Lord 1983 and the last day of my sophomore year of high school, my friends and I got shut out of the late-night show and waited in line for over two hours to see the one at midnight. We ordered pizza and sat outside the Showcase Cinema – this time in Louisville, Kentucky – and ate on the sidewalk next to the velvet ropes.

Star Wars was – and is – serious business for me.

My cousin, uncle, sister, and I still talk about the initial viewing like it’s a historic event. “Remember when we went to see Star Wars and it was sold out and we had to see Smokey and the Bandit instead and we had to wait a week?” Good times. It was the first time a movie felt like an event. It was the first time a movie transported me. It’s the first movie that permeated American pop culture. I like to brag that I’ve seen every single Star Wars movie first-run in the cinema like it’s a badge of honor and not something that ages me. I have literally grown up in that world.

My love for that film runs deep because it ignited my love for ALL film.

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Whats your first memory of discovering ‘Star Wars?’ Was it the original 1977 film, or perhaps an installment in the prequel or sequel trilogies? Let us know in the comments below — and May the Fourth Be With You!