Postcard

Did you know....

1. Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977, and by the end of August it had grossed $100 million - faster than any other film in history.

2. When Harrison Ford read for the part of Han Solo he was working as a carpenter with little acting experience.

3. Lucas originally named the character Luke Starkiller, but on the first day of shooting he changed it to the less violent Skywalker.

4. Lucas got the idea for Chewbacca one morning in the early 1970s while watching his wife Marcia drive off in her car with their dog, an Alaskan malamute. Lucas liked the way the large, shaggy dog looked in the passenger seat. So he decided to create a character in the film that was a cross between Indiana, a bear, and a monkey.

5. Lucas got the name R2-D2 while filming American Graffiti. During a sound-mixing session for the film, editor Walter Murch asked him for R2, D2 (Reel 2, Dialogue 2) of the film. Lucas liked the name so much that he made a note of it, and eventually found the right character for it.

6. None of the spaceship models ever moved an inch during the filming of the flight sequences. The motion was an optical illusion created by moving the cameras around motionless models. The models were so detailed that one of them even had Playboy pinups in the cockpit.

7. The executives at 20th Century Fox hated the film the first time they saw it. Some of the company's board of directors fell asleep during the first screening; others didn't understand the film at all. One executive's wife even suggested that C-3PO be given a moving mouth, because no one would understand how he could talk without moving his lips.

8. Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and Kenny Baker, who played R2-D2, are the only actors credited with being in all six Star Wars films

9. One of the most famous bloopers from the film is when stormtroopers burst into a room and one of them hits his head on the door frame.

10. Darth Vader was played by three actors. David Prowse was the body, James Earl Jones the voice, and Sebastian Shaw was the face when Darth Vader was eventually unmasked.