George Lucas was so uninterested in attending the May 25, 1977 premiere of his groundbreaking film Star Wars that he didn’t even fully realize it was happening, which resulted in a humorous hamburger-eating experience.
As often told, finishing the movie was a nightmarish experience for Lucas, adding to his belief that it wasn’t going to be successful. In fact, Lucas previously explained that he ultimately bolted to Hawaii to take a vacation with his friend and fellow director Steven Spielberg just to get away from what he thought was going to be negative feedback.
In episode 2 of the Disney Plus series Light & Magic, Lucas added another part of this story that he never publicly told before.
First, Lucas claims about finishing the final cut of the movie, “We were mixing it up until the day it was released.” This can be corroborated, and it leads to a story worth telling on its own (which we’ll gift you soon), but this likely made Lucas just relieved to finish his work.
So, Lucas was focused on his deadline, and he later suggests he had all but forgotten that the film was set to premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre later that day.
He explained, “When we finished, we went to Hamburger Hamlet on Hollywood Boulevard right across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.”
Although Lucas doesn’t say who exactly he was with, he does say that they all realized that there was an extremely long line at the theater. “We said, ‘Boy, there’s something going on out there. It must be a premiere or something.’”
Incredibly, it still hadn’t dawned on Lucas or anyone else that the movie people were waiting to see was indeed Star Wars.
So, there’s Lucas, eating at a Hamburger Hamlet — all of which has since closed — and enjoying a meal while completely oblivious that the line at the movie theater across the street was for his film’s premiere.
What happened next? They ate, of course. Then they later left and realized what was happening.
As Lucas tells the story, “It wasn’t until we walked outside that we could see that it was Star Wars. It was like a mob. They closed the street off!”
At this point, the segment of Lucas’ story ends, but one can deduce from earlier interviews that he’s given that the long lines didn’t convince him the movie was going to be well-received. So, he still decided to take off to Hawaii and ignore the attention. It was a pretty worthwhile vacation considering it’s when Spielberg and Lucas first discussed creating a character together named Indiana Jones.
Alan Ladd, Jr., the executive at 20th Century Fox Studios who signed Lucas to a movie deal after watching American Graffiti and was one of the few who believed in him, kept calling Lucas to tell him how popular the movie was rapidly becoming. In a 2015 interview, Lucas explains that he responded to Ladd by saying, “Laddie, calm down. It’s a science fiction film. Science fiction films get a good old group of sci-fi fans. They’ll go to anything the first week. Wait for a couple weeks, and you’ll see what it’s really gonna do.”
It wasn’t until Ladd called Lucas a few days later and told him about a CBS news segment on the movie with Walter Cronkite that he was convinced that Star Wars was going to be big. Ironically, Lucas’ special effects crew later played a prank on Cronkite when the news anchor visited to do a segment about The Empire Strikes Back.
What about the actors on the hit film? Did they take such convincing also?
Mark Hamill told CBS Sunday Morning earlier this year that long lines at the premiere didn’t convince him either, and that it wasn’t until they were flying around the country on their publicity tour that he realized Star Wars was going to be a hit.
He explained, “It was Carrie, Harrison, and me. When we landed in Chicago, I looked out and saw there were crowds outside. I say, ‘Hey, you guys, there must be somebody famous on this plane!’ We’re looking around for some superstar athlete or whatever.”
Hamill said he realized the crowds were for them when he noticed that many people in the crowd were dressed like Star Wars characters.
So, George Lucas wasn’t the only one who worked on the film who just couldn’t imagine it being such a major hit.
Lucas has also explained that he normally goes on vacation somewhere when his movies come out as a way to not worry about how they will do. He doesn’t explain, however, if he generally eats hamburgers across the street from his movie’s premieres.
