How A Richard Pryor Skit Became A Companion Piece To The Star Wars Holiday Special
There's random, and then there is stumbling across Richard Pryor bartending in the "Star Wars" universe. If you spend enough time searching "Star Wars" on YouTube, that's exactly what you'll uncover. Unfortunately, we only get a brief glimpse of the colorful Mos Eisley Cantina in "Star Wars: A New Hope," because once Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi affirm that "you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy," they meet up with Han Solo and get down to business in a dark corner of the tavern.
However, we have Richard Pryor to thank for imagining what it might be like if we had stuck around a while at the Mos Eisley Cantina. A long-forgotten skit on the short-lived NBC variety show dubbed "The Richard Pryor Show" hilariously imagines life as an employee at the "Star Wars Bar."
The sketch is classic Pryor, where he vigorously argues with barflies about the efficacy of wooden bats vs. laser bats in baseball and gets into conflicts with other bar patrons, which happen to be actual "Star Wars" characters. How in the name of a galaxy far, far away did this come together? For the answer, we can look to another infamous TV program, "The Star Wars Holiday Special."
The sketch used actual 'Star Wars' costumes
"The Richard Pryor Show" debuted on September 13, 1977, a mere months after the debut of "Star Wars: A New Hope." As Ultimate Classic Rock notes, the one-shot sketch show used a previous sketch special as a template, CBS's "Lily" starring Lily Tomlin, where Pryor won an Emmy as part of the writing staff. As expected with Pryor, "The Richard Pryor Show" was groundbreaking and pushed the envelope, which is likely why it only lasted four episodes.
The very first thing audiences saw in the first of those four episodes was the "Star Wars Bar" sketch. Nearly all of the scum and villainy from the movie are represented, including Greedo, Momaw Nadon, Muftak, Arleil Schous, M'iiyoom Onith, and Chachi De Maal. All of it was approved by the "Star Wars" overlords, with the costumes coming straight from the movie's wardrobe department.
Publicist Charles Lippincott was in charge of promotion for "Star Wars: A New Hope" and was looking for creative ways to reach new audiences. Allowing "The Richard Pryor Show" to use actual characters from the movie was one of several ways Lippincott planned to introduce "Star Wars" to television viewers. In 2015 Lippincott took to social media, explaining:
"These [TV shows] and their selection was not an accident. I made a conscious decision to reach different audiences with these different vehicles."
A year later, the horrifying "The Star Wars Holiday Special" aired on CBS, yet again exposing TV audiences to the movie, albeit in a brutal fashion. But that might not have even been the strangest promotion of all. Everything in "Star Wars" must come in threes, right? So it's not surprising that in addition to the comical sketch on "The Richard Pryor Show" and the downright bizarre "The Star Wars Holiday Special" there exists one more property. As Yoda would later say to Obi-Wan, "There is another."
There is a trilogy of this odd promotional madness
The release of "Star Wars: A New Hope" in the spring of 1977 was a massive success, helping redefine the movie industry's blockbuster formula. But by the fall of that year, Charles Lippincott was looking for ways to drive more people to the theater to see the film (eventually to the tune of $300 million worldwide for its first run). Lippincott created a multi-prong television campaign to coincide with the release of the documentary "The Making of Star Wars."
On the September 23, 1977, episode of the "Donny & Marie" variety show starring Donny and Marie Osmond, Lippincott's third promotional vehicle would be revealed, via classic "Star Wars" opening crawl.
The tribute to "Star Wars" saw Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO joining Donny as Luke Skywalker, Marie as Princess Leia, Redd Foxx as the weirdly-named "Obi Ben Oki Fa Noki" and Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo. The musical comedy stage numbers also included dancing Stormtroopers and jokes from Darth Vader. It's the kind of thing that makes you think you might have accidentally taken a different kind of gummy instead of your daily multivitamin.
And oh, how I wish this was all "Star Wars" canon. "The Star Wars Holiday Special" kind of already is, but I won't hold my breath for Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx to be accepted into the galaxy any time soon. To do so means you're accepting all other promotional content, which frankly would blow the collective mind of the "Star Wars" universe.
For now, Lippincott's television campaign will have to exist in the outer rim as just another strange promotion in a long line of strange "Star Wars" marketing ploys.