A long time ago, Star Wars on TV really sucked
Before the success of The Mandalorian and Andor, Star Wars on TV meant cheesy variety shows and an embarrassing holiday special
Film Features Star Wars
Every Star Wars fan has a favorite Disney+ TV series, including titles like Andor and The Mandalorian, and nearly every fan has a “least favorite” to show hate-watch (we’re looking at you The Book Of Boba Fett). And after last weekend’s Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London, which saw lots of big announcements, there are even more series to come. But it used to be that Star Wars on TV wasn’t either good or bad. It was just bad. Really, really bad.
This is because Star Wars represented a paradigm shift—the shaggy, countercultural New Hollywood elbowing its way onstage in a time that was still governed by old Hollywood “entertainment.” Television in 1977 wasn’t supposed to be good. It was supposed to kill time, as blandly as possible. The top two shows were both set in the 1950s: Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days. Third-ranked was a paragon of what NBC exec Paul Klein derogatorily called “Jiggle TV”—the roommate farce Three’s Company, which could be remembered for John Ritter’s slapstick genius, but was notorious at the time for Suzanne Somers’ revealing outfits.
This is the ecosystem George Lucas was trying to navigate to build out his Star Wars universe. He fucked things up almost right away.
This isn’t the TV special you’re looking for
For its September 25, 1977, broadcast, the Donny & Marie program was gifted by the Star Wars Corporation with: high production value shots of the Millennium Falcon; the actual C3PO and R2D2; the real Chewbacca costume; the genuine Darth Vader wardrobe; and a regiment of finger-snapping Imperial Stormtroopers, shimmying their way through a retro-fitted version of The Temptations’ “Get Ready” that begins “We’re Darth Vader’s raiders/And we can’t believe/The things that you do/You’re ALLLRIGHT!”
The resultant 12-minute mini-musical truly puts the awe in awful. You know you’re in trouble from three syllables into the first song, when Donny (as Luke) calls Marie “Princess Lee-uh.” But true kitsch nirvana isn’t achieved until the line “Darth will be searching up and down!” is used to bust a John Travolta, point-at-the-sky disco move that people really performed in ye olde 1970s.
Only King of Cool Kris Kristofferson emerges unscathed, by using the Jedi mind trick we might call the Dean Martin Dodge: Kris plays Han Solo like he just rolled in from a party he’s trying to get back to, so he’s in the sketch but not of the sketch.
Donny and Marie were trendsetters in one way though. They were a brother and sister act, and so were Luke and Leia—although nobody knew this at the time.
Anger leads to hate, hate leads to The Star Wars Holiday Special
Donnie & Marie was just a prologue to the single worst Star Wars narrative project ever made: CBS Television’s Star Wars Holiday Special of 1978. Personally conceived by George Lucas as the Wookie movie he never managed to make elsewhere, the Star Wars Holiday Special got rushed into production through an outside company so it could air for Christmas. The intent (let us not kid ourselves) was to push Star Wars toys during the holiday rush.
The plot, if you want to call it that, has Chewbacca trying to get home for “Life Day,” a secular Wookie Christmas (there’s apparently no Jesus in a galaxy “far, far away”). Stormtroopers and whatnot project various threats, but they’re barely integrated into the storyline. The main Star Wars heroes appear, and are given not much at all to do.
A lot of time is spent on the allegedly comic hijinks of Chewbacca’s family, featuring Chewbacca’s father “Itchy” and his son “Lumpy” (presumably “Scratchy” was taken). A miniaturized version of Jefferson Starship performs “Light The Sky On Fire” which was probably Lucas’ way of discharging Star Wars’ minor debt to the band’s 1970 sci-fi concept album Blows Against The Empire. There’s also a cartoon that introduces Boba Fett for the first time, and it’s actually kind of awesome. At the end of it all, Leia sings.
That’s pretty much that.
Nothing in the Star Wars canon delineates the schism with old Hollywood better than this legendary horse turd, which plops Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher alongside TV icons Art Carney, Harvey Korman, and Bea Arthur—a trio of brilliant comics in other contexts, but ambassadors from schtick-ville here.
According to writer Bruce Vilanch, the project failed because George Lucas insisted on featuring his groaning Wookiee creations—an excuse that would play better if Vilanch wasn’t also lead writer on the woebegotten Rob Lowe and Snow White Oscar opener of 1989, as well as a staff writer on Donny & Marie. Still, 1980’s officially sanctioned Star Wars Christmas album, Christmas In The Stars, suggests shoveling licensed yuletide crap into the marketplace was a corporate policy.
A wretched hive of scum and villainy and passable TV
The Star Wars talk show appearances of the era are mostly low-key fun. This one by Alec Guinness is mind-altering, though. The famously disgruntled Obi-Wan actor seems highly pleased by his first viewing of the movie, and even more pleased by his advantageous profit participation deal.
There’s lots more TV ephemera from the period, demonstrating how mainstream culture didn’t “get” Star Wars. Here’s a Bob Hope Christmas special featuring Hope, Olivia Newton-John, and Mark Hamill in “Scar Wars.” When Saturday Night Live got around to mocking Star Wars, it was the cluelessness of old showbiz types like Hope it targeted, with Bill Murray’s manic lounge singer crooning made-up lyrics to John Williams’ main title theme in the style of a demented Robert Goulet.
Carrie Fisher hosted a Star Wars-inflected SNL episode just a day after the Star Wars Holiday Special aired, neatly re-establishing the franchise’s dented bona fides in a single swoop.
Your eyes can deceive you. Not all ’70s Star Wars TV is bad
So, The Ewok Adventure notwithstanding, did official Star Wars ever get TV right during the George Lucas era? It did—exactly once, and not in narrative form. The Making Of Star Wars pioneered a format that DVD “special features” would later pound into the floor. Airing on ABC just a week before Star Wars met Donny & Marie, this comprehensive documentary goes behind the scenes on the original shoot, chronicling the fan hysteria in a breathless tone that feels like the way Lucas must have been experiencing it and positioning Star Wars in the wider context of cultural history. A lot of the credit has to go to scriptwriter and noted film critic Richard Schickel, who had already created a series of knowledgeable, crowd-pleasing docs about Hollywood for public TV.
Even the scripted C3PO and R2D2 material—so deadly on Donny & Marie—comes off fine, probably because The Making Of Star Wars was shot on film, not videotape, harmonizing it visually with Star Wars itself.
The Making Of Star Wars is the only Star Wars television show of the period that functions as the right kind of time machine today. It’s not an index of dated creative failures like everything else Star Wars touched on TV, but rather a transponder that communicates how Star Wars’ success was a product of human effort, and boundless enthusiasm. In this extremely corporate era of Star Wars TV, that, most of all, is what seems to hail most from a galaxy far, far away.
22 Comments
Now the TV is good and the movies suck
I don’t know how I managed to duck the SWHS. It was right in my wheelhouse, as I was obsessed with both Star War and Christmas in ‘78. But I’m thankful I did.TV was just awful in the late 70s. I can remember being regularly embarrassed for performers even as a kid. The D&M Star Wars stuff wasn’t especially bad by their standards, they did that shit every week.
On one hand I can’t imagine that I didn’t watch it, given that I first saw Star Wars in 1978 and got a bunch of the toys for Christmas.But on the other, I absolutely do not remember watching it. It seems like something specific would’ve seared itself into my memory, but even when I watched it a few years ago none of it felt familiar at all.
I did watch the SWHS when it broadcast, but as a 70’s kid I couldn’t really tell it was bad. It was the only new Star Wars besides the movie, and exactly as you say, 70’s television was mostly horrible.This article could just be “it was the 1970’s.”
Seven-year-old me may not have known it was bad, but it was confusing. Why weren’t there dog fights? Where were the lightsabers? What is this weird cartoon in the middle of the show?I don’t remember there being musical numbers. That might be a blessing.
I watched it. I loved it.
the tv mostly really sucks now, too. there’s just more of it and it’s more expensive. i would say star wars’ hit ratio remains consistent.
How do you not mention the Muppet show?
A much better clip than what I found, to be sure. Thanks!
Ewok Adventure was the 80s also 1980s the Muppet Show. Which is just cheese balls delightful.
Didn’t get much better in the post-SW ‘80s either, even with better production values (for the day) and more Lucas approvals & involvement: see both Ewok tv movies and ‘Droids’ & ‘Ewoks’ Saturday morning cartoons.
They were pretty good for what they were. The cartoons were for kids, but they were fun and didn’t stray too far from the established canon. They even got Anthony Daniels to do C-3PO’s voice.
There was a SW Holiday Special, and it was bad? Learn something every day.
Not even a passing mention of the Star Wars episode of The Muppet Show, which was (as per the norm for that show) genuinely amusing?
Mark Hamill crashes Argyle the Gershwin Gargling Gargoyle’s act and then runs off like a spooked turkey. He’s always been a treasure.
“We’ve landed in some kind of third-rate TV show.”
Wasn’t this the 80’s, though?
1980, yes, still several years before The Ewok Adventure which got a passing mention.
Was any of it really Lucas screwing up when all of it was just doing the standard tv appearance stuff for something that became popular? The only recognized format of the era that might have turned out decent would have been a miniseries (which would have come across at best like the OG BSG or V), and Lucas had no reason to downgrade to tv – it was reasonably limited to cheap & easy publicity. The culture just wasn’t ready for prestige television yet…
A long time ago?
Book of Boba Fett sure feels like it was a long time ago.
“We gotta market this Holiday Special to kids. Kids like to laugh – let’s get some really funny people signed on. Art Carney is a hoot, Harvey Korman is a real cut-up, and Bea Arthur is hilarious on ‘Maude.’ We don’t need a script or anything – just turn ‘em loose. Kids also love that rock and roll, so let’s get a rock band, but one that really fits the theme with astronauts and all that junk. How about Jefferson Starship? They’re spacey. You gettin’ all this down, Miss Johnson?”
*puffs cigar*