I thought I watched it as a child, but perhaps not as I might be mixing that up with the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 that played the theme music as its opening. I did see it on network TV when I was in college as it was broadcast over two nights in the mid-1970's. The next time I watched the entire movie again is when I bought the Beta tape in the mid-1980's. Followed by a DVD viewing and Blu-ray viewing over a couple of sittings. I watched bits of it on TCM and other channels over several years. If it ever plays again in a movie theater, I will force myself to go in order to see it again in one viewing. One of my best friends loves this movie. I'm not in love with it, but, there are film sequences that I really do like more than other sequences.I tried watching it on video at least half a dozen times as a young kid and always got bored within the first half hour. When it came back into theaters around 1998, I went and saw it as a teenager and the combination of seeing it on a big screen and being a captive audience member who couldn’t just flip it off caused me to pay attention and contemplate it in a way I hadn’t before. It’s not a film I revisit often, and when I do, I often find that it’s Clark Gable’s charisma and his character’s scripting that holds my interest most of all.
But I’m also an outlier in that I was a ten year old who loved collecting VHS tapes of old movies and loved taping 50s and 60s shows off TV. Most people aren’t looking that far behind their daily lives when it comes to finding something to put on.
I would be willing to bet that in the year 2020, the number of people who have actually seen GWTW is only a small percentage of the number of people who have an opinion on it.