I agree with diaglo.
I would highly discourage house ruling 1e into 3e or even into a hybrid. There's nothing wrong with that, but--IMHO--you might as well just play 3e. If you're having a desire to play 1e, I think that means you need to try to understand what really makes it different. (Save hybridizing for later.)
Lurking at DF can help you understand how some people can enjoy 1e without house-ruling it into an equivalent of 3e. You have to understand that there isn't a monolithic grognard viewpoint, though. Look for the bits that surprise you.
I also found it helpful to read nigh everything Gygax, Kuntz, & Mornard (Gronan) wrote online.
Realize--& express to your players--that there is a whole lot of room to create interesting characters within the choices offered by 1e. Save any ideas that don't fit in 1e for the next 3e campaign, & challenge yourselves to come up with interesting 1e characters.
That's not to say that I'm not all for busting out of the choices in the books. I'm just saying that it's possible to focus more on the opportunities than the limitations.
(I think it also helped for me to realize that a PC doesn't need mechanics to validate his style. It's OK that mechanically two fighters are identical. Their choice of weapon, tactics, & style--not to mention everything outside of combat--can still be quite different, even if mechanically they could swap those things. If that makes any sense...)
As for players, I don't know. I'm lucky, I guess. Everyone in my group was happy to let me run Basic/Expert D&D instead of 3e when they asked me to run a D&D campaign. They jumped in whole hog & enjoyed the system on its own terms. They said they happily do it again. Even the one player who insisted on saying that he still felt 3e was superior in every way.
Edit: Ironically, I may have been the person in my group who was most set against playing older editions again. If somebody else in the group had suggested playing Basic/Expert several years ago, I might well have been the one grumbling against it. (^_^)
Edit #2: & for what it's worth, I'm not advocating playing 1e strictly by-the-book. I'd likely omit weapon v. armor adjustments, the finer points of initiative, weapon profs, the DMG unarmed combat rules, &c. if I were to run a 1e game. On the other hand, those are reasons I choose Basic/Expert instead.
