What Played on HBO’s First-Ever Broadcast?

You might not remember the 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion, even though it was directed by Paul Newman, who joined Henry Fonda and Lee Remick in the film’s cast. After all, the film didn’t make much of a dent at the box office or on the awards circuit — though Richard Jaeckel did get a supporting-actor Oscar nod — and it gets overshadowed by another film adaptation of a Ken Kesey novel, 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Sometimes a Great Notion does, however, have a claim to fame in the history of cable television: It was the very first movie that HBO broadcast when the channel launched on November 8, 1972, as only a few hundred households witnessed. But it wasn’t the first programming offered by Home Box Office…