Star Wars: This absolute legend of cinema almost played Darth Vader

Darth Vader is finally four in one. If David Prowse slipped into the costume of the legendary Sith Lord in the original trilogy, on the other hand, it was the actor Sebastian Shaw, who was still in costume in the scenes of the lightsaber battle, while Bob Anderson gave his features. The Return of the Jedi sequence where the character finally appears unmasked, defeated by his son and firstly realizes his mistake.

And, of course, it’s also the inimitable and unforgettable voice of James Earl Jones. But before he cast his vote for this symbol for eternity, George Lucas considered him a completely different actor. To be honest, an absolute legend of the 7th art: Orson Welles.

From David Prowse… to Orson Welles

On the set of A New Hope, David Prowse read his lines with his mask on. The result was logically unconvincing because his lines were muffled by this accessory. Therefore, Darth Vader’s lines were re-dubbed in post-production.

Prowse imagined that he would dub his own voice, but the producer had meanwhile returned to Los Angeles after filming, and there was no question of bringing Prowse from England for the job. Very expensive. Not to mention the slight accent of the actor, which did not fit the character.

Orson Welles’ voice was one of the most famous in film and certainly on the radio. Stentor’s voice, deep and serious. Thus, he was Warner Studios’ first choice to voice OOM in THX 1138, but George Lucas insisted on casting someone lesser known, James Wheaton.

So the filmmaker will later consider entrusting the voice of Vader to the legendary actor-director of Citizen Kane. But he came to the same conclusion as he did during his first film, THX 1138: his voice was so well-known that it was too recognizable, and therefore would be a disadvantage for this central character in his saga.

Humility by James Earl Jones

Very humble, James Earl Jones refused to credit the episodes A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back because he felt that his contribution to the films was not significant enough. This will eventually be credited Return of the Jedi.

“Irwin Kershner Gave me K7 with sound David Prowse Doing the Darth Vader thing. It was absolutely terrible. When Giorgi came to give me advice, he said: “I don’t know if we did the right thing or not, let’s see what happens.” Jones said. Naturally, I wanted to do something interesting, more sophisticated, with variations and all that. But George said to me: “No, no! You have to keep your voice in the same tone, because he is not human.”

In a 2009 interview with AFI, the actor revealed a very modest fee for his contribution to film history: barely $7,000 for the first film; Even if, by his own admission, this amount was very important to him at that time. The rest is history.