Star Wars hasn’t quite yet made it to Broadway, but Mark Hamill certainly has. In fact, he’s starred in five Broadway plays in his career, but his first was a complete embarrassment for him, and it’s partly because of the stage production’s Star Wars-themed ad campaign.
Hamill was — and still is — so familiar as Luke Skywalker, that at one time it nearly hurt his career, post-Star Wars. It’s certainly understandable. The Empire Strikes Back actor entered the 1980’s riding high and rich off of the success of the highly anticipated Star Wars sequel. There was one more movie to make to close out the spacey trilogy but that movie — Return of the Jedi — wouldn’t begin filming until January of 1982. Hamill also had to think about what roles he could land after Jedi to keep his career going.
So, despite already being a multi-millionaire thanks to the success of the galactic saga, Hamill remained passionate about his craft, and searched for work and aimed for the big lights of Broadway. To his delight, he landed a major lead role in 1981, and was excited that he could begin to establish himself as more than just the guy from Star Wars.
The Elephant Man won the Tony for Best Play in 1979, and was the inspiration for the highly regarded 1980 film of the same name directed by David Lynch, whose work earned him an Academy Award nomination. Coincidentally, because of the success of the film, George Lucas approached Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi, but Lynch was simply uninterested.
Hamill was cast to take over the lead role in the play — a character named John Merrick, based on a real- life person named Joseph Merrick who had extreme physical deformities. The play details Merrick’s life in 19th century London.
When Hamill landed the role, he was excited, but also was completely unaware that the play’s popularity was beginning to decline. Its problems were likely due in large part to the subject matter. It’s not exactly the type of story that people would normally jump to see again, so customer retention was probably a significant issue. In fact, Hamill was stunned to later learn that the show was consistently playing to a half empty theater.
It soon became widely known that Mark Hamill was now on Broadway, because producers figured it would be a good idea to run a Star Wars-themed ad campaign for The Elephant Man.
The ads included “And the force continues on Broadway,” written in a style meant to mimic the opening scroll of Star Wars.
Hamill had no idea that the show would run such ads. Considering his desire to do something entirely free of Star Wars content, and his understanding that it’s not exactly a fun play despite the ads, it was almost nightmarish for the actor, who later explained that he had it written in his contract that he had to approve all ads. Well, he never even saw these, let alone approved them, and now they were out there for the public to see. The producers soon changed out the ads, at Hamill’s request.
Sure enough, to no one’s surprise — except maybe the producers —it turned out that the Star Wars-themed ads for such a serious and biographical show like The Elephant Man was a bad idea.
Hamill’s run on the show was — unbeknownst to him before signing — just a desperate attempt to save it. The attempt disastrously failed. Three weeks after Hamill joined the cast, the show closed. It wasn’t exactly a Star Wars-esque premiere for Hamill. He lasted just 25 performances, and he had moved to New York from California for the show, and was now worried about his future in acting, though he would obviously ultimately have a long and successful career.
When he was interviewed by David Handler a month after the show’s collapse, Hamill opened up about this first Broadway experience. The article appeared in multiple newspapers during the first week of August 1981.
“I was just a gimmick,” Hamill realized as he looked back on the disastrous situation.
When referring to the ad campaign, Hamill said, “I’ve not been so disturbed and embarrassed my whole career.”
The beauty of the whole experience, and of knowing such a failure happened after Star Wars, is that he stayed true to his desire to excel in his craft, and ultimately, became successful long after Star Wars. Excluding Luke Skywalker, his most familiar role is as the voice of the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, which earned him critical acclaim in the 1990’s.
Of course, Hamill filmed Return of the Jedi in 1982, and watched it own cinemas in the summer of 1983, so few people will feel bad for his Broadway bomb. It’s safe to say that Return of the Jedi didn’t run any ads proclaiming “Mark Hamill from The Elephant Man.”
