I saw it at the much missed Ken cinema later that summer. Demand was so high that the local art house showed it.
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Timeline:
- Saw a copy of the pre-release paperback on a drug store book rack:
Thought it sounded really hokey and juvenile, so I didn’t buy it. I was reading Anderson and Niven and Heinlein and Stapledon, etc, etc, and thought it was the kind of dumb movie hyped by “Starlog” magazine.
- A few weeks letter, saw the trailer.
Like, instant Sense Of Wonder mind-fuck. Brief glimpses of a lush and romantic civilization.
- Bought the book on the way home from the theater.
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As I was born in 1977, I can tell you that the film is indeed not 47 years old.
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whatever floats yer boat… Personally, thought it was horrid (the trailer.) I saw the movie with neighborhood chums, around St Louis, when it came out. Moved to SF that fall. Saw the remaining installments (and re-releases) at the Coronet there. Thought it/they were wonderful at the time. COMPLETELY OVER star wars and all superhero movies now–you tell a story, you get in, you get out, you move on. These things now are all “Hook the whale!” and ride it until it runs out of (inspiration and) cash… 
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I saw SW the week after it’s premier. The trailer that convinced me to see it was shorter, but had the same narrator and general feel. Except that it ended with “never before in the history of cinema, has so much money been spent…just for fun (cue Millennium Falcon jumping to lightspeed)”.
I’d like to see that again. I’ve searched, but no joy.
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Your poor mother!
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I have a completely different perception of the trailer. It really feels like a persiflage to me.
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Would you believe a bookstore?
It’s technically a Barnes and Noble, but the Bookstar sign remains.
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I remember our mom taking my brother and me to see the movie - 45 years ago - and we loved every minute of it.
Here’s where we saw it (this doesn’t exist anymore):
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woah! i just learned a new word! thanks!
“it’s the story of a boy, a girl, and a universe” is perhaps not the best line for a trailer. any trailer 
star wars is the first movie i ever saw,.or at least was present for. i was too young to remember. my parents saw it alone first to make surre “too scary” - i guess whatever trailer they saw, it didn’t convey a whole lot
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Great spot! Beautiful building. I was sorry to hear of its demise.
ETA: And, I now recall, not too far from where PSA 182 and the Cessna came down the next year. Ugh.
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Like others here I saw it the first weekend it came out. My friends and I were SF / comic book nerds and were pretty excited about it. We were not disappointed.
I know it is picky, but one thing in the trailer made me moan - “light years ahead of its time”. I probably did not notice that then or thought it was a good line.
Regardless, this kind of “it can’t be that many years” slap up side the head makes me feel oldish.
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I am pretty sure it’s canon that in the galaxy far, far away they have switched all measures of distance to be measures of time
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I was 11, and had no idea what I was in for. My friend’s mom dropped us off at the theater. I was expecting some sort of Japanese monster movie or something. Godzilla vs. Everybody. I’d seen no ads for it, heard no hype.
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I didn’t see it until like a year or more after it came out. My dad didn’t want to wait in those lines. By the time I saw it, because of the sensation the movie caused, just about every clip in the movie was shown on TV, one way or another, so when I finally saw it in the theater, it felt like there wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen.
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I know where that was. It was a real shame when San Jose allowed the Century Domes to be torn down.
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