40 Pounds of Trouble had a limited one-day-only New Years Eve screening at select theaters across the United States, on the night of December 31, 1962.[11][12] Theaters showed the film from one to three times that night in celebration of the oncoming new year.[13] The film had its official world premiere on January 18, 1963 at the Carib-Miami-Miracle Theaters in Miami, Florida,[14] and the next day at Harrah's Club's South Shore Room in Lake Tahoe, Nevada which Curtis and his wife Christine Kaufmann attended.[15][16] The film then opened to the rest of the United States during the last week of January and first week of February 1963.