Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1975

7 thoughts on “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1975”

• So this ad appeared on Sunday, 11/23/75. It also alludes to the show being run regularly on Sundays. Well, not only did the show not premier that Sunday night, as far as I know the new episodes never premiered on Sundays on WTTW. It is also really strange that this ad ran on the day it did, without any mention of the show having a premier on the following Wednesday night. Maybe the show was originally meant to premier that Sunday. We do know that the “pilot” was taped on Thursday, November 20th, but that the pilot did not air until Wednesday, November 26th. I posted the listing for the pilot on the show page.

• Interesting. Who knows what they were thinking about nearly 50 years ago?

• For two months, I started to watch the show in chronological order from 1975 to 1999 to gauge their opinions on American cinema during that time. I came to the conclusion that with the death of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s and Hollywood’s post-Jaws and Star Wars fixation with high concept spectacles, they were frustrated with a vast majority of movies from 1975 to 1995. Only Gene’s track record of movie recommendations started to improve in the late 90s.

• I’ve got the 11/23/75 Chicago Tribune in front of me. It has the tv section for the entire week, and it lists “Opening Soon” airing twice: Sunday night at 10:00, and Wednesday night at 7:30. So the premiere was in fact Sunday the 23rd.

  For some reason, the Wednesday listing has a fuller description of the show, as if that were the premiere. But there’s no doubt that it aired first on Sunday.

  Siskel’s piece in this issue is an interview with Stanley Donen. The paper didn’t even bother to add a note at the end to the effect of “Watch Siskel tonight on channel 11!”

• Interesting, James. Is there a chance you can post the article on Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/Siskelandebert

• First, thanks to Larry and all the contributors. I’ve been frustrated by how little information we have about the early years of the show. Even after 3 books (Life Itself, Enemies-A Love Story, and Opposable Thumbs), I expect there is still quite a bit we don’t know. Ebert’s book devoted just one chapter to the show and contained several inaccurate comments. Enemies was a series of interviews that were probably for a proposed book that never materialized (maybe because the author was unable to get Ebert’s participation). Opposable Thumbs was more concerned about readability than providing a lot of details. And most of the details that were provided had already been divulged in Enemies. Where does that leave us? Hoping for another book, which seems unlikely at this point. With that in mind, for the last several months I’ve been combing through the Tribune listings up to September of 1982, with the goal of creating a full record of the WTTW episodes. That goal proved to be a challenge. I was not sure what day, week, or month the show would be on. So I tried to be very thorough. The trib listings are not the final say on the airings, but they are a good source in lieu of official documentation from WTTW. If anyone out there has access to other listings that might plug any gaps or correct possible errors, that information would be greatly appreciated. I’m going to start by posting a list of all the Opening Soon episodes. There were two surprises here. First, the early episodes were few and far between. Second, this site hosts four of the first five!

• Opening Soon at a Theater Near You–Episode Guide (as found in the Trib listings)
  1. 11/23/75 10:00 Sunday First Pilot aired, rerun 11/26 7:30 Wednesday.
  2. 03/01/76 7:00 Monday Second Pilot (Taxi Driver, etc.)
  3. 10/26/76 MISSING 8:30 Tuesday (“Marathon Man” “Car Wash” “The Front” “The Ritz”)
  4. 12/28/76 8:30 Tuesday (King Kong, etc.)
  5. 01/25/77 9:30 Tuesday (Best and Worst of 1976)
  6. 03/22/77 MISSING 9:30 Tuesday (Academy Award Predictions)
  7. 05/28/77 MISSING 10:00 Saturday (need more verification–listing shows it ending at 10:15)