Steven Spielberg Movies from the Very Beginning
From Cecil B. DeMille's train wreck to the birth of the summer blockbuster
Play Mountain
<cite index="1-4">Steven Allan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development.</cite> <cite index="1-5">His parents were both born to Russian Jewish immigrant families.</cite> The surname he carried was <cite index="10-2">derived from two components: "Spiel," meaning "play" or "game," and "Berg," translating to "mountain" or "hill."</cite>
A boy destined to make his living moving pictures was named, unknowingly, **play mountain**. <cite index="29-9,29-10">Born in Cincinnati in 1946, Spielberg moved with his family to New Jersey when he was three years old. There, he saw his first movie and watched television on the family's first TV.</cite> The engineer's son would spend a lifetime learning how to collapse mountains for an audience.
The Train Crash That Made Him
<cite index="29-11">It wasn't until a 10-year-old Spielberg and his family moved to Arizona in 1957 that he encountered what would become the focus of his childhood and adult life: telling stories on film.</cite> But the seed was planted years earlier. <cite index="67-1,67-2,67-3,67-4">When Steven Spielberg was six or seven years old his father took him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. When he arrived at the theater he felt cheated, because he thought he was going to see a real circus, with real-life clowns and elephants and lion tamers. But as the pictures moved across the screen the boy's disappointment soon gave way to enchantment. One scene in particular–the film's spectacular train wreck–would alter the course of his life.</cite>
What he felt in that theater was not wonder but **control**. <cite index="65-9,65-10,65-11,65-12">According to Spielberg, he first tried his hand at filmmaking after seeing The Greatest Show on Earth, and the need to do so came about as a means of avoiding getting into trouble with his father. In seeking to recreate the exhilaration he experienced watching DeMille's film, Spielberg quickly made a habit of crashing his train cars into one another. After his father threatened to take the train set away, Spielberg got ahold of his parent's 8mm camera and filmed a train wreck. He was then able to view the film over and over, repeatedly enjoying the excitement of the crash without losing access to his train.</cite>
Earning Merit Badges in Spectacle
<cite index="29-2,29-3,29-5,29-6">Steven loved the Boy Scouts, but to move up the ranks he needed to earn merit badges. In the summer of 1958, his father suggested he earn a photography badge by making a movie. By 12, he was wowing Boy Scout buddies with his first Western short. A year later, the scrawny, geeky middle schooler was directing high schoolers in an ambitious war-themed film.</cite> [[merit-badge|merit-badge]] The outcast had found his power: the camera was a passport to command.
<cite index="8-4,8-6">"Firelight" is a science fiction adventure film made by Spielberg when he was just 17 years old. The film was shot on a budget of only $500 and features amateur actors.</cite> <cite index="21-18,21-19">Firelight premiered on March 24, 1964, at Spielberg's local cinema, the Phoenix Little Theatre, in Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg managed to sell (through the use of advertising by friends and family) 500 tickets at one dollar each.</cite> <cite index="24-4">The director claimed the screening earned him a profit of $1.</cite> He had made a feature film. He had charged admission. He had made a dollar.
The Kid Who Walked Past Security
<cite index="20-2">His first professional film was Amblin' (1969), a slick short about hitch-hiking which was distributed as a support feature with the very successful Love Story (1970); it secured Spielberg a contract with Universal Pictures' television division.</cite> But the path to that screening was **unconventional**. <cite index="38-4">Legend has it that Duel was made as part of the handful of productions that Spielberg got involved with after he marched past security at the Universal lot and set himself up in an empty office.</cite>
<cite index="22-1,22-2,22-15">In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Murder by the Book (1971).</cite> He was 22, directing Joan Crawford. A decade after the merit badge. The kid who needed permission had **taken it**.
A Truck in the Desert
<cite index="20-4">He first attracted widespread attention with Duel (1971), a suspenseful made-for-television film of Richard Matheson's horror story "Duel" (April 1971 Playboy) about a motorist pursued by a vindictive petrol tanker.</cite> <cite index="41-1,41-2">ABC pushed for soundstage filming, but Spielberg knew that this was a story that needed the air of the wide open road, and so it was shot against the vast backdrop of a California desert highway. With diners and gas stations peppered along the way, it was the first real taste of the mythic Americana that would permeate the entire career of one of the greatest directors to ever pick up a megaphone.</cite>
<cite index="42-1,42-2">Duel originally aired as a part of the ABC Movie of the Week series on November 13, 1971. It later received an international theatrical release by Universal Pictures (through Cinema International Corporation) in an extended version featuring scenes shot after the film's original TV broadcast.</cite> <cite index="43-3,43-4,43-5">The television film was given the honor of having a run of print ads and a press screening, something rare for the likes of television product back then, but indicative that Universal knew they had a special film on their hands. After the film aired on November 13, 1971, Spielberg was offered a handful of firm directing offers for feature films, while Duel was nominated for two Emmys—it won one for best sound editing—and was also nominated for best TV film of 1971 by the Golden Globes.</cite>
The Sugarland Express: When Critics Saw a New Kind of Director
<cite index="47-3">While it failed to attract attention at the box office, The Sugarland Express certainly caught American film critics' eyes, with Pauline Kael of The New Yorker declaring the film to be "...one of the most phenomenal debut films in the history of movies."</cite> <cite index="47-4,47-5">"Spielberg uses his gift in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action," wrote Kael. "He could be that rarity among directors—a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks."</cite>
But not all saw it that way. <cite index="50-10,50-11,50-12,50-13,50-14">In his 1974 New York Times review, Stephen Parser negatively compared Sugarland Express to a similar film debut made one year earlier: Badlands by then 29 year-old Terrence Malick. 'Although set in the past, "Badlands" says a great deal about the passivity of Americans in the seventies.' His criticism is that this film of doesn't say that. The reviewer then remarked on Spielberg's youth, and technical wizardy, then criticizes him for not being in touch with human emotions. "[H]e doesn't have an original idea or the slightest feeling for people."</cite> **Two critics, two Americas.** One saw a born entertainer; one saw a virtuoso without soul.
The Shark That Changed Everything
<cite index="54-2,54-3">Jaws gave rise to a completely new genre, the summer blockbuster, implying a high-anticipated, large-budget product that dominates screens and brings maximum profits. In 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jaws hit Hollywood and changed the cinema world forever.</cite> <cite index="56-2,56-3">Fourteen days after its nationwide release on June 19, 1975, Jaws turned a profit. By September, it had become the first film to earn more than $100 million, passing The Godfather (1972) as the biggest box-office hit up to that time.</cite>
<cite index="59-1">It became the prototype for a new kind of summer blockbuster: a high-concept, high-budget, high-profile picture designed to appeal across demographic lines and play on thousands of screens.</cite> [[jaws-marketing|jaws-marketing]] <cite index="56-8,56-9">Prior to Jaws, the summer months were believed to be a bad time to release a film. Jaws demonstrated that summer movies could rake in record profits.</cite> A machine that would **rule cinema forever** had just been switched on. And Spielberg, age 29, had turned the key.
Close Encounters: Returning to the Obsession
<cite index="77-7,77-8,77-9,77-10">1977 was an important year for director Steven Spielberg because he was coming off making one of the biggest hits in Hollywood history with Jaws. Spielberg's follow-up was naturally on everyone's radar, and many wondered what direction he would go in next. With its "creature feature" aspects, Jaws could have pushed Spielberg into making horror movies, and, with its grandiose scale, it could have just as easily pushed him to make things more personal. Instead, Spielberg did what all great directors do and broadened his horizons.</cite> <cite index="21-7">Spielberg returned to its subject matter for his third major film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).</cite> **He had returned to Firelight.** A 135-minute UFO film made at 17. Now remade as art.
<cite index="78-1,78-2">He directed the mystical science-fiction tale Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which he also wrote. Dreyfuss was cast as the lead, and he submitted one of the best performances of his career, as a telephone lineman who encounters an unidentified flying object and subsequently becomes obsessed with UFOs.</cite> The film was made not for money—that had been Jaws—but for **meaning**. For obsession. For the thing that cannot be unseen.
The Projects That Never Were
<cite index="86-5,86-6,86-7,86-8">Before choosing The Sugarland Express, Spielberg considered directing the Burt Reynolds vehicle White Lightning as his first theatrical release. "I spent two-and-a-half months on the film," Spielberg explained, "met Burt once, found most of the locations and began to cast the movie, until I realized it wasn't something that I wanted to do for a first film. I didn't want to start my career as a hard-hat, journeyman director. I wanted to do something that was a little more personal."</cite> <cite index="83-2,83-3">Before he rose to prominence with "Jaws," the future "Schindler's List" director attempted to adapt "Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper," Wallace Reyburn's satirical book about the invention of the toilet. He approached screenwriters Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck before dropping the project around the same time "The Sugarland Express" was shot.</cite>
These were the films that **refused him**—or he refused them. The alternative Spielberg, the one who adapted the history of the toilet, who made action comedies with Burt Reynolds, who took Universal's money and became a journeyman—existed only as shadow, as the question mark in every interview. "I wanted something personal," he said, and that instinct—to reach for the wound, not the surface—became the spine of his entire career.
From Play Mountain to Blockbuster Architect
His name meant play mountain. He was born into a family that split science and art—the engineer father, the pianist mother. At six he saw a catastrophe on screen and learned that catastrophe could be controlled, rewatched, survived through *representation*. At twelve he filmed his father's toy trains crashing, again and again. At seventeen he made a feature film about aliens. At twenty-nine he created the template that would shape cinema for fifty years. But the arc wasn't about <cite index="54-2,54-6">the summer blockbuster, implying a high-anticipated, large-budget product that dominates screens and brings maximum profits.</cite> That was what the world saw. What Spielberg was doing was something older and more personal: **converting fear into spectacle**.
<cite index="69-1,69-3">Whether it's killer sharks, man-eating dinosaurs, or the horrors of Omaha Beach on D-Day, Spielberg said it was all in some way inspired by a train wreck filmed by director Cecil B. DeMille for his movie, "The Greatest Show on Earth."</cite> The boy who felt cheat when he walked into the theater—expecting a real circus, receiving art instead—spent his life learning to give audiences *real circuses that were also art*. To make the invisible visible. To film the thing that terrifies you, so you could watch it safely, forever. From the merit badge to the shark to the mountain—it was always the same impulse: **control the catastrophe, own the moment, give others what he'd received from DeMille: the sensation of falling and being caught.**
Sources and research
Linguistic: The Name and Its Secret
### **Spielberg: Play + Mountain**
<cite index="10-2">The surname "Spielberg" has Germanic roots, derived from two components: "Spiel," meaning "play" or "game," and "Berg," translating to "mountain" or "hill."</cite> The name arrived in the Ashkenazic Jewish diaspora in the 18th–19th centuries, often linked to place of origin or chosen for its pleasant sound. A 17th-century Špilberk Castle in Brno gave the name its geography; <cite index="16-3">Jews were expelled from the city in 1454, taking the name of their former residence to other places in Europe.</cite> Steven Spielberg's surname carried exile, wandering, and the notion of a place where games were played—a leisure mountain, a site of joy. He inherited a name that predated him by centuries and meant, in its essence, what his entire career would become: the making of pleasure from the vertical world.
Deep Time: Cecil B. DeMille's Train Crash
### **The Genesis Moment (1950s)**
<cite index="67-1,67-3,67-4">When Steven Spielberg was six or seven years old his father took him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. But as the pictures moved across the screen the boy's disappointment soon gave way to enchantment. One scene in particular–the film's spectacular train wreck–would alter the course of his life.</cite> This wasn't an origin myth Spielberg constructed late; <cite index="69-3">he said it was all in some way inspired by a train wreck filmed by director Cecil B. DeMille for his movie, "The Greatest Show on Earth."</cite> Whether directed at an audience of thousands or remade in his bedroom with Lionel trains and an 8mm camera, the crash became the central image of his imagination. Control over it became his art.
Historical Timeline: The Climb to Jaws (1959–1975)
### **Key Dates and Films**
- **1958**: <cite index="29-3">Earns photography merit badge by making a film for Boy Scouts.</cite>
- **1959**: Directs first war film, *The Last Gun*, at age 13 with Boy Scout friends.
- **1961**: <cite index="6-7">Wins filmmaking contest with Escape to Nowhere (1961), a 40-minute war film, when he was a teenager.</cite>
- **1964**: <cite index="21-18,21-19">Firelight premieres on March 24, 1964, at Spielberg's local cinema, the Phoenix Little Theatre, in Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg managed to sell 500 tickets at one dollar each.</cite>
- **1968**: <cite index="89-1">A screening of his short film about hitchhikers, Amblin' (1968), at the Atlanta Film Festival in Georgia led to a contract with Universal Studios.</cite>
- **1969**: Television debut directing *Night Gallery* for Rod Serling.
- **1971**: <cite index="42-1">Duel originally airs as a part of the ABC Movie of the Week series on November 13, 1971.</cite>
- **1974**: <cite index="47-3">The Sugarland Express catches American film critics' eyes, with Pauline Kael declaring it "one of the most phenomenal debut films in the history of movies."</cite>
- **1975**: <cite index="56-3">Jaws becomes the first film to earn more than $100 million by September, passing The Godfather.</cite>
- **1977**: <cite index="21-7">Spielberg returns to the subject matter of Firelight for his third major film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).</cite>
Critics: The Kael vs. Parsons Binary
### **Two Visions of the Same Director**
**Pauline Kael (The New Yorker, *Sugarland Express*)**:
<cite index="47-4,47-5">"Spielberg uses his gift in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors—a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks."</cite>
**Stephen Parsons (New York Times, *Sugarland Express*)**:
<cite index="50-1,50-2">The reviewer remarked on Spielberg's youth and technical wizardy, then criticized him for not being in touch with human emotions. "[H]e doesn't have an original idea or the slightest feeling for people."</cite> This critic framed Spielberg against Terrence Malick as the representative of the rival strain: technical virtuosity without emotional depth.
This binary would persist through Spielberg criticism for decades—the entertainer vs. the artist—until films like *Schindler's List* and *Saving Private Ryan* forced a reconciliation.
Alternatives: The Roads Not Taken
### **Unmade Projects That Define Choice**
- **White Lightning (rejected, circa 1973)**: <cite index="86-6,86-7,86-8">"I spent two-and-a-half months on the film, I realized it wasn't something that I wanted to do for a first film. I didn't want to start my career as a hard-hat, journeyman director. I wanted to do something that was a little more personal."</cite>
- **Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper (rejected, early 1970s)**: <cite index="83-2,83-3">Spielberg attempted to adapt this satirical book about the invention of the toilet before dropping the project around the same time "The Sugarland Express" was shot.</cite>
Both rejections reveal Spielberg's early instinct to pursue personal, even painful material over commercial machinery. The choices he *didn't* make were as much his signature as those he did.
Current State: The Legacy Codified (2026)
### **What the Beginning Built**
As of June 2026, Spielberg's early filmography (1957–1977) remains the foundation of modern blockbuster cinema. <cite index="1-3">He has done more to define popular film-making since the mid-1970s than anyone else.</cite> <cite index="60-11,60-12,60-13">We're still living in the entertainment landscape that "Jaws" reshaped. Its outsize success made studios realize that if they packaged and promoted movies correctly, they wouldn't just be hits — they could become phenomena, selling T-shirts and toys along with tickets. "Jaws" established the template for "Star Wars," "Jurassic Park," "The Avengers" and the other culture-defining smashes that followed in its wake.</cite> The boy who filmed toy trains in Arizona at age 12 had restructured how 1.8 billion people consumed entertainment. That inheritance remains active and unquestioned.