Star Wars Holiday Special

• 1. Introduction

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  The Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS on the 17th of November, 1978, and was never officially broadcast again. Not once. In the decades since, it became something that fans whispered about, traded on bootleg tapes, and uploaded to the corners of the internet, because the studio that owned it seemed to want it buried. What could possibly be in a two-hour television special built around the most successful film of its era that would make its own creators want to forget it existed? The answer involves a four-armed alien cooking instructor, a virtual reality fantasy sequence for a Wookiee named Itchy, and the debut of a bounty hunter who would become one of the most beloved characters in the entire franchise. This is the story of the most infamous piece of Star Wars history never meant to be remembered.

• 2. How It Got Made

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  George Lucas had imagined, while outlining the original Star Wars, a film set entirely among Wookiees, with no other characters. After the first film's enormous success, the cast began making television appearances, and CBS approached Charles Lippincott, who was head of marketing for the Star Wars Corporation, about producing a television special. According to producer J.W. Rinzler, everyone at Lucasfilm agreed the idea was sound.

  Lucas was busy relocating his production company at the time and had limited involvement. Producer Gary Kurtz later recalled that early script meetings showed genuine promise, but pressures from promoting the original film and developing the next one left Lucasfilm with almost no bandwidth. The production was largely handed off to the television studio, with Lucasfilm supplying props, actors, and access. Kurtz described it plainly: they just let the TV people do it.

  The special was written by variety show veterans, including writer Bruce Vilanch, who was uneasy about the decision to build the narrative around a species that speaks only in grunts, without subtitles. Lucas refused to change this. The project went through two directors. The first, David Acomba, was a classmate of Lucas from USC film school but had no experience with multi-camera television setups. Acomba clashed with producers and departed after completing only a handful of scenes, including the cantina sequence and the Jefferson Starship performance. He was replaced by Steve Binder, who received little guidance from Lucasfilm beyond a document called the "Wookiee bible" describing how the species should look and behave. Stan Winston was hired to design the Wookiee family costumes, and Malla's mask was built from a Chewbacca mask used in the original film.

• 3. Life Day on Kashyyyk

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  The plot of the special centers on Chewbacca trying to reach his family on the Wookiee home planet of Kashyyyk in time for Life Day, a holiday unique to the special. Han Solo accompanies him, and the two are pursued by Imperial Star Destroyers before slipping into hyperspace. Meanwhile, three members of Chewbacca's family are introduced for the first time: his father Itchy, played by Paul Gale; his wife Malla, played by Mickey Morton; and his son Lumpy, played by Patty Maloney.

  Malla contacts Luke Skywalker, Art Carney as a local trader named Saun Dann, and watches a cooking demonstration by Chef Gormaanda, a four-armed alien played by Harvey Korman in a parody of Julia Child. The Imperial garrison arrives and searches the Wookiee family's home, forcing everyone to stall for time. Lumpy devises a plan to fake a voice command ordering the stormtroopers back to their base, using a translation device and a recording. When one trooper discovers the ruse, Han and Chewbacca arrive just in time, and Han eliminates the threat by tricking the trooper into falling over a railing.

  The special closes with the family traveling to a festival at the Tree of Life, where they appear in space wearing red robes and carrying glowing orbs. Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, delivers a short speech and sings a Life Day song set to the melody of the Star Wars main title by John Williams. The names of Chewbacca's family were later explained in the expanded universe as nicknames; their full names are Mallatobuck, Attichitcuk, and Lumpawarrump.

• 4. Boba Fett's Debut

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  Tucked inside the special, presented as an in-universe cartoon that young Lumpy watches on a viewscreen, is an animated segment titled "The Faithful Wookiee." It was produced by Toronto-based Nelvana Ltd. and written by Lucas himself. Nelvana would later produce the Droids and Ewoks Saturday-morning series for ABC in 1985, but this cartoon was their first Star Wars work.

  Lucas requested that the visual style draw inspiration from the French artist Moebius. The main cast provided their voices. The story finds Han and Chewbacca stranded on a water moon called Panna, where they encounter a mysterious bounty hunter who at first appears to be helping the Rebels before being exposed as an agent of Darth Vader.

  That bounty hunter was Boba Fett, making his very first appearance in any Star Wars medium. His visual design was derived from footage of the unpainted costume being developed for The Empire Strikes Back. According to Nelvana co-founder Clive Smith, a suggestion from the animation team to "scuff up his costume a little bit" actually influenced the look of Fett's live-action appearance in the films. The final costume had already made a public parade appearance two months before the special aired. Fett was voiced in the cartoon by Don Francks.

  As of April 2021, the cartoon is available on Disney+ under the title The Story of the Faithful Wookiee, making it the only portion of the special to receive an official release on any platform.

• 5. Songs, Comedy, and Variety Acts

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  The special's original music was composed by Ken and Mitzie Welch, while Ian Fraser adapted John Williams' orchestral themes from the film. The program features four original songs woven through its runtime.

  Diahann Carroll performs a number called "This Minute Now" as a holographic fantasy figure created by a virtual reality device given to Itchy as a Life Day gift. Jefferson Starship performs "Light the Sky on Fire" as a 3D music video watched by an Imperial guard. The clip was Marty Balin's final appearance with the band; he had departed in October 1978, just a month before the broadcast, and the song was later included as a bonus 45 rpm single in the Jefferson Starship greatest hits collection Gold. Bea Arthur plays Ackmena, the proprietor of the Mos Eisley cantina, and sings a closing-time farewell song called "Good Night, But Not Goodbye," set to the Cantina Band theme. The cantina aliens from the original film reappear, including the band Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes.

  Harvey Korman appears in three separate roles throughout the special: as Chef Gormaanda, as a malfunctioning android named Dromboid presenting an instruction video that Lumpy watches, and as a love-struck alien named Krelman at the cantina bar, whose affliction is drinking through a hole in the top of his head. Art Carney's role as Saun Dann is more central to the plot; at one point his character's slow-paced theatrical style mirrors Ed Norton, his character from The Honeymooners, as an Imperial officer impatiently orders him to hurry up.

  The special also features a circus-style acrobatics routine with uneven bars and juggling, performed by several credited performers including The Wazzan Troupe and The Mum Brothers.

• 6. Reception and Suppression

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  The broadcast aired on Friday the 17th of November, 1978, from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm Eastern Standard Time on CBS, pre-empting regular episodes of Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk. Critics and audiences reacted immediately and harshly. A November 1978 Associated Press review by Jerry Buck called the program "bubble gum for the brain." David Hofstede, author of What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, ranked it first on his list, calling it "the worst two hours of television ever."

  On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the special holds a 25% approval rating based on 16 reviews. Nathan Rabin, writing for The A.V. Club, wrote that he was "not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine."

  The special has never been rebroadcast in the United States and has never been officially released on home video in its entirety. In 2005, Lucas gave a May interview in which he described the special as something Lucasfilm largely handed over to television professionals, saying the decision to let them use the characters "probably wasn't the smartest thing to do."

  Carrie Fisher reportedly negotiated a copy of the special from Lucas as a condition of recording commentary for the Star Wars trilogy box set, saying she wanted it so she would "have something for parties... when she wanted everyone to leave." Harrison Ford, appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2006, initially declined to acknowledge the special's existence at all. Mark Hamill admitted in 2018 that he had never seen the entire thing. Anthony Daniels, in his 2019 autobiography, called it a "turd."

  Despite Lucasfilm's studied silence, the special was broadcast in Canada on CTV the same night as the CBS airing. It reached Australia, New Zealand, France (in a shortened 72-minute French-dubbed version on the 1st of January, 1980, on TF1), Sweden (as Stjärnornas krig - och fred on SVT on the 31st of May, 1979), Ireland (on RTÉ 2 on the 27th of December, 1979), Honduras, and Brazil, where it aired on Christmas Day, 1981.

• 7. Cult Status and Legacy

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  In 2008, an online poll at the Paley Center for Media asked viewers to choose a Christmas special for a screening. The Star Wars Holiday Special won with 59% of the vote, beating A Charlie Brown Christmas at 34.6% and How the Grinch Stole Christmas at 31.3%. Its reputation had transformed from an embarrassment into a perverse badge of honor.

  Bootleg recordings of the original CBS broadcast circulated among fans for years before spreading online. The special's underground quality became part of its identity. In the 2006 music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's "White and Nerdy," the main character buys a bootleg copy of the special; the scene is staged as a drug deal, a direct nod to its shadowy reputation. The RiffTrax comedy group, formed by Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, and Michael J. Nelson, released a parody commentary track in 2007.

  Lucasfilm placed the special within Star Wars continuity from 1978 to 2014, assigning its elements to a secondary tier of canon. Leland Chee, who maintained Lucasfilm's internal continuity database called "the Holocron," confirmed in 2007 that the database contained at least 28 entries related to the special. Director J. J. Abrams confirmed in a 2015 interview that the special remained "definitely canon" following Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm. Life Day was mentioned in "Chapter 1: The Mandalorian," the first episode of The Mandalorian in 2019.

  The special also marked a genuine first: because James Earl Jones had been uncredited in the original Star Wars, the Holiday Special was the first production to officially credit him as the voice of Darth Vader. A documentary about the making of the special, titled A Disturbance in the Force and directed by Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak, was announced on the 17th of November, 2020, the special's 42nd anniversary.