Welcome to a new monthly series which celebrates 30 years of Star Wars by highlighting some of the relevant events that occurred in the months leading up to and immediately following Star Wars' release in 1977. Although this first installment arrives a bit belatedly (it's almost April!), we'll do our best to catch up with a quick overview of January and February (see below).

Looking over the list, one can't help but notice how little play Star Wars was getting in the media in the months before its release. Aside from a few blurbs in industry newsletters and fanzines, Star Wars was basically nowhere to be seen. It's often been reported that Star Wars had little to no prerelease advertising, and the list below really drives that point home.

January, 1977

• UK's Sight and Sound magazine prints a two-page spread of stills from Star Wars in their Winter 1976/1977 issue.
• Composer John Williams views a rough cut of Star Wars and begins fine-tuning his written score.
• Fox executives view a rough cut of the film up at Lucas' home, where it's relatively well-received.
• New cantina footage, including some creature insert shots and close-ups of Greedo (now with articulated lips, a functionality not available during an earlier cantina shoot in England) was filmed over two days in a small studio on La Brea Ave. in Los Angeles.
• Additional Tatooine footage, including shots of a radio-controlled model sandcrawler, a full-size landspeeder on wheels, an elephant posing as a bantha, and Tusken Raiders were shot in the Mojave Desert.
• Marc Pevers, a marketing executive at 20th Century Fox, opens a dialog with Craig Stokely, vice president of product planning for Kenner Products.
• Industrial Light & Magic continues special effects photography, including the Vader TIE and wingman collision, Millennium Falcon in Death Star hangar bay, tests for the lightsaber "seeker" remote, and other shots.

February

• Lucas screens a rough cut of Star Wars for several of his close friends, including directors Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg. While Spielberg is very excited about Star Wars, De Palma was less optimistic, and offered to help rewrite the opening crawl.
• Ralph McQuarrie draws up some concepts for the movie poster.
• While attending the 1977 Toy Fair in New York, Star Wars Corporation publicist Charles Lippincott is literally pushed out of an office by an executive of a large toy company after attempting to make a licensing pitch.
• The first printing of the paperback novel, which went on sale in November, '76, sells out.
• ILM shooting includes: star streak for hyperspace, live action stormtroopers outside Death Star docking bay, severed arm (and head!) insert shots for cantina, X-wing and landspeeder dashboard graphics, Death Star laser to Alderaan, title crawl tests, Death Star trench sequences, and other shots.

March

• John Williams conducts and records the Star Wars score over 8 days between March 5 and March 16 in London.
• The first Star Wars comic book is released.
• Films Incorporated's Chairman's Choice newsletter (Spring issue) contains a two-page write-up on Star Wars, including an interview with George Lucas. Employees of Films Incorporated, a company which specialized in the distribution and sale of 16mm films to libraries, etc., had been among the few who saw potential in Star Wars when Charles Lippincott presented a slideshow for exhibitors during a January 1976 convention staged by 20th Century Fox.
• Children of the Night #3, a horror zine, prints a one-page preview of Star Wars, announcing it as "a G-rated fantasy film".
• James Earl Jones spends a single day at Goldwyn Studios recording his voice-over dialog for Darth Vader.
• Phil Tippett and Jon Berg film the stop-motion characters for the Falcon's holo-chessboard sequence.
• According to legend, Kenner President Bernie Loomis established the size of the Star Wars action figure line by holding his thumb and forefinger 3.75" apart and having the distance between his fingers measured for the size of Luke Skywalker.
• Fox executives preview Star Wars with most of the special effects shots added and are ecstatic.
• A crew from ILM, including Richard Edlund and Lorne Peterson, travel to Guatemala to shoot the exteriors for the Yavin moon location. Fox had originally asked the team if they might just use the Adventureland setting at Disneyland to shoot the exteriors.
• ILM shooting includes rear-projected landspeeder cockpit footage with Mark Hamill and C-3PO (not used in film), more sandcrawler shots, an insert shot of Artoo being fitted with a restraining bolt, a Tusken Raider binocular insert shot, the film titles, and other shots.

Stay tuned for the next installment of this continuing series which will explore the events of April, 1977, one month before the release of Star Wars on May 25th!