By Tim Nasson
Publisher Wild About Movies
Some things you never forget. Your first birthday (the first one you can remember). Your first day at school. Your first kiss. Your wedding day. Your first baby being delivered. And something as insignificant yet memorable as the first movie you ever saw in a movie theater with your parents as a child.
I remember walking to the local movie theater holding my mother’s hand, excited that we would be seeing Bambi, my first movie.
I had seen ads on television touting the Disney movie originally released in 1942 now back in theatrical rerelease catering to the child in everyone with the silly skunk who had made friends with a rabbit in the thicket named Thumper and who could, yes, call him Flower it he wanted to.
Those three, Thumper, Flower and Bambi seemed to be inseparable – at least on the TV commercials – and as if they were having the time of their lives. I couldn’t wait to peek into more of their fun filled lives on a big movie screen, no less. Little did I know that there would be a huge forest fire, causing Bambi and his mother to run right into danger and that Bambi would be left – seemingly – alone for the rest of his life, without a mother. That’s Walt Disney for you, the master of evil, when it came to scaring the bejesus out of children.
We, my mother and I, had either driven or walked by the Broadway Theater almost every week since I could remember. It was a second run movie theater, with only one screen.
There wasn’t a week that went by when we passed by – and I could read at the age of 3 – where there wasn’t a movie I desperately wanted to see, mainly because of the movie posters hanging next to the box office which was just in front of the sidewalk; movie posters that seemed to be hypnotizing me, begging me to come into the theater.
This was the summer of 1975. And I was determined that Bambi would be my first. The first movie I would see in a movie theater.
Mommy. Can we go see Bambi this week? I asked. For whatever reason, she said yes, and that was the beginning of lifelong affair with movies for me.
Bambi was first released in theaters on August 21, 1942. During its original theatrical run it took in only $3,000,000. Disney, though, Walt himself, had a plan. Rerelease all of the classic Disney animated movies in movie theaters every five or seven or ten years (depending on his mood, it seems) for a new generation of kids.
Bambi was rushed back into theaters 5 years later on Christmas Day 1947. During its 1947 theatrical rerelease it only took in $2,200,000.
So, Walt decided to make everyone wait a full ten years before they could get their eyes on the most famous venison ever to grace the big screen. July 4th weekend 1957 Bambi was trotted back out and the film took in $6,000,000.
Nearly ten years later, on March 25, 1966 Bambi reappeared in theaters and the film grabbed $9,000,000.
It was during the summer of 1975, though, when Disney pull out all the stops. Unlimited TV commercials, newspaper ads, and even a movie junket featuring the cast of voices. Bambi earned $20,000,000 during the summer of 1975, making it the most successful run of the film, since its release in 1942.
Bambi wouldn’t arrive back in theaters until June 4, 1982, where it took in $23,000,000.
Bambi’s final appearance on the big screen during a theatrical rerelease was July 15, 1988. The film stole more than $39,000,000 from moviegoers.
And then something strange happened. A new form of movies, VHS, was getting very popular and all old movies were new again, this time with the ability to watch them on your own TVs at home, any time you wanted to.
You could go and buy Bambi when it was released (for a limited time, of course) for $49 and make him yours for always, or at least until the VHS tape broke from your kids having watched it so many times.
Those were the days of real childhood. Walking by a movie theater knowing you wanted to see a movie just because of the power of a movie poster. The poster that had the ability to try and steal you away from the grip of your mother’s hand, and make you run inside the theater to see whatever movie it was that had bitten you and gave you the movie bug.
That’s one bug I hope that everyone has been bitten by.
For your chance to win a pair of passes to any AMC, Regal or Harkins Theater in the U.S. (perhaps for you and your child’s first movie in a theater), just leave a comment on our Facebook page mentioning the first movie you remember seeing as a child. Winners will be chosen at random throughout the month of August from all comments left on the appropriate Facebook posts (pertaining to this article).
