First Movie Memory

The first I saw in a Movie Theater(in Revere, MA)was THE FAMILY JEWELS(1965)with, of course, Jerry Lewis.

 

Too old for a movie on tv, so probably at a Drive In.

And those initial memories aren’t great.

Had nightmares for years from Moby Dick and, wait for it, Oklahoma. The dream segment where Rod Steiger beats the hell out of Gordon MacRae, was up there with Gregory Peck strapped to the whale.

Never watched either again.

 

My father took me to see "West Side Story" (1961) at the old Rivoli theater in Manhattan when I was 8. Sometime in 1962 I think.

 

Mine is probably Dumbo with I think my grandparents or at least my grandmother I would have been five, I remember the actual cinema, going up the staircase to the balcony, unfortunately it's long gone, I know I'd been to see films before, but that's the earliest I remember and can date, there are other films from around that time, but I think I saw them after Dumbo.

 

Good God ! My memory is from about 1960 ! You make me feel positively ancient , Mikaela. I can feel my bones turning into dust.

 

"How the West Was Won" in the theater, big screen big sound, I was six.

 

I vividly remember when Geppetto is swallowed by the whale in Pinocchio. I can't remember how old I was, maybe four, but that scene has stayed with me almost sixty years. ;o)

 

The first movie I have really vivid memories of is The Ghost of Frankenstein, which a neighbor had up on their (big at the time) 25" TV in the early 1960s, I'm guessing 1960 or 1961. My folks told me the first movie I saw in the theater was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but I don't remember it. I do remember seeing Journey to the Seventh Planet in the theater, and that would've been about 1961 as well. All three of these movie lean in a fantasy/science fiction/horror direction, and I've loved the genre for many years.

Yeah, we saw quite a few of the big Cinerama films like How the West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm when they came out in 1962. This was the same theater at which I later saw 2001, which had a huge impact on me as a young teenager in 1968.

 

The hardcover program we bought at the HTWWW show was on my parent's bookshelves for years afterwards. It was a Big Deal.

 

My Dad took me to a few Disney movies when we had a theatre in our town. Shaggy Dog and Darby O'Gill And The Little People from 1959 were two I remember. Then the theatre closed in 1960 and he took me to the last night it was open to see Pollyanna in 1960.

 

In a movie theater it had to be Star Wars in 1977 when I was about 6 years old. My parents were still married too.

 

Yes, I was just telling somebody the other day that the big Road Show engagements for certain films were a big event, where you were supposed to dress up, and there was an intermission, and the theater would sell expensive programs and so on. Not casual at all. All the Cinerama films definitely aimed for that kind of atmosphere.

 

Star Trek II

Cederbrae Mall

Scarborough, ON

 

This isn' t a first movie memory but it is a memory I cherish.
My Dad took me to see ' Thunderball ' when it came out. I was much too young to be admitted at that time so he snuck me in thru the exit door. We saw a couple of the ushers looking at us but they didn't say anything.
Thought this James Bond guy was very cool and the underwater fight sequence really exciting.
But best if all was when we got home and my Dad told my Mom where we had been. She flipped and gave him a blast about it. He just said : " Oh so what ? :
Gotta love your parents.

 

Used to live just down the street from there.

 

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) is the earliest memory I have of seeing a film in a theater. I would have been 4.

 

When one of my aunties took me and her kids to see Return from Witch Mountain at a theater. I was five-years-old.
I just remember Bette Davis creeping me out.

 

Bambi

 

Bette Davis creeped me put in just about every movie I saw her in. She always had that slightly insane vibe about her. I consider ' Whatever Happened to Baby Jane ' a horror movie.

 

TV Memory?

 

I think it was The Absent Minded Professor at a Saturday Matinee in 1961. I liked it a lot - I already liked Fred MacMurray from My Three Sons.

 

Yes...the first movie I remember watching.

 

Probably seeing Herbie the Lovebug, or something similar, at the drive-in in the mid-70s. The first movie that made a huge impression on me was seeing Star Wars in 1977 when I was 6.

 

First TV memory /movie?
Movie.. can’t recollect.
TV .. The fifties was the golden decade of the TV western.

 

X The Unknown. On TV, I was also about 4 or 5, and remember being frozen while watching it.
My first theater experience was also about 5 years old, my parents took the family to see the blown up to widescreen re-release of Gone With The Wind. I can still see in my mind's eye Scarlet up on the screen holding up her fist and saying the "I'll never be hungry again" line, and me thinking the movie was over!