Star Wars creator George Lucas began his legendary directing career first by getting behind the camera.
Lucas graduated from Modesto Junior College in the early 1960s and then enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he began to experiment with cinematography. However, Lucas was struggling to find any work in Hollywood and needed something to give him more experience.
In the book George Lucas: A Life, he said at the time, “I had to go into the drama department and do drama and stage work, but I hated getting up and acting. I really wanted to be in a real situation with a camera on my shoulder following the action. That was exciting to me.”
He received such an opportunity by working for Father Patrick Peyton‘s expanding film company Family Theater Productions. (Yes, the same Patrick Peyton who is the subject of our graphic novel The Tale of Patrick Peyton, and whose cause for canonization is underway).
Beginning in the early 1960s, Family Theater Productions began working on short, five-minute films based on the Psalms. These shorts were produced for television and premiered at the Twentieth Century Fox building in Hollywood.
Through a series of connections, George Lucas was able to get a small part on the production team for a short film based on Psalm 42 (41 in the Douay-Rheims translation) and was titled, “The Soldier.” As explained in their YouTube description, “Film producer/director George Lucas (Star Wars) received his first film credit as an assistant cameraman in this short film. In exchange for his work, he was allowed to edit a student film on Family Theater equipment.”
The short film was directed by Richard A. Colla (Battlestar Galactica) and was one of William Shatner’s first performances on screen. William Shatner would later become well-known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise.
Lucas needed the ability to edit his experimental student projects, and so it was providential that he could edit on Family Theater equipment. The experience must have proved helpful in his early career as a few years later Lucas put together his first film, THX 1138, which led to the creation of “Lucasfilm,” the company that would produce his famous Star Wars series.
Photo: By Nicolas Genin CC BY-SA 2.0
Philip Kosloski
Philip Kosloski is the founder of Voyage Comics & Publishing and the writer and creator of the comic book series, Finnian and the Seven Mountains.