Elder gays, please explain something before VCR era

You were SOL unless it came onto television.

Most big cities had at least one rep theater, and maybe a film society too. It was exciting to see what they'd be offering every month, but the instant access through streaming is a dream come true. Movies on TV were often cut and in mediocre color, plus there were endless commercials to suffer through.

Before the internet life was not on demand.

Movies had return engagements. There were also rep houses, festivals, second run theaters. Colleges and other organizations would have private showings of important movies. There were also fewer movies, so they weren’t used as a background noise.

Yes, back then, you were SOL if you didn't see a film during its theatrical run (it might wind up on network TV somewhere down the road--but not any foreign films or arthouse movies). Best bet was being in a larger city with a repertory theater. Thank God for streaming now.

T'was the best of times really

Prior to recorded movies for consumer use, many independent theaters had matinees and/or midnight showings of older films. This practice eventually expanded to larger theater chains once they discovered better net profit compared to first run releases.

Eventually, older films were broadcast on independent TV stations. The inception of cable (and eventually satellite) TV allowed for channels that specialized in older films.

I saw Mame with Lucy in the theater and had to wait YEARS before finding out how truly awful she was in it.

Xanadu was at the $1 theater for two weeks and I saw it every day.

People who could afford to rented projectors and movies. My uncle had a private cinema in his house. But you didn't need all that.

There were also arthouse movie theatres that ran all the time often until late at night and if you were very interested to see a film they'd often come up.

Even today there are tons of films especially from the 70s and 80s that just aren't available, but tons and tons of schlock on Netflix and amazon prime.

Before the proliferation of VCRs and cable television in the 1980s, movie lovers could watch older films on subscription channels like ON TV or SelecTV. Other than that, you had to wait until the specialty theaters ran them or some network station bought the rights and butchered the hell out of them for family viewing and commercial airtime, and cropped them to fit the tv aspect ratio.

Every local channel played old movies at some time of the day. The networks premiered popular fairly recent hit films in prime time and did a lot of promotion so you'd know what was coming up.

I loved the local affiliates who had lots of hours to fill especially late at night and the UHF channels had classic films all the time. It was easy and fun to give one's self a free education in classic Hollywood cinema.

[quote]cropped them to fit the tv aspect ratio.

Imagine watching "Lawrence of Arabia" in pan & scan, cropped to fit a Zenith 25" screen. If you had missed it in all its Super Panavision glory in the movie theaters, you really wouldn't know what you were missing.

In Chicago, there was a movie shown on at least one channel after the 10:00 news. These were old B&W films and sometimes edited to keep them in the 2 hour time slot (including commercials).

I remember when NBC started a series called "Saturday Night at the Movies" in September of 1961, which showed every week a different newer movie. My recollection was that the films were from 20th Century Fox and included lots of films from the 1950s.

Here's a list of the films from the first four seasons.

Later they also started "Monday Night at the Movies" and "Wednesday Night at the Movie".

I still remember watching so many of these film. Made me a big fan of Richard Widmark. Also the first time I heard about the story of the Titanic when they showed 1953's "Titanic".

Movies used to have a super-long first run in the theaters, as well. I know that doesn't answer the question of how do you see a movie 2 years later. But it did give people a longer window of time to make it to the theater. My mom said that "The Sound of Music" ran for months in the theaters.

If you loved silent movies, one could buy them on 8mm. I owned Phantom of the Opera and most of Lillian Gish's films.

Growing up in the 90s, I would record a lot of my favorite movies or tv shows on VHS tapes as I knew they might not be shown again. It was possible to get local places to order some films on VHS, but if it wasn’t on their list, they couldn’t order it. There was no Amazon or eBay back then.

I saw "The Sound of Music" in a second run theater in 1968.

I'm not saying it was in it's fourth smash year continuously in cinemas, but I did see it on the big screen that year.

*its

Sorry!

So TV Guide magazine was a household item for a reason, it was really useful to find which movies would be showing on tv at what time!

I miss the revival houses. It makes a huge difference to see a movie in a theater as opposed to a TV screen.

There were repertory movie theaters in large cities that would regularly show old movies. The Brattle in Cambridge, MA was a favorite of mine--I saw so many things there in college. And then at the Angelica in NYC.

You either saw them on tv or saw them in the theater when they got a cheap re-release.

R15 is the faggiest fag who ever fagged. Probably had a cat named Poopsie, too! lol

I don't think anyone specifically mentioned this, but I saw quite a few old films at public-library movie nights.

I miss the ability to happen upon old movies late at night on regular TV. I saw some really interesting ones that way, like B-movies from the '30s whose names I never knew. There was something much easier about taking whatever there was---because there wasn't an enormous surfeit of cultural products---rather than being able (expected) to affirmatively choose your own collection of movies or view them on demand.

[quote] I saw "The Sound of Music" in a second run theater in 1968.

Hmm ... It was first released on April 1, 1965.

In the U.K. you had to wait for the film to be shown on TV (usually every few years) and bigger films like Gone with the Wind or The Sound of Music would get re-released in cinemas every few years. You could only see Disney films in cinemas every 5 years.

Because there were only 3 TV stations until the early 1980s, you wouldn’t get the same big film shown more than once every couple of years.

The Christmas TV schedules were when all the big films would be shown, over the period from about the 20th December to 2nd January. They’d also be shown a good few years after they were initially released. We got The Sound of Music for the first time in something like 1978 and Mary Poppins in 1984.

Even when videos were available you didn’t get all titles initially. It was common for films like E.T to not be released on video to maintain the theatre sales for years to come.

I still find it amazing you can generally get all films now instantly whenever you fancy seeing them. In those days you could wish for years to see a film.

Any decent university had one or more film societies with regular showings of old movies. Posters always up everywhere on campus advertising them.

Same with TV reruns. Once, mebby twice and never to be seen again till the cable need for recycled product.

I should also add to the above. How someone born within the last 40 years would view films is very different to how someone born over 40 years ago would have viewed them.

Today, film titles are regarded how music has mostly always been enjoyed. As something accessible that could be played whenever you wanted.

But film titles were not this kind of medium. Film titles could only be regarded as something you experienced when it was available not when you wanted to see it.

[quote] [R15] is the faggiest fag who ever fagged. Probably had a cat named Poopsie, too! lol

Actually, R23, I had a dog named Asta.

I recall that 'Bridge on the River Kwai' was first shown on national television in 1966 or 1967, and it was a huge event, one of the highest-rated shows up to that time. It hadn't been in the theaters in years.

I lived in DC in the 1970s, and there were a lot of resources like the legendary Circle Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue, which was a cheap double-biller that showed lots of old Classic Hollywood, along with niche events like 'Japanese Samurai week' or Ingmar Bergman's films. Then there were a couple of UHF channels that showed movie oldies at night, plus that was about peak time of the Humphrey Bogart renaissance so there was one channel that showed two of his movies every Thursday evening. And then there was channel 20 which had great horror movies on weekend nights.

[quote]Growing up in the 90s, I would record a lot of my favorite movies or tv shows on VHS tapes

Someone didn't read the title of this thread.

The ABC Movie of the Week!

This is sort of on topic. My family flew from New York to Seattle on Saturday 29 July 1972. The Rolling Stones had just played four shows in New York City. Channel 5 in New York (WNEW?) was going to show the movie "Gimme Shelter" on Saturday night. I remember turning on the televsion after we'd arrived in Seattle, expecting to see the movie. I was 13, what did I know.

You had to have a projector and somehow get a copy of a movie, but that wouldn't work because I don't think you could use a movie projector like they used in theaters, for home use.

Channel 2 was CBS, Channel 7 was ABC, Channel 4 was NBC, Channel 13 was WNET Public Television. Channel 13 had the best shows back then.

[quote]Channel 5 in New York (WNEW?)

yes

[quote] So TV Guide magazine was a household item for a reason, it was really useful to find which movies would be showing on tv at what time!

If you were fancy, you bought the real TV Guide at the supermarket every week. (If not, there was a cheapie TV guide that was tucked into the Sunday paper.)

In the back pages section, they listed every movie playing on every channel and who the main stars were for that week. You would--or at least, I did--make a little note of that on your calendar so you could be in front of the television at the right time.

It's like before answering machines - you'd tend to call people early evening, because that's when most people were home.

R15 The Silent Movie Theatre in LA was quite hip in the 80's until the hustler BF murdered the old queen who owned it.

The ephemeral nature of movies made you enjoy them so much more.

I first saw GWTW for the first time in a theater in the early seventies. It was the only way to see it until it made it's first tv appearance later during the 70s.

[quote] first saw GWTW

wha'?

Gone With The Wind

Back in the day, I remember kicking myself when I missed an episode of a tv show that I liked. The only thing I could do was hope that the show would be rerun in the summer.

Remember when you had to be somewhere when they were going to show an episode of something you loved, and you knew you had to miss it!

I kind of liked having to clear my schedule, have to REALLY watch something (concentrate), and then digest it afterward without seeing it again for 6 months or so.........

you could see movies day and night on TV. ABC, CBS, NBC showed movies in the morning, afternoon, prime time and late night as did local stations in NY. There were at least 8 different movies available for viewing per day and The Million Dollar Movie ran the same film for a week Monday-Friday 8pm-10pm.

And TV was far more of a shared national event. Everyone would tune in to watch the big shows all at the same time and talk about them the next day.

[quote] Any decent university had one or more film societies with regular showings of old movies. Posters always up everywhere on campus advertising them.

My most vivid memory of them, from the 70s and early 80s: men with neckbeards by themselves in the audience, shouting "FOCUS!!" almost from the second the movie started.

There's an episode of "All in the Family" wherein Gloria is obsessed with getting all her work done because "Citizen Kane" is going to be on tv that night. Watch it and pretend its a documentary, OP.

[quote]And TV was far more of a shared national event. Everyone would tune in to watch the big shows all at the same time and talk about them the next day.

Yes. I now think of the '70s as a lackluster era for TV, but I remember when I was going to school, ALL the kids on the bus would be talking about whatever had happened on Charlie's Angels, The Six Million Dollar Man, Alice, Mork & Mindy, Happy Days, or Three's Company the night before. With the sitcoms, they'd be quoting the lines. They wouldn't hear those lines a second time until the episode came around again as a rerun. I know VCRs existed in the '70s, but I didn't personally know anyone who had one until the early '80s.

Maybe that kind of discussion still happens, but it was different when the choices were so limited.

[quote]And TV was far more of a shared national event.

Those were the days when "Who Shot J.R.?" and "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" was on everyone lips the next day at the water cooler.

R19 & R36 aren’t kidding. When the new issue of TV Guide hit each week I was *so* excited. At one point I subscribed, but canceled it because I could get it at the grocery store a day earlier.

Libraries sometimes had projectors and films. In remember we screened The Graduate in my basement.

Back then, the old movies weren't so old! I watched movies with Bogie, Errol Flynn, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald even when we had only the Big 3 networks!

Wait a bit and it would show up on HBO.

We would walk a mile to see those old movies OP

Uphill both ways

Before VCRs most of us were more concerned with going out, doing things with other people, having run, living life. VCRs started the transition of people becoming home bound, anti-social recluses which got us to the point we are today where so many are social retards incapable of carrying on an intelligent conversation with someone else face to face.

^^ "having fun"

[quote] VCRs started the transition of people becoming home bound, anti-social recluses

Was that what happened to YOU?

"VCRs started the transition of people becoming home bound, anti-social recluses"

Someone missed out on the fun of picking guys up in the adult section at Blockbusters 😜

[quote] VCRs started the transition of people becoming home bound, anti-social recluses

All I can say is that if you believe this, you obviously weren't in college during the age of VHS.

When I was in college, Saturday and Friday nights (even weekend nights), you could meet tons of other students socially at the Blockbuster Video or Hollywood Video. VHS tapes were expensive to buy for movies you only wanted to see once; everyone rented. And people TALKED to each other at the rental shops because everyone was browsing through the same bestsellers (lining the wall) and the smaller, older movies on the shelves in the center of the store.

R61, he is both right and wrong. Much like TV in the 1950s, VCRs brought socializing into the home. Yes, there was very much a drop off in going to restaurants, movie theaters, etc.; however, it was quite common to invite friends over to see a film. This was true of all age groups, not just college age.

"and cropped them to fit the tv aspect ratio."

Like this. On tv they completely cropped out Matt Servitto's dick.

R60 Blockbusters never had an adult section. That was the beauty of your local video store.

r1 is right, but it's interesting that apparently late shows were showing old movies all the time. Lou Lumenick's Twitter account is nothing but old TV ads and air dates for old movies on TV back to the 1950s, it's really fascinating.

Also, I bring this up so much I'm becoming boring, but it's relevant: I'm reading Andy Warhol's diaries and he's said twice now that they're always showing old movies on TV these days, with "these days" being the late 1970s and early 1980s. And I know from personal experience that by the late 1980s you could see a lot of old movies on Turner stations and WGN superstation.

[quote]Imagine watching "Lawrence of Arabia" in pan & scan, cropped to fit a Zenith 25" screen.

That's how I first saw it on a Turner station, I think TBS. Even when TCM started out, for the first several months they would sometimes show a cropped movie with a notice beforehand warning you of that. I talked to someone who worked at TCM once and they said they went to work getting TV-ready copies in their correct aspect ratio at the very beginning but often someone in scheduling would schedule a movie they hadn't gotten to yet, so they dug out the old TBS or TNT copy and played it.

I told them how much I appreciated all their hard work, it was great to be able to see the whole movie, finally.

We California city kids in the 70s and early 80s had all sorts of choices for seeing old movies beyond the late show or UHF film festivals constantly running on TV (anyone remember Carol Doda, "the perfect 36", Elvira,or Tom Labrie?).

Many of the old movie palaces had been converted to repertory theaters or co-op film collectives with three or four double bills per week of obscure stuff along with the classics. They kept suggestion boxes or request logs and would show your requests if they liked them and the films were available. One of my favorites was the Red Vic Movie House run by hippies and punks in the Haight. You could sit on one of their old comfy couches and watch the movie after picking up some freshly baked goods and hot chocolate at their concession stand. They served you popcorn with real butter in glass bowls. On the posher side you could also sit on couches at the on-site theater at the MGM Grand in Tahoe, where they'd show their 50s and 60s films from their vault to us kids while our parents gambled in the casino.

Churches, museums, libraries and universities usually had ongoing film festivals. I remember one church had an entire summer of Hitchcock classics in chronological order from The 39 Steps to North by Northwest. And if you happened to be in a pizza parlor at the right time, you might catch an old Chaplin, Keaton, or Laurel & Hardy classic projected onto pull-down canvas makeshift movie screens.

@r64, "Blockbusters never had an adult section. That was the beauty of your local video store. "

They did where I lived...

"Blockbuster Had A Naughty Room?

If the news of a naughty room in Blockbuster surprises you, then you likely weren’t a teenager in the 90’s. It is nearly tradition to have lost your innocence in the back of the famous video rental store. 97% of current 40 year olds in 2020 report seeing nudity for the first time in the back of one of the stores. If this surprises you, it is likely you are either too old, too young, or too lame to have experienced this tradition. The tradition is a common talking point to current young adults. Every 90’s kid can bond over the common grounds they all share. "

R68 Thanks for that reliable piece of journalism. A great contribution to this thread.

R50 Game of Thrones. If you missed an episode, it was hard to escape it not being spoiled. You had to stay off social media and pray your friends wouldn’t text you after and want to talk about it based on their assumption you watched it too.

I grew up in the 1970s. Many classic Hollywood films were shown late at night or during the afternoons on the weekends. We got HBO in 1974 or 1975. That's where most movies first were shown after their theatrical runs. Popular movies were then shown next on network TV and it would sometimes be a big event. But it would sometimes take years for the movies to wind back up on HBO. I'm not certain of the year, but I think in 1988 on the 10th anniversary of Grease, HBO got the rights back and showed it many times that month. By then, HBO was showing movies more frequently when they had them. In the early days of HBO, they'd show movies only a few times a month.

R60 I can’t imagine those days. I’m 34 and I was the little kid who would sit by the adult section or room (most were closed off rooms) and I’d wait for the door open to see inside. All those guilty men would look at me and my mouth would be dropped or I’d be laughing because I’d see some covers from the inside.

Speaking of adult section, what about porn? They had porno theaters.

@r69, This more reliable for you, smartass? 😠

"However, the company did carry R-rated and unrated films. "

I read something years ago about how the real driver behind the boom in VCRs was porn. People wanted access to porn in their homes and to not have to be seen at sketchy porn theaters and the original catalog of VHS tapes was largely XXX movies that people would buy a very expensive machine to play very expensive movies. And then when DVDs came along, again, porn was the first widely available item and turned DVD players into must haves in homes and commercial movies just followed the trend. Same with steaming. People wanted porn online and if it wasn’t for porn, we’d never have YouTube or Netflix.

So count on porn ushering in the next wave of video access, whatever that will be.

Oh someone please explain to R74 the difference between an R or NR rated film and an XXX film. I find myself exhausted at the thought of trying.

^ You're the only exhausting one here. Who said XXX you perv? I said adult section. I was right you were stupid as usual. Own it

They would periodically release the James Bond films in nationwide double (or triple) features.

R75, I would believe that porn probably still drives a lot of the tech advancements in movie / video availability.

Unrelated side note, porn also probably drove a lot of First Amendment rights issues.

HBO existed in the mid 70s and I can remember watching it at someone's house before VCR days.

Probably not really what OP meant - consider it a tangent.

My first year in college (84-85), I lived at the repertory theater on Race Street in downtown Cincinnati. That's where I first saw "Another Country" (1984), which was the first VHS tape I bought ($84!). They showed all of Ingmar Bergman's films in a row and I saw them all. I think I went there every day.

There were usually several second-run "dollar movie" houses in various neighborhoods. I remember going to one in Yonkers to see CAMELOT in the early 70s. I had seen the film in its initial roadshow release, which was the way major films were launched in those days, and was looking forward to seeing it again. But the dollar movie house showed the later general-release version which had something like 20 minutes cut from the film. I had a similar experience with seeing FUNNY GIRL again in a second-run house, it also had some scenes trimmed for general release.

But if you lived in NYC you had a choice of marvelous revival and repertory film houses like Theater 80 St Marks, The Bleecker Street Cinema, Film Forum, The Regency, as well as the Museum of Modern Art.

R82 many roadshow release films would be edited for wide release later, both Camelot and Funny Girl were on the list.

Thank you R83, very informative!

You would have your family reenact it for you.

[quote] Libraries sometimes had projectors and films. In remember we screened The Graduate in my basement.

R53 people can borrow the projector? this sounds too much fun to miss!

I grew up watching "The 3 o'clock movie" on TV most days. I wish now that I had a list of all the films I saw that way. I'm sure I saw many classics, but I have few conscious memories of it.

Please describe the private cinema R9. Popcorn machines? Cigarette girls running around, too?

[quote]Please describe the private cinema [R9]. Popcorn machines? Cigarette girls running around, too?

It was so long ago. Whenever I went there as a kiddie I'd ask my cousin to take me up there. I think it was in the attic. There was a proper bar with miniatures I seem to remember and proper cinema seats.

One day my uncle threw me a party there and he got us "For Pete's Sake". I think that's the only time I ever saw a movie there.

London was full of screening rooms you could rent and cool kids would have their birthday parties there. I never did.

^ I wrote the word "there" about 50 times.

Libraries and museums in major cities would often show vintage films, especially if there were colleges in the area like here in Boston.

My boarding school in England would show movies most Saturday nights - dreadful hetero war movies and such. One time one of our teachers rented Annie Hall and it went over the top of most of the kids so they were noisy and restless which pissed me off as I wanted to enjoy it.

in the Detroit area, back in about 1976, at 2:45 pm we had the "afternoon movie with Bill Kennedy" (a b-list actor from the last days of the contract period in Hollywood).......it was GREAT, I had the house alone, Doritos and Campbell's chicken noodle soup and the TV all to myself..........I watched it every day........reruns of classic old movies with commentary by Bill..............miss those days................

R40, When NBC purchased the rights to broadcast "GWTW" in 1976, it became must see TV.

Of course, they aired it over two successive evenings to earn more money with commercials.

In Cambridge, MA, there was The Brattle Cinema, The Harvard Square Cinema and The Orson Welles Cinema, all catering in old Hollywood movies.

The Brattle Cinema in Harvard Square is where the resurgence of Humphrey Bogart movies began in the 1960s.

Movie theaters. There were first run ones and niche ones. In Providence, RI there was the Castle theater. We used to go there all the time.

A lot of movies were allowed to rot/disintegrate/stored carelessly or were destroyed. Many in the very early days were considered ephemeral. That’s why there are so few silent movies around. By the mid 1950s TV created a massive need for content and televised feature films became a big part of programming.

When I was a kid in the 70s, I remember it being a huge deal when “big” movies would come on tv. My mom made me watch Gone With the Wind with her when it came on. I was probably 10 or so, and even though I thought it would be boring, I loved it. I remember watching the Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, too.

I got my first vcr for my birthday in the early 80s. The first two movies I rented were Risky Business and All the Right Moves. Tom Cruise made me tingly THEN.

Getting movies into your home was an excruciatingly long and baffling journey. It seemed only a few enterprising inventors kept the dream alive.

The technology was there, but I guess there were copyright issues that needed ironed-out before you were allowed to own your very own cassette of "Oliver!".

Movie studios rented their movies out to TV stations, and if yours were cheap (like mine) they rented shit like Beach Party movies, Godzilla, Jerry Lewis, etc. just to have filler between commercials.

Thank god the Baby Boomers saved us from the old fossils!

R80, I thought there’s no way that’s right, HBO must’ve come out in the 80s, but damn you’re right! November 1972. HBO is almost 50!! That’s genuinely shocking to me seeing as the 90s were 15 years ago and the 80’s only 20.

R75 Porn pioneered online shopping and payments. The first major payment systems online were porn sites.

R100, In the 1970s in California, there was the "Z Channel", which showed movies for a price.

Johnny Carson often referred to it on the Tonight Show.

[quote]I thought there’s no way that’s right, HBO must’ve come out in the 80s, but damn you’re right! November 1972. HBO is almost 50!!

My grandparents were early adopters of cable, and I was a little kid and didn't get that there were a few different premium movie channels. In the version in my head, you had cable and you had ALL the stuff. I remember being so excited that I could watch the Superman movie (the first Christopher Reeve one) on the day I visited them. Then my grandfather looked at the listing and pointed out that that one was on TMC rather than HBO. That was a tough day.

I agree with the comment up thread that having limited over the air channels and pre-vcr meant you had to watch whatever the stations put on. Fortunately it was also pre-infomercials, so old movies ran at 4:00 in the afternoon (before the evening news) and late at night after the 11:00 news. Having no control over choice meant you watched a lot of stuff just because it was on, B movies with contract actors. Commercials were a pain but they were brief back then and anyway we didn’t know any better.

The version of HBO that was available in the late 70s was super basic.....in some of their interstitials they had text like a video game. It was all very low budget in the beginning. But they did play movies. I think Walter Matthau was in whatever we watched that night. Something for the adults (us kids were bored).

[quote]R64 Blockbusters never had an adult section.

Did they have a Barbra Streisand section you defaulted to cruising?

IIRC some Hollywood Video stores had a backroom for "adult" videos and they were not really hardcore, just playboy channel or midnight skinmax stuff. For Blockbuster, it might depends on whether the store was corporate owned or independently owned franchise, the latter might have some softcore videos etc.

Anyone remember the early cable boxes (before the ones with the dial I think) that had a row of buttons. And you could push two buttons down halfway and hold them in place with pennies to unscramble the pay channels?

Only me? God, I’m old as fuck.

^ You think that's bad, we could get TV from Mars with this thing...

R108 Ha! With the three rows. My brother in law worked for Ma Bell and rigged up an extension.