Contests for kids

I'm working on a couple of articles which have to do with the release of STAR WARS. Even after the film opened, we knew it was important to keep the fans engaged. One thing we did to keep the fans engaged was we had contest for kids. I'm going to re-upload some items I have on a few contests. This was Centuri. I'm looking at the jpg, but recall the item was faxed to the office. It's on that old thermal paper which did not age well.

Contest in "Eye" (Weekly Reader Magazine) Here's the wikipedia link for the history of the children magazine.

Wonder what happened to these kids.

In London, Dec 77, some lucky kid won a C-3PO mask. 'Course, the truth is those C-3PO Don Post masks were so small they were basically for kids.

A London drawing contest for kids.

Nobody Wanted to Book Star Wars

The myth of Nobody Wanted to Book Star Wars has been repeated ad infinitum. An excerpt from Steve Sansweet's book on collectibles highlighting the STAR WARS banner, which, I believe, now lives at Rancho Obi-Wan, had a colorful description of me ripping the heads of chickens. The excerpt said no one wanted to book STAR WARS. Not true. In my distribution file is a vintage note which I'm sharing. You'll see we had planned on 50 theaters opening STAR WARS on May 25, 1977. The limited release was going to be followed with other theaters releasing the film in June, July and Aug. 1977. This follows a staggered release pattern, which differs from what we see today of a film opening broadly, then several weeks later, disappearing.

It makes for better copy, me being the geek ripping chickens heads off with my teeth, and the wunderkin film nobody wanted... The distribution document is 14 pages long. Here are two more pages, of the 5/27/77 and 7/1/77 dates. What you don't see here is we had the number of media outlets tallied next to the 5/27/77 cities' names because we were planning in advance how to handle the advertising and promotion. We hadn't yet tallied up the number of media outlets for 7/1/77. As it turned out, we were lucky. We didn't need to do anything. After 5/25/77, people were knocking down our doors to get STAR WARS.

Here's another weird thing which was in storage. After STAR WARS was released, we were besieged with folks who wanted to license STAR WARS product. This was a very ugly T-shirt someone sent as a prototype of what they would like to do. Of course, we had already licensed T-shirts to Factors, Inc., so this was turned down. The 2nd part of this story is this was an item we listed on ebay. Well, I guess collectors liked the idea of having a T-shirt sample from 1977, even though the shirt was very ugly and really bore no resemblance to the franchise's design.It wasn't pirated. It was sent in hopes they'd be able to license the STAR WARS name. I've included my hands in one shot to prove I have hairy knuckles and am not the type who gets their nails manicured.

Boy, all I have to do is post vintage product and the likes start popping... Here's one nobody really likes - the official Bradley watches with the hand of my lovely wife, Bumpy... She's the one who keeps me going. Guys, be nice to your wife (or whatever sweet thing you have by your side) because by the time you get to my age, you're really going to need them.

Marvel comics

When we first pitched the idea of doing a daily comic strip to the LA TImes, we had planned on using Al Williamson. Al did up 2 weeks of worth for the presentation George and I did to the LA Times. We did not realize it while we were doing the pitch, but the Times had already decided on using Russ Manning because he was their in-house guy. It was a bit embarrassing going back to Al to tell him the Times didn't want to use him. That's not something you want to tell an artist after they've done two weeks of finished comics for the job, but Al, as usual, was the consummate professional and did not bat an eye. Mind you, he wasn't working for free -- we paid him -- but the principle of pitching a series and having the series go to another artist would really irk some.

Al gave the first weeks comics to George, and the 2nd week to me. At one point, when i started writing up my history, I told this story and the response I got back implied I was lying. These fan experts can be so irritating!!! This dweeb tried to tell me that Al Williamson wasn't involved. That's the problem with this fandom. Some folks have got so much vested in their position as Star Wars experts they assume they know what happened, and what was going on... Boy, you know, you're only as good as your source. If you read a source that based his expert opinion on the BS of another second hand gossip, you can think all these 3 stories add up to the gospel truth. But they don't. And that, folks, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with religion. The gospel truth is told by one person, who tells another, and so on and so on... This is gossip, and gossip does not add up to truth. Before you start spouting off history, check your sources and do your due diligence. and remember, just because it's in print doesn't mean it's the truth. Writers, after all, are some of the worsts gossips.

After doing the deal for the Marvel Star Wars comics, Marvel sent me a bundle of the 1st issue. Most of the STAR WARS samples I received, I put into storage. Locked the door on the storage room, walked away, went on to work on my next project. Stuff sat in storage for years. Ended up having 3 large storage rooms in Los Angeles. The first one was on Pico Blvd., in the Westside, because I was working at MGM. Then I needed a 2nd storage and got one in central LA, around my office in Korea Town. The last one I rented was on Figueroa, in Highland Park. You can see how with the passage of time, my new storage rooms moved east because renting a new space in the Westside became more and more expensive. By the time I was filling my 3rd storage room, I was practically in East LA :)

I've heard people end up picking up some great stuff because they buy out storage rooms... right, it's a TV show -- Storage Wars??? Anyway, I always made sure I paid my storage rent on time. Didn't know what was in there, but the idea of someone going through the detritus of my life didn't seem right. I'm meandering. I was going to show you the bundle of Marvel comics. Bumpy decided we had to get rid of stuff and listed the bundle on ebay. then, after putting the listing up, she talked to someone and found out the whole deal on selling comics. She had thought it would be great to keep the whole bundle together, but found out breaking them up and grading them would net more cash. And Bumpy likes cash. grin emoticon When she pulled the listing, some buyers were really angry. This was the lot we were thinking of using to create a Star Wars Comic creators fund with Hero Initiative. Didn't work out, but we still have the comics.

Alex Tavoularis storyboards

I've shared these before. I'm looking through my hard drive and re-sharing a few things. These are Alex Tavoularis' boards which fans keep asking me to sell. I get messages on my private email from folks lusting after these. And no, they will not be part of the Brownie point loot, so don't start salivating. I'm sharing these for everyone can enjoy. Suppose i should really rescan these so they aren't skewed. Well, one day....

A very early concept drawing, when we dabbled around with the idea of Luke being a she.

An early Chewie when the wookie was clean shaven :)

Star Wars posters

Fox sent me two copies of each of STAR WARS international posters they released. These were from the original release run. The larger ones, like this poster here, were sent folded. When we first started inventorying them, we had no idea how to shoot posters, action figures or anything else. You have to figure, we weren't collectors or anything. I just had these because I happened to have worked on the film.

I was going to say if I had worked on something else they would have sent that, but that's not really true. I don't have posters or the ad campaigns from Westward.

Johnny Friedkin, the VP of Fox's Advertising, Marketing and Promotion, made sure I got these cause he took a liking to me. Sometime after I had finished ALIEN, when Johnny and I were alone, he turned to me and said when he first hired me, he wasn't sure I'd work out, so he had secretly set up some tests for me. I looked at him and asked him what these tests were. He winked, and said, "You'll never know." And he's right, because to this day, I don't know what tests he put me through. But when I kept asking him, he said, "Don't worry. You passed with flying colors." and winked.

Legend has it that Johnny was good friend with Neil Simon, and Neil based his character OSCAR from the Odd couple on him. I found this odd, because Johnny, like Stanley Bilecki, was always impeccably dressed and Neil's OSCAR was kind of frumpy.

Star Wars appearances

When STAR WARS was released, I expected it to do well, but did not expect the staggering, overwhelming response. No one did. In our wildest dreams, we could not have predicted how massive a hit we had on our hands.

The week the film opened, we were swamped with phone calls. Everybody wanted a piece of us. We were a very small office, and could barely keep up with things we had planned, much less this onslaught.

We had agreed to do certain appearances and promotions, but after the film opened, George felt that we had to be careful to preserve our image. For that reason, we had some appearances scheduled which were cancelled. We paid a cancellation fee rather than, as George said, cheapen our characters.

There were allegedly appearances made by STAR WARS characters, but I can tell you right now, most of them weren't authorized. Folks sprang up out of the woodwork claiming to be representative and making appearances. We tried stopping them, but undoubtedly, only caught a fraction of the guys out there posing as STAR WARS.

This is a stat of one of the few authorized Vader appearances which was done for Factors Inc, to promote the T-shirt sales.