Can't recall the last time there was a Big Movie Premiere at the Inwood Theatre -- maybe the 2007 Wendell Baker Story wingding attended by Owen, Luke and Andrew Wilson, which took place a whole two years after the movie bowed at South by Southwest? I guess that counts. Or when Robert De Niro and Barry Levinson stopped by for the What Just Happened Q&A during the AFI. That's more like it.
Still , both were but a shadow of a shadow of the event that took place at the Inwood 40 years ago tonight: The world premiere of director Ken Russell's big-screen adaptation of The Who's Tommy attended by one of its stars, Ann-Margret.
As our John Anders noted at the time, Dallas seemed like a pretty "unlikely" location for such an event. Apparently it had something to do with Ann-Margret's ties to Dallas: Her second film, 1962's State Fair, was shot at Fair Park. So ... sure. Why not. Makes about as much sense as Tommy.
From the looks of our archived pieces, which you can browse below, it certainly sounded like quite the scene at "Inwood and Vine," hawhaw: "glitter-throwing girls swinging from the marquee, a black-satin-red-carpeted stage with a live drummer pounding in beat with the movie soundtrack" and other elements that combined to make up what our Jan Hubbard deemed a "high rent freak show." And then there was Ann-Margret, introduced by KZEW's Gary Shaw and seen in the clip below playing the Tommy pinball machine. Not much of a pinball wizard. Like anyone noticed.
