title: Star Wars (film)

text: According to Christian, the "Millennium Falcon" set was the most difficult to build. Christian wanted the interior of the "Falcon" to look like that of a submarine. He found scrap airplane metal "that no one wanted in those days and bought them." He began his creation process by breaking down jet engines into scrap pieces, giving him the chance to "stick it in the sets in specific ways." It took him several weeks to finish the chess set (which he described as "the most encrusted set") in the hold of the "Falcon". The garbage compactor set "was also pretty hard, because I knew I had actors in there and the walls had to come in, and they had to be in dirty water and I had to get stuff that would be light enough so it wouldn't hurt them but also not bobbing around." A total of 30 sets consisting of planets, starships, caves, control rooms, cantinas, and the Death Star corridors were created; all of the nine sound stages at Elstree were used to accommodate them. The massive rebel hangar set was housed at a second sound stage at Shepperton Studios; the stage was the largest in Europe at the time.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In 1975, Lucas formed his own visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) after discovering that 20th Century-Fox's visual effects department had been disbanded. ILM began its work on "Star Wars" in a warehouse in Van Nuys. Most of the visual effects used pioneering digital motion control photography developed by John Dykstra and his team, which created the illusion of size by employing small models and slowly moving cameras. Brian Johnson also turned down the opportunity to work on the film because he was busy working on "".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Lucas tried "to get a cohesive reality" for his feature. Since the film is a fairy tale, as he had described, "I still wanted it to have an ethereal quality, yet be well composed and, also, have an alien look." He designed the film to have an "extremely bizarre, Gregg Toland-like surreal look with strange over-exposed colors, a lot of shadows, a lot of hot areas." Lucas wanted "Star Wars" to embrace the combination of "strange graphics of fantasy" and "the feel of a documentary" to impress a distinct look. To achieve this, he hired the British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor. Originally, Lucas's first choice for the position was Geoffrey Unsworth, who also provided the cinematography for "2001: A Space Odyssey". Unsworth was interested in working with the director, and initially accepted the job when it was offered to him by Lucas and Kurtz. He eventually withdrew to work on the Vincente Minnelli-directed "A Matter of Time" (1976) instead, which "really annoy[ed]" Kurtz. Lucas called up for other cinematographers, and eventually chose Taylor, basing his choice on Taylor's cinematography for "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Hard Day's Night" (both 1964). On his decision, Lucas said: "I thought they were good, eccentrically photographed pictures with a strong documentary flavor."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Taylor said that Lucas, who was consumed by the details of the complicated production, "avoided all meetings and contact with me from day one, so I read the extra-long script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot the picture." Taylor also said, "I took it upon myself to experiment with photographing the lightsabers and other things onstage before we moved on to our two weeks of location work in Tunisia." Taylor was aware of the "enormous amount of process work" to follow principal photography and believed "a crisp result would help."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: During production, Lucas and Taylor—whom Kurtz called "old-school" and "crotchety"—had disputes over filming. With a background in independent filmmaking, Lucas was accustomed to creating most of the elements of the film himself. His lighting suggestions were rejected by Taylor, who believed that Lucas was overstepping his boundaries by giving specific instructions, sometimes even moving lights and cameras himself. Taylor refused to use the soft-focus lenses and gauze Lucas wanted after Fox executives complained about the look. Kurtz stated that "In a couple of scenes ... rather than saying, 'It looks a bit over lit, can you fix that?', [Lucas would] say, 'turn off this light, and turn off that light.' And Gil would say, 'No, I won't do that, I've lit it the way I think it should be—tell me what's the effect that you want, and I'll make a judgment about what to do with my lights.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Originally, Lucas envisioned the planet of Tatooine, where much of the film would take place, as a jungle planet. Kurtz traveled to the Philippines to scout locations; however, because of the idea of spending months filming in the jungle would make Lucas "itchy", the director refined his vision and made Tatooine a desert planet instead. Kurtz then researched all American, North African, and Middle Eastern deserts, and found Tunisia, near the Sahara desert, as the ideal location. Lucas later stated that he had wanted to make it look like outer space.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: When principal photography began on March 22, 1976, in the Tunisian desert for the scenes on Tatooine, the project faced several problems. Lucas fell behind schedule in the first week of shooting due to malfunctioning props and electronic breakdowns. Moreover, a rare Tunisian rainstorm struck the country, which further disrupted filming. Taylor said, "you couldn't really see where the land ended and the sky began. It was all a gray mess, and the robots were just a blur." Given this situation, Lucas requested heavy filtration, which Taylor rejected, who said: "I thought the look of the film should be absolutely clean ... But George saw it differently, so we tried using nets and other diffusion. He asked to set up one shot on the robots with a 300mm, and the sand and sky just mushed together. I told him it wouldn't work, but he said that was the way he wanted to do the entire film, all diffused." This difference was later settled by 20th Century-Fox executives, who backed Taylor's suggestion.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Filming began in Chott el Djerid, while a construction crew in Tozeur took eight weeks to transform the desert into the desired setting. Other locations included the sand dunes of the Tunisian desert near Nafta, where a scene featuring a giant skeleton of a creature lying in the background as R2-D2 and C-3PO make their way across the sands was filmed. When Daniels wore the C-3PO outfit for the first time in Tunisia, the left leg piece shattered down through the plastic covering his left foot, stabbing him. He also could not see through his costume's eyes, which was covered with gold to prevent corrosion. Abnormal radio signals caused by the Tunisian sands made the radio-controlled R2-D2 models run out of control. Baker said: "I was incredibly grateful each time an [R2] would actually work right." After several scenes were filmed against the volcanic canyons outside Tozeur, production moved to Matmata to film Luke's home on Tatooine. Lucas chose Hotel Sidi Driss, which is larger than the typical underground dwellings, to shoot the interior of Luke's homestead. Additional scenes for Tatooine were filmed at Death Valley in North America.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: After two-and-a-half weeks of filming in Tunisia, production moved to Elstree Studios, near London, to film interior scenes. Elstree was chosen as a studio over other options in Hollywood or elsewhere. "Star Wars" required the use of nine different sound stages simultaneously, which most studios couldn't accommodate. Because of stricter working conditions, filming in Britain had to finish by 5:30 pm, unless Lucas was in the middle of a scene. He often made requests for more time to shoot, but they were usually turned down.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Despite Lucas's efforts, his crew had little interest in the film. Most of the crew considered the project a "children's film", rarely took their work seriously, and often found it unintentionally humorous. Actor Baker later confessed that he thought the film would be a failure. Ford found it strange that "there's a princess with weird buns in her hair", and called Chewbacca a "giant in a monkey suit."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The Elstree sets designed by John Barry, according to Gilbert Taylor, "were like a coal mine." He said that "they were all black and gray, with really no opportunities for lighting at all." To resolve the problem, he worked the lighting into the sets by chopping in its walls, ceiling and floors. This would result in "a 'cut-out' system of panel lighting", with quartz lamps that could be placed in the holes in the walls, ceiling and floors. His idea was supported by the Fox studio, which agreed that "we couldn't have this 'black hole of Calcutta. The lighting approach Taylor devised "allowed George to shoot in almost any direction without extensive relighting, which gave him more freedom." In total, the filming in Britain took 14 and a half weeks.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Lucas commissioned computer programmer Larry Cuba to create the animated Death Star plans shown at the rebel base on Yavin 4. This was written with the GRASS programming language, exported to a Vector General monitor and filmed on 35 mm to be rear-projected on the set. It is the only computer animation in the original version of the film. The Yavin scenes were filmed in the Mayan temples at Tikal, Guatemala. Lucas selected the location as a potential filming site after seeing a poster of it hanging at a travel agency while he was filming in Britain. This inspired him to send a film crew to Guatemala in March 1977 to shoot scenes. While filming in Tikal, the crew paid locals with a six-pack of beer to watch over the camera equipment for several days.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: While shooting, Lucas rarely spoke to the actors, who believed that he expected too much of them while providing little direction. His directions to the actors usually consisted of the words "faster" and "more intense". Kurtz stated that "it happened a lot where he would just say, 'Let's try it again a little bit faster.' That was about the only instruction he'd give anybody. A lot of actors don't mind—they don't care, they just get on with it. But some actors really need a lot of pampering and a lot of feedback, and if they don't get it, they get paranoid that they might not be doing a good job." Kurtz has said that Lucas "wasn't gregarious, he's very much a loner and very shy, so he didn't like large groups of people, he didn't like working with a large crew, he didn't like working with a lot of actors."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Ladd offered Lucas some of the only support from the studio; he dealt with scrutiny from board members over the rising budget and complex screenplay drafts. Initially, Fox approved $8 million for the project; Gary Kurtz said: "we proceeded to pick a production plan and do a more final budget with a British art department and look for locations in North Africa, and kind of pulled together some things. Then, it was obvious that 8 million wasn't going to do it—they had approved 8 million." After requests from the team that "it had to be more," the executives "got a bit scared." For two weeks, Lucas and his crew "didn't really do anything except kind of pull together new budget figures." At the same time, after production fell behind schedule, Ladd told Lucas he had to finish production within a week or he would be forced to shut down production. Kurtz said that "it came out to be like 9.8 or .9 or something like that, and in the end they just said, 'Yes, that's okay, we'll go ahead. The crew split into three units, with those units led by Lucas, Kurtz, and production supervisor Robert Watts. Under the new system, the project met the studio's deadline.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Lucas had to write around a scene featuring a human Jabba the Hutt, which was scrapped due to budget and time constraints. Lucas would later claim he wanted to superimpose a stop-motion creature over the actor—which he did with computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the 1997 Special Edition. All of the original script drafts describe Jabba as humanoid, with the notion of him being an alien not coming up until work on the 1979 re-release. According to Greedo actor Paul Blake, his own character was created as a result of Lucas having to cut the Jabba scene.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: During production, the cast attempted to make Lucas laugh or smile, as he often appeared depressed. At one point, the project became so demanding that Lucas was diagnosed with hypertension and exhaustion and was warned to reduce his stress level. Post-production was equally stressful due to increasing pressure from 20th Century-Fox. Moreover, Hamill's car accident left his face visibly scarred, which restricted re-shoots.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" was originally slated for release on Christmas 1976; however, its production delays pushed the film's release to mid-1977. Editor John Jympson began cutting the film together while Lucas was still filming in Tunisia; as Lucas noted, the editor was in an "impossible position" because Lucas had not explained any of the film's material to him. When Lucas watched Jympson's rough cut for the first time, he disliked what he saw. J. W. Rinzler wrote that "Jympson's selection of takes was questionable, and he seemed to be having trouble doing match-cuts." Lucas was prepared to give Jympson more time; Jympson disliked Lucas's working style. As production went on, Lucas still disapproved of Jympson's cut and fired him halfway through the film's production. He commented: "Unfortunately it didn't work out. It's very hard when you are hiring people to know if they are going to mesh with you and if you are going to get what you want. In the end, I don't think he fully understood the movie and what I was trying to do. I shoot in a very peculiar way, in a documentary style, and it takes a lot of hard editing to make it work." After attempting to persuade Jympson to cut the film his way, Lucas replaced him with Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew, and his then-wife, Marcia Lucas, who was also cutting the film "New York, New York" (1977) with Lucas's friend Martin Scorsese. Richard Chew considered the film to have been cut in a slow, by-the-book manner: scenes were played out in master shots that flowed into close-up coverage. He found that the pace was dictated by the actors instead of the cuts. Hirsch and Chew worked on two reels simultaneously.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Jympson's original assembly contained a large amount of footage which differed from the final cut of the film, including several alternate takes and a number of scenes which were subsequently deleted to improve the narrative pace. The most significant material cut was a series of scenes from the first part of the film which introduced Luke Skywalker. These early scenes, set in Anchorhead on the planet Tatooine, presented the audience with Luke's everyday life among his friends as it is affected by the space battle above the planet; they also introduced the character of Biggs Darklighter, Luke's closest friend who departs to join the rebellion. Chew explained the rationale behind removing these scenes as a narrative decision: "In the first five minutes, we were hitting everybody with more information than they could handle. There were too many story lines to keep straight: the robots and the Princess, Vader, Luke. So we simplified it by taking out Luke and Biggs." In an examination of this early cut, which has come to be called the "Lost Cut", David West Reynolds noted the film adopted a "documentary-like" approach that emphasized "clarity, especially in geographic and spatial relationships" over "dramatic or artistic concerns". As a result, the film was more "leisurely paced". Reynolds estimated this early cut contained "30–40%" different footage from the final cut, with most of the differences coming from extended cuts or alternate takes rather than deleted scenes.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: After viewing a rough cut, Alan Ladd likened the early Anchorhead scenes to ""American Graffiti" in outer space". Lucas was looking for a way of accelerating the storytelling, and removing Luke's early scenes would distinguish "Star Wars" from his earlier teenage drama and "get that "American Graffiti" feel out of it". Lucas also stated that he wanted to move the narrative focus to C-3PO and R2-D2: "At the time, to have the first half-hour of the film be mainly about robots was a bold idea."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Meanwhile, Industrial Light & Magic was struggling to achieve unprecedented special effects. The company had spent half of its budget on four shots that Lucas deemed unacceptable. With hundreds of uncompleted shots remaining, ILM was forced to finish a year's work in six months. Lucas inspired ILM by editing together aerial dogfights from old war films, which enhanced the pacing of the scenes.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Burtt had created a library of sounds that Lucas referred to as an "organic soundtrack". Blaster sounds were a modified recording of a steel cable, under tension, being struck. The lightsaber sound effect was developed by Burtt as a combination of the hum of idling interlock motors in aged movie projectors and interference caused by a television set on a shieldless microphone. Burtt discovered the latter accidentally as he was looking for a buzzing, sparking sound to add to the projector-motor hum. For Chewbacca's growls, Burtt recorded and combined sounds made by dogs, bears, lions, tigers, and walruses to create phrases and sentences. Lucas and Burtt created the robotic voice of R2-D2 by filtering their voices through an electronic synthesizer. Darth Vader's breathing was achieved by Burtt breathing through the mask of a scuba regulator implanted with a microphone, which began the idea of Vader having been a burn-victim, which had not been the case during production.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In February 1977, Lucas screened an early cut of the film for Fox executives, several director friends, along with Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin of Marvel Comics who were preparing a "Star Wars" comic book. The cut had a different crawl from the finished version and used Prowse's voice for Darth Vader. It also lacked most special effects; hand-drawn arrows took the place of blaster beams, and when the "Millennium Falcon" fought TIE fighters, the film cut to footage of World War II dogfights. The reactions of the directors present, such as Brian De Palma, John Milius, and Steven Spielberg, disappointed Lucas. Spielberg, who said he was the only person in the audience to have enjoyed the film, believed that the lack of enthusiasm was due to the absence of finished special effects. Lucas later said that the group was honest and seemed bemused by the film. In contrast, Ladd and the other studio executives loved the film; Gareth Wigan told Lucas: "This is the greatest film I've ever seen" and cried during the screening. Lucas found the experience shocking and rewarding, having never gained any approval from studio executives before. The delays increased the budget from $8 million to $11 million.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: With the project $2 million over budget, Lucas was forced to make numerous artistic compromises to complete "Star Wars". Ladd reluctantly agreed to release an extra $20,000 funding and in early 1977 second unit filming completed a number of sequences including exterior desert shots for Tatooine in Death Valley and China Lake Acres in California, and exterior Yavin jungle shots in Guatemala, along with additional studio footage to complete the Mos Eisley Cantina sequence.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: On the recommendation of Spielberg, Lucas hired John Williams, who had worked with Spielberg on the film "Jaws", for which he won an Academy Award. Lucas originally hired Williams to consult on music editing choices and to compose the source music for the music, telling Williams that he intended to use extant music. Lucas believed that the film would portray visually foreign worlds, but that a grand musical score would give the audience an emotional familiarity. Therefore, Lucas assembled his favorite orchestral pieces for the soundtrack, until Williams convinced him that an original score would be unique and more unified, having viewed Lucas's music choices as a temp track. However, a few of Williams's eventual pieces were influenced by the temp track: the "Main Title Theme" was inspired by the theme from the 1942 film "Kings Row", scored by Erich Wolfgang Korngold; and the track "Dune Sea of Tatooine" drew from the soundtrack of "Bicycle Thieves", scored by Alessandro Cicognini. Lucas would later deny having ever conceived using extant music for the film.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In March 1977, Williams conducted the London Symphony Orchestra to record the "Star Wars" soundtrack in 12 days. The original soundtrack was released as a double LP in 1977 by 20th Century Records. 20th Century Records also released "The Story of Star Wars" that year, a narrated audio drama adaptation of the film utilizing some of its original music, dialogue, and sound effects.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The American Film Institute's list of best film scores ranks the "Star Wars" soundtrack at number one.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: According to Lucas, different concepts of the film were inspired by numerous sources, such as Beowulf and King Arthur for the origins of myth and religion. Lucas had originally intended to remake the 1930s "Flash Gordon" film serials but was unable to obtain the rights; thus, he resorted to drawing from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film "The Hidden Fortress" and, allegedly, Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". "Star Wars" features many elements derived from "Flash Gordon", such as the conflict between rebels and Imperial Forces, the wipes between scenes, the fusion of futuristic technology and traditional mythology, and the famous opening crawl that begins each film. The film has also been compared to "The Wizard of Oz".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The influence of "The Hidden Fortress" can be seen in the relationship between C-3PO and R2-D2, which evolved from the two bickering peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, and a Japanese family crest seen in the earlier film is similar to the Imperial Crest. "Star Wars" also borrows heavily from another Kurosawa film, "Yojimbo" (1961). In both films, several men threaten the hero, bragging about how wanted they are by the authorities, and have an arm being cut off by a blade; Kuwabatake Sanjuro (played by Toshiro Mifune) is offered "twenty-five ryo now, twenty-five when you complete the mission", whereas Han Solo is offered "Two thousand now, plus fifteen when we reach Alderaan." Its sequel "Sanjuro" (1962) also inspired the hiding-under-the-floor trick featured in the film. Another source of influence was "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), which inspired the film's visual approach, including long-lens desert shots. There are also thematic parallels, including the freedom fight by a rebel army against an empire, and politicians who meddle behind the scenes.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Tatooine is similar to the desert planet of Arrakis from Frank Herbert's "Dune" series. Arrakis is the only known source of a longevity spice; "Star Wars" makes references to spice in "the spice mines of Kessel", and a spice freighter. Other similarities include those between Princess Leia and Princess Alia, and Jedi mind tricks and "The Voice", a controlling ability used by the Bene Gesserit. In passing, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are "moisture farmers"; in "Dune", dew collectors are used by Fremen to "provide a small but reliable source of water." Frank Herbert reported that "David Lynch, [director of the 1984 film "Dune"] had trouble with the fact that "Star Wars" used up so much of "Dune"." The pair found "sixteen points of identity" and they calculated that "the odds against coincidence produced a number larger than the number of stars in the universe."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The Death Star assault scene was modeled after the World War II film "The Dam Busters" (1955), in which Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers fly along heavily defended reservoirs and aim bouncing bombs at dams, to cripple the heavy industry of Germany's Ruhr region. Some of the dialogue in "The Dam Busters" is repeated in the "Star Wars" climax; Gilbert Taylor also filmed the special effects sequences in "The Dam Busters". In addition, the sequence was partially inspired by the climax of the film "633 Squadron" (1964), directed by Walter Grauman, in which RAF de Havilland Mosquitos attack a German heavy water plant by flying down a narrow fjord to drop special bombs at a precise point, while avoiding anti-aircraft guns and German fighters. Clips from both films were included in Lucas's temporary dogfight footage version of the sequence. There are also similarities in the Death Star trench sequence to the bridge attack scene in "The Bridges at Toko-Ri".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The opening shot of "Star Wars", in which a detailed spaceship fills the screen overhead, is a reference to the scene introducing the interplanetary spacecraft "Discovery One" in Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey". The earlier big-budget science fiction film influenced the look of "Star Wars" in many other ways, including the use of EVA pods and hexagonal corridors. The Death Star has a docking bay reminiscent of the one on the orbiting space station in "2001". Although golden and male, C-3PO was inspired by the silver female robot Maria, the "Maschinenmensch" from Fritz Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: While the film was in production, a logo was commissioned from Dan Perri, a title sequence designer who had worked on the titles for films such as "The Exorcist" (1973) and "Taxi Driver" (1976). Perri devised a foreshortened "STAR WARS" logotype consisting of block-capital letters filled with stars and skewed towards a vanishing point. This logo design was originally conceived to follow the same perspective as the film's opening crawl. In the end, Perri's logo was not used for the film's opening title sequence, although it was used widely on pre-release print advertising and on cinema marquees.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The logotype eventually selected for on-screen use originated in a promotional brochure that was distributed by Fox to cinema owners in 1976. This brochure was designed by Suzy Rice, a young art director at the Los Angeles advertising agency Seiniger Advertising. On a visit to ILM in Van Nuys, Rice was instructed by Lucas to produce a logo that would intimidate the viewer, and he reportedly asked for the logo to appear "very fascist" in style. Rice's response to her brief was to use an outlined, modified Helvetica Black. After some feedback from Lucas, Rice decided to join the "S" and "T" of "STAR" and the "R" and "S" of "WARS". Lucas signed off on the brochure in between takes while filming inserts for the Mos Eisley Cantina scene. Gary Kurtz was impressed with Rice's logo and selected it over Perri's design for the film's opening titles, after modifying the letter "W" to flatten the pointed tips originally designed by Rice. This finalized the design of one of the most recognizable logos in cinema design, although Rice's contribution was not credited in the film.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: For the US release in 1977, 20th Century-Fox commissioned a promotional film poster from the advertising agency Smolen, Smith and Connolly. They used the freelance artist Tom Jung who was given the brief of "good over evil." His poster, known as , depicted Luke Skywalker standing in a heroic pose, brandishing a shining lightsaber above his head, with Princess Leia below him, and a large, ghostly image of Darth Vader's helmet looming behind them. Some Fox executives considered this poster "too dark" and commissioned the Brothers Hildebrandt, a pair of well-known fantasy artists, to rework the poster for the UK release. When the film opened in British theaters, the Hildebrandts' was used in cinema billboards. Fox and Lucasfilm subsequently decided that they wanted to promote the new film with a less stylized and more realistic depiction of the lead characters. Producer Gary Kurtz turned to the film poster artist Tom Chantrell, who was already well known for his prolific work for Hammer horror films, and commissioned a new version. Two months after "Star Wars" opened, the Hildebrandts' poster was replaced by Chantrell's in UK cinemas.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Charles Lippincott was the marketing director for "Star Wars". As 20th Century-Fox gave little support for marketing beyond licensing T-shirts and posters, Lippincott was forced to look elsewhere. He secured deals with Marvel Comics for a comic book adaptation, and with Del Rey Books for a novelization. A fan of science fiction, he used his contacts to promote the film at the San Diego Comic-Con and elsewhere within science-fiction fandom.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: On 1 May 1977, the first public screening was held at Northpoint Theatre<ref name="cinematreasures/5426"></ref> in San Francisco, where "American Graffiti" was test-screened, four years earlier.<ref name="kcbsradio/before-anyone-else"></ref>


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Worried that "Star Wars" would be beaten out by other summer films, such as "Smokey and the Bandit", 20th Century-Fox moved the release date to May 25, the Wednesday before Memorial Day. However, only 37 theaters ordered the film to be shown in North America. In response, the studio demanded that theaters order "Star Wars" if they wanted the eagerly anticipated "The Other Side of Midnight" based on Sidney Sheldon's 1973 novel by the same name.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" debuted on Wednesday, May 25, 1977, in fewer than 32 theaters, and eight more on Thursday and Friday. Kurtz said in 2002, "That would be laughable today." It immediately broke box office records, effectively becoming one of the first blockbuster films, and Fox accelerated plans to broaden its release. Lucas himself was not able to predict how successful "Star Wars" would be. After visiting the set of the Steven Spielberg film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", Lucas was sure "Close Encounters" would outperform the yet-to-be-released "Star Wars" at the box office. Spielberg disagreed, and believed "Star Wars" would be the bigger hit. Lucas proposed they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other's films; Spielberg took the trade, and still receives 2.5% of the profits from "Star Wars".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Amidst Fox pessimism, Lucas elected to forgo his option to an extra $500,000 fee for directing "Star Wars", in exchange for obtaining the merchandising and sequel rights for the movie from Fox.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "The Other Side of Midnight" was supposed to be the studio's big summer hit, while Lucas's movie was considered the "B track" for theater owners nationwide. While Fox requested Mann's Chinese Theatre, the studio promised that the film needed only two weeks. Fearing that the film would fail, Lucas had made plans to be in Hawaii with his wife Marcia. Having forgotten that the film would open that day, he spent most of Wednesday in a sound studio in Los Angeles. When Lucas went out for lunch with Marcia, they encountered a long line of people along the sidewalks leading to Mann's Chinese Theatre, waiting to see "Star Wars". He was still skeptical of the film's success, even with enthusiastic reports from Ladd and the studio. While in Hawaii, it was not until he watched Walter Cronkite discuss the gigantic crowds for "Star Wars" on the "CBS Evening News" that Lucas realized he had become very wealthy. Francis Ford Coppola, who needed money to finish "Apocalypse Now", sent a telegram to Lucas's hotel asking for funding. Even technical crew members, such as model makers, were asked for autographs, and cast members became instant household names; when Ford visited a record store to buy an album, enthusiastic fans tore half his shirt off.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The film was a huge success for 20th Century-Fox, and was credited for reinvigorating the company. Within three weeks of the film's release, the studio's stock price had doubled to a record high. Prior to 1977, 20th Century-Fox's greatest annual profits were $37 million, while in 1977, the company broke that record by posting a profit of $79 million.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Although the film's cultural neutrality helped it to gain international success, Ladd became anxious during the premiere in Japan. After the screening, the audience was silent, leading him to fear that the film would be unsuccessful. Ladd was reassured by his local contacts that this was a positive reaction considering that in Japan, silence was the greatest honor to a film, and the subsequent strong box office returns confirmed its popularity.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: After two weeks William Friedkin's "Sorcerer" replaced "Star Wars" at Mann's Chinese Theatre because of contractual obligations; Mann Theatres moved the film to a less-prestigious location after quickly renovating it. When "Star Wars" made an unprecedented second opening at Mann's Chinese Theatre on August 3, 1977, after "Sorcerer" failed, thousands of people attended a ceremony in which C-3PO, R2-D2 and Darth Vader placed their footprints in the theater's forecourt. At that time "Star Wars" was playing in 1,096 theaters in the United States. Approximately 60 theaters played the film continuously for over a year; in 1978, Lucasfilm distributed "Birthday Cake" posters to those theaters for special events on May 25, the one-year anniversary of the film's release. "Star Wars" premiered in the UK on December 27, 1977. News reports of the film's popularity in America caused long lines to form at the two London theaters that first offered the film; it became available in 12 large cities in January 1978, and other London theaters in February.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" was re-released theatrically in 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1982, with the subtitles "Episode IV" and "A New Hope" being added in 1981. Gary Kurtz goes onto say that Lucas and his creative team had been planning on renaming ‘"Star Wars"’ since Empire’s production. The film was digitally remastered with some altered scenes in 1997 for a theatrical rerelease, dubbed the "Special Edition."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In 2010, Lucas announced that all six previously released "Star Wars" films would be scanned and transferred to 3D for a theatrical release, but only 3D versions of the prequel trilogy were completed before the franchise was sold to Disney in 2012.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In 2013, "Star Wars" was dubbed into Navajo, making it the first major motion picture translated into a Native American language.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The subtitles "Episode IV" and "A New Hope" were first published on a title page for the film's script in the 1979 book "The Art of Star Wars", in what Kaminski claims as "outright forgery", remarking that "the script itself wasn't even the authentic revised fourth draft, but more like a transcription of the finished film, edited and combined with the real fourth draft." The title was changed when the film entered re-releases. Official sources state that the change was made at the theatrical re-release of April 10, 1981.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The retronymic inclusion of subtitles brought the film into line with the introduction to its sequel, "The Empire Strikes Back", which was reconceived during rewrites as "Episode V" and eventually released as such in 1980. Lucas claims this was intended from the beginning, and was only dropped to avoid confusing audiences: ""Star Wars" was the fourth story in the saga and was to have been called "Star Wars, Episode Four: A New Hope"." In 2014, Kurtz recalled they had toyed with the idea "of calling it Episode III, IV, or V." Hamill recalls having asked Lucas "Why are we doing episode four?" and being answered that Lucas wanted "to give the audience a feeling that they'd missed something and that they were coming into the middle of this story" or that it was "the most commercial section" of the overriding story. Kaminski, however, points out that all early drafts carry an "Episode One" subtitle, and that even early drafts of the sequel are called "Episode II."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: After ILM began to create CGI for Steven Spielberg's 1993 film "Jurassic Park", Lucas decided that digital technology had caught up to his "original vision" for "Star Wars". For the film's 20th anniversary in 1997, "Star Wars" was digitally remastered with some altered scenes and re-released to theaters, along with "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi", under the campaign title "Star Wars" Trilogy: Special Edition. This version of the film runs 124 minutes.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The Special Edition contains visual shots and scenes that were unachievable in the original release due to financial, technological, and time constraints; one such scene involves a meeting between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt. The process of creating the new visual effects for "Star Wars" was featured in the documentary film, "", directed by "Star Wars" sound designer Ben Burtt. Although most changes are minor or cosmetic in nature, many fans and critics believe that Lucas degraded the film with the additions. A particularly controversial change in which a bounty hunter named Greedo shoots first when confronting Han Solo has inspired T-shirts bearing the phrase "Han Shot First."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" required extensive recovery of misplaced footage and restoration of the whole film before Lucas's Special Edition modifications could be attempted. It was discovered that in addition to the negative motion picture stocks commonly used on feature films, Lucas had also used Color Reversal Internegative (CRI) film, a reversal stock subsequently discontinued by Kodak. CRI proved to deteriorate faster than negative stocks did, although it theoretically was of higher quality, as it saved two generations (an interpositive followed by an internegative), where employed. Because of this, the entire composited negative had to be disassembled, and the CRI portions cleaned separately from the negative portions. Once the cleaning was complete, the film was scanned into the computer for restoration. In many cases, entire scenes had to be reconstructed from their individual elements. Digital compositing technology allowed the restorers to correct for problems such as misalignment of mattes and "blue-spill."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In 1989, the 1977 theatrical version of "Star Wars" was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress. 35mm reels of the 1997 Special Edition were initially presented for preservation because of the difficulty of transferring from the original prints, but it was later revealed that the Library possessed a copyright deposit print of the original theatrical release. By 2015, this copy had been transferred to a 2K scan, now available to be viewed by appointment.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In the United States, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan, parts of or the whole film were released on Super 8. The whole film was released for all these countries (including subtitled silent editions and an American Spanish-language edition), except for Italy, where the film (titled ""Guerre stellari"") was released by IE International as eight brief scenes: "Battaglia spaziale" ("Space battle", the Battle of Yavin), "Duello col laser" ("Duel with the laser", Obi-Wan and Darth Vader's duel), "La cattura dell'astronave" ("The capture of the spaceship"), "La liberazione di Leia" ("Leia's liberation", the adventure on the Death Star), "Messaggio dallo spazio" ("Message from space", Leia giving R2-D2 the plans), "SOS nella galassia" ("SOS in the galaxy") and "Trappola mortale" ("Deadly trap", the "Falcon" being captured by the Death Star). A full Super 8 version of the film was only made available in Italy as a pirate six-reel set.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Clips were also released for the Movie Viewer toy projector by Kenner Products in cassettes featuring very short scenes, including "Assault on Death Star", "Battle in Hyperspace", "Danger at the Cantina", and "Destroy Death Star".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" debuted on Betamax, CED, LaserDisc, Video 2000, and VHS between the 1980s and 1990s by CBS/Fox Video. The final issue of the original theatrical release (pre-Special Edition) to VHS format occurred in 1995, as part of "Last Chance to Own the Original" campaign, available as part of a trilogy set and as a standalone purchase. The film was released for the first time on DVD on September 21, 2004, in a box set with "The Empire Strikes Back", "Return of the Jedi", and a bonus disc of supplementary material. The films were digitally restored and remastered, and more changes were made by Lucas. The DVD features a commentary track from Lucas, Ben Burtt, Dennis Muren, and Carrie Fisher. The bonus disc contains the documentary "", three featurettes, teasers, theatrical trailers, TV spots, still galleries, an exclusive preview of "", a playable Xbox demo of the LucasArts game "", and a making-of documentary on . The set was reissued in December 2005 as part of a three-disc limited edition boxed set without the bonus disc.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The trilogy was re-released on separate two-disc limited edition DVD sets from September 12 to December 31, 2006, and again in a limited edition tin box set on November 4, 2008; the original versions of the films were added as bonus material. The release was met with criticism as the unaltered versions were from the 1993 non-anamorphic LaserDisc masters and were not re-transferred using modern video standards. The transfer led to problems with colors and digital image jarring.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: All six "Star Wars" films were released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on Blu-ray Disc on September 16, 2011 in three different editions, with "A New Hope" available in both a box set of the original trilogy and with all six films on "Star Wars: The Complete Saga", which includes nine discs and over 40 hours of special features. The original theatrical versions of the films were not included in the box set. New changes were made to the films, provoking mixed responses.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: On April 7, 2015, Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilm jointly announced the digital releases of the six released "Star Wars" films. Fox released "A New Hope" for digital download on April 10, 2015. In December 2016, "Rogue One" (2016) director Gareth Edwards revealed that Lucasfilm had recently completed a 4K restoration of "Star Wars", but did not elaborate on whether the restored version was based on the 1977 original or a subsequent re-release.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment reissued the film on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on September 22, 2019. Additionally, all six films were available for 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos streaming on Disney+ upon the service's launch on November 12, 2019. This version of the film was released by Disney on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray box set on March 31, 2020.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" remains one of the most financially successful films of all time. The film opened on a Wednesday in 32 theaters expanding to 43 screens on the Friday and earning $2,556,418 in its first six days to the end of the Memorial Day weekend ($ in dollars). Per "Variety" weekly box office charts, the film was number one at the US box office for its first three weeks. It was replaced by "The Deep" but gradually added screens and returned to number one in its seventh week, building up to $7 million weekends as it entered wide release ($ in dollars) and remained number one for the next 15 weeks. It replaced "Jaws" as the highest-earning film in North America just six months into release, eventually earning over $220 million during its initial theatrical run ($ in dollars). "Star Wars" entered international release towards the end of the year, and in 1978 added the worldwide record to its domestic one, earning $410 million in total. Its biggest international market was Japan, where it grossed $58.4 million.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: On July 21, 1978 while still in current release in 38 theaters in the U.S., the film expanded into a 1,744 theater national saturation windup of release and set a new U.S. weekend record of $10,202,726. The gross prior to the expansion was $221,280,994. The expansion added a further $43,774,911 to take its gross to $265,055,905. Reissues in 1979 ($22,455,262), 1981 ($17,247,363), and 1982 ($17,981,612) brought its cumulative gross in the U.S and Canada to $323 million, and extended its global earnings to $530 million. The film remained the highest-grossing film of all time until "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" broke that record in 1983.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The release of the Special Edition in 1997 was the highest-grossing reissue of all-time with a gross of $138.3 million, bringing its total gross in the United States and Canada to $460,998,007, reclaiming the all-time number one spot. Internationally, the reissue grossed $117.2 million, with $26 million from the United Kingdom and $15 million from Japan. In total, the film has grossed over $775 million worldwide.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Adjusted for inflation, it had earned over $2.5 billion worldwide at 2011 prices, which saw it ranked as the third-highest-grossing film at the time, according to "Guinness World Records". At the North American box office, it ranks second behind "Gone with the Wind" on the inflation-adjusted list.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" received critical acclaim. In his 1977 review, Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" called the film "an out-of-body experience," compared its special effects to those of "2001: A Space Odyssey", and opined that the true strength of the film was its "pure narrative". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" called the film "the movie that's going to entertain a lot of contemporary folk who have a soft spot for the virtually ritualized manners of comic-book adventure" and "the most elaborate, most expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made". A.D. Murphy of "Variety" described the film as "magnificent" and said George Lucas had succeeded in his attempt to create the "biggest possible adventure fantasy" based on the serials and older action epics from his childhood. Writing for "The Washington Post", Gary Arnold gave the film a positive review, writing that the film "is a new classic in a rousing movie tradition: a space swashbuckler." However, the film was not without its detractors: Pauline Kael of "The New Yorker" criticized "Star Wars", stating that "there's no breather in the picture, no lyricism", and that it had no "emotional grip". John Simon of "New York" magazine also panned the film and wrote, "Strip Star Wars of its often striking images and its highfalutin scientific jargon, and you get a story, characters, and dialogue of overwhelming banality." Stanley Kauffmann, reviewing the film in "The New Republic", opined that it "was made for those (particularly males) who carry a portable shrine within them of their adolescence, a chalice of a Self that was Better Then, before the world's affairs or—in any complex way—sex intruded."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: When "Star Wars" opened in the UK Derek Malcolm of "The Guardian" concluded that it "plays enough games to satisfy the most sophisticated", though he stated that Lucas's earlier films were better. Barry Norman of "Film..." called the movie "family entertainment at its most sublime", which "combines all the best-loved themes of romantic adventure", with a script evoking "everyone's glorious memories of Saturday matinees". "The Daily Telegraph"s science correspondent Adrian Berry said that "Star Wars" "is the best such film since "2001" and in certain respects it is one of the most exciting ever made". He described the plot as "unpretentious and pleasantly devoid of any 'message'." A few critics found fault in the lack of representation of African Americans in the space fantasy, with a writer for "New Journal and Guide" calling it "one of the most racist movies ever produced", pointing out that "the force of evil ... is dressed in all black and has the voice of a black man". Lucas felt hurt at the accusations.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The film continues to receive critical acclaim from modern critics. The film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes indicates approval rating based on reviews with an overall rating of . Its consensus states in summary, "A legendarily expansive and ambitious start to the sci-fi saga, George Lucas opened our eyes to the possibilities of blockbuster filmmaking and things have never been the same." Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 90 out of 100 based on 24 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim." In his 1997 review of the film's 20th anniversary release, Michael Wilmington of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film four out of four stars, saying, "A grandiose and violent epic with a simple and whimsical heart." A "San Francisco Chronicle" staff member described the film as "a thrilling experience." In 2001 Matt Ford of the BBC awarded the film five out of five stars and wrote, ""Star Wars" isn't the best film ever made, but it is universally loved." CinemaScore reported that audiences for "Star Wars"s 1999 re-release gave the film a "A+" grade.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Gene Siskel, writing for the "Chicago Tribune" in 1977, said, "What places it a sizable cut above the routine is its spectacular visual effects, the best since Stanley Kubrick's "2001"." Andrew Collins of "Empire" magazine awarded the film five out of five and said, ""Star Wars" timeless appeal lies in its easily identified, universal archetypes—goodies to root for, baddies to boo, a princess to be rescued and so on—and if it is most obviously dated to the 70s by the special effects, so be it." In his 1977 review, Robert Hatch of "The Nation" called the film "an outrageously successful, what will be called a 'classic,' compilation of nonsense, largely derived but thoroughly reconditioned. I doubt that anyone will ever match it, though the imitations must already be on the drawing boards." In a more critical review, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the "Chicago Reader" stated, "None of these characters has any depth, and they're all treated like the fanciful props and settings." Peter Keough of the "Boston Phoenix" said, ""Star Wars" is a junkyard of cinematic gimcracks not unlike the Jawas' heap of purloined, discarded, barely functioning droids."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The film garnered numerous accolades after its release. "Star Wars" won six competitive Academy Awards at the 50th Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. A Special Achievement for Sound Effects Editing went to sound designer Ben Burtt and a Scientific and Engineering Award went to John Dykstra for the development of the Dykstraflex Camera (shared with Alvah J. Miller and Jerry Jeffress, who were both granted for the engineering of the Electronic Motion Control System). Additional nominations included Alec Guinness for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, which went to Jason Robards for "Julia" and George Lucas for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, which were instead awarded to Woody Allen's "Annie Hall".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: At the 35th Golden Globe Awards, the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), and it won the award for Best Score. It received six British Academy Film Awards nominations: Best Film, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production/Art Design, Best Sound, and Best Score; the film won in the latter two categories. John Williams's soundtrack album won the Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score for a Motion Picture or Television Program, and the film attained the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The film also received twelve nominations at the Saturn Awards, winning nine: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction and Best Writing for George Lucas, Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness, Best Music for John Williams, Best Costume for John Mollo, Best Make-up for Rick Baker and Stuart Freeborn, Best Special Effects for John Dykstra and John Stears, and Outstanding Editing for Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" launched the careers of many of the film's actors, including Hamill, Ford, Fisher, Mayhew, Daniels, Baker, and Jones. Ford, who subsequently starred in the "Indiana Jones" series (1981–present), "Blade Runner" (1982), and "Witness" (1985) after working on the film, told the "Daily Mirror" that "Star Wars" "boosted my career", and said, "I think the great luck of my career is that I've made these family movies which are introduced to succeeding generations of kids by their families at the time it seems appropriate."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The film also spawned the "Star Wars Holiday Special", which debuted on CBS on November 17, 1978 and is often considered a failure; Lucas himself disowned it. The special has never been aired after its original broadcast, and it has never been officially released on home video. However, many bootleg copies exist, and the special has consequently become something of an underground legend.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" and its ensuing film installments have been explicitly referenced and satirized across a wide range of media. "Hardware Wars", released in 1978, was one of the first fan films to parody "Star Wars". It received positive critical reaction, went to earn over $1 million, and is one of Lucas's favorite "Star Wars" spoofs. Writing for "The New York Times", Frank DeCaro said, ""Star Wars" littered pop culture of the late 1970s with a galaxy of space junk." He cited "Quark" (a short-lived 1977 sitcom that parodies the science fiction genre) and "Donny & Marie" (a 1970s variety show that produced a 10-minute musical adaptation of "Star Wars" guest starring Daniels and Mayhew) as "television's two most infamous examples." Mel Brooks's "Spaceballs", a satirical comic science fiction parody, was released in 1987 to mixed reviews. Lucas permitted Brooks to make a spoof of the film under "one incredibly big restriction: no action figures." In the 1990s and 2000s, animated comedy TV series "Family Guy", "Robot Chicken", and "The Simpsons" have produced episodes satirizing the film series. A Nerdist article published in 2021 argues that ""Star Wars" is the most influential film of all time" partly on the basis that "if all copies ... suddenly vanished, we could more or less recreate the film ... using other media," including parodies.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars", together with Lucas, is the subject of the 2010 documentary film "The People vs. George Lucas" that details the issues of filmmaking and fanaticism pertaining to the film franchise and its creator. Many elements of the film have also endured presence in popular culture. The iconic weapon of choice of the Jedi, the lightsaber, was voted as the most popular weapon in film history in a survey of approximately 2,000 film fans. Characters such as Darth Vader, Han Solo, and Yoda have become iconic, and all three were named in the top twenty of the British Film Institute's "Best Sci-Fi Characters of All-Time" list. The expressions "Evil empire" and "May the Force be with you" have become part of the popular lexicon. A pun on the latter phrase has led to May 4 being regarded by many fans of the franchise as an unofficial "Star Wars" Day. To commemorate the film's 30th anniversary in May 2007, the United States Postal Service issued a set of 15 stamps depicting the characters of the franchise. Approximately 400 mailboxes across the country were also designed to look like R2-D2.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Ebert wrote in his book "The Great Movies", "Like "The Birth of a Nation" and "Citizen Kane", "Star Wars" was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after." It began a new generation of special effects and high-energy motion pictures. The film was one of the first films to link genres together to invent a new, high-concept genre for filmmakers to build upon. Finally, along with Steven Spielberg's "Jaws", it shifted the film industry's focus away from personal filmmaking of the 1970s and towards fast-paced, big-budget blockbusters for younger audiences.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Filmmakers who have said to have been influenced by "Star Wars" include James Cameron, J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Dean Devlin, Gareth Edwards, Roland Emmerich, John Lasseter, David Fincher, Peter Jackson, Joss Whedon, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, John Singleton, and Kevin Smith. Scott, Cameron, and Jackson were influenced by Lucas's concept of the "used future" (where vehicles and culture are obviously dated) and extended the concept for their films, such as Scott's science fiction films "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982), Cameron's acclaimed sequel "Aliens" (1986) and his earlier breakthrough film "The Terminator" (1984). Jackson used the concept for his production of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy to add a sense of realism and believability. Christopher Nolan cited "Star Wars" as an influence when making the 2010 blockbuster film, "Inception".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Some critics have blamed "Star Wars", as well as "Jaws", for ruining Hollywood by shifting its focus from "sophisticated" films such as "The Godfather", "Taxi Driver", and "Annie Hall" to films about spectacle and juvenile fantasy. On a late 1977 episode of "Sneak Previews", Siskel expressed concern that, "It's so successful and so mindless fun that I hope Hollywood doesn't forget that there are people who like to see serious pictures too." Another critic, Peter Biskind, later complained, "When all was said and done, Lucas and Spielberg returned the 1970s audience, grown sophisticated on a diet of European and New Hollywood films, to the simplicities of the pre-1960s Golden Age of movies... They marched backward through the looking-glass." In an opposing view, Tom Shone wrote that through "Star Wars" and "Jaws", Lucas and Spielberg "didn't betray cinema at all: they plugged it back into the grid, returning the medium to its roots as a carnival sideshow, a magic act, one big special effect", which was "a kind of rebirth."


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In its May 30, 1977 issue, "Time" magazine named "Star Wars" the "Movie of the Year." The publication said it was a "big early supporter" of the vision which would become "Star Wars". In an article intended for the cover of the issue, "Time"s Gerald Clarke wrote that "Star Wars" is "a grand and glorious film that may well be the smash hit of 1977, and certainly is the best movie of the year so far. The result is a remarkable confection: a subliminal history of the movies, wrapped in a riveting tale of suspense and adventure, ornamented with some of the most ingenious special effects ever contrived for film." Each of the subsequent films of the "Star Wars" saga has appeared on the magazine's cover.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" was voted the second most popular film by Americans in a 2008 nationwide poll conducted by the market research firm, Harris Interactive. "Star Wars" has also been featured in several high-profile audience polls: in 1997, it ranked as the 10th Greatest American Film on the "Los Angeles Daily News" Readers' Poll; in 2002, the film and its sequel "The Empire Strikes Back" were voted as the greatest films ever made in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Films poll; in 2011, it ranked as Best Sci-Fi Film on "", a primetime special aired by ABC that counted down the best films as chosen by fans, based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and "People" magazine; in 2014 the film placed 11th in a poll undertaken by "The Hollywood Reporter", which balloted every studio, agency, publicity firm, and production house in the Hollywood region.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Reputable publications also have included "Star Wars" in their best films lists: in 2008, "Empire" magazine ranked "Star Wars" at No. 22 on its list of the "500 Greatest Movies of All Time"; in 2010, the film ranked among the "All-Time 100" list of the greatest films as chosen by "Time" magazine film critic Richard Schickel; the film was also placed on a similar list created by "The New York Times", "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made"; in 2012, the film was included in "Sight & Sound"s prestigious decennial critics poll "Critics' Top 250 Films", ranking at 171st on the list, and in their directors poll at 224th.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Lucas's original screenplay was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 68th greatest of all time. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress named "Star Wars" among its first selections to the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"; at the time, it was the most recent film to be selected and it was the only film from the 1970s to be chosen. Although Lucas declined to provide the Library with a workable copy of the original film upon request (instead offering the Special Edition), a viewable scan was made of the original copyright deposit print. In 1991, "Star Wars" was one of the first 25 films inducted into the Producers Guild of America's Hall of Fame for setting "an enduring standard for American entertainment." The soundtrack was added to the United States National Recording Registry 15 years later (in 2004). The lack of a commercially available version of the 1977 original theatrical edit of the film since early '80s VHS releases has spawned numerous restorations by disgruntled fans over the years, such as Harmy's Despecialized Edition.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: In addition to the film's multiple awards and nominations, "Star Wars" has also been recognized by the American Film Institute on several of its lists. The film ranks first on 100 Years of Film Scores, second on Top 10 Sci-Fi Films, 15th on 100 Years...100 Movies (ranked 13th on the updated 10th anniversary edition), 27th on 100 Years...100 Thrills, and 39th on 100 Years...100 Cheers. In addition, the quote "May the Force be with you" is ranked eighth on 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes, and Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi are ranked as the 14th and 37th greatest heroes respectively on 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Little "Star Wars" merchandise was available for several months after the film's debut, as only Kenner Products had accepted marketing director Charles Lippincott's licensing offers. Kenner responded to the sudden demand for toys by selling boxed vouchers in its "empty box" Christmas campaign. Television commercials told children and parents that vouchers within a "Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package" could be redeemed for four action figures between February and June 1978. Jay West of the "Los Angeles Times" said that the boxes in the campaign "became the most coveted empty box[es] in the history of retail." In 2012, the "Star Wars" action figures were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: The novelization of the film was published as "" in December 1976, six months before the film was released. The credited author was George Lucas, but the book was revealed to have been ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. Marketing director Charles Lippincott secured the deal with Del Rey Books to publish the novelization in November 1976. By February 1977, a half million copies had been sold. Foster also wrote the sequel novel "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" (1978) to be adapted as a low-budget film if "Star Wars" was not a financial success.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Marvel Comics also adapted the film as the first six issues of its licensed "Star Wars" comic book, with the first issue sold in April 1977. Roy Thomas was the writer and Howard Chaykin was the artist of the adaptation. Like the novelization, it contained certain elements, such as the scene with Luke and Biggs, that appeared in the screenplay but not in the finished film. The series was so successful that, according to Jim Shooter, it "single-handedly saved Marvel". From January to April 1997, Dark Horse Comics, which held the comic rights to "Star Wars" since 1991, published a comic book adaptation of the "Special Edition" of the film, written by Bruce Jones with art by Eduardo Barreto and Al Williamson; 36 years later, the same company published "The Star Wars", an adaptation of the plot from Lucas' original rough draft screenplay, from September 2013 to May 2014.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: Lucasfilm adapted the story for a children's book-and-record set. Released in 1979, the 24-page "Star Wars" read-along book was accompanied by a 33⅓ rpm 7-inch phonograph record. Each page of the book contained a cropped frame from the movie with an abridged and condensed version of the story. The record was produced by Buena Vista Records, and its content was copyrighted by Black Falcon, Ltd., a subsidiary of Lucasfilm "formed to handle the merchandising for "Star Wars"." "The Story of Star Wars" was a 1977 record album presenting an abridged version of the events depicted in "Star Wars", using dialogue and sound effects from the original film. The recording was produced by George Lucas and Alan Livingston, and was narrated by Roscoe Lee Browne. The script was adapted by E. Jack Kaplan and Cheryl Gard.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: An audio CD boxed set of the "Star Wars" radio series was released in 1993, containing the original 1981 radio drama along with the radio adaptations of the sequels, "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi".


title: Star Wars (film)

text: A radio drama adaptation of the film was broadcast on the American National Public Radio network in 1981. The adaptation was written by Brian Daley and directed by John Madden, and was produced with cooperation from George Lucas, who donated the rights to NPR. Williams's music and Burtt's sound design were retained for the show, and Hamill and Daniels reprised their roles. The radio drama narrative began with a version of the backstory to the film which relates Princess Leia's acquisition of the secret Death Star plans. It also featured scenes not seen in the final cut of the film, such as Luke Skywalker's observation of the space battle above Tatooine through binoculars, a skyhopper race, and Vader's interrogation of Princess Leia. The radio version was originally considered to be part of the official "Star Wars" canon, but has since been supplanted by revised canonical narratives.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: "Star Wars" was followed by "The Empire Strikes Back" in 1980 and "Return of the Jedi" in 1983, which concludes the original film trilogy. "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" continue the backstory of the original trilogy. Like the previous film, "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" were a financial success and fared well with critics, as the original trilogy is considered one of the best film trilogies in history.


title: Star Wars (film)

text: 22 years after the release of "Star Wars", Lucas wrote and directed the prequel trilogy, consisting of the films "The Phantom Menace" (1999), "Attack of the Clones" (2002), and "Revenge of the Sith" (2005). The films chronicle the history between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, and the latter's fall to the dark side and transformation into Darth Vader. The prequel trilogy was financially successful, and polarized critics and fans on their release for the storylines and some new characters. Following Lucas's sale of the "Star Wars" franchise to The Walt Disney Company in 2012, Disney developed a sequel trilogy, consisting of "The Force Awakens" (2015), "The Last Jedi" (2017), and "The Rise of Skywalker" (2019). Original trilogy cast including Ford, Hamill, and Fisher reprised their roles, alongside new characters portrayed by Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac. Standalone films and television series have also been released, exploring adventures set around the main trilogy arcs.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. He was, like his brothers John and Edward, a prominent member of the Democratic Party and has come to be viewed by some historians as an icon of modern American liberalism.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy was born into a wealthy, political family in Brookline, Massachusetts. After serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1944 to 1946, Kennedy returned to his studies at Harvard University, and later received his law degree from the University of Virginia. He began his career as a correspondent for "The Boston Post" and as a lawyer at the Justice Department, but later resigned to manage his brother John's successful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1952. The following year, he worked as an assistant counsel to the Senate committee chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He gained national attention as the chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee from 1957 to 1959, where he publicly challenged Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa over the union's corrupt practices. Kennedy resigned from the committee to conduct his brother's successful campaign in the 1960 presidential election. He was appointed United States Attorney General at the age of 35, one of the youngest cabinet members in American history. He served as his brother's closest advisor until the latter's 1963 assassination.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: His tenure is known for advocating for the civil rights movement, the fight against organized crime and the Mafia, and involvement in U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba. He authored his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a book titled "Thirteen Days". As attorney general, he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on a limited basis. After his brother's assassination, he remained in office during the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson for several months. He left to run for the United States Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating. In office, Kennedy opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and raised awareness of poverty by sponsoring legislation designed to lure private business to blighted communities (i.e., Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration project). He was an advocate for issues related to human rights and social justice by traveling abroad to eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa, and formed working relationships with Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Walter Reuther.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In 1968, Kennedy became a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency by appealing to poor, African American, Hispanic, Catholic, and young voters. His main challenger in the race was Senator Eugene McCarthy. Shortly after winning the California primary around midnight on June 5, 1968, Kennedy was mortally wounded when shot with a pistol by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, allegedly in retaliation for his support of Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. Kennedy died 25 hours later. Sirhan was arrested, tried, and convicted, though Kennedy's assassination, like his brother's, continues to be the subject of widespread analysis and numerous conspiracy theories.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Robert Francis Kennedy was born outside Boston in Brookline, Massachusetts, on November 20, 1925. He was the seventh of nine children to businessman/politician Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and philanthropist/socialite Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. His parents were members of two prominent Irish-American families in Boston. His eight siblings were Joseph Jr., John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Jean, and Ted. All four of his grandparents were children of Irish immigrants.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: His father was a wealthy businessman and a leading figure in the Democratic Party. After he stepped down as ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1940, Joe Sr. focused his attention on his oldest son, Joseph Jr., expecting that he would enter politics and be elected president. He also urged the younger children to examine and discuss current events in order to propel them to public service. After Joseph Jr. was killed during World War II, the senior Kennedy's hopes fell on his second son, John, to become president. Joseph Sr. had the money and connections to play a central role in the family's political ambitions.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy's older brother John was often bedridden by illness and, as a result, became a voracious reader. Although he made little effort to get to know his younger brother during his childhood, John took him on walks and regaled him with the stories of heroes and adventures he had read. One of their favorite authors was John Buchan, who wrote "The Thirty-Nine Steps", which influenced both Robert and John. John sometimes called Robert "Black Robert" due to his prudishness and disposition.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Unlike his older brothers, Kennedy took to heart their mother Rose's agenda for everything to have "a purpose," which included visiting historic sites during family outings, visits to the church during morning walks, and games used to expand vocabulary and math skills. He described his position in the family hierarchy by saying, "When you come from that far down, you have to struggle to survive." As the boys were growing up, he tried frequently to get his older brothers' attention, but was seldom successful.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: As his father's business success expanded, the family kept homes around Boston and New York City; the Cape Cod peninsula; and Palm Beach. Kennedy later said that during childhood he was "going to different schools, always having to make new friends, and that I was very awkward ... [a]nd I was pretty quiet most of the time. And I didn't mind being alone." He had to repeat third grade. A teacher at Bronxville public school reflected that he was "a regular boy", adding, "It seemed hard for him to finish his work sometimes. But he was only ten after all." He developed an interest in American history, decorating his bedroom with pictures of U.S. presidents and filling his bookshelves with volumes on the American Civil War. He became an avid stamp collector and once received a handwritten letter from Franklin Roosevelt, also a philatelist.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In March 1938, Kennedy sailed to London with his mother and four youngest siblings to join his father, who had begun serving as Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He attended the private Gibbs School for Boys for seventh grade. In April 1939, he gave his first public speech at the placing of a cornerstone for a youth club in England. According to embassy and newspaper reports, his statements were penciled in his own hand and delivered in a "calm and confident" manner. Bobby returned to the United States just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In September 1939, Kennedy began eighth grade at St. Paul's School, an elite Protestant private preparatory school for boys in Concord, New Hampshire, that his father favored. Rose Kennedy was unhappy with the school's use of the Protestant Bible. After two months, she took advantage of her ambassador husband's absence from Boston and withdrew Kennedy from St. Paul's. She enrolled him in Portsmouth Priory School, a Benedictine Catholic boarding school for boys in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which held daily morning and evening prayers and Mass three times a week, with a High Mass on Sundays. Kennedy attended Portsmouth for eighth through tenth grade.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: At Portsmouth Priory School, Kennedy was known as "Mrs. Kennedy's little boy Bobby" after he introduced his mother to classmates, who made fun of them. He was defensive of his mother, and on one occasion chased a student out of the dormitory after the boy had commented on her appearance. He befriended Peter MacLellan and wrote to him, when his brother John was serving in the U.S. Navy, that he would be visiting his brother "because he might be killed any minute". Kennedy blamed himself when his grades failed to improve. In letters to her son, Rose urged him to read more and to strengthen his vocabulary. Rose also expressed disappointment and wrote that she did not expect him to let her down. He began developing in other ways, and his brother John noticed his increased physical strength, predicting that the younger Kennedy "would be bouncing me around plenty in two more years". Monks at Portsmouth Priory School regarded him as a moody and indifferent student. Father Damian Kearney, who was two classes behind Kennedy, reflected that he "didn't look happy" and that he did not "smile much". According to Kearney's review of school records, Kennedy was a "poor-to-mediocre student, except for history".


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In September 1942, Kennedy transferred to his third boarding school, Milton Academy, in Milton, Massachusetts, for 11th and 12th grades. His father wanted him to transfer to Milton, believing it would better prepare him for Harvard. At Milton, he met and became friends with David Hackett. He invited Hackett to join him for Sunday Mass. Hackett started accompanying him, and was impressed when Kennedy took it upon himself to fill in for a missing altar boy one Sunday. Hackett admired Kennedy's determination to bypass his shortcomings, and remembered him redoubling his efforts whenever something did not come easy to him, which included athletics, studies, success with girls, and popularity. Hackett remembered the two of them as "misfits", a commonality that drew him to Kennedy, along with an unwillingness to conform to how others acted even if doing so meant not being accepted. Kennedy's grades improved.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: One of his first relationships was with a girl named Piedy Bailey. The pair was photographed together when he walked her home after chapel on a Sunday night. Bailey was fond of him and remembered him as being "very appealing". She recalled him being funny, "separate, larky; outside the cliques; private all the time". Soon after he transferred to Milton, he pressed his father to allow him to enlist, as he wanted to catch up to his brothers who were both serving in the military. Kennedy had arrived at Milton unfamiliar with his peers and made little attempt to know the names of his classmates; he called most of the other boys "fella" instead. For this, he was nicknamed "Fella". Most of the school's students had come in eighth or ninth grade and cliques had already been formed. Despite this, his schoolmates would later say the school had no prejudice. He had an early sense of virtue; he disliked dirty jokes and bullying, once stepping in when an upperclassman tried bothering a younger student. The headmaster at Milton would later summarize that he was a "very intelligent boy, quiet and shy, but not outstanding, and he left no special mark on Milton".


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In Kennedy's younger years, his father dubbed him the "runt" of the family and wrote him off. Close family friend Lem Billings once remarked to Joe Sr. that he was "the most generous little boy", and Joe Sr. replied that he did not know where his son "got that". Billings commented that the only similarity between Robert and Joe Sr. was their eye color. As Kennedy grew, his father worried that he was soft on others, conflicting with his ideology. In response, Kennedy developed a tough persona that masked his gentle personality, attempting to appease his father. Biographer Judie Mills wrote that Joe Sr.'s lack of interest in Robert was evident by the length of time it took for him to decide to transfer him to Milton Academy. Both Joe Jr. and John attended the exclusive Protestant prep school Choate from their first year, while Robert was already a junior by the time he was enrolled at Milton. Despite his father's disdain, Kennedy continued to seek his approval, requesting that Joe Sr. write him a letter about his opinions on different political events and World War II.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: As a child, Kennedy also strove to meet his mother's expectations to become the most dutiful, religious, affectionate, and obedient of the Kennedy children, but the father and son grew distant. Rose found his gentle personality endearing, though this was noted as having made him "invisible to his father". She influenced him heavily and, like her, he became a devout Catholic, throughout his lifetime practicing his religion more seriously than the other boys in the family. He impressed his parents as a child by taking on a newspaper route, seeking their approval and wishing to distinguish himself. However, he had the family chauffeur driving him in a Rolls-Royce so that he could make his deliveries. His mother discovered this and the deliveries ceased.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Joe Sr. was satisfied with Kennedy as an adult, believing him to have become "hard as nails", more like him than any of the other children, while his mother believed he exemplified all she had wanted in a child. Mills wrote, "His parents' conflicting views would be echoed in the opinions of millions of people throughout Bobby's life. Robert Kennedy was a ruthless opportunist who would stop at nothing to attain his ambitions. Robert Kennedy was America's most compassionate public figure, the only person who could save a divided country."


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Six weeks before his 18th birthday in 1943, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve as a seaman apprentice. He was released from active duty in March 1944, when he left Milton Academy early to report to the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His V-12 training began at Harvard (March–November 1944) before he was relocated to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine (November 1944 – June 1945). He returned to Harvard once again in June 1945 completing his post-training requirements in January 1946. At Bates he received a specialized V-12-degree along with 15 others, and during its Winter Carnival built a snow replica of a Navy boat. While in Maine, he wrote a letter to David Hackett in which he expressed feelings of inadequacy and frustration at being isolated from the action. He talked of filling his free time by taking classes with other sailors and remarked that "things are the same as usual up here, and me being my usual moody self I get very sad at times." He added, "If I don't get the hell out of here soon I'll die." In addition to Hackett, who was serving as a paratrooper, more of his Parker Hall dorm mates went overseas and left him behind. With others entering combat before him, Kennedy said this made him "feel more and more like a Draft Dodger or something". He was also frustrated with the apparent desire to shirk military responsibility by some of the other V-12 students.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy's brother Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. died in August 1944, when his bomber exploded during a volunteer mission known as Operation Aphrodite. Robert was most affected by his father's reaction to his eldest son's passing. He appeared completely heartbroken and his peer Fred Garfield commented that Kennedy developed depression and questioned his faith for a short time. After his brother's death, Robert gained more attention, moving higher up the family patriarchy. On December 15, 1945, the U.S. Navy commissioned the destroyer , and shortly thereafter granted Kennedy's request to be released from naval-officer training to serve aboard "Kennedy" starting on February 1, 1946, as a seaman apprentice on the ship's shakedown cruise in the Caribbean. On May 30, 1946, he received his honorable discharge from the Navy. For his service in the Navy, Kennedy was eligible for the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In September 1946, Kennedy entered Harvard as a junior, having received credit for his time in the V-12 program. He worked hard to make the varsity football team as an end; he was a starter and scored a touchdown in the first game of his senior year before breaking his leg in practice. He earned his varsity letter when his coach sent him in wearing a cast during the last minutes of a game against Yale. His father spoke positively of him when he served as a blocking back and sometime receiver for the faster Dave Hackett. Joseph Sr. attended some of Kennedy's practices and saw his son catch a touchdown pass in an early-season rout of Western Maryland. His teammates admired his physical courage. He stood tall and weighed , which made him too small for college football. Despite this, he was a fearless hitter and once tackled a 230-pound fullback head-on. Wally Flynn, another player, looked up in the huddle after one play to see him crying after he broke his leg. He disregarded the injury and kept playing. Kennedy earned two varsity letters over the course of the 1946 and 1947 seasons.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Throughout 1946, Kennedy became active in his brother John's campaign for the U.S. Representative seat that was vacated by James Curley; he joined the campaign full-time after his naval discharge. Biographer Schlesinger wrote that the election served as an entry into politics for both Robert and John. Robert graduated from Harvard in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in political science.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Upon graduating, he sailed immediately on the with a college friend for a six-month tour of Europe and the Middle East, accredited as a correspondent for the "Boston Post", filing six stories. Four of these stories, submitted from Palestine shortly before the end of the British Mandate, provided a first-hand view of the tensions in the land. He was critical of British policy on Palestine and praised the Jewish people he met there calling them "hardy and tough". He held out some hope after seeing Arabs and Jews working side by side but, in the end, feared that the hatred between the groups was too strong and would lead to a war.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In September 1948, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. Kennedy adapted to this new environment, being elected president of the Student Legal Forum, where he successfully produced outside speakers including James M. Landis, William O. Douglas, Arthur Krock, and Joseph McCarthy and his family members Joe Sr. and John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's paper on Yalta, written during his senior year, is deposited in the Law Library's Treasure Trove.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married Ethel Skakel at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. He graduated from law school in June 1951 and flew with Ethel to Greenwich to stay in his father-in-law's guest house. The couple's first child, Kathleen, was born on July 4, 1951.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: During this time, his brother John tried to keep Joe Sr. "at arm's length". The brothers rarely interacted until Kenny O'Donnell contacted Robert to repair the relationship between John and their father during John's Senate campaign. As a result of this, Joe Sr. came to view Robert favorably as reliable and "willing to sacrifice himself" for the family.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In September 1951, he went to San Francisco as a correspondent for the "Boston Post" to cover the convention that concluded the Treaty of Peace with Japan. In October 1951, he embarked on a seven-week Asian trip with his brother John (then a U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts' 11th district) and their sister Patricia to Israel, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Japan. Because of their age gap, the two brothers had previously seen little of each other—this trip came at their father's behest and was the first extended time they had spent together, serving to deepen their relationship. On this trip, the brothers met Liaquat Ali Khan just before his assassination, and India's prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In 1951, Kennedy was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. That November, he moved with his wife and daughter to a townhouse in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and started work as a lawyer in the Internal Security Section of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; the section was charged with investigating suspected Soviet agents. In February 1952, he was transferred to Brooklyn (designated as special assistant to attorney general) to help prepare fraud cases against former officials of the Truman administration. On June 6, 1952, he resigned to manage his brother John's U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts. JFK's victory was of great importance to the Kennedys, elevating him to national prominence and turning him into a serious potential presidential candidate. John's victory was also equally important to Robert, who felt he had succeeded in eliminating his father's negative perceptions of him.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In December 1952, at his father's behest, Kennedy was appointed by family friend Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Kennedy disapproved of McCarthy's aggressive methods of garnering intelligence on suspected communists. This was a highly visible job for him. He resigned in July 1953, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy". The period of July 1953 to January 1954 saw him at "a professional and personal nadir", feeling that he was adrift while trying to prove himself to his family. Kenneth O'Donnell and Larry O'Brien (who worked on John's congressional campaigns) urged Kennedy to consider running for Massachusetts Attorney General in 1954, but he declined.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: After a period as an assistant to his father on the Hoover Commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February 1954. That month, McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn subpoenaed Annie Lee Moss, accusing her of membership in the Communist Party. Kennedy revealed that Cohn had called the wrong Annie Lee Moss and he requested the file on Moss from the FBI. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been forewarned by Cohn and denied him access, calling RFK "an arrogant whippersnapper". When Democrats gained a Senate majority in January 1955, Kennedy became chief counsel and was a background figure in the televised Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954 into McCarthy's conduct. The Moss incident turned Cohn into an enemy, which led to Kennedy assisting Democratic senators in ridiculing Cohn during the hearings. The animosity grew to the point where Cohn had to be restrained after asking RFK if he wanted to fight him. For his work on the McCarthy committee, Kennedy was included in a list of Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1954, created by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. His father had arranged the nomination, his first national award. In 1955 Kennedy was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In 1956, Kennedy moved his growing family outside Washington to a house called Hickory Hill, which he purchased from his brother John. This enormous 13-bedroom, 13-bath home was situated on in McLean, Virginia. Kennedy went on to work as an aide to Adlai Stevenson during the 1956 presidential election which helped him learn how national campaigns worked, in preparation for a future run by his brother, Jack. Unimpressed with Stevenson, he reportedly voted for incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower. Kennedy was also a delegate at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, having replaced Tip O'Neil at the request of his brother John, joining in what was ultimately an unsuccessful effort to help JFK get the vice-presidential nomination. Shortly after this, following instructions by his father, Kennedy tried making amends with J. Edgar Hoover. There seemed to be some improvement in their interactions, which came to be seen as "elemental political necessity" by Kennedy. This later changed after Kennedy was appointed attorney general, where Hoover saw him as an "unprecedented threat".


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: From 1957 to 1959, he made a name for himself while serving as the chief counsel to the U.S. Senate's McClellan Committee under chairman John L. McClellan. Kennedy was given authority over testimony scheduling, areas of investigation, and witness questioning by McClellan, a move that was made by the chairman to limit attention to himself and allow outrage by organized labor to be directed toward Kennedy. In a famous scene, Kennedy squared off with Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa during the antagonistic argument that marked Hoffa's testimony. Kennedy, who was instructed to collect information, discovered several financial irregularities, such as that Hoffa had misappropriated $9.5 million in union funds and made corrupt deals with employers. During the hearings, Kennedy received criticism from liberal critics and other commentators both for his outburst of impassioned anger and doubts about the innocence of those who invoked the Fifth Amendment. Senators Barry Goldwater and Karl Mundt wrote to each other and complained about "the Kennedy boys" having hijacked the McClellan Committee by their focus on Hoffa and the Teamsters. They believed Kennedy covered for Walter Reuther and the United Automobile Workers, a union which typically would back Democratic office seekers. Amidst the allegations, Kennedy wrote in his journal that the two senators had "no guts" as they never addressed him directly, only through the press. He left the committee in late 1959 in order to run his brother's presidential campaign.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: In 1960, Kennedy published "The Enemy Within", a book which described the corrupt practices within the Teamsters and other unions that he had helped investigate. John Seigenthaler assisted Kennedy. Kennedy went to work on the presidential campaign of his brother, John. In contrast to his role in his brother's previous campaign eight years prior, Kennedy gave stump speeches throughout the primary season, gaining confidence as time went on. His strategy "to win at any cost" led him to call on Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. to attack Hubert Humphrey as a draft dodger; Roosevelt eventually did make the statement that Humphrey avoided service.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Concerned that John Kennedy was going to receive the Democratic Party's nomination, some supporters of Lyndon Johnson, who was also running for the nomination, revealed to the press that JFK had Addison's disease, saying that he required life-sustaining cortisone treatments. Though in fact a diagnosis had been made, Kennedy tried to protect his brother by denying the allegation, saying that JFK had never had "an ailment described classically as Addison's disease". After securing the nomination, John Kennedy nonetheless decided to offer Lyndon Johnson the vice presidency. This did not sit well with some Kennedy supporters, and Robert tried unsuccessfully to convince Johnson to turn down the offer, leading him to view Robert with contempt afterward. RFK had already disliked Johnson prior to the presidential campaign, seeing him as a threat to his brother's ambitions. RFK wanted his brother to choose labor leader Walter Reuther. Despite Kennedy's attempts, Johnson became his brother's running mate.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy worked toward downplaying his brother's Catholic faith during the primary but took a more aggressive and supportive stance during the general election. These concerns were mostly calmed after JFK delivered a speech in September in Houston where he said that he was in favor of the separation of church and state. The following month, Kennedy was involved in securing the release of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. from a jail in Atlanta. Kennedy spoke with Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver and later Judge Oscar Mitchell, after the judge had sentenced King for violating his probation when he protested at a whites-only snack bar.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: After winning the 1960 presidential election, President-elect John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother attorney general. The choice was controversial, with publications including "The New York Times" and "The New Republic" calling him inexperienced and unqualified. He had no experience in any state or federal court, causing the president to joke, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." But Kennedy was hardly a novice as a lawyer, having gained significant experience conducting investigations and questioning witnesses as a Justice Department attorney and Senate committee counsel and staff director.


title: Robert F. Kennedy

text: According to Bobby Baker, the Senate majority secretary and a protégé of Lyndon Johnson, President-elect Kennedy did not want to name his brother attorney general, but their father overruled him. At the behest of Vice President-elect Johnson, Baker persuaded the influential Southern senator Richard Russell to allow a voice vote to confirm the president's brother in January 1961, as Kennedy "would have been lucky to get 40 votes" on a roll-call vote.