Page 36 - Star Wars Insider #175

BACK TO 1977
Troubled Times 01
In 1977, the United States was
a country coming to terms with
itself. Since the 1960s, the civil
rights movement, women’s
liberation groups, and bohemian
counter-culture had overturned a
lot of long-standing assumptions
about American life, while the
unpopular Vietnam War and the
Watergate scandal had rocked
public trust in authority fi gures.
Though President Nixon had
resigned in 1974 and the war in
Vietnam had ended in 1975, recent
history still loomed large in popular
culture. On TV, 1977 was the year
of Nixon’s famous interviews
with David Frost, as well as the
continuation of Korean War drama
M*A*S*H, which drew numerous
parallels with Vietnam. At the
49th Academy Awards in March
1977, Oscar wins and nominations
went to Watergate drama All The
President’s Men and paranoiac
dramas Logan’s Run, Network, and
Taxi Driver—each an exploration of
a man who could take no more in a
faulty society.
As people wrestled with
these heavy subjects and their
implications in day-to-day life, it’s
fair to say they were in need of
some light relief. To put it another
way, they needed some new hope.
01 Drinkers of Coca-Cola
could collect tokens and
exchange them for these
gorgeous posters.
02 The Star Wars Sketchbook
offered a glimpse at Joe
Johnston’s drawings.
03 The Story of Star Wars
record allowed fans to
relive the adventure.
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Hope and change
Hope was not entirely lacking in
1977, of course. A new president—
former peanut farmer Jimmy
Carter—came into office in January,
promising the fresh perspective
of a Washington outsider, and
displaying a down-home sensibility
far removed from his predecessors.
The dawn of microprocessor
technology brought new
computing and gaming power into
homes, in the form of the Apple
II computer and the Atari VCS
console. Futuristic technology also
revived public interest in space
travel as the NASA Space Shuttle
Enterprise made its first test fl ights.
But there was one thing more
than any other that combined all
of those possibilities, from farmboy
authenticity to cutting-edge tech
and outer space adventure. And
that was a fi lm called Star Wars.
Overnight success
Star Wars opened on fewer than
40 screens across the U.S. on
Wednesday May 25, 1977. It had no
current star names (Alec Guinness
and Peter Cushing having both
made their names in the 1940s and
’50s), and was not based on a pre-
existing novel or story, unlike all
the biggest hits preceding it, from
Gone With The Wind (1939) to The
Exorcist (1973) and Jaws (1975).
Despite these inauspicious
beginnings, word of mouth about
the film (and a preemptive tour
of sci-fi conventions by Lucasfi lm
marketing man, Charles Lippincott)
made it an instant hit, with George
Lucas himself encountering a long
line of people waiting to see the
movie at Mann’s Chinese Theatre
in Hollywood on day one. By
August, it was playing on more
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