Me, " The Fox and The Hound"
I’m pretty sure it was To Sir with Love for me. You know, Lulu singing the theme song. I’d read it more cynically now, of course.
ET: The Extra Terrestrial. I never used to be a very emotionally affected kid when it came to TV and movies, so that stands out. I was 12.
As I’ve aged I’ve become more susceptible. I now well up at the sight of a kitten playing with yarn, which is inconvenient.
Brian’s Song. The James Caan and Billy Dee Williams one, not the stupid new one.
Where The Red Fern Grows.
Old Yeller.
I grew up in the seventies, and back then the kid’s movies and animated specials were shown once a year and it was a Very Special Occasion. It didn’t take my brother and me long to learn that there is only one way to watch Snoopy Come Home…lying on our stomachs, chins propped in our hands so we could block the side views of our faces from each other and pretend we weren’t crying. Of course, the little wet patches of carpet in front of us gave it away (not to mention Mom asking, “You aren’t crying, are you?”)
“Snoo-oo-oo-oo-oopy, Snoo-oo-oo-oo-oopy…why oh why did you roam? come home come home” Waaaah!
Same, but I was in my 20s and hadn’t cried in 10 years. ET broke the dam and now there’s no telling what will turn on the waterworks.
A much older one for me: The Incredible Journey, not the one with the talking dogs and cat, but the original Disney production in 1963. I bawled at the ending of that, then read the book and bawled at the ending there (same ending, BTW), then years later saw the (IMHO much inferior) remake and bawled (I was in my 40’s by now) at the ending.
Heck, even just thinking about it now has me blinking…
Bambi. I was like 5 I think.
The Last Unicorn. I was four.
Bambi here too.
Mine was *A Boy Named Charlie Brown *-- after he comes home after misspelling “beagle” at the national spelling bee, the scene in which he’s sitting on his bed and kicks off his shoes … just so sad.
It came out in 1969 (the same year I was born) but I saw it in the theater when I was four or five, so it must have been re-released or presented as a family movie for some occasion.
I don’t know if it was The Last Unicorn or The Neverending Story. Doesn’t matter what the release date was - I saw them both on video.
I’ve never seen either again! shudder
Pretty sure that was mine, too. I think I was too stunned by Bambi - my parents did a good job of not letting on about anything.
A movie in the early 90s called Awakenings with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. When the patient wakes up and says hello to his mother after years spent in a catatonic state. I wasn’t even having family issues at the time but it still got me.
I am sure earlier movies did it but my first memory of crying at a movie was ET.
Not sure about movies, but I definitely cried at the first Broadway musical I ever saw, on my 10th or 11th birthday: “Fiddler on the Roof.”
PS I’m 100% Irish Catholic, not Jewish.
Almost certainly ET, since that was one of the first movies I ever saw, period.
I can’t honestly say it’s the first, but the first movie I remember making me cry was Moon.
Create a creature that wants to do nothing but go home to a home that never existed for it. I can’t imagine anything more cruel.