Interestingly, that memory at 11 months of various mind-scarring scenes from Bambi is not my earliest memory. It may, however, be my earliest memory that has duration.
The first movie I saw in a theatre was Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I’d like it anyway, but it has the added bonus of being forever linked in my mind with the uncle who took me, who is one of my all-time favorite people.
Shortly before that I remember having to take my Sunday night bath early and get in my nightgown and matching quilted robe and slippers to be allowed to stay up past bedtime to watch **The Wizard of Oz ** on Easter. It played every Easter. I don’t know why.
I’ve tried to explain to my son that when I was his age we had to wait for movies and couldn’t just play them whenever we wanted and it was a big deal. For the whole week before my mom could make me behave by saying “or you won’t be allowed to stay up for the Wizard of Oz” where there would normally be “or you’ll be sent to your room.”
Also, we didn’t have a color television until a few years later so the impact was slightly diminished. Still I loved it. To this day watching it floods me with sense memories of the feel of those quilted robes, my hair smelling of Johnson & Johnson No More Tangles, popcorn the way my mom made it…
Yeah, I remember how special that was. It was practically a holiday, maybe a step below Halloween.
As best as I can recall, it was Yellow Submarine. I would have been about 5 at the time. (That’s the first I recall seeing in a theater, no idea what the first movie I saw on television would have been.)
I think the first movie I ever saw was “The Ten Commandments” in 1956. I would have been around five years old. We saw it at a drive-in.
The first movie I ever saw in a theater was “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”. My older cousin was visiting and wanted to go to the movies, and took me along, because I was crazy about dinosaurs at the time. This would also have been around late 1956 or early 1957. It was at our neighborhood movie theater. Why it was playing at our neighborhood theater three or four years after it was released is a mystery to me, but I remember going to that movie like it was yesterday.
I asked my mom and I have to revise my first movie.
It was Benji but I didn’t think of it because I barely remember it. The only very, very vague recollection I have of it is of one of the kidnappers kicked the other little white dog, Tiffany. Actually, I’ll say “I was present for Benji” in the cinema, but was so young I probably slept through most of it.
The only reason I can corroborate that was actually there, aside from remembering the one scene, is because my sister and I liked it so much my parents bought me a toy “Benji” and a “Tiffany” for my sister. Basically, I remember us loving the movie far better than I remember the movie itself.
I also remember the whole family looking forward to the sequel, For the Love of Benji, but I remember that much more vividly (it’s when he was in Greece, stole some sausages, and got chased by dobermans).
My mom said I went to Benji was because she was actually taking my sister and couldn’t find a babysitter for me. I would have been potty-training age.
She also said my first movie on TV was The Three Lives of Thomasina, which I don’t remember at all. But it explains why, we also had a toy cat named “Thomsina”.
That brings back memories! I too saw this movie and don’t remember it, and I too had a toy cat (mine was a Siamese with a sparkly collar) names Thomasina.
There was a song with the same name on the soundtrack album from Disney’s “Aristocats” movie (which I think was the second movie I ever saw as a kid, and I was totally obsessed with it). The record had several cat songs from other Disney movies (“That Darn Cat” being another) because the title film didn’t have enough songs in it to pad out even a short ‘70s kids’ album.
Sad, but I still have the record somewhere. I played that thing to death when I was 6 or 7.
The first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Babes In Toyland, around Christmas in 1961, when I was seven. I saw it at a big theater (with a balcony) called The New Theater in downtown Baltimore. My father took me and my little brother while my mother did some Christmas shopping at the big department stores which used to be downtown. I’m sure I had watched movies on television before that (Wizard of Oz, for sure), and I had probably seen something at a neighborhood theater before that too, but that’s the first one I remember.
The first memory I have of seeing a movie was at a Drive-in theater for Pete’s Dragon in 1977. It scared the hell out of me and I had nightmares for weeks 
I vaguely recall a Sesame Street movie that had a blue-painted Big Bird singing a very sad song in a spotlight, which made approximately three-year-old me cry and bury my face against my mom. According to mother (many years later), he had been kidnapped by big guys, who put him on display to make money, but I don’t remember anything except the singing. Googling gives the name 'Follow That Bird.'
When I was about four, a friend’s father took a bunch of us to see Back to the Future. The flaming car tracks scared the hell out of me, and I don’t remember much else of it, either.
Really, it’s amazing how much I still like movies, considering how potentially scarring my first experiences were.
My father’s first movie was the Wizard of Oz, when he was four or five and it was broadcast on TV. The flying monkeys apparently scared him half to death.
I have to stick with The Little Mermaid for first movie I remember seeing in a theater, but the honorary title for first movie I ever saw probably goes to 101 Dalmatians.
Yeah, I say stuff like that to my daughter all the time. “Sophie, when I was growing up there were only three channels. And the only time cartoons were on were Saturday mornings, between 8 and noon. And there were no machines to play movies - the only time you could watch a movie at home was when it appeared on one of the three channels. AND THERE WERE NO VIDEO GAMES! AT ALL!!!”
She’s half-horrified, half-pitying me and her poor mom who were so deprived.
The first I ever saw was the Disney version of The Little Mermaid, but either I got sick or Ursula scared me and we left the theater halfway through.
You know, now that I think about it, I’ve never seen the end of that movie, and I’m 22 years old now. I wonder if she ever gets her voice back…
She does, but it looks dicey there for a bit. Ursula gets shishkebabed by the bowsprit of a ship, and when she dies all the Merfolk she had imprisoned as coral (?) transform back into their rightful selves. Daddy decides that his daughter’s happiness is more important than his rules, so he makes her into a human *with *a voice, so she and Prince Eric can live Happily Ever After.
Just in case you want closure or something.
Three elements that several people have in common:
[ul][li]going to the drive-in[/li][li]seeing a Disney or sci-fi movie[/li][li]a scary character[/li][/ul]
My answer has all of those: the first movie I remember seeing was The Black Hole, at the drive-in when I was seven. I doubt it’s the first movie I saw, but it made an impression. I don’t think I saw anything scarier than Maximilian for years.
The first movie I remember seeing alone was Back To the Future, but there’s a good chance I went to other, less memorable, movies before that too.
Slave Ship, made in 1937 and based on a William Faulkner book. It is the first one I remember seeing (not on first run-I’m not THAT old). I was reminded of it by the similar scene in Amistad of the slaves being throw overboard while still chained together so that the ship’s captain could not be charged with slave-running by the pursuing navies. I bet Steven Spielberg has or has seen a copy of it.
I just bought *The Slave Ship-A Human History * book by Marcus Rediker. Fascinating.
My first theater movie? I think maybe Midnight Cowboy?
Kidding. It was The Sword And The Stone.
The first I remember was Snow White. I was four. When they were chasing the witch in the forest I freaked out and started crying hysterically. I never saw the very end. My mom had to remove me from the theater. It’s nice to know that I wasn’t alone in being terrorized by that witch.
So the first full movie I saw was Star Wars.
I have no idea what movie I saw on TV for the first time. We weren’t allowed much TV. However, I presume it was probably the Wizard of Oz, after reading other posts. IT was usually a big deal in our household to watch it annually as my older sister loved that movie.
I second that. Likewise all the Christmas specials, which were run ONCE, not endlessly, on multiple channels. My son is another one who doesn’t understand this.
The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was Old Yeller. I looked it up, and it was released in 1957. I was born in 1958. I’m positive that I did not see it in utero, but I did see it in one of the big downtown first-run movie palaces, so let’s just leave it at…I was little.
I remember being bored and squirmy on my mother’s lap, and my sibs (my two older sisters, for sure, and maybe my brother, but he would have been a teenager) being upset by the ending.
The heaven that was a movie theater was introduced to me when I was four, in June, just before I turned five at the beginning of the next month. My mother wanted, for my birthday, to bring my friends to see ‘The Jungle Book’, but wasn’t sure if it would be too scary for them. So, she brought me a week before as a ‘test screening’. I sat there in the front row, on the left. If the theater hadn’t been remodelled over a decade ago, I could even show you which seat. There was something… I daresay… Holy about it to me at that age. Quiet, and dark, and… Somehow all for me. I think it’s what drew me to become so interrested in film.
Incidentally, the first film I saw wasn’t ‘The Jungle Book’. Before the feature, they played a short serial of Zorro. I was THRILLED with it, and was extra-happy when I got to see it again with my friends a week later.
I’ve loved movies in movie theaters ever since, and I think it’s a shame I don’t get to see more of them that way. Don’t get me wrong, DVD’s are very nice and convenient, but… There’s something about a movie theater.