The scene outside Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood was unprecedented. It was opening day of a new film and thousands were already there to see it and see it again. Waiting in line for hours became an event that made history and the nightly news. Like theatres across the country on May 25, 1977, Mann's Chinese broke house records, selling out round-the-clock showings of George Lucas's space opera, Star Wars.
The scene inside theatres, however, was the real event. Only a few minutes after the lights fell, Star Wars ignited Star Wars fans. "Like most people, it was the opening scene - the shot of the giant Imperial Star Destroyer coming from behind us and overhead and just coming and coming and coming - that blew me away. The movie had me from that point on," says Craig Miller, Star Wars fan and head of the original Star Wars fan club for Lucasfilm in 1977.
Kerry O' Quinn, a young magazine publisher at the time, saw the film in Manhattan. "When the movie ended, the crowd cheered. Even after the lights came up and the audience stood, reluctant to leave, there was shouting and whooping. I remember one nerdy fan yelling at a friend across the auditorium, 'Parsecs aren't a measure of time!' His friend yelled back, 'So what!' Others in the crowd applauded the reply."
Who were these people that knew to attend Star Wars' premiere? How did they know about Star Wars and what made them show up?
It's well documented that George Lucas grew up on a diet of Flash Gordon serials and Saturday matinees filled with high adventures, cliff-hanging story arcs and swashbuckling heroes of good and evil. Star Wars is an homage, if not an extension of, the science fiction and comic book styling of his youth. Lucas has said, "As a kid, I read a lot of science fiction. But instead of reading technical, hard-science writers like Isaac Asimov, I was interested in Harry Harrison and a fantastic, surreal approach to the genre. I grew up on it. Star Wars is a sort of compilation of this stuff." (Quote from "George Lucas Interviews, Edited by Sally Kline," Interview by Stephen Zito, reprinted with permission by the American Film Institute and the author, published in American Film, April 1977.)
In the Spring of 1976, "The Star Wars" was in principal photography. Cast and crew had assembled in western Tunisia on the outskirts of the Sahara Desert in March then moved to Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, England on the outskirts of London. There, the production overtook all nine mammoth soundstages for 14 1/2 weeks. Back at the Lucasfilm Ltd. business offices in Los Angeles, Charles Lippincott, the head of publicity and promotion, set to implement an unprecedented advance publicity strategy.
