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So How Many Darth Vaders Were There In Star Wars: A New Hope Anyway?

I love listening/watching to Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcasts which he uses to interview other comedians on stage for a good long time, full of emergency questions, meanderings, digressions, revealing his own foibles, obsessions and life story along the way.

I thought this might be an opportunity to a) get him a few more viewers/listeners and b) get some of you to subscribe to the monthly badges that pay for the damn things (I've just upped mine to a monthly Platinum).

Because I was talking about it to all the cool comic book creators in the pub the other week (they call it RHLSTP) and realised that a number of revelations along the way never made it out to the general public.

Such as… how many Darth Vaders were there?

Much has been made of Darth Vader original actor David Prowse, the giant figure known more in Britain for playing the Green Cross Code Man in a series of public awareness films in the seventies and eighties. Prowse was dubbed by James Earl Jones in the movies, something Prowse has never been happy about, but there was a more serious falling out somewhere along the line on George Lucas' part, after Prowse was accused of spoiling the father/son twist in Empire Strikes Back, but this seems to mystify Prowse and he found himself cut out from what he calls the Star Wars family and after further statements from Prowse, found himself banned from official Star Wars events from 2010  after he appeared in the documentary The People vs George Lucas, despite saying he didn't know what the interview was to be used for. He was not asked to reprise his role in Rogue One, and did not know Darth Vader appeared in the film until he was told by a Radio Times journalist.

But, although James Earl Jones dubbed his voice, Sebastian Shaw played his helmet-less version, no one seems to have disputed that Prowse physically played Darth Vader in the first three movies.

Until I was listening again to Peter Serafinowicz on RHLSTP, talking about his work with George Lucas as the voice of Darth Maul. As well has getting to go to Star Wars: Phantom Menace premiere in New York – but only by way of buying his own tickets to the show, and fly himself (and his friends) over himself and then have to watch… The Phantom Menace.

But the thing that stuck out for me was something I hadn't heard elsewhere. With Peter telling Richard what George Lucas had told him – that Dave Prowse was only one of a number of Darth Vaders on the set of the show. Listen to it here at around 20:40.

Peter does his best George Lucas voice saying "Dave Prowse was only in the Darth Vader suit when he was standing and pointing, when he was running or fighting, he was other guys…"

Wikipedia reports that in the lightsaber fight scenes between Vader and Luke Skywalker, Prowse, who wasn't a very skilled swordsman (he kept breaking the poles that stood in for the lightsabers), was replaced by the scene's fight-choreographer, the stuntman and fencing coach Bob Anderson. Prowse felt sidelined by Anderson during the making of Return of the Jedi in particular, and claims that he was only able to persuade director Richard Marquand that he should be the one to throw the Emperor off the balcony after Marquand had tried and failed for a week to film the scene successfully without him.

But Peter's reported claim from George seems much more than that.  Is this more bad feeling making its way out? Or is what actually went down on an Elstree sound stage?

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