MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: George Lucas had to fight for Chewbacca to wear no clothing in Star Wars.

There are many interesting aspects about George Lucas' early planning for what would become the iconic blockbuster film, Star Wars, but two of the aspects that are most interesting to me right this second (because they tie into this legend) is A. just how much of a passion project this was for Lucas and B. how much Lucas' love for science fiction and fantasy played a role in his ideas for the film.

Lucas had a very specific idea for what he wanted Star Wars to look like, and he was so familiar with a lot of different notable science fiction and fantasy artists that he knew which ones of the artists that he wanted to emulate for his film project. Lucas believed that having art to go along with his pitch for Star Wars was an important part of his process, and so he enlisted the help of artist Ralph McQuarrie to put together designs for the film pitch.

McQuarrie later recalled, ""I just did my best to depict what I thought the film should look like, I really liked the idea. I didn't think the film would ever get made. My impression was it was too expensive. There wouldn't be enough of an audience. It's just too complicated. But George knew a lot of things that I didn't know." That echoed Lucas' own thoughts about the film at the time, namely, "I thought it [Star Wars] was too wacky for the general public. Right or wrong this is my movie, this is my decision, and this is my creative vision, and if people don't like it, they don't have to see it."

Lucas purchased some paintings from the artist John Berkey, including one piece that had recently been used for the cover of 1972's reprinting of Star Science Fiction Stories No.4...

john-berkey

As you can see, Berkey's work is a CLEAR influence on the sort of thing that Lucas was looking for with this Star Wars project, specifically the Rebel spaceships and the Imperial Death Star. Here, then, is the McQuarrie painting done for the pitch inspired by the Berkey painting...

ralph-mcquarrie-design

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So that basically was the situation that Lucas and McQuarrie were working with. Lucas had very specific ideas of what he wanted the film to look like, and he also had an expert sense of recall of the science fiction and fantasy artists that he saw as being the ideal ones for said designs. This is similar to an old Comic Book Legends Revealed that I did where Lucas' same sense of recall led to him taking inspiration from an old Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book story...

scrooge-boulder

to use for the iconic boulder sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark...

raidersofthelostarkball

That same sense of recall from Lucas played a major role in the design of Chewbacca.

When McQuarrie first started designing Chewbacca, he obviously was very much thinking humanoid, just weird looking...

chewbbaca-design-sketch-mcquarrie

Lucas, though, wanted to go a whole other direction with the character. Lucas, you see, had an Alaskan Malamute named "Indiana" (yes, it is the origin of the whole "Indiana Jones being named after his dog" bit from the Indiana Jones franchise) and when he would drive around with the dog, Lucas was struck by how it looked like he had a giant co-pilot with him in the car...

alaskan-malamute

So he wanted McQuarrie to go beyond humanoid and try to do more of an animal design for Chewbacca. Lucas' recall led him to a recent issue of Analog Magazine, which had a short novel in it by a pre-Game of Thrones George R.R. Martin called "And Seven Times Never Kill a Man." Artist John Schoenherr had designed some characters for Martin's story and they made it to the cover of the magazine...

analog_7507

Lucas sent the drawings to McQuarrie and basically said, "Draw Chewbacca like that" and so that's what McQuarrie did...

chewbacca-production-art-by-ralph-mcquarrie

Obviously, that design evolved into the final character design...

chewie-han

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The problem with having basically a giant dog as a character is that dogs, well, you know, don't have pants. McQuarrie kept coming up with some designs with the character in pants and Lucas kept saying no and that carried over to when the film started production. Lucas' specific vision of what Chewbacca would look like required him to not have pants and that was a bit of a strange thing for the studio executives at the time.

During the DVD commentary for the 2004 release of Star Wars on DVD, Mark Hamill recalled what Lucas had to go through with regard to Chewbacca's lack of clothes. "I remember the memos from 20th Century Fox. Can you put a pair of lederhosen on the Wookiee?' All they could think of was, 'This character has no pants on!' This went back and forth. They did sketches of him in culottes and baggy shorts."

However, by this point in time, Lucas had already been to war with the executives on many different other topics (including, humorously enough, whether he could even include the word "war" in the title of the film) and so he was effective at fighting for his own vision, and so he was able to keep Chewbacca pants less for the final film. Honestly, it is a bit of a hard argument to suggest that there really is any real problem as Lucas' vision of Chewbacca as a dog really is a powerful idea here. No one expects Donald Duck to wear pants, so why a Wookiee?

The legend is...

STATUS: True.

Be sure to check out my archive of Movie Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film. Click here for more legends specifically about Star Wars!

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