Forty Years

[J.T.B.]

May 25, 1977.

A release date a long time ago in a world that seems far, far away...

Please post your recollections of Star Wars and 1977.

I was six or seven years old, first grade. My uncle, who was a great guy and who really connected with me when I was little, had moved to LA and was working in film music. He knew I was nuts for rockets and astronauts and Star Trek and all that. When he came back for a visit he was excited to tell me: "You've got to see this movie that's coming out. You will absolutely love it. It's in space, it looks incredible, they have all these spaceships, they have swords with laser beams on the end..." He probably said it differently, but that's how I remember it: "swords with laser beams on the end." I pictured a metal sword with a bright beam shooting out the tip, I didn't know. But I was intrigued, no question about that!

So about the time we got out of school for the summer, everybody started talking about Star Wars. And I knew that must be the movie my uncle told me about. So I started bugging my mom and dad. We were getting ready to move, we had sold our house and were going to move into an apartment while a new house was being built. So it seemed like forever before I got to go to that movie. It was probably only a couple of weeks, really, but I was going crazy over it.

Then one Sunday afternoon, as we were settling into the apartment, my dad and I got into his burnt orange '76 GMC pickup and went to the Fox Theater (a single room big-screen cinema) to see Star Wars. My sister may have gone, but I recall it as just the two of us. And I remember as we got home, I felt like I had seen something that had changed everything. That seems like an exaggeration, but maybe not that great of one. We know that moviemaking did indeed change in many ways. But personally I have never again felt such a difference between going into the theater and coming out at the end. The world felt different, that's the best I can describe it.

So I was making new friends in the neighborhood that summer, and Star Wars was the common currency for every elementary school kid. We played Star Wars constantly, every empty field was Tatooine, every unfinished house a Death Star, every bike an X-wing or TIE fighter. We went to the movie as many times as we could, we read the novel, we got the Marvel comics, we watched every TV news story that might show a clip from the movie, we waited impatiently for "The Making of Star Wars" on TV. We cassette-recorded that disco song from the radio. We walked up to the gas station to buy the trading cards. When I went to my new school in the fall, the place was Star Wars crazy. It seemed like every boy had a Star Wars t-shirt. I did, light blue. The t-shirt transfers back then were crap, the rubbery ironed-on image soon cracked all over and started flaking off. We didn't care, we wore them anyway. We played Star Wars every recess. A girl in the third grade would have her hair done like Princess Leia a couple times a week and we would pursue her as stormtroopers around the playground. Day after day, it never got old. Then the toys came out...

Things went on like this for at least two years. There were other things that caught our attention, like CE3K and Smokey and the Bandit and CHiPs, and then later TMP and The Black Hole, but , I mean... not Star Wars.

In 1979 we visited my uncle in California, and he told me what he had heard, from inside "the business," about The Empire Strikes Back. I couldn't wait. Sadly, I would never see him again; he died in December 1980, only 30 years old.

 

[MacLeod]

I barely remember 1977 given that I would only be a toddler that year.

 

[Ithekro]

I was womb bound at that time. I am certain I heard it in September of 1977 as I waa born two days after my parents saw it in a drive-in theater. Sort of marked the baby.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I was 9 years old and living overseas on the Northwest Cape of West Australia. (Exmouth). We're talking the bare boonies, here. We had no TV there in '77 so we heard next to nothing about the movie when it came out- I may have seen one movie poster on a beat-up billboard over by the town drive-in.

Sadly, my first viewing experience was FAR less than optimal. The first time I saw it was as the second movie of a double feature at a Drive-In theater, probably months after it premiered in the U.S. I was a big a space nut and already a fan of TOS Trek and Space 1999, so when I heard about the movie I was excited to see it. However, the sound was through a tinny, crappy little box-speaker (I could hardly hear it from the roof rack of our land rover) and it started so late that I fell asleep during the Tatooine stuff. I did wake up in time for the Death star sequences and the final battle- thought it was all pretty cool, but it didn't make a huge impact on me at first. Eventually the movie showed up at the base movie theater on the armed forces circuit, and that was a much more contemporary viewing experience and made a much bigger impact. Then, months later, I ordered the novelization from the school book club, starting collecting the original Marvel SW comics, and my mom started buying me some of the action figures. Over time I became the rabid SW fan I am today.

To say SW has had a huge effect on my life would not be an exaggeration. While there were other elements that led me to my career first as a military then a commercial pilot, we used to joke that all of us went to flight school because we wanted to be either Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. It's also embarrassing how much time I spent at age 9 trying to move objects with my mind- I wanted the Force to be real!

I love that two generations since mine have come to know and love SW, but I tell you, there was nothing quite like the magic of the time when there was nothing but one movie and some non-official material like comics, etc, and the toys. The 'expanded universe' was all in our imaginations, Darth Vader was not yet Luke's father or Leia his sister, and there was ENDLESS schoolyard debate over whether Luke or Han was better and which one would ultimately win the princess. Good times, and we were chomping at the bit for 1981 and ESB!!

EDIT: Reading the comments of the OP brought back some other memories as well. The disco song, the dogfights fought on bikes, the audio-version that I listened to a million times, and the soundtrack, which is so evocative of the movie's scenes and characters that you can almost watch the movie in your head by listening to the soundtrack. This was all before VHS, much less all the media that came later. You could see the movie in a theater as many times as you could manage- I only got to see it twice- but some of the above mentioned things like the audio drama and soundtrack tattooed it into my brain for all time.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I was 11. Star Wars didn't open in my area until June 15. I was away at camp, and caught the earliest show I could on June 17, 7:30 PM, after getting back. I had been looking forward to it, after learning about Star Wars in magazines, including in a Read magazine handed out at school.

http://www.sandcrawler.com/SWB/Images/StarWars/Magazines/mag-read-v26n18-1977-05-11.jpg

I was already a big Star Trek fan by then, and I'd seen and enjoyed all the Flash Gordon serials with Buster Crabbe. Needless to say, it was a life-altering event. I was just the right age primed in just the right way.

I love that two generations since mine have come to know and love SW, but I tell you, there was nothing quite like the magic of the time when there was nothing but one movie and some non-official material like comics, etc, and the toys. The 'expanded universe' was all in our imaginations, Darth Vader was not yet Luke's father or Leia his sister, and there was ENDLESS schoolyard debate over whether Luke or Han was better and which one would ultimately win the princess. Good times, and we were chomping at the bit for 1981 and ESB!!

EDIT: Reading the comments of the OP brought back some other memories as well. The disco song, the dogfights fought on bikes, the audio-version that I listened to a million times, and the soundtrack, which is so evocative of the movie's scenes and characters that you can almost watch the movie in your head by listening to the soundtrack. This was all before VHS, much less all the media that came later. You could see the movie in a theater as many times as you could manage- I only got to see it twice- but some of the above mentioned things like the audio drama and soundtrack tattooed it into my brain for all time.

This more or less describes my experience as well. There weren't many toys at first. The bubble gum cards were fun, and so were the plastic models (X-wing and Darth's TIE). I always found the Kenner figures disappointing because they were so much smaller than the 8" Mego figures I was used to for Star Trek and superheroes, not to mention the 12" G.I. Joes. I listened to my double-LP soundtrack endlessly. One of my projects was to sort the tracks, broken up as necessary, into chronological order....

What happy memories!

 

[publiusr]

I turned 11 in 77'

I actually did not see it in the theater at first.

My school got a print later, and I turned down a chance to see it. The last sci-fi movie was Logan's Run after all--and I figured this would be a run-of the mill type deal.

Then the TOS Enterprise was the Queen of battle as it were. For years afterward--the Enterprise wasn't the largest spacecraft on film that was often seen.

Excluding the Cygnus from The Black Hole, we had what I called the Big Three (not Kirk Spock and McCoy mind you)

Star Destroyers
Battlestars
The Draconia from Buck Rogers.

I couldn't wait until the inevitable Trek movie--and we got the refit.

And--when it comes to grace--she still puts the others to shame.

 

[marillion]

I was there... Opening night at the Stewart Theater in downtown Lincoln, NE.

I happened to be friends with the theater owner's grand kids who gave me four passes. So my mom took me and my cousins, Mitch and Richard to the show.

I can still remember the line around the block, but we got to waltz right in and take our seats. At the time, the Stewart was one of those olde time theaters with the grand decor to match.. I barely remember what it looks like now, but it was really nice.

I was enthralled... Talk about sensory overload... By the time the movie was over, my 7-year old mind was still trying to process what I'd seen.. up to that point, I'd mostly gone to see Disney movies and the like.. I had never seen anything so grand in scale.. And loud!! My mom and cousin Richard (who was also 7) hated it.. It was too loud, too violent, etc etc etc.. But my cousin Mitch, who I think was 12 at the time and I could hardly contain ourselves...

The next day, I could barely remember some of the character names or some of the lesser plot points (Hey.. I was 7!), but I was already scrawling TIE fighters, X-Wings and the Falcon on my Big Chief note pad, as best as I could... It was an amazing experience.. I don't remember a lot of things very clearly from those days, but I will never forget that.

ETA: I just looked up the "Stuart" Theater.. I guess I never realized that it was initially built in 1929 to be a state performance theater and wasn't really used for movies until the early 70s.. Since then, it has changed hands a couple of times and the current owners restored it to its original glory as a performing arts venue rather than a movie theater. I had no idea it was so beautiful. Here's the link.

 

[DimesDan]

It was a little over six years before I was born, so.......

 

[Jedi_Master]

I was born in 1981, so my first "experience" with Star Wars was when I was a baby, and my mom and dad would walk me at night while it played on (HBO?) the television. My brother had some of the toys, but I don't remember them all that much as my parents had to sell them when I was still very little.
A few years later, we moved to a new town and my parents went through financial difficulties and we had nothing but an old stereo/record player. I would look at Star Wars soundtrack record cover and listen to the music, imagining what the various scenes would look like and sound like, and I read all the movie novel adaptations from the library. Finally, when I was about eight or nine years old we were able to get a TV and a VCR, and we bought all three films on video-cassette. I watched them over and over and over again, and we had to get a new set of tapes because I wore the first ones out.
Then the Zahn novels came out, and the world really opened up for me.

 

[J.T.B.]

Reading the comments of the OP brought back some other memories as well. The disco song, the dogfights fought on bikes, the audio-version that I listened to a million times, and the soundtrack, which is so evocative of the movie's scenes and characters that you can almost watch the movie in your head by listening to the soundtrack.

Yeah, there's something about the audio-only that really imprints on your brain. I knew every pop and crackle in the soundtrack double-LP.

About the toys... I don't remember anything about sending in a card to get the Kenner action figures in the mail, I heard about that a long time later. But I do remember when the first figures came out in stores. They were going to have some kind of event at Sears, and we were very excited and my mom took us down there, and we made our way through the store and bunches of kids, and then, there was Darth Vader. A tall guy in a Darth Vader suit. So we got our figures, I got Vader, my sister got R2 and my brother got Chewie. And then we waited in a short line and the guy in the suit autographed the figure cards! He wrote "DARTH VADER" in blue magic marker. And I kept that card in my dresser drawer for years even though I knew it was kind of silly.

Then, pretty much whenever we had two bucks, my brother and I would get a figure. The first toy I saw other than the action figures was the landspeeder, a kid brought it to school. Then I got an X-wing and my brother a TIE. It really bugged me that you had to stick a white stormtrooper in the TIE, that just wasn't right! We spray painted one black. It wasn't till around ROTJ that Kenner came out with a proper TIE pilot, and by then I considered myself "too old" for action figures.

The novel, storybook and comics were intriguing because of the deleted scenes. The novel had a color photo of a stormtrooper on a dewback, the storybook had a photo of Biggs on Tatooine. Though I can see why the scene was cut, and agree it should have been, looking up at the sky and seeing battling spaceships was a very strong image, an ordinary kid could easily imagine himself in that situation. I felt like that myself as a teen, sent out alone on a farm to do work with a lot of down time, standing in the field and looking up at the long contrails and tiny jet planes in the vast sky and wondering where they were going. I can understand why people would later swear they had seen that in the movie.

I remember going through The Star Wars Sketchbook in the book section of a department store (we didn't have any mall/chain bookstores yet). I was so taken with that book, I almost memorized it just from poring over it in the store. But by the time I got enough money to buy it, it was gone. My friend gave me a copy he'd found in a used bookstore years later.

 

[Nyotarules]

Nine years old and did not give a damn, even at that age I was discerning of movies that had no one looking like me in it. Hence I preferred Star Trek TOS.
In hindsight Star Wars paved the way for Star Trek movies, so for that I am pleased.

 

[publiusr]

I remember going through The Star Wars Sketchbook in the book section of a department store (we didn't have any mall/chain bookstores yet). I was so taken with that book, I.

Those type books open up the Star Wars univers possibilities even more than what actually makes it to film.

 

[Tom]

I was 6 when my dad took me to see it, and it made me a scifi fan from that moment forward.

 

[arch101]

Was 8 years old, a prime target for the film. I had to wait until early June. I was already a big sci-fi nut. I thought Space:1999 was the greatest thing that could ever happen. Then, THIS! Completely blew my mind. Condemned me to life as a sci-fi geek. We had pizza afterwards at Luigi's, a long-gone Albany, NY staple. I went back 8 more times that summer. Then, Dr. Who started being carried on my local PBS station that fall. I also started to pay more attention to Trek, which my Father watched regularly.
I did get out to see Smokey and The Bandit, too.