The first feature film to forsake opening credits was Walt Disney‘s Fantasia (’40), but this version has been jettisoned. Yes, the original 1940 theatrical cut was credit-less, but brief credits were added for an early ’90s home video version.
There were no opening credits for Mike Todd‘s Around the World in 80 Days (’56), although I have a memory of a 1.37:1 introduction about the eternal thirst for adventure and modes of 19th Century travel, narrated (I think) by Edward R. Murrow. But that was a pumped-up, high-tech travelogue movie + a reserved-seats roadshow thing…the first film to be presented in 30-frame-per-second Todd-AO, etc.
In fact the first general audience popcorn movie to forsake an opening credit sequence was Kirk Douglas and Richard Fleischer‘s The Vikings (’58). All the credits (above- and below-the-line) were confined to an animated sequence at the very end.
The next big-deal film to blow off opening credits was Robert Wise‘s West Side Story (’61).
And yet these the last two announced their titles at the very beginning. The first film to completely ignore a title acknowledgment was Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now (’79). The 70mm roadshow version didn’t even present a closing-credits sequence, although the 35mm general release version did.
