BEHIND THE SCENES: TUNISIAN BUDDIES!

Mark Hamill and Sir Alec Guinness have some behind the scenes fun with Anthony Daniels as See-Threepio and Artoo Detoo in this great shot from the near completion of Tunisian filming on the original STAR WARS in April 1976.

BEHIND THE SCENES: A PERFECT MATCH

On location in Tunisia circa March/April 1976, George Lucas confers with Sir Alec Guinness as he arrives at one of the areas being used to represent the desert planet of Tatooine. Guinness considered Tunisia an inspired choice as a locale for the film, which he thought gave the project some believability, and was equally impressed with the young director, once telling an interviewer his view that Lucas was so immersed in the medium he probably went to sleep covered in film!

CLASSIC IMAGE: HIGH ABOVE MOS EISLEY!

March/April 1976: On a Tunisian mountain within whats now known as STAR WARS Canyon, Mark Hamill, Sir Alec Guinness, and Anthony Daniels get ready to film a scene where our heroes look down towards the wretched hive of "scum and villainy" that is Mos Eisley space port. The camera angle looking forwards from Luke's Landspeeder never made the final cut, instead replaced with a matte composite plate shot put over a wide image of California's Death Valley, filmed by Lucas and a small Second Unit later in STAR WARS 1977 Post-Production.

LOOKING BACK: OBI-WAN LIVES!

Obi-Wan Kenobi makes the ultimate sacrifice for his escaping friends in STAR WARS.

Prior to March 1976, Sir Alec Guinness, playing the wise and noble Jedi Knight, Ben "Obi-Wan" Kenobi, thought he was going to survive his duel with Lord Darth Vader and go on to the Rebel Base on Yavin IV to provide both support for Princess Leia and encouragement to Luke Skywalker whilst piloting his ship against the Death Star. Here are the late 1975/ early 76 storyboards by famed UK artist Ivor Beddoes of the original sequence, which culminated in a shield door cutting the devil horned, helmeted Vader off from Kenobi (injured in battle, the Jedi is then helped back to the Millennium Falcon by Luke Skywalker):

George Lucas, however, had other ideas, and didn't want Sir Alec as an actor and Kenobi as a character having very little to do but stand in the background for the films final act. So, in advice and consultation with wife Marcia, he took the brave step of killing Kenobi off- a wise move that added drama and sadness to the film and gave it a harder edge-that main characters, despite their abilities, could be killed off unexpectedly in the STAR WARS saga- though it was a decision that Lucas struggled with right up to the start of the films shooting in Tunisia and which worried Guinness. Fortunately, Lucas also had a little plan of having Kenobi come back as a spectral Force voice at the end victory, which meant that a return of some kind for Guinness/Kenobi, in person or in voice-over, for the future (if the film was a hit) was possible.

CLASSIC IMAGE: DUEL OF THE FATES - THE SEQUEL!

I love this image (Kenobi and Vader fighting so intently, with the huge prop Millennium Falcon in the background), used in the pages of many a magazine of the day and even now. Its one of the earliest released stills shots and shows this by having Vader's lightsaber incorrectly blue instead of the usual demonic red. Why and how this error got through is unknown-it may have been due to time factors in the run up to the films release-Kurtz and Lucas must have been sooo busy trying to get the film completed, whilst FOX, pretty much oblivious to it all, probably didn't care and thought it had a turkey of a movie on its hands. It would be interesting to know which artist added the glow to the rod- not to blame them or anything, but just to know. It wouldn't have been Ralph McQuarrie, who also did airbrushing to selected images (adding blasts and lightsaber glows to certain posed shots, scene stills and effects images) - having been involved on STAR WARS since 1975 he would have been aware of the correct lightsaber colours. Most likely it was someone at that time in FOX's publicity department..

One thing I like to do where possible is show the image the way it was originally lensed by the stills cameraman. Many of the times this image has been used it has been cropped in too close (a major bug bear I have with some OFFICIALPIX images!)-so far in my picture research, this is the best I can get that shows more of the image - click on it to see it fully (if anyone can help with an even fuller version of this image please get in touch). I think it would be nice now if the official LUCASFILM Picture Archive, with the soon 35th Anniversary of STAR WARS, could go back to the original shot and do a new release with the blades at the correct colours, as well as keeping the original inconsistency frame.

TV ALERT: ALEC GUINNESS BIOGRAPHY/DOCUMENTARY ON UK TV

For anyone who wants to find out more about Sir Alec Guinness's life as an actor before, including and after STAR WARS, check out the UK BIOGRAPHY channel programme on him transmitting next Wednesday evening 11th August (repeated Thursday morning). Its very good and has a nice section on the original 1976 STAR WARS filming at ELSTREE.