Did anyone see this originally in a UK cinema in the 1970s? The reason I'm asking is that I want to find the film that it was released with in a double bill - I can't remember the title.
I just read that on the trivia and I think, for the UK at least, it's nonsense.
Controversy aside, the initial release of Gold in the UK was a big deal. As Roger Moore's first film after his first Bond was a huge success, this was treated almost like a Bond film. It got a big World Premier in Leicester Square, London, and was a major event. It then initially played in Rank's Odeon chain, in the same screens, usually, as Live and Let Die had played in the previous year.
I have an interest in, and a reasonable memory for, double bills, and while I can't be 100% absolutely sure that there was no minor supporting film, I'm about 98% sure; it was only accompanied by either a short (usually a short documentary) or a cartoon. They were selling souvenir brochures in the foyer for goodness sake (I still have mine). These were dying out by the 70's and were only ever done for big "event" films. I can't think of a single film that I EVER saw that got a souvenir brochure yet played initially on a double bill.
It was, I'm sure, eventually shown in re-release as a double bill, although I don't actually remember that. I'm almost as sure that in its release around regional and local cinemas in the months after release (as was the tradition then, before wide releases became the practice), it still played on its own. I can remember trying to talk a friend into seeing it one evening after school at our semi-local, and I don't recall any supporting film to help argue the case.
The implication that it was originally released only as a fairly minor film, either in support, or with a major supporting film, isn't just misleading; its quite simply utterly wrong.
Like it or not, it was an event picture, and a big hit.
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John-367
11 years ago
grambax I agree with your post. Gold was a major popular release and treated as such.
While some people might want to diminish the importance of the film at the time, it is also very possible that faulty memories and/or ignorance of the cinema exhibition business in the 1970s are to blame.
Shorts were still not uncommon with major releases, some of them approaching an hour or more with decent production values and familiar casts, so it's easy to misremember two features being together in a programme when it was one feature and a lengthy dramatic short.
It's also very easy to misremember seeing two particular films together when you saw them separately almost 40 years ago, haven't thought much about it since and have no way of checking.
Also major features, as you say, often took months to roll out and filter down to local fleapits, then, often quite quickly, a popular film might be put together with another feature and do another circuit. For the average audience member it could easily seem as if a double bill programme in a nearby town was still part of the initial release which had only just finished at another cinema down the road.
Anyone brought up with the internet would probably be astonished at how little information about the workings of the film industry was available to the average interested audience member of the pre-1990s - and how unreliable that often was.
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grambax
11 years ago
Anyone brought up with the internet would probably be astonished at how little information about the workings of the film industry was available to the average interested audience member of the pre-1990s - and how unreliable that often was.
Thanks! Yes, that is very true.
One way to find out about some double bills is to look for images of their posters. Old quads do indeed reveal the re-release of Gold, as the supporting film with a Diamonds Are Forever re-release, as mentioned above. But the memorable original quad poster, and magazine ads which show up occasionally, are of Gold alone.
My recollection, and I was still a boy at the time, is that by the mid Seventies, even the habit of releasing short dramas as support films (some, such as the Edgar Wallace films, and a series of half hour crime re-enactions, The Scales of Justice were then grouped as TV Series) was pretty much dying out. It still happened - I remember The Empire Strikes Back had an interesting dramatic short in support. But I remember this as pretty much the exception rather than a norm by that time. I think all the Bonds of that era were accompanied by short documentaries or a cartoon, for example.
But getting a clear picture of those days, even now, is pretty difficult. There are few public sources.
BTW Has the trivia been changed. It now mentions only a US Double Bill release. As it stands, the thread looks as if I'm suggesting the OP was talking nonsense, while what I meant was the trivia quoted was nonsense. But it now makes no mention of the UK release at all.
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11 years ago
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grambax
10 years ago
I saw it in the cinema in the 1970s. It was either alone or main feature. Roger Moore was a big star back then. It certainly was not 2nd on the bill to a Bond film.
Out of curiosity, was that in the UK or US?
It was a big release in the UK, with only a documentary short or a cartoon in support.
It did was on a major release double bill after a couple of years, and only then was it the supporting film, to Diamonds Are Forever.
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