McKenna’s Gold at ARTE: Before Star Wars 8, George Lucas Was on the Set of a Western and Here’s What He Filmed

A film student at the University of Southern California, George Lucas was 23 years old when his film Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB won him a scholarship to go on the set of MacKenna’s Gold, a western shot in Arizona.

He is to shoot a short documentary film there. He is not alone as three other students have been invited to do the same. $150 a week and equipment provided, Lucas is cautious. In Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas By Dale Pollock, he states:

I thought it all looked like a ploy by them to get cheap behind the scenes documentaries and that they were doing it under the guise of this grant. I wasn’t going to give them a promotional film that would allow them to promote the film.

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And indeed, Lucas is not at all going to film what we would call today. McKenna’s gold is a western directed by British director Jack Lee Thompson (The Gun of Navarone), as was the norm in the US in 1967, with a cast of talented but aging stars.

Thus we find Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, but also Lee J. Cobb, Burgess Meredith, Edward G. Robinson and Eli Wallach. Only actresses Camilla Sparv and Julie Newmar bring back a little youth.

Lucas does not really feel consistent with this shoot in Hollywood, which does not speak to him much, and signs a student film about the Arizona desert and distant pictures on the set of McKenna’s Gold. Titled 6-18-67, or “June 18, 67,” it instead shows the atmosphere of the desert as he experiences it, disturbed by human presence but also impressively peaceful.

Of course, young George Lucas still doesn’t know that ten years from now he’ll be releasing Star Wars and joining Steven Spielberg in burying old and new Hollywood and replacing them with the blockbuster era of the 1980s, pure entertainment films above. All in order to make money and if the feature film promotes it, to sell toys and related products.