DALLAS — Friday, June 20, marks 50 years to the day that “Jaws” was released in theaters nationwide. Audiences across America all of a sudden had simultaneous shark fever and shark phobia. What Alfred Hitchcock did for showers 15 years earlier with ‘Psycho,’ Steven Spielberg did for entire oceans.
Cinematically speaking, “Jaws” changed the course of both moviegoing and moviemaking—the kind of stuff Hollywood dreams are made of for filmmakers and cinephiles alike. And yet, far from the lights of Tinseltown, it was one screening at one theater right here at home in Dallas that charted that course for what is regarded as “the original summer blockbuster.”
As legend has it, for one reason or another,* The Medallion Theatre at 125 Medallion Center, Dallas, was chosen to be the site of the screening—the very first theater to ever show “Jaws” for a public audience on March 26, 1975, two months and three weeks before its official release…