The Debut of Star Wars

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Most people probably don't remember what movies were like before the "Star Wars" franchise was born on this date in 1977.

I do, but, in all honesty, I don't remember the "Star Wars" premiere. There was no fuss about it that I can recall.

It was definitely a "summer blockbuster" — it was made for $11 million and wound up earning nearly half a billion dollars — but the concept of the summer blockbuster was still new. Hollywood has turned it into a marketing art form, but it was still a bit primitive in 1977, and, to be candid, "Star Wars" caught nearly everyone by surprise.

Today, it isn't uncommon for movies to spend a month or so at theaters — if that — before being yanked and prepared for cable and home video markets, but, in 1977, cable represented an extremely small share of the market, and home video was still in its infancy.

Thirty–five years ago, movies often spent months showing at theaters, many of which were still single–screen facilities, and then went on to drive–ins, where the objective was to squeeze a few more dollars in revenue, after which they were relegated to commercial television.

In 1977, successful movies spent months at theaters. It was the flops that were gone in a matter of weeks, seldom to be heard from again.

And there were some movies that got quite a bit of fanfare upon their release — but "Star Wars" wasn't one of them, and such fanfare could accompany just about any movie at just about any time of year.

It probably seems remarkable today, but movie promoters seemed to be oblivious, at least until 35 years ago, to the fact that there were huge potential audiences out there — teenagers — who had time on their hands and money in their pockets.

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But nothing about "Star Wars" seemed designed to appeal to a mass audience.

With the exception of Alec Guinness, I suppose nearly everyone in the movie was an unknown to the moviegoing audience, and the book upon which "Star Wars" was based was familiar to sci–fi fans — but few others. James Earl Jones, of course, was familiar in both face and voice, but only his voice was used in the role of Darth Vader.

I was working on a maintenance crew that summer, and one of my co–workers — Brad — told me under the least glamorous conditions imaginable — while we we stood knee–deep in fresh manure and shoveled it into flower beds — about the movie he had just seen.

Now, Brad was a sci–fi fan, and he had read the book. He raved about the movie, and I promised him I would go to see it — probably figuring that I never would.

But I did, about three months later. It was a group excursion from my hometown of Conway, Ark., to the nearby state capital of Little Rock to see the movie.

"Star Wars" had been causing quite a stir by then. Promoters of that time hadn't done the things that promoters would do in years to come, and they had to play catch–up as first the movie and then the double album soundtrack made buckets of money.

I was dating my first serious girlfriend — Karen — at the time, and she wanted to see the movie. So did her parents and her younger brother and sister — and the foreign exchange student who was living with them. And so did my mother.

So all eight of us piled into her parents' Volvo station wagon — four of us in the rear area — and drove to Little Rock one hot August night.

Karen and her family had only moved to Conway a year earlier. They had lived in northern California and Indiana before they moved to Arkansas, and the car they drove did not have air conditioning. I remember how grateful I was when we arrived at the theater, and I felt that wonderful cold air on my sweaty skin when we walked inside.

I was even more grateful when I got a cold drink and felt that icy liquid go down my parched throat.

But I felt no real sense of excited anticipation before the movie began.

For that matter, I had no real sense that I had seen the first installment in a series of movies that would define the art of filmmaking for the next three decades. I enjoyed it, but, if someone had asked me, I would have said I thought it was a one–shot deal, an entertaining movie but with very limited long–term appeal.

In fact, I remember vividly being somewhat surprised when I heard Karen and her siblings speculating about what the sequel would reveal. Until that moment, I had not even thought about the possibility of a sequel.

With whom would Princess Leia end up — the rakish smuggler Han Solo or the still naive Luke Skywalker who was training to be a warrior? That was at the heart of their discussion.

As I say, I enjoyed the movie, but I thought little of the notion of a sequel. I didn't think there would be one.

History has shown that I seriously underestimated the market's appetite for the story.

The Trouble With Angels

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When I was growing up in Conway, Ark., the merchants in town sponsored free weekly movies for the children in town every summer.

There was only one theater in Conway in those days, and the movies that were shown were usually a few years old. They were new to me, of course, and probably to most of the kids I knew.

Because there was almost always a lag between the times when many of the free movies I saw were released and the time I actually saw them, I'm not really sure when I saw them for the first time.

Such is the case with a movie that made its debut on this day in 1966 — "The Trouble With Angels" starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell.

My best guess is that I must have seen it about three or four years after it came out. I don't really know.

But I do know that I liked it when I saw it. Maybe that is because I actually got to watch it.

Sure, it was pretty silly, even predictable. In hindsight, that was the best kind of movie for the audience that saw it. I went to many of the free movies in my hometown when I was growing up, and the silly movies were the ones that always seemed to hold that audience's attention.

Other movies had somewhat limited audiences within the more general audiences in the theater. It was at the free movies, for instance, that I saw "Planet of the Apes" for the first time, and I was intrigued, but I wasn't able to watch all of it because the members of the audience engaged in a "food fight."

Long before John Belushi and the cast of "Animal House" brought the concept to the screen, the kids of my generation were doing it in the seats and aisles of the darkened theater.

(I remember the kids got so rambunctious that the theater manager stopped the movie and came out on the stage — yes, there was an actual stage in the theater — and threatened to pull the plug on the movie if we didn't settle down.)

"Planet of the Apes" was just a little too high over most of the heads in the theater that day. I had to watch it on another occasion — and in an entirely different setting — to experience the whole film.

But "The Trouble With Angels" seemed to totally absorb everyone sitting in the theater the summer afternoon it was shown.

Yes, it was silly and predictable. And, since the action took place on the campus of a girls' school, it probably had more appeal for the girls in the audience than the boys. (That would change in the years ahead. This audience would have been mostly 8– and 9–year–olds — and I know, from having been an 8– and then 9–year–old boy, that no boy in that age group considers girls angelic in any way.)

Nevertheless, my memory is that everyone sat in rapt silence as the story played out on the screen.

If you watch the movie today, you might recognize some of the cast members by face if not by name.

Apart from the adolescent girls who played the students at the school, the adults who played the instructors were all seasoned pros. Some are known for the roles the played on TV, others for their contribution in other films, and they were all above the material they were given. But they handled it admirably.

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There are no lines from the movie that have remained with me all these years ... well, except for one.

It was Hayley Mills' catchphrase in the film: "I've got the most scathingly brilliant idea!"

When she said that, you knew that something really outrageous (at least within the context of the film) was about to happen — and, usually, it did.

If you compare it to similar movies, made before or since, "The Trouble With Angels" was a fairly routine film.

But I think, in the loving directorial hands of Ida Lupino, what the story did (it was based, as I understand it, on the memoirs of a former Catholic high school student) was make the audience care genuinely about everyone in it.

And that's quite an achievement.

Attaboy, Luther!

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I'm not sure how old I was when I first saw "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken."

I'm quite sure I didn't see it at the movie theater in my hometown. My parents liked Don Knotts, always enjoyed watching him on The Andy Griffith Show, but, for some reason, they didn't want me to spend money to see his movies at the movie theater — even if all my friends were going to see them.

As a result, I don't think I saw him in a movie at a movie theater until I was old enough to drive to the theater myself.

When I look back on my youth, I get the distinct impression that my social development may not have been everything it should have been. You see, my hometown (I've written about it here before) was rather small. It wasn't necessarily small by Arkansas standards — but, by the standards of other states, yes, Conway was small.

I didn't even grow up within the city limits. I grew up on a manmade lake, Lake Beaverfork, that was a few miles outside the city limits. In those days, there weren't many houses out there — I've been told there is a lot of development there now — and even fewer families with children my age.

Consequently, my circle of close friends, the ones I played with after school and during the summers, consisted of the kids who lived on that lake. Some were my age; most were not. My interactions with the kids in town were confined to the hours we were in school together. We seldom saw each other away from school.

And there weren't many places for young people to socialize in those days outside of school. As I have mentioned here before, my hometown has grown quite a bit since I was a child there, and I'm sure there are many more options for kids in Conway today.

There was no shopping mall in my hometown when I was young — just a strip mall that had an arcade, where a kid could go and spend several dollars in an evening playing the pinball machines and listening to popular tunes on the jukebox. Life's lessons in that environment consisted mainly of periodically going out into the tall grass next to the arcade and, under cover of darkness, sharing alcohol or the occasional joint with one's buddies.

There was the bowling alley/skating rink on the other side of town, which was where kids went to socialize on Friday and Saturday nights when they were in those awkward early adolescent years — and, occasionally, when I was still under the legal driving age, I managed to persuade my parents to take me there for an evening of trying to impress the opposite sex with my (mostly imagined) prowess at bowling and my ability to inhale cigarette smoke.

In those days, weekend evenings spent at the bowling alley/skating rink still qualified as rites of passage for just about everyone who grew up in my hometown. That is the kind of thing that is probably regarded as quaint by young people who live there today since, as I have said, I am sure they have many more options today.

Be that as it may, the bowling alley/skating rink played a major role in my formative years. And, so, too, did Don Knotts — in spite of my parents' efforts.

Why does "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" stand out in my memory? I'm not really sure. It came out in 1966 — and, in those days, my hometown was served by a single movie theater (not counting the drive–in on the outskirts of town that had a reputation, when I was in my teens, for showing R–rated B movies that tended to serve as the backdrop for young couples who were a lot more interested in each other than what was on the screen).

I was in first grade in 1966. It would be many years before I saw a movie at the drive–in.

Anyway, I know I didn't see that movie at the town theater, which had a reputation of its own. It wasn't at all unusual in those days for popular movies — and even the not–so–popular ones — to take a year or more to find their way to Conway.

There were other, more lucrative markets in Arkansas in those days — the state capitol, Little Rock, wasn't far away and first–run movies usually came there long before they came to Conway.

When I was growing up, if one wanted to see a movie while it was still the subject of dinner conversation everywhere else, you had to see it in Little Rock. By the time it got to Conway, it was certain to be yesterday's news — or, more accurately, last year's news.

I remember seeing "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" when I was spending the night at the home of one of my buddies. This friend, Larry, always appeared to be somewhat worldly to me, and it seemed I was always seeing comedies that made impressions on me when I was at his house.

It was at Larry's house, for example, that I first saw "The Fortune Cookie" — and, while everyone seems to think of other films when they think of Walter Matthau, I think of "The Fortune Cookie."

It brings back pleasant memories of childhood.

And so it was that one night when I was about 7 or 8, I was spending the night at Larry's and "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" came on. Larry's parents had adopted him when he was little, and they had lavished affection on him. He was the only kid I knew who had a TV in his bedroom, and he had a 10–speed bike long before anyone else.

Anyway, on this occasion, I remember sitting in Larry's room watching his TV, munching on chips and laughing at Knotts' bug–eyed physical comedy in an hilarious house of horrors — and his exaggerated nervousness when delivering his speech (punctuated by the off–screen shouts of "Attaboy, Luther!").

All things considered, there probably were worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

I didn't know it at the time, but Knotts' co–star, Joan Staley, had been a Playboy centerfold about eight years before she made "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken." She had to make it wearing a dark wig because the film's producers thought she was too sexy as a blonde.

Well, I guess you can judge that for yourself. You can see "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" on Turner Classic Movies tonight at 7 p.m. (Central).

Death of a Cultural Icon

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On this day in 1955, actor James Dean was killed in a head–on collision near Cholame, Calif.

Dean was 24 when he died. He made a few uncredited film appearances in the early 1950s, but he is remembered for the three films he made in the mid–1950s — "East of Eden," "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant." His performances spoke to angst–ridden teenagers of the time, and he is still remembered, more than half a century after his death, as a symbol of that awkward time of life.

While Dean was working on his final film, he was interviewed by actor Gig Young for an episode of "Warner Bros. Presents." After Dean's death, the segment was not aired, but you can see it in the attached clip. It has often been misidentified as a public service announcement.

Another interesting story involves actor Alec Guinness. As I understand it, Dean introduced himself to Guinness and showed him his new Porsche 550 Spyder. Guinness reportedly thought the car was "sinister" and told Dean, "If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week."

The conversation occurred on Sept. 23, 1955, exactly one week before Dean's fatal crash.

This date always brings back unique memories for me because, when I was a teenager, director James Bridges came to my hometown of Conway, Ark., to make a movie about the impact Dean's death had on teens of the time. Bridges grew up in Paris, Ark., which wasn't exactly a stone's throw from my hometown, but it was fairly close, and, as I recall, he chose my hometown because it was a college town and he wanted to use the academic setting as a backdrop.

The movie was semi–autobiographical for Bridges, who was 19 when Dean died.

The original title of the movie was "9–30–55." When the finished product came to the screen, the title had been changed to "September 30, 1955."

Prior to filming, Bridges held auditions that drew literally hundreds of local wannabe actors, and he actually wound up casting a local girl who was often said to be a star in the making.

I don't think she ever made another movie, but there were some noteworthy folks in the cast. The most familiar was Richard Thomas, who was the star of the TV series "The Waltons" at the time.

Two other actors made their debuts in the film — Dennis Quaid (who may be best known for his work in "The Right Stuff") and Tom Hulce (who is probably best known for his appearances in "Animal House" and "Amadeus").

Kris Allen Wins

I don't think it is an overstatement to say that this is probably the biggest night in the history of my hometown.

I wasn't living in Conway, Ark. — in fact, I wasn't even living in Arkansas — on the night in 1992 when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States.

I did meet Clinton on a couple of occasions when I was living in Conway. Clinton made some appearances at his Faulkner County campaign headquarters during his gubernatorial races, and I still have a political button that Clinton himself gave me during one of his appearances. But he never lived in Conway, to my knowledge.

As big as that night in 1992 was for the state of Arkansas, tonight is bound to be even bigger for Conway.

Because Kris Allen won the "American Idol" competition. If you've been watching the show, you know that Allen lived, for a time, in Conway, which happens to be my hometown.

His victory was announced only a matter of minutes ago. It is already being considered an upset.

I can't tell you whether I think it was an upset or not. I haven't been watching the show, although I knew that a young man who lived in Conway was a finalist. And I've been reading articles about him on the Conway newspaper's website.

Earlier this month, thousands of people turned out for a rally for Allen in Conway. I'm sure there will be a huge welcome–home rally for him when he returns to Arkansas after his "American Idol" triumph.

Well, congratulations, Kris. I hope you enjoy your moment in the spotlight. I know Conway will.

By the way, have you heard the phrase "kick awesome?" Apparently, that is a phrase Allen came up with. I have no doubt some bright marketer in the Conway area will be selling bumper stickers and T–shirts with that phrase.

It might even show up on the "Home of Kris Allen" signs that I'm sure will be erected on the city limits — if they haven't been installed already.

Oh, To Be Home Tonight ...

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I grew up in Conway, Ark.

Does the name of the town sound familiar? If it does — and if you don't happen to be a product of the place — you've probably heard of Conway because that is where "American Idol" finalist Kris Allen lived while he was in college. Maybe he still lives there. I honestly don't know.

I lived in Conway for most of the first 20 years of my life. Allen, who is 23, hadn't even been born when I left Conway.

Truth is, we probably lived in entirely different places. Same name. Different places.

The Conway I lived in didn't even reach 20,000 in population. In fact, I think there were fewer than 10,000 people there when I enrolled in first grade. Most of the time that I lived there, there was one movie theater in town, the old–fashioned, single–screen type downtown with a big marquee out front. I have vivid memories of going there as a child. When our family went to the movie, we stopped at the drug store on the corner and bought candy bars to eat instead of paying the higher prices for snacks at the theater. My mother would then smuggle them into the theater in her purse and hand them out to my father, my brother and me when we got to our seats.

In the summers, the local merchants sponsored free movies for kids. Each week, the mothers in my neighborhood took turns driving the kids in to see the movie, and the mothers got a few free hours to do with as they pleased.

A two–screen theater opened when I was in junior high, and the old theater downtown went out of business. A Wal–Mart and a McDonald's also opened around that time. Folks thought Conway was really becoming cosmopolitan.

In 2006, Conway had more than 57,000 residents. That means it is probably around five times the size it was when I was in elementary school.

Conway has had its moments in the spotlight. When I was a kid, one of our neighbors was one of the top Democrats in the state. In fact, when I was in third grade, he ran for the Senate and his wife ran for governor. Neither won.

Before he won NBA championships with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen played college basketball at the University of Central Arkansas, which is located in Conway. When I was growing up, the school was known as State College of Arkansas, but many of the locals waged a successful campaign for it to be given university status.

I remember the current mayor as a fairly ordinary kid who was a year or two behind me in school. Speaking of which, the building where I attended high school (which seemed new and very state of the art at the time) is still being used, but the enrollment in grades 9–12 has grown so much that they now have grades 9 and 10 on one campus and grades 11 and 12 on another.

The mascot is still the Wampus Cat. You don't know what that is? Well, it's a six–legged cat with "four to run with the speed of light and two to fight with all its might."

Doesn't that sound positively "It's a Wonderful Life?"

Actually, it did seem like a pretty good place to grow up. At least, it seemed that way to me. I grew up outside the city limits on a manmade lake. Summers were wonderful there. We swam in the lake. We camped out. We went fishing.

It was like being Huck Finn with an air–conditioned home in which to sleep. And Conway was always hot and humid in the summer so you thanked whatever higher power made air conditioning possible.

There wasn't much traffic so we could ride our bikes in the middle of the road if we wanted to.

And, in the winter, a fresh snowfall would turn those rustic woods into a winter wonderland.

I'm sure a lot of things about Conway are different now.

And I don't know how much of his life has been spent there. Allen was born in nearby Jacksonville. I don't know if he attended Conway High at any point, but he didn't graduate from CHS. He's a worship leader in his church in Maumelle.

But I think Allen went to school at UCA, and the city has adopted him as its own. From what I've read on the website for the town's newspaper, they're having "watch parties" around Conway, and folks have been snapping up official Kris Allen T–shirts.

This week, he's in the finals of "American Idol." The winner will be revealed tomorrow night.

You can bet they'll be watching in Conway.