A Long Time Ago…

In a Galaxy far, far away

Firstly, Happy New Year!

I was in Canada in June 1977 when I first heard about Star Wars. I was at a drive-in movie with a friend, watching a late-night horror double bill of David Cronenberg's Rabid and George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Between the films came a trailer for something that immediately caught our attention, in fact we were so impressed that we decided to seek it out and go see it the very next day. Star Wars was ground-breaking for the time and was even more impressive with no background knowledge or hype to affect our expectations. Needless to say, I couldn't wait to see it again, but on my return to London I had to wait a whole six months until the UK release date of December 27th. It seems incredible that the gap between film releases in the US and UK was so vast in those days, but that's the way it was. Above is the original flyer that I grabbed from the cinema in Hamilton, Ontario at the time, and below is the lobby card that I was given after working on the window display at Allders of Croydon, department store. Visual merchandising was my profession at the time.

Cut to three years later and I was given an invitation to the Special Preview of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Here’s my brochure.

Some of the actors were in attendance and I met a couple of them afterwards, including Mark Hamill who for some reason also introduced me to his brother, plus C3PO himself, Anthony Daniels, who tried to nab my brochure. Here are their autographs.

Shortly after the preview they had an exhibition in Selfridges and here's a shot I took of the kids queuing up to see R2D2.

Plus some of the models, props and costumes shown at the exhibition itself.