Mark Hammill presents Oscar to Benjamin Burt, Jr., April 3, 1978 for special sound effects award for "Star Wars" as "C-3PO" in center looks on. Justin Hulse, 13, is draped in a "Jedi warrior" cape as he waits to do a TV interview before the start of "Star Wars" at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, Friday, January 31,1997.
A long time ago, in a theatre far, far away....a kid’s movie opened that would change Hollywood forever.
It’s hard to remember a day when Star Wars wasn’t a towering cultural and marketing event, but on May 25, 1977, it was a smallish movie opening on a Wednesday in just 32 theaters.
There was no premiere.
AP
Theater goers wait in lines in front of the Avco Center Theater in Los Angeles to see "Star Wars" in June 7, 1977.
“Theaters didn't want the movie. We were lucky to get thirty theaters to open it,” Charles Lippincott, former Lucasfilm promotions chief later said of the troubled and much-delayed production.
In New York, you could go see Star Wars at two theaters in Manhattan - the Loews Orpheum on East 86th St. and the Astor Plaza in Times Square - and on Long Island at the Mann Twin South in Hicksville. All three movie palaces have since been demolished.
Tickets were $4. Some viewers remember the box office handing out lapel buttons saying “May the Force be with You.”
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