7 Things You Didn’t Know about the Original Star Wars

(And I didn’t either!)

May 25, 2017 is, as many people have pointed out, the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, which went out to a small number of theaters (37 theaters to be exact) on May 25, 1977.

As a big Star Wars fan, I thought I knew a lot about the original movie. I recently read the new biography of George Lucas, by Brian Jay Jones, and was surprised that even for a big Star Wars fan like myself, there were many things I didn’t know about the original Star Wars.

Here’s my top 7 Things I didn’t know about Star Wars (and I bet you didn’t either!)

1. Marcia Lucas may have had a lot more to do with the success of the original Star Wars than George Lucas has let on.

When Marcia Lucas won the 1977 Oscar for editing Star Wars, many thought it might just be that she was George’s wife. But many of the emotional key moments of the film can actually be attributed to her. Marcia was the one who made the point, “If the audience doesn’t cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he’s being chased by Vader, the picture doesn’t work.” It was also Marcia who suggested the Lucas kill off Obi-Wan Kenobi! That’s right — in Lucas’ original script, the old Jedi Knight survived the Death Star fight with Darth Vader!

Much of what we view as the “film” relies on the editors in terms of what’s cut and what shows up on screen when, and Marcia was responsible for a lot of the emotional moments. It’s telling that many thought what was missing from the prequels were real emotional moments — by then Marcia and George were divorced (she left him for another man), and her significant contribution to Star Wars had been de-emphasized by a heartbroken Lucas.

2) The long lines for Star Wars didn’t come out of nowhere; instead, a carefully orchestrated underground nerd marketing campaign had been building up Star Wars in the sci-fi/comics world leading up to May, 1977.

I was under the impression that when Star Wars was released, no one had heard of it, and because of the word of mouth suddenly there were long lines for the movie. This is of course, partly true: Star Wars became a sensation because of word of mouth and repeat viewings. There’s a famous story about George Lucas going to Hamburger Hamlet in Hollywood with Marcia on May 25, 1977, and seeing a long line of people in front of Grumman’s Chinese Theater — they didn’t know what was going on — it turned out the lines were for the premiere of Star Wars!

But, that wasn’t the whole story. Charles Lippincott, who George had hired to be in charge of marketing, had built a marketing campaign that built up Star Wars among the comic-book and science fiction audience well before its release. Today we’d call it “generating buzz”.

They released a novelization of Star Wars (ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster but attributed to Lucas), which had sold out of its first print run of 175,000 by February, 1977! That was a full 3 months before the movie was released. They published a comic book series that was published before the film and had a session at Comic-con in July 1976. In the sci-fi and comic book world there were posters announcing that Star Wars was “coming to your Galaxy this summer”. At WorldCon 1976 in Kansas City, the convention was buzzing about Star Wars when the team showed off the outfits of Darth Vader, C3PO. In the words of Jones, “…by the spring of 1977, enthusiasm for Star Wars was like a pot rolling to a slow boil — and the lid was about to blow off!”

3. In February, 1977, an early cut was shown to Lucas’ film-maker friends, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg, who had completely different reactions.

De Palma, who was a good friend of Lucas, supposedly hated the opening crawl, and was known to have said, “What’s all this Force shit?” and “Where’s the blood when they shoot people?” Lucas response was: “You should talk. None of your films have made a dime!” De Palma then offered to help Lucas rewrite the opening crawl which was shortened.

Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, liked it — He said later, “I loved it because I loved the story and the characters. I was probably the only one who liked it, and I told George how much I liked it.”

4. ILM started in Los Angeles and wasn’t working well initially.

Lucas famously started Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company that became famous for the special effects in the Star Wars films, and then did the special effects for many cutting edge projects, including Spielberg’s ET, the Star Trek movies, and more. It has been located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I didn’t know that during the filming of Star Wars it was set up and opearating in Los Angeles. Lucas was upset that John Dykstra, who won an Oscar for Star Wars, had initially spent a year and a million dollars (in 1976 dollars, mind you) and had produced only one special effects shot. A film like Star Wars has hundreds if not thousands of special effects shots. Eventually, the operation began running better and produced good work, but Lucas was very upset with the initial operation. He fired Dykstra and almost everyone else after Star Wars was complete and moved ILM to the Bay Area, where it has been ever since. (in an interesting side-story, Dykstra went on to do the special effects for Battlestar Galactica, and Lucas was upset because they looked very similar to Star Wars effects!)

5. Star Wars was significantly late and over budget.

Twentieth Century Fox had originally slated Star Wars to be released Christmas 1976, but the cost and time over-runs made them have to change their plans. Star Wars was at least $2 million over budget, which made Fox hesitant to keep pouring money into this unproven project. Many executives at Fox were worried that it was going to be a big flop, though Alan Ladd, Jr, the executive at Fox most directly responsible for Star Wars went to bat for Lucas again and again.

At one point, Lucas needed extra money to do the special effects for Jabba the Hutt in a scene with Han Solo on Tatooine (which was originally shot with a stand in actor, who was replaced with a CGI Jabba in the special editions in 1997). The studio would only give him $20,000 since the film was so over budget (20% over budget, since the original budget was ~$10 million). Lucas instead filmed the Greedo/Han Solo scene with this $20k to explain Han Solo’s history with Jabba (famously, this scene had its own controversy in the special editions —who shot first — Han or Greedo? )

6. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas “swapped” profits in their 1977 films!

In 1976, Spielberg and Lucas were debating over which of their science fiction films — Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Star Wars — both to be released in 1977, would do better at the box office. Lucas and Spielberg had a bet and decided to swap with each other 2.5% of the profits of each movie. Spielberg definitely got the better end of that deal, as he ended up making more than $40 million from that bet!

7. All three of the main cast had various issues in getting their parts — Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher — and they almost went to another trio!

Hamill thought he’d blown his audition and was convinced he wasn’t going to get it after his audition. For Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher had missed the original auditions, and she auditioned late with Harrison Ford (who also wasn’t in the original pool of actors for Han Solo). Lucas had originally wanted Christopher Walken for the Han Solo part, and was considering a trio of Walken, Will Seltzer, and Terri Nun for the main three parts. But when Lucas saw the chemistry between Ford and Fisher, he ended up going with the trio that we know and love — Hamill, Ford, and Fisher for the main parts!

While those weren’t the only things that came out in the biography that I hadn’t known, they were ones that jumped out at me! Perhaps by the premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I’ll do another post of this kind.