by Edward Gross
CARRIE FISHER
In our first scene together, I had to open by saying, “Grand Moff Tarkin—I thought I detected your foul stench,” or something like that, and it took real acting, boy, ’cause two minutes before, Cushing was generously telling me where my key light was, where to stand so he wouldn’t upstage me … doing all he could to help a nervous actress in her first major, starring role.
PETER CUSHING
Well, there was nothing extraordinary or unusual about the way I was offered the film. George Lucas and his partners offered it to me the same way I am offered every film I appear in. They sent a script and a letter to my agent, with an offer.
CARRIE FISHER
I liked Peter Cushing so much that it was almost impossible for me to feel the hatred I needed to act against him. I had to say lines like, “I recognize your foul stench,” but the man smelt like linen and lavender. I couldn’t say that to this nice English man whom I adored. So I substituted in my mind the one person I hate.
PETER CUSHING
Dear Carrie was so sweet about it. She later told the press how difficult it was for her to say that line convincingly, since I really smelled like lavender water. You see, I always lavishly slosh lavender water all over myself whenever I’m filming. I will also use a tube of Colgate Dental Cream, because I’m very conscious of bad breath. In fact, if I’m watching a boring love scene in a movie, I can’t help thinking, “I do hope they’ve both brushed their teeth.”
MARK HAMILL
When we were making the film, I thought I’d never get to meet Peter Cushing, because I didn’t have any scenes with him. So I made sure I went in and got to meet him. I did some research ahead of time and this is before the internet, where you actually had to go to the library and read books. He was really surprised that I knew one of his first movie parts was the Laurel and Hardy film A Chump at Oxford. He said to me, “How did you know that?” He was thrilled that I knew that.
PETER CUSHING
The challenge to an actor in these weird parts is enormous, and I like that. The depth of such roles rests on a combination of one’s own imagination and the ways in which one looks on a particular character. I stress the human element, the sadness, the loneliness of evil.
MARK HAMILL
When I met Christopher Lee—I was on something that he was in—I kept saying to myself, “Don’t ask him about Dracula, don’t ask him about Dracula, don’t ask him about Dracula,” and what did I do? I asked him about Dracula and he pointed out some of the other famous roles he played. I felt terrible, because he was an actor of incredible range and I more than anyone should know what it’s like to be so associated with one role.
PETER CUSHING
Horror movies give so much pleasure, and giving pleasure is why I wanted to do Star Wars. It’s fantasy. People can experience emotions watching it that they can’t experience in their ordinary lives.
MARK HAMILL
I always wondered why he had this lavender glove and his dresser told me, “Because when he smokes, he doesn’t want to get the nicotine or its fragrance on his fingers and transfer them when he shakes your hand.” I said, “Oh my God, we don’t have anybody that polite in America.” People smoke cigars in elevators.
GEORGE LUCAS
Peter Cushing, like Alec Guinness, is a very good actor. He got an image that is in a way quite beneath him, but he’s also idolized and adored by young people and people who go to see a certain kind of movie. I think he will be remembered fondly for the next 350 years at least. And so you say, is that worth anything? Maybe it’s not Shakespeare, but certainly equally as important in the world.
PETER CUSHING
By the way, can you possibly tell me what a “Grand Moff” is? Sounds vaguely subversive.
* * *
Prior to portraying the most domineering villain in cinema history, the late David Prowse was a bodybuilder from a small housing estate in Bristol, born on July 1, 1935. His early jobs included a dance hall bouncer and a helper at a swim club. His interest in bodybuilding began at an early age, culminating in winning the British Heavyweight weightlifting championship in 1962. The notoriety gained from his bodybuilding allowed Prowse to transition into acting, with roles as Frankenstein’s monster in Hammer films The Horror of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, as well as small roles in Casino Royale and A Clockwork Orange, where he was first noticed by George Lucas. At six foot six, Prowse had the shape and build to be the formidable Sith Lord George Lucas was looking for in his sci-fi epic. Although happy to take the role of Darth Vader, Prowse has notoriously talked down his acting experiences, always feeling he deserved more responsibility and trust than he was given—even as to suggest his potent district West Country accent deserved to be the voice of Darth Vader.
The voice that would echo through film history, James Earl Jones could never have thought the small voice-over role he took in 1976 would end up being the role he was most identified with. James Earl Jones was born in Mississippi on January 17, 1931, to Ruth (Williams) Jones, a teacher and maid, and Robert Earl Jones, a boxer, butler, and chauffeur. Jones was sent to live with his grandparents in Michigan at age five, as his father had left soon after Jones was born, and his mother found it difficult to financially and personally manage. He found the transition difficult, and developed a vocal stutter—an affliction he still grapples with to this day, despite years of hard work to remove it.
After serving in the military just after the Korean War ended, Jones began to act in several theater shows around the Michigan area. He eventually grew in prominence for his stage work, winning a Tony Award in 1969 for his performance in The Great White Hope. Jones’s first film role came in 1967’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Starring roles came in both television and film in the years after, for such projects as The Great White Hope (an adaptation of the hit theatrical play), The UFO Incident, Conan: The Barbarian, and Field of Dreams, giving Jones both audience and critical acclaim. But some of his most iconic roles come from his work as a voice-over actor: for 1994’s The Lion King, and for Star Wars, in which he voiced Darth Vader.
JOHN L. FLYNN
Darth Vader was conceived by George Lucas as the epitome of evil, the Black Knight in the Arthurian tales or Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Though he does not appear in any form in the original treatment, the character had two roles in the first draft screenplay: General Darth Vader and Valorum. In early drafts of the screenplay, Vader (under the name Captain Dodona) was an intergalactic bounty hunter who was hired to track down and murder Jedi Knights for the Emperor. Then Vader became a Dark Lord of the Sith, and Lucas created Boba Fett from that early concept of Vader as a bounty hunter. However, in the novelization of Star Wars and the final screenplay, the reference to Vader as some sort of bounty hunter remains. According to Obi-Wan, Vader betrayed and murdered the pilot Skywalker, then “helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights.” Darth Vader was also given Kane Starkiller’s exoskeleton to help him survive, and a background story was worked up by Lucas to explain his severe injuries—apparently, before the specifics of the prequels were decided on, Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader fought a fierce lightsaber duel and Vader was driven into the molten lava of an active volcano. He survived, but his body was ruined and he was forced to wear an ominous black breathing mask that also hides his disfigurement, like The Man in the Iron Mask. Not much more is revealed about his character in the first film.
RALPH MCQUARRIE
George didn’t envision Darth Vader with a mask—he said he might have his face covered with black silk. But I got worried for Vader’s health, because he had to transfer to another spacecraft through outer space with stormtroopers who had armored spacesuits. George said, “Well, give him some kind of breath mask”—which he wore through all three films. George had mentioned him having to wear a helmet like a Japanese medieval warrior, one of those big flared-out helmets, and I made it somewhere between that and a Germ
an World War II helmet. In probably one day, I made all the drawings that defined Darth Vader. I was moving fast and didn’t have all week to fool around with him—I had lots of other things to work on. Tusken Raiders, Jawas, and the Sandcrawler were done in those first few weeks. When I was drawing Darth Vader, George described him as someone in an airtight garment with a lot of wrapping and black bands and folds kind of fluttering. He said, “Darth Vader will be coming in like the wind, kind of sneaky, yet big and impressive.”
DAVID PROWSE
I didn’t have to read for it. I didn’t have to do anything. In fact, they offered me two parts. They offered me the part of Darth Vader and they offered me the part of Chewbacca. Peter Mayhew wasn’t even considered at that time. I said, “Tell me more about the parts.” And he said, “Well, Chewbacca’s like a giant teddy bear and Darth Vader’s the big villain in the film.” I said, “You know what you can do with Chewbacca. I’ll take the big villain.”
BRIAN MUIR
(sculptor, Star Wars)
To create the mask of Darth Vader, the plasterers molded Dave Prowse to create a plaster cast of his head and body. Having cut the head and shoulders from the rest of the body, to make it easier to handle, I used this to start the sculpting process for the now iconic Vader mask. There had to be at least a quarter inch of clay on the head at any point to allow for casting thickness and to know that it would fit on Dave’s head. Once I had sculpted the mask to a finish, which was originally designed to have a front and rear section, it was handed to the plasterers to mold and cast in plaster. I then applied clay to the plaster Vader mask and sculpted the helmet.
DAVID PROWSE
I didn’t see the finished costume until I arrived on set. When they put the helmet and mask on, George asked me to turn my head from left to right. I did, but the mask stayed facing forward! They took it off and intended to reduce its size. George said, “No, the mask and helmet fit perfectly with your shape and size; we’ll pad the mask out with foam rubber.” And this is what they did. It was really tight.
BRIAN MUIR
With any sculpt taken from a two-dimensional drawing there is always an input from the sculptor. Every sculptor works in different ways and has their own interpretations of a design. I can always tell my own work.
* * *
Prowse admits that as far as he was concerned, he was Darth Vader and didn’t anticipate that his voice would ultimately be dubbed by James Earl Jones. Ultimately, Jones would get the lion’s share of acclaim for immortalizing Darth Vader in celluloid and eventually an on-screen credit.
DAVID PROWSE
I did all the dialogue all the way through the film. I discussed it with George Lucas. I said, “Well, what are we going to do?” And he said, “Obviously we’ll probably, what we call metalize it or robotize it.” What I would do is sit down in the sound room and do every line over and then they could do what they wanted to it. But then with the finished film, I think it was a question of George deciding … well, I don’t know whether he knew what he wanted as far as the voice was concerned. Then they just got James Earl Jones in to do it. I really never got lucky. I wouldn’t mind being covered up if people gave you the credit. But now I’m covered up and I’m not getting the credit at the same time. Every time, they mention Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, and stop! And then it says, “The big villain of the film with the interesting voice is James Earl Jones,” and that’s as far as it goes.
* * *
“He was very gentle, very sweet, very easy to get along with,” George Lucas remembered after the passing of Peter Mayhew. The seven-foot-three British actor was born on May 14, 1944, in London, England. His early adult life was spent working as a hospital orderly, a position he would maintain throughout his experiences of filming the Star Wars trilogy—he had little faith in his ability to make a career out of his acting. Mayhew gained his first acting job when the producers of the 1977 film Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger discovered him from a photograph in a newspaper article about men with large feet and cast him in the role of the minotaur. Soon after, he was recommended to George Lucas as a good fit for the role of the towering gentle giant in Star Wars.
GEORGE LUCAS
A Wookiee is a kind of a cross between a large bear, a dog, and a monkey. And he’s very friendly … until you get him riled. I’m very fond of Wookiees. I had a Wookiee at home. Well, she wasn’t quite as big as the Wookiee in Star Wars, but she’s a Wookiee just the same. Actually, she was a dog, but she looked just like a Wookiee. She was a very big, furry dog. She looked like a panda bear, but not as big. Her name was Indiana and a Wookiee has certain dog characteristics—a Wookiee is protective, a friend, and kind of cuddly. The word came from Terry McGovern, a California disc jockey who had done some voice-over roles in my film THX 1138. He had improvised a line about having just run over a Wookiee in the street. I asked him if he knew what he meant when he said the word Wookiee, and he just told me that he had made it up on the spot. But I liked it and used it in the film. I guess when I was trying to name this new creature, I thought it sounded like a good description of the creature I wanted.
RALPH MCQUARRIE
George said he wanted Chewbacca to look like a lemur, so he had great big limpid eyes in some of my early sketches. George also gave me a drawing he liked from a 1930s illustrator of science fiction that showed a big apelike, furry beast with a row of female breasts down its chest. So I took the breasts off and added a bandolier and ammunition and weapons, and changed its face so it looked somewhat more like the final character and I left it at that.
PETER BEALE
For Chewbacca, we were looking for an enormously tall actor and we put a call out and couldn’t find one. One of the casting people was in a pub and there’s this tall man sitting on the bar stool, and she went up and talked to him and discovered that he was an actor and that’s how our friend got that role. He was found, literally, in a pub.
STUART FREEBORN
(makeup supervisor, Star Wars)
George Lucas insisted that Chewbacca had to be eight feet tall. A woman recommended a very tall porter who worked at Croydon Hospital. I called them and they confirmed that their employee, Peter Mayhew, was seven feet four inches. So I told George, “I’ve found a man who is seven foot four and I think I could build him up to give you eight.” George said, “Get him down and see if you think he can handle working the mechanics with his mouth and tongue, and then if you think it’s okay, contact me and I’ll test him out to see if he can take direction.”
PETER MAYHEW
(actor, “Chewbacca,” Star Wars)
My “acting” career started with a newspaper article. When I was at King’s College in London, a reporter came down to do a story on me. He was writing an article on big feet for the Guinness Book of Records. He had seen me walking around and thought I’d make good copy. It attracted the attention of the producers of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and they asked me if I would be the minotaur and as I knew my height would come in useful for some purpose, I jumped at the opportunity. A lot of the crew on the film would eventually find themselves on Star Wars and I’d got to know them really well. One of the makeup chaps forwarded my name to Gary Kurtz when he found out what they wanted for the movie.
STUART FREEBORN
So Peter Mayhew came in and I told him what he had to do. He was quite an intelligent fellow and said, “That’s fine, I can manage that.” Then I phoned George and said, “He seems great to me.” So George sent his assistant down to pick him up, and he tested him. George phoned me and said, “I think he’ll do fine.” So that’s how he came about. And then I built this extra four inches on his head and four inches on his feet and I got him up to eight feet exactly.
PETER MAYHEW
The only problem with playing Chewbacca was the extreme heat of the costume. It was a one-piece suit with a zipper up the back, knitted out of yak and mohair. The mask was fiberglass, which had been cast from my own fa
ce. There was no trouble there as it was all ironed out in the planning stages. I could move easily and I soon got used to the heat. In the garbage disposal scenes, there was a ridge built on the set which I stayed on as they didn’t want to get this expensive suit wet and dirty.
* * *
The late Kenny Baker was born in Birmingham, England, on August 28, 1934. After a time in boarding school, the three-foot-eight Baker was approached by a woman on the street and asked to join a theatrical troupe of dwarfs and midgets. Baker agreed and soon found success as a comedian and performer in ice skating shows. He formed a successful comedy act called the Minitones with entertainer Jack Purvis and played in nightclubs. While working with Purvis and the Minitones, Baker was selected by George Lucas to operate R2-D2, but only on the condition that Purvis would be hired for a role as well, which ended up being the lead Jawa. Baker’s other films include The Elephant Man, Time Bandits, Willow, Flash Gordon, Amadeus, and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.
