I remember it. Or think I do. I did read the novelization, once, as a little kid, but my mother also remembers the missed throw, and she never touched the books. The one piece I can add to the puzzle is that I'm too young to have seen it in theaters in '77. So I'm convinced it must have been a TV broadcast. We actually had a VHS copied from a network broadcast - in the 80s I think. That's the version of the movies I grew up on. In fact, the moment I saw this board, I drove over to my parent's house to grab it, but they finally threw it out to make room for the DVD collection. DAHH!!!

But SOMEBODY in the world must have a tape of that broadcast. It'll be a bitch to find... I don't even know how many TV edits there might be. Our tape had all three movies, though I don't recall if they were back-to-back or over consecutive nights. The only difference I'm certain of was missing material in Jedi - this cut didn't include the droid's "job interview" scene at Jabba's palace (which, to this day, feels out of place to me, since I never saw it as a kid). Also, it was definitely on one of the big three networks - it was taped well before we got cable. It's probably a lost cause, but I can't feel this matter is closed until I've seen that broadcast again.