A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, “Star Wars” opened in Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day weekend of 1977 — in exactly one theater.
That’s how movies were typically released back then. Instead of storming the multiplexes, they opened small and spread across the country gradually. For the first half of that summer, Cleveland Park’s Uptown Theatre was one of only a couple dozen screens in the U.S. where you could see George Lucas’s new epic. “Susceptible teens from Charlottesville to Gettsyburg would have needed to nag their folks to make weekend pilgrimages,” recalls film critic Gary Arnold.
