Chapter 8, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones is back

WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS

Filming on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom began on 18th April 1983 on location in Sri Lanka and in Macao. When the Chinese sequence was safely in the can, the Macao unit joined the crew in Kandy and, with the two crews working side by side, the location work was wrapped in three weeks. From that lush setting, the cast and crew came back to earth with a bump, spending the next twelve weeks toiling through the British summer at EMI’s Elstree Studios at Borehamwood, just outside London. 

Director Spielberg and his two principal actors arrive at
London's Heathrow Airport for the studio shooting 
of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Additional location scenes were filmed in Northern California in the United States, where Hamilton Air Force Base stood in for Shanghai Airport and the Tuolomne River played the part of the Ganges. Principal photography finished on September 8 1983 without incident, barring one mishap, though the special effects work would continue up until March 1984.

Like Raiders before it Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is packed to overflowing with complex and dangerous stunt work. The ‘one mishap’ very nearly shuttered production on the movie when Harrison Ford fell from an elephant and aggravated an old back injury – with a third of the picture still to be completed! Ford was jetted back to Los Angeles to undergo emergency laser surgery and filming was halted while the star recuperated. 

Riding an elephant (and falling from one) are all in a day's
work for the average action movie star.

When he returned to the set, he found the most strenuous stunts – including his battle with the henchmen of Mola Ram and his climactic fight on the rickety rope bridge – were still before him. Fortunately for Ford, his doctors had patched him up perfectly and filming resumed without a hitch. Ford, as usual, was dismissive about the incident.

‘I’m now as fit as a fiddle,’ he said, ‘but I could never have done it without Vic Armstrong. Guys like Vic are invisible. They never get any credit. Nobody ever interviews them.’

Armstrong had worked with Ford several times before, on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi, doubling for Ford when the going got too rough. Armstrong was philosophical about Ford's remarks.

‘We have to be invisible,’ he conceded, ‘if people are going to believe in the film.’

Peas in a pod ... Vic Armstrong (left!) was often mistaken
for Harrison Ford on set

Maybe ‘invisible’ isn’t the right word, for Armstrong bears a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. While working on the set of Raiders, so many people mistook Armstrong for Ford that it came to be something of a running gag. But there’s more to doubling for an actor than just physical resemblance. Of Ford, Armstrong said, ‘He’s a natural athlete and he wants to do it all. I say to him, “H, we can’t afford to get you smashed up in this scene because we’ve got a whole crew that needs to make a living.” And he says, “Yeah, you’re right,” and does the scene anyway. He could have made a great stunt man himself.’

THAT’S A WRAP!

When Steven Spielberg called ‘Cut!’ for the last time on 8th September 1983, it’s unlikely that he would have realised just how literally that order could be taken. As with Raiders, certain scenes had been cut from the screenplay before and during shooting, obviously with Spielberg’s blessing, but when Temple of Doom was presented to the censors, the word ‘cut’ began to take on sinister overtones.

On the plus side, the scenes that had been excised from Raiders had been modified and incorporated into Temple of Doom.

‘The idea of the plane crash and then jumping out of the door in a life raft had, at one time, been in the original,’ confirmed Huyck.

‘The other thing was the mine car,’ added Katz. ‘George had thought of the mine car race for Raiders. But I don’t know how it was written or what happened to it. He wanted a roller coaster ride.’ And he got one!

Though much of the mine-car roller coaster scene was shot
with miniatures, some of it was filmed full size,
with Harrison Ford and Ke Huy Quan riding the truck.

So there was every reason to believe, then, that scenes cut from Temple of Doom could find their way into some future Indiana Jones movie. Like the scene in which Kate Capshaw, as Willie, was to wrestle a boa constrictor.

‘We had a snake scene that Kate wouldn’t do,’ explained Huyck. ‘They had a boa constrictor and they had trained it. For weeks in advance, she had been trying to psyche herself up for this. She said she touched it and, the first time, it sort of ... undulated. And she thought she was going to die. She started sweating. Then they tried to put it on her shoulders to show her what it would be like, and she just freaked out. Steven (Spielberg) was sort of ashen and said, “That’s all right.”’

‘It was a very funny scene,’ added Katz, ‘because there she is, being strangled by a snake, and Indy is just helplessly standing there!’

‘So they didn’t do it,’ continued Huyck. ‘Kate just couldn’t do it. That’s when Steve said, “Okay, if you’re not going to do this, there’s no way you’re not going to do the bug scene.”’

But Lucas, never one to waste a good idea, did recycle the sequence for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, almost twenty-five years later.

Another cut, involving the child Maharajah, ended up causing the film to be a little less clear than it should have been. It comes as something of a surprise to audiences to discover, late in the film, that the young monarch is under the control of the Thuggees. A couple of explanatory scenes had been written, but had never been filmed. During the banquet sequence, the prime minister Chattar Lal is seen talking to the shadowy figure of Mola Ram in the gardens outside the Palace. Later, Indy is teaching the young Maharajah how to use his whip. When the child comes to try it himself, he gets it wrong and hurts himself. Short Round laughs and a scuffle follows. During the scrap, Short Round sees the Maharajah’s eyes glow red, and understands something weird is going on. Presumably these scenes were taken out, sacrificing clarity for pace, as the dinner sequence was long in itself.

A far different kettle of cuts was the chunk of Temple of Doom hacked out by overzealous censors in their never-ending quest to protect those who share their sensitive dispositions, but not their incorruptibility. The film was given a PG rating for its American release and immediately came under fire from journalists and parents’ associations across the country.

‘The movie,’ said The New York Times, ‘in addition to being endearingly disgusting, is violent in ways that may scare the wits out of some young patrons.’

Parents who had taken their young children to early preview screenings said their offspring were particularly disturbed by the scene in which Mola Ram tears the still-beating heart from the chest of a living sacrifice victim and the victim’s subsequent immersion in boiling lava. The PG rating was called into question in some quarters, and the distributing company, Paramount, added a warning line to the newspaper ads, which read: ‘This film may be too intense for younger children’.

OK, this probably is a bit intense for eight year olds ...

In the UK the British Board of Film Censors took a harder line. Numerous changes were requested from Paramount before the BBFC would grant the picture the desired PG rating. Secretary of the Board, James Ferman, felt that the US version of the movie couldn’t even get a fifteen rating under the British system. To obtain a fifteen, the scene in which ‘the slow burning of a man in absolute agony’ is shown would have to go. Faced with the threat of an eighteen certificate, Paramount decided to make cuts to the British release print. Yet, even in this toned down version, the film drew some flak for its violence. The late Alexander Walker, admittedly not noted for his tolerance towards youth-oriented movies, dismissed the picture as ‘Indiana Jones meets the Marquis de Sade.’

Harrison Ford took such criticisms in his stride. ‘This is a completely moral tale,’ said the actor, ‘and in order to have a moral resolve, evil must be seen to inflict pain. The end of the movie is proof of the viability of goodness.’

... and, of course, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom does
provide the statutory Happy Ending.

Still, in spite of all the fuss, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was yet another in a long line of box office records for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. No matter what the critics and the censors thought, the cinema-going public gave the movie the best vote of confidence they knew how. Between them, they spent enough ticket money to propel Temple of Doom to the top end of the movie charts for 1984, putting it in the number three slot, just a whisker behind Ghostbusters and Beverley Hills Cop in the battle for the number one slot and raising it to number 88 in the all-time box-office champs list with a take of almost $180 million in the US and $333 million worldwide. In addition, the American Academy nominated the film in the category of Best Score and awarded the movie an Oscar for Best Special Effects. And no one can argue with that kind of success.

And while the critics and the audiences were chewing over Temple of Doom, Ford was moving onto another of his ‘small time’ films, Witness. ‘It’s a calculated departure,’ stated Ford. ‘This movie is the story of an Amish woman and a Philadelphia cop and the intelligence of the script gives me some wonderful cloth to cut.’

And despite their earlier denials, Spielberg announced in the early part of 1984 that he would be directing the third Indiana Jones film, and Ford, too, had been signed for the project. ‘Playing Indy,’ said Ford, ‘is just a fun thing to do!’

WHAT NEXT FOR THE HARRISON FORD STORY?

Where I go next with this blog is something I have to think about. My original plan was to put the whole of The Harrison Ford Story online. In my day job, I manage websites and in that arena, the conventional wisdom is that no one wants to read extended chunks of text on a screen. We all find it difficult and we all read far slower from a screen than we do from the printed page. And The Harrison Ford Story can be bought in its printed form very inexpensively online from Amazon.co.uk or from any number of online retailers.

So I'm probably doing everyone, myself included, a disservice by continuing down this route. I have no evidence that anyone is reading this, so I think I'll hold off for a while - unless you tell me differently.

Alan McKenzie, Aug 2013

Chapter 8, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones is back

From Box Office Draw to Box Office Phenomenon

‘Playing Indy is just a fun thing to do.’ Harrison Ford

Every time a big, successful movie looms over the cinematic horizon, you can bet, sure as sunrise, that the same relentless movie-making machinery will grind into motion.

The first stage of this process is that every bozo with a budget in Film City, USA will think he can reproduce the elements that made the original the success it was. Within months, a flood of dismal, copycat movies will be jostling for space on screens around the world. Then, the makers of the film that started it all will begin work on a sequel – if only to show the rip-off merchants how it should be done.

Which is exactly what happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In rapid succession, film-goers were forced to suffer High Road to China (ironically starring George Lucas’ first choice for Indiana Jones, Tom Selleck), Invaders of the Lost Gold (actually just an Italian horror movie Horror Safari opportunistically retitled), Hunters of the Golden Cobra, a kind of spaghetti Raiders starring ex-model David Warbeck and directed by Italian hack-meister Antonio Marghereti, and Treasure of the Four Crowns, another cheesey Italian effort, this time in 3D. Then, in early 1983, the American screen trade paper Variety announced that work had begun on the follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF ... WHAT?

‘Steven Spielberg is helming Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on location in Sri Lanka (with lensing in Hong Kong and London’s Elstree Studios to follow) for Lucasfilm Ltd and Paramount, with Harrison Ford reprising his title role characterisation first seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Douglas Slocombe back as cinematographer, Kate Capshaw, who had roles in A Little Sex and the current sci-fier Dreamscape is Ford’s new leading lady.’ All of which must have come as something of a surprise to certain American fan magazines which were getting excited about a Raiders sequel called ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death’.

Other than that, information was hard to come by. Not that Ford would have put talking to the press very high on his list of priorities anyway. He had married Melissa Mathison on March 14, 1983, a short time after obtaining his final divorce from Mary and mere weeks before beginning work on Temple of Doom.

What was known was that Lawrence Kasdan, busy with directing his latest film, The Big Chill, had passed on the scripting chores. Lucas had turned to his old friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who had worked wonders with Lucas’ original draft of American Graffiti.

George Lucas himself had hinted at the contents of further Indiana Jones films around the time Raiders was released and confessed that Indy was his personal favourite of the characters he had created. ‘If I could be a dream figure, I’d be Indy,’ He told American magazine Rolling Stone. ‘It’s not just that I’m interested in archeology or anthropology; a lot of that got into Star Wars too. It’s just that Indy can do anything. He’s a lot of Thirties heroes put together. He’s this renegade archeologist and adventurer, but he’s also a college professor, and he’s got this Cary Grant side, too. In some stories, we’ll see him in top hat and tails. We don’t want to make him Superman – he’s just open to all possibilities. Raiders will be the most action oriented of the Indiana Jones movies – the others should deal more with the Occult.’

OK, maybe not top hat and tails, but definitely another side to
Indiana Jones ... kind of a "Bogart in Casablanca" look

Lucas had no problems convincing director Steven Spielberg to re-sign on the dotted line. ‘I’d hate to let it slip through my fingers into some one else’s hands,’ said Spielberg. ‘I’ll certainly not be involved in the third or the fourth one, but I really want to do the follow-up, because the story is even more spectacular than Raiders.’

Coincidence? I think not ...

Harrison Ford was also expressing his pleasure at the prospect of appearing in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. ‘Of course I’m doing the second Raiders film,’ he said. ‘With great pleasure. And for the first time, I think, in the history of sequels and good directors, Steven Spielberg is going to direct it. So this is very exciting for me. It was one of the best working relationship experiences of my life working with Steven.’

Pleased as he was, Ford was a little disturbed to hear from Starburst’s Tony Crawley that there were a total of five Indiana Jones films on the Lucasfilm launching pad, in varying stages of development. After completing filming on Return of the Jedi, the actor said, ‘Actually, I’m only committed to one film at the moment. That’s another Indiana Jones film. I had hoped to have a year off between the end of Jedi and the beginning of the next Indy film. Five (Indiana Jones films) is okay with me. I mean I really enjoy working on them. And I really enjoy the character very much. And certainly I couldn’t hope for better company than Lucas and Spielberg. But having done one, I don’t think I’d do four more of anything. They must be talking to Roger Moore ... one at a time for me!’

THE WRITE STUFF

Though they were newcomers to the Indiana Jones series, script-writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were no strangers to Lucasfilm Ltd. They had written the screenplay for Lucas’ first big hit, American Graffiti, succeeding in producing a workable script where others, including Lucas, had failed.

Huyck and Katz, a husband and wife team, had met at University in California, worked together at Francis Coppola’s studio where they first encountered Lucas and went on to write Graffiti (1973), Lucky Lady (1975) and French Postcards (1979).

The writers were first contacted about writing Temple of Doom in February, 1982. ‘We flew up to George’s house with Steven Spielberg and spent four days there,’ said Huyck. ‘In the first hour, George told us what he had in mind. Essentially, the story started in Shanghai and had Indy get into a situation in which his plane crashes. Then he’s asked by villagers to recover a sacred stone. That’s the basic outline we were given and we started building from there.’

The events in Temple of Doom take place a year before those in Raiders. Consequently, the new script called for a completely new cast of supporting characters, notably Short Round, Indy’s child companion and ‘bodyguard’ and Willie Scott, a nightclub singer.

‘We sat around trying to come up with names for the new characters,’ explains Huyck, ‘and we said that since George named Indiana Jones after his dog, Steven Spielberg and us should be able to name the characters after our dogs. So Steve named Willie after his dog and we named Short Round after ours. But our dog is named after a Korean child in the Sam Fuller movie The Steel Helmet (1951).’

‘Short Round really came out of the notion that George wanted a child in the movie,’ adds Katz. ‘He wanted a girl, but we didn’t like that idea too much, and Steve didn’t feel comfortable with it, either. So we thought of the idea of Short Round and then of his character. How he participated in the script developed out of the story conferences.’

The script went through three full drafts on its way to completion, with pauses for less major rewrites along the way. The first draft took Huyck and Katz six weeks, ‘because we wanted to get something we could talk about immediately,’ says Huyck. The second draft took another six weeks, with the third draft being completed in a breakneck four weeks of work. From there, the writers were called away to attend to their next project, Best Defense, though throughout the period of shooting on Temple of Doom, they were continually called upon by Steven Spielberg for polishing on the final draft.

FINE TUNING

With the script out of the way, the production crew could turn their attention to the casting of both the supporting actors and the locations. In the September of 1982, the ‘line’ producer of Temple of Doom, Robert Watts, set off for Asia with the movie’s production designer, Elliot Scott.

‘First we went to Hong Kong,’ said Watts, ‘looking for locations for the Chinese sequence. Hong Kong was too modern and we had to rule it out. From there we went to Macao, which hasn’t been developed as much as Hong Kong, and we found locations that would do for Shanghai. Then we went to India, where the bulk of the movie is supposed to take place, and we found most of the locations we wanted. The only problem was that they were miles apart.

‘Carrying on to Sri Lanka, we found, to our surprise, that we could get almost everything we wanted in the environs of one town, Kandy, with the exception of the Maharajah’s Palace.’

It was decided to base the production location at Kandy with only three days set aside for filming the Palace sequences on mainland India. Then Watts ran into hurdles. The Indian Government has rigid policies concerning the making of movies within its borders. A number of changes to the script were asked for. Too many for Lucasfilms’ liking.

‘George Lucas had very clear ideas on how the film should be,’ said Watts. ‘It is an adventure and the things that happen couldn’t possibly happen in real life. But the film, if it is to work, has to have the look and feel of reality. We were prepared to go so far to meet the Indian Authorities’ demands, but to have gone the whole way would have robbed the film of that element. In the end we decided it wasn’t worth it, least of all for three days shooting, and we closed our Bombay office.’

To get around the problem of being denied the necessary location, the filmmakers decided to build the Palace on the backlot at Elstree Studios and use matte paintings – a special effects technique to incorporate realistic artwork into live action footage – for the long shots.

Watts’ next objective was to take care of casting the actors. ‘The film has a very small cast,’ said Watts, ‘though this is not always apparent because there are always lots of people on the screen. In fact, I would say that it is possibly the smallest and most difficult casting I’ve ever worked on.’

That Harrison Ford would appear as Indy was never in dispute. But finding the right actor to portray Short Round caused all concerned headaches.

‘We had open casting calls in New York, Vancouver, London – anywhere with a substantial Chinese community,’ explained Watts, ‘and out of hundreds of boys there was only one who was really suitable.’

Ke Huy Quan was discovered during casting sessions in Los Angeles. A Vietnamese refugee, his English was good, but not so polished as to sound like a native American.

Ford with supporting cast members Ke Huy Quan and Kate Capshaw.

For the key role of villain Mola Ram, Indian star Amrish Puri was cast. ‘The only trouble was,’ said Watts, ‘that being such a popular actor in India, he was working on eighteen films at once. Scheduling him was a nightmare!’

Top Bollywood star Amrish Puri was cast as as the
dastardly villain Mola Ram.

The casting of Kate Capshaw for the part of Willie Scott was a lot more straightforward. Capshaw had been introduced to the character of Indiana Jones when she was dragged, under protest, to see Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. ‘I went, very petulent and sulky,’ admitted Capshaw, ‘and stayed that way for about two minutes! When I came out, I would have been a great advertisement for going to see that movie.’

Kate Capshaw got to perform a spectacular cabaret routine
in the opening sequence of Temple of Doom.

A couple of years later, Kate Capshaw’s agent just happened to be out jogging with one of the casting directors on Temple of Doom ... and the rest is history. ‘Every director has a gut feeling for who a character is, what their special qualities are. They don’t know who has “got it”, but they’ll know it when they see it. Steven felt I had it when he met me.’

With Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the plan was to set it apart from Raiders, with Indy himself as the only linking factor. This was underlined in the filmmakers’ approach to the character of Willie Scott. Kate Capshaw was at pains to make Willie as different from Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood as she could. Where Marion was tom-boyish, Willie was feminine, Where Marion was tough and capable – up to a point – Willie was nervous and flappable.

‘Willie has led this pampered life,’ explained Capshaw, ‘and feels that’s what’s due to her – to be cared for and looked after. She meets Indiana Jones, a person unlike anyone she has ever been involved with, and ends up going off with him. In the course of their adventures, all of her earlier life is stripped away from her and Willie must fall back on her own resources. She discovers that she is a strong woman and a very gutsy lady.’

The screen writers Huyck and Katz don’t necessarily share Capshaw’s vision of Willie. Their intention was to depict Willie as an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary situations, whose first reaction to the assorted plights she finds herself in is to crack up, not an attribute that Huyck particularly admired; ‘I never really cared for the character very much in the first place,’ he said. ‘But we felt that she was reacting realistically to the kind of things Indiana Jones goes through ... the kind of situations where, since she’s not so tough – as few people would be in those situations – she’d scream.’

Kate Capshaw spent most of the movie squealing and complaining,
which didn't endear the character to fans ...

I thought that this take on the film’s female lead was its biggest liability. Willie did little more than scream throughout the whole picture, and ended up as little more than a typical ‘damsel in distress’, but that kind of talk tends to upset Gloria Katz.

‘People have very mixed feelings about Willie,’ said Katz. ‘I’m a little offended by the idea of a macho woman. I think that’s a woman as conceived by men. I don’t think that’s a woman that necessarily, realistically exists. When you’re covered in insects, your instinct is to scream! So I think Willie represents the audience’s realistic point of view, what they would be like if they were thrown out into the jungle. True, it’s not a brave, strong woman but it’s a different kind of woman and, I think, a more realistic one.’

Next: More Temple of Doom

Chapter 2, Part 3 - Harrison Ford: Breaking In

STAR WARS STAR

Harrison Ford was not to remain a professional carpenter for much longer because, by the time American Graffiti was released to strong reviews, director George Lucas had finalised a deal with Twentieth Century-Fox to make a space adventure movie called Star Wars. Ford was familiar with the project, but nurtured no ambitions about being in the movie. After all, he hadn’t been one of the principle players in Graffiti and probably felt his contribution had been minimal.

‘George (Lucas) had let it be known that he wasn’t going to use anybody from American Graffiti,’ said Ford. ‘Not because we’d disappointed him, but he was writing a whole new thing and needed new faces. But old Fred Roos did it again. He prevailed on George to see me after he’d seen everyone else.’

The story of how Harrison Ford ended up with the role of Han Solo is another one of those tales that Ford tells better than anyone else. He recounted it within a short interview for the London events magazine, Time Out.

‘The reason I ran into George Lucas again was because Francis Coppola’s art director inveigled me into installing a very elaborate raised panel in his studio office. Now, I knew they were casting and I thought it a bit coy to be around Francis’s office, being a carpenter, during the day. So I did the work at night. Well, one day something came up and I got stuck and I had to work at the studios during the day. And, sure enough, that was the day that George Lucas was doing the casting for Star Wars.

Harrison Ford as Han Solo from Star Wars

‘There I was, on my knees in the doorway, and in comes Francis Coppola, George Lucas, four other captains of the industry and Richard Dreyfuss. In fact, Dreyfuss came through first and made a big joke out of being my assistant. That made me feel just great. I felt about the size of a pea after they walked through. But, weeks later, when they’d tested everybody else in the world, I got the part.’ 

Ford is guilty of a little over-simplification here. The casting for Star Wars was as meticulous, at the very least, as the casting on American Graffiti. Lucas knew he was going to have to interview literally hundreds of young actors and young hopefuls just to find the three people to portray the key lead roles. So in the early part of 1975, he joined forces with another young director making his first major picture, Brian De Palma, who was looking for a teenage cast for Carrie. For about eight weeks, De Palma and Lucas were seeing 30-40 young actors and actresses a day. Lucas sat quietly making notes and entering the names of those who particularly impressed him on a Second Interview list. After Lucas tripped over Ford in the doorway of Coppola’s office, the young filmmaker approached Ford for assistance with the video tests for the Star Wars auditions. The idea was that Ford, whom Lucas felt at ease with, would read the male parts for the actresses testing for the role of Princess Leia. Ford initially didn’t mind doing the favour for Lucas, whom he liked, but after a time became irritated with having to read a part which he thought he would never play.

According to Dale Pollock’s book, Skywalking, it was Ford’s "churlishness" that won him the part of Han Solo. But it’s far more likely that George Lucas saw in Harrison Ford elements of the character he envisaged for Solo. Ford had a certain forthright and honest way of expressing himself that isn’t a million light years away from Solo’s lines in the movie.

At one stage, Lucas was considering a black actor for the role of Solo. This idea probably evolved into the character of Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back.

But also to be taken into consideration was Lucas’s unique concept of ensemble casting. Lucas had decided on Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher as one trio. But if any of them had been unable to take part in the film, Lucas had a reserve team waiting in the wings to step in. It was all of one group or all of the other – no mixing and matching. Lucas’s second group was Christopher Walken, Will Selzer and singer Terri Nunn, who would later front the band Berlin.

In some documenting of the Star Wars casting story, it has been reported (admittedly by me, as well, in earlier editions of this book) that Nunn was a former Penthouse Pet. However, given that she was 15 when she auditioned for Star Wars, this seems unlikely on two counts. Firstly, it would have been illegal for Nunn to have modelled for Penthouse before the Star Wars casting and secondly, it seems pretty unlikely that Lucas would have auditioned a nude model for a pivotal role in his wholesome family film. While some sources assert that Nunn did appear in Penthouse for February 1977 under the name of Betsy Harris, I had been unable to find any confirmation of this at the time this book was published. Indeed, Terri Nunn herself had denied it many times. In an interview with the online Exclusive Magazine, Nunn was asked about the rumour of her Penthouse appearance and replied, ‘No, that one’s not true! I don’t know who that is, but that wouldn’t even be legal. But, I have heard about this before. I haven’t seen her, but people need to think about the age. It’s a good story, but it’s not me, sorry!’ And even if it were true, the date of the photoshoot would have been long after the Star Wars auditions.

Is this Terri Nunn on the cover of the Feb 1977 issue of Penthouse?

Then, in 2011, Nunn claimed in an interview with radio DJ John Aberley on his interview show "Life Unedited" on Pennsylvania station WCHE that she really was the model Betsy Drake in that issue of Penthouse magazine. "It was me. Yeah, it was me. It was very hush-hush at the time, because, honestly, it was kinda illegal. I was sixteen. I met the guy at a party and he offered the idea, and I was, like, 'Yeah, I wanna do that, you know.' I was trying to be sexy and I didn't feel very sexy. I was in my teen years. And he shot that when I was, let's see, sixteen … and I was seventeen when it came out. About eight months later. So I still wasn't eighteen when it came out."

Above: "Betsy Drake" in Penthouse. Below: 1980's publicity pic
of Terri Nunn. Are they the same person? I really couldn't say.
How about you?

In any event, George Lucas decided to go with the ensemble of Mark Hammill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. ‘For me, at least,’ said Ford about the casting of his trio, ‘it was obvious what the relationship would be, simply by looking at the others. It was apparent the characters were very contemporary and the situation very simple – without meaning that in a derogatory way. It was simply straightforward, a clear human story. I mean, I didn’t have to act science fiction.’

George Lucas had worked out backgrounds for all his characters. Solo had been abandoned by space gypsies at a very early age and was raised by creatures called Wookiees until he was twelve. He eventually became a cadet at the Space Academy, but was thrown out for selling exam papers to his peers. Eventually he became a smuggler, living outside the laws of the Empire. Yet at the same time, Lucas knew that his actors could add the little touches that would bring the characters to life on the screen.

‘Very little time was wasted,’ said Ford in the Lucas biography, Skywalking. ‘George didn’t have an authoritarian attitude like so many directors: “Kid, I’ve been in this business twenty-five years. Trust me.” He was different. He knew the movie was based so strongly on the relationship between the three of us, he encouraged our contributions.’

It’s the little contributions Ford makes to the characters he’s playing that makes him such an interesting actor. Which shows that Lucas’s shrewdness won out over his own ‘all new faces’ rule for Star Wars. Ford goes on to explain how he went about filling in the spaces in Solo’s personality.

‘George Lucas gave me a lot of freedom to change little parts of the dialogue which weren’t comfortable.’ Ford is being charitable here. In Skywalking it said that Ford’s favourite way of pulling Lucas’s leg during filming was to say, ‘You can type this shit, George, but you sure can’t say it.’

‘We worked together on it,’ continues Ford. ‘I really like working with him.’

The part of Han Solo was the biggest chance of Ford’s career to show what he could do as an actor. ‘This was the first time I had a character big enough to take space instead of just filling in spaces as I did at Columbia and Universal. I could do that for the first time.’

Ford had worked with big name, heavyweight actors before, but never with such a ‘legend’ as Sir Alec Guinness. Most of the cast were in awe of Sir Alec and Ford was no exception.

‘He gave me many sleepless nights. I’d be thinking, “I’m supposed to be in a movie with Sir Alec Guinness. He’ll laugh at me just once ... and I’ll pack up and go home.” But, of course, he never did. He’s really a very kind and generous person.’

When questioned by Ritz magazine whether Ford was using the title ‘Sir Alec’ out of respect or because Guinness insisted on it, he replied with his customary tact, ‘Let’s just say he prefers it.’

THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MOVIES

When Star Wars opened in the United States on May 25th, 1977, it garnered rave reviews and within months had become the most successful movie of all time. Several critics likened Ford’s performance in the Han Solo role to John Wayne’s style of acting. This was news to Ford, never a movie fan himself.

‘I never thought about that,’ said Ford, ‘until I kept seeing it mentioned in the reviews.’ Besides, Ford was well aware that it would be impossible to get away with imitating other actors for very long.

‘If I end up acting like John Wayne, and I know I’m acting like John Wayne, then I’m in heaps of trouble. But if I don’t realise I’m acting like John Wayne, and I am, then that is simply part of my subconscious supplying something that is necessary for the role. I was never aware of doing a routine. Acting is so intensely personal that if you’re not operating – totally – within your own resources, there comes a moment when you’ll be stuck, you won’t know who to imitate. Much better to use only your own personality and resources as a tool and keep them both sharp and well-oiled.’ 

Probably Ford’s finest moment in Star Wars is when he is in the prison block of the Death Star trying to rescue the Princess. Both Solo and Luke are disguised in Imperial Storm Trooper costumes, with Chewbacca posing as their prisoner. The three dispatch the prison guards – noisily – and draw the attention of the officer in charge of the detention area. The officer calls the prison block on the intercom and demands to know what is happening. It’s left to Solo to try to convince the unseen Imperial officer that all is well. Realising that his reassurances are falling on deaf ears, Solo fires his blaster into the control panel to cut off the irritating stream of questions. Solo’s sense of desperation is portrayed with nervous realism and, more importantly, with humour. The scene was played that way after careful consideration by Ford, ‘and done in one take. I never learned the dialogue for it because I wanted to show desperation. I told George Lucas I wanted to do it all the way through first time. I just said, “Stop me if I’m really bad.” He didn’t.’

One side effect of the success of Star Wars was that it conferred instant celebrity on the three principle players. For an actor who values his privacy, that could have been a problem for Harrison Ford. ‘Fortunately, I don’t have as unique a physiognomy as Carrie or Mark do, so I’m much less recognised in the streets – about which I’m very happy. That could get heavy. It happens infrequently enough, and people are usually very nice, because the film is very broadly accepted – so that’s a pleasure. But when they know where we’re going to be, and they’re sitting outside the hotel – all these autograph people – sometimes that’s a drag. But none of that really bothers me.’

Harrison Ford's portrayal of Han Solo became one of the
great cultural icons of the late 1970s.

Compounding the fame achieved by Ford through his appearance in Star Wars was all the merchandising that trailed in the wake of the movie. Suddenly, the toy shops were full of plastic Han Solo figures, jigsaws bearing Ford’s features and assorted paraphernalia. And, in addition to the toys, there was the fact that just about every magazine published was finding excuses to report on the Star Wars phenomenon. There were novelisations of the film, comic strip adaptations by juvenile publishing giant Marvel Comics and a series of novels, unrelated to the film, starring Han Solo and his Wookiee friend Chewbacca. There have been three Han Solo novels by Brian Daley published by Sphere Books; Han Solo at Stars’ End, Han Solo and the Lost Legacy and Han Solo’s Revenge, and three by A.C. Crispin published by Bantam; The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit and Rebel Dawn.

The other major change in Ford’s life brought about by the success of Star Wars was the financial one.

‘I believe in the work ethic,’ said Ford. ‘That was the middle class way I was brought up. When I was offered Han Solo, I was paid less for that than when I was a carpenter.’ 

That was so while he was actually working on the film. But Ford, like Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, later received a percentage of the film’s profits. Two thirds of a percent may not sound like much, but that fraction of a point totted up a healthy $53,000 for Ford in the first three months that Star Wars was on release. And with Star Wars having taken a staggering $798 million worldwide to date, making it one of the highest grossing movies of all time, Ford has done quite nicely out of Lucas’ little science fiction film.

‘Not that money means very much in my life. But suddenly having it made it possible to move into a large house in the Hollywood Hills and equip a large workshop on the premises where I now spend all my spare time making furniture. I don’t think success has changed me. Sure, I live in a big house. But I still manage to be a pretty private sort of a guy. My greatest pleasure is my work and the nearest thing I’ve got to a hobby is my carpentry. I don’t go to parties and I’m not involved in the Hollywood scene. Who knows, maybe if I had socialised a bit more, success would have come much sooner, because in Hollywood, to succeed, you have to know the right people. By some irony, all the right people – like George Lucas and Francis Coppola – all knew me, and I didn’t even have to hustle for their attention.’

And in the months that followed, while Ford was waiting for work to begin on the Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, he didn’t have to hustle for the attention of other filmmakers, either. In fact, Ford was the busiest of the Star Wars stars during that period.

‘That could be because I made an effort to take advantage of the film offers that being in Star Wars gave me,’ he later said. ‘I think people in this industry realise that I’ve played, and am capable of playing, these different types of characters. I was able to do small parts once in a while due to the popularity of Star Wars. I’ve been really lucky to have Star Wars as a part of my life.’

Chapter 2, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Breaking In

WHO WAS THAT MASKED CASTING DIRECTOR?

The enormous success of American Graffiti didn’t change Harrison Ford’s life overnight. Where actors were singled out for praise, it was always the principals, Richard Dreyfuss and Ronny Howard, who got the credit. Lucas, too, was suddenly a star. But for Ford, it was back to carpentry and the infrequent tv appearances.

Ford took a role in the cult tv show Kung Fu, appearing as a character called ‘Harrison’ in the episode ‘Crossties’ (season 2, 1974), a story about angry farmers battling the railroad company that wants to snatch their land.

It was Fred Roos, again, who was responsible for getting Harrison Ford his next two roles. Francis Coppola was putting together another project, the highly praised The Conversation. Naturally he hired Fred Roos to cast the movie. And, inevitably, Roos turned once again to Harrison Ford for one of the smaller, but hardly less vital, parts in the picture.

‘I still did the odd carpentry job after American Graffiti,’ recalls Ford. ‘But before too long there was Coppola’s film, The Conversation, which I did with Hackman. I turned up playing an evil young henchman (who works for Robert Duvall’s Director character) in that movie. There was no role there until I decided to make him a homosexual.’

In an effort to make something more of his role than just another walk-on, Ford had bought a loud green silk suit for the then huge sum of $900. At the script read-through, Coppola was astonished at Ford’s outfit. ‘What are you?’ he asked unkindly. Ford explained his idea for the character. In 1974 gay characters would have been a risk, but Coppola was nothing if not a gambler. ‘Hey, that’s really good,’ he told Ford and instructed production designer Dean Tavoularis to create a room for the character, by now named Martin Stett, that underlined his lifestyle.

Harrison Ford with Gene Hackman in The Conversation

Again an important director had listened to and agreed with Ford’s ideas.

The Conversation tells the story of surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who records a conversation between a young couple as they walk through San Francisco. When Harry plays the tape back in his workshop, he notices a sentence in the conversation which suggests the couple are in some kind of danger. He takes the tape to the Director (Robert Duvall) of the large corporation that hired him, but on an impulse refuses to hand the tapes over to the Director’s assistant, Martin Stett (Harrison Ford). Later, while visiting a surveillance equipment exhibition, Harry runs into Stett again. The young man tries to put pressure on Harry to hand over the tapes. Harry refuses. At the same exhibition, he meets and befriends another investigator, Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield). They have a few drinks together and return to Harry’s workshop for a party. Also at the party is a call-girl, Meredith (Elizabeth MacRae) with whom Harry spends some time. But when he wakes up, Harry finds that the tapes of the conversation have been stolen. He tries to contact the Director but fails. Fearing that a murder is about to be committed, he takes a room next to the one in which the young couple have arranged to meet. He breaks into the couple’s room and is horrified to find that a murder has been committed. The Director has been killed, apparently by the couple that Harry thought were in danger. Back at his apartment, Harry is warned to keep what he knows to himself as he, too, is under surveillance. Harry searches his own apartment thoroughly for the listening device but finds nothing.

Harrison Ford plays the slightly sinister Martin Stett in The Conversation.

The Conversation received much praise from the critics. Monthly Film Bulletin’s David Wilson said, ‘The Conversation is an unqualified success, a complex, reverberating study of a man trapped by guilt ... It is a measure of that success ... that the comparison which most obviously suggests itself, Blow-Up, leaves Antonioni’s film looking empty and inert.’

Variety said, ‘A major artistic asset to the film – besides script, direction and the top performances – is supervising editor Walter Murch’s sound collage and re-recording. Voices come in and out of aural focus in a superb tease.’

Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, ‘The members of the supporting cast are almost as good as Mr Hackman, particularly Allen Garfield as a surveillance expert from Detroit who bugged his first phone at the age of 12 and then went on to become famous in the trade as the man who told Chrysler that Cadillac was getting rid of its fins.’

But good though Ford’s performance in The Conversation might have been, again he went unnoticed by the critics. The one big success still eluded him.

BACK TO TELEVISION

A few months after the release of The Conversation, Ford turned up in an episode of the legal drama show Petrocelli, ‘The Edge of Evil (season 1, 1974), playing Tom Brannigan. It was to be Ford’s last appearance in episodic television.

Ford next had a walk-on part in the tv movie Judgement: The Trial of Lt Calley, a courtroom drama set in the wake of a Vietnam atrocity, directed by Stanley Kramer and based on a true incident (‘I played the witness who cries,’ said Ford), and a more substantial role as the eldest son of Sarah Miles’s Jennifer Blackwood in the lavish tv production of Dynasty.

Dynasty is a sprawling tale of the fortunes of the Blackwood family and their migration to Westmore, Ohio in 1823. John Blackwood (Harris Yulin), the head of the family is a man of unbending principles whose dearest ambition it is to farm the 100 acre piece of land he has acquired. His wife, Jennifer (Sarah Miles) and his brother Matt (Stacy Keach) both feel there is more money to be made in the carriage business. Eventually, Jennifer leaves John for Matt after being accused of infidelity by her husband. But the relationship doesn’t work out and Jennifer returns to John. Realising the depth of her husband’s hatred for her she endeavours to build the Blackwood carriage business into an empire. Matt returns to Westmore and tries to convince John to sell the farmland to the railroad for a huge profit. Though John refuses, Jennifer’s youngest son, Carver (Gerrit Graham) conspires with Matt to kill John and sell the land. After John’s death, Jennifer, unaware of the conspiracy, passes over her eldest son, Mark (Harrison Ford) and appoints Matt to run the Blackwood business.

Variety complained that Dynasty’s ‘last half hour concentrates too much on Miles’s ungrateful grown-up offspring’ and that it ‘really encompassed too wide a time span to be handled properly in a two-hour movie.’ Ford had the pretty thankless role of the ‘nice son’ so didn’t have the material at hand an actor needs to stand out in a cast. Unsurprisingly, Ford’s contributions passed unmarked by contemporary critics, and looking at the film today I can see why they might have been unenthusiastic. Ford’s acting is earnest but unshowy. I don’t think Ford was bad in the role, but that his style was simply ahead of its time.

So Harrison Ford was still an acting carpenter.