As a sounding board for George Lucas, the chosen editor of Martin Scorsese between ’74 and ’77 and Oscar nominated for her work on American Graffiti, Marcia Lucas was a big deal in the industry well before her work on Star Wars propelled her and many of the cast and crew who worked on it to another level entirely.
Writing at SFGate, Gregory Wakeman looks at her incredible career, the positive influcence she had on Lucas – as Mark Hamill said “She was really the warmth and the heart of those films, a good person he could talk to, bounce ideas off of, who would tell him when he was wrong” – and how her contributions have largely been overlooked.
George had initially decided that he should hire someone else to edit “Star Wars” so that his wife could escape his rather large shadow, which had started to obscure her own career. But then George asked her to replace John Jympson in the position, and she turned the film into a much more emotional and exciting adventure.
Marcia’s assistance on the sci-fi epic wasn’t just confined to the editing bay. As he worked on the script for the film, she was the one who suggested that Alec Guinness’ Obi-Wan Kenobi should die at the hands of Darth Vader. Throughout the writing process, Marcia was George’s sounding board, questioning him when certain sections didn’t make sense or sounded too corny, while also giving him the necessary encouragement.
Her crowning moment being when she reassembled the final action sequence in the Death Star trench. Thanks to her ingenious assembly, it managed to build in tension and then deliver a satisfying and rousing conclusion that undoubtedly contributed massively to the film’s popularity.
After the release of “Star Wars”and “New York, New York” in 1977, though, Marcia nearly stopped working as an editor. She did uncredited edits on “More American Graffiti” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” and officially edited “Return Of The Jedi” alongside Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham, while also constantly making suggestions for Lucas’ other projects.
Most notably, after watching an early screening of “Raiders Of The Lost Ark,” Marcia turned to her husband and director Steven Spielberg and told them “there was no emotional resolution” to the ending because Jones’s love interest Marion Ravenwood just disappeared. Spielberg instantly agreed, and shot an additional scene in San Francisco that showed Ravenwood waiting for Jones outside a building mocked up to look like it was in Washington, D.C.
But as George’s focus fixated on the ever expanding “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” series, as well as building Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm, and Skywalker Ranch, their marriage started to struggle. By the middle of 1982, Marcia had asked George for a divorce, which was finally announced in June, 1983.
![American Graffiti / More American Graffitti (Drive-In Double Feature) [DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51V319BRNHL._SL160_.jpg)
- Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams (Actors)
- Bill L. Norton (Director) - Bill L. Norton (Writer) - Howard Kazanjian (Producer)
- French, Spanish (Subtitles)
- Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
