MovieChat Forums > Elmer Gantry (1960) Discussion > Was this Film Released Late?

Was this Film Released Late?

posted 18 years ago by armourereric
6 replies | jump to latest

I had the pleasure to see this movie on television this past Saturday; Our local San Diego PBS affiliate has a Saturday night classic movie show at 9PM and showed this uncut and without commercials. I recognized this as a film my parents saw at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh in 1968, I was 4 at the time and they could not get a sitter, but that's the question, when we went there was a patron line about a block long to get tickets and we had to wait in the line and it was 1968! (I was born in 1964) and I'm trying to determine how a 1960 film was showing as a blockbuster at a pulbic theatre in 1968? Any thoughts.

Eric

[–] EricBarker 18 years ago

It was probably a re-release. Studio re-releases were common well into the seventies because they were still a vital source of income before video made them obsolete. I remember an extremely well publicized re-release of "Psycho" in 1967, originally made the same year as "Elmer Gantry". Older films often ran as the second half of double bills, too, especially at drive-ins. When my parents took me to see "Hatari" at the drive-in during its first run in 1962, the second film was "Flying Tigers", made twenty years before. I saw a lot of re-releases back then.

The other possibility is that the Stanley might have been a revival house -- that is, a theater that showed a continuing program of older films.

[–] rubyredjewel 18 years ago

"
I live in DC and the musical "West Side Story" played at the same theater for ten years.Which was unsusal but back then there was almost a movie theater on every corner.The same thing happened with "The Rocky Horror Show" except it played only on the weekend for years at the same theater.
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[–] spamdumpj 18 years ago

Was it particularly popular in Pittsburgh? Remember that there were no VCR's back then, so if you wanted to see a movie, you either saw it in a theatre or you rented it, (and this was relatively expensive) from a company that rented movies to schools and the like. Local community groups would sometimes rent and show old movies as fundraisers, and big theatrical releases were often re-released. Gone With the Wind was re-released about a dozen times. Maybe that was the case with this movie, or maybe parts of it were shot in Pittsburgh or something. By 1968 or thereabouts, I recall watching it on TV.

[–] Harold_Robbins 17 years ago

"Studio re-releases were common well into the seventies because they were still a vital source of income before video made them obsolete."

Amen. That's how I got to see GONE WITH THE WIND, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, BEN-HUR, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the 1954 A STAR IS BORN, MY FAIR LADY and DR ZHIVAGO as they were intended to be seen - on the big-screen. I don't care how big somebody's TV screen is or how sophisticated their home-theater set-up, it's just not the same. If the generation out there is lucky they might get to see limited re-releases of the LORD OF THE RINGS films or TITANIC, but as for the ones I was lucky enough to see, chances are slim except for special showings by film societies.

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[–] Alfriend 16 years ago

In the days before video and dvd, classic films were often reissued every few years. I was born in the 1950's and still saw "Gone With The Wind" when I was 5, 10 and 13 in the movie theatres. Movies like Elmer Gantry, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, 2001, etc were among those that I remember were re-issued from time to time.

[–] toshguy 15 years ago

Damn, that must have been cool! Nowadays you can see older movies only on special
screenings. It would be cool if they still regularly reissued classics in normal theaters. Except for the obvious reason of DVD's and such, anpther reason they don't do that anymore is that people who like classic movies generally don't go to the cinema. Mostly teens and people in their twenties frequently watch movies in theaters and most of them apparently like crap like Twilight and Transformers.

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