STAR WARS INSIDER / 51FINDING YOUR FETTpart of the test, ILM had rigged up
a wrist-mounted fl amethrower, but
it was scrapped after Dunham’s arm
caught fi re. Lucas, now knowing
the fi nal use for the costume,
asked Johnston to give it a more
weathered appearance instead of
its gleaming white look. “When it
became a bounty hunter instead of
a super trooper, we could basically
do anything we wanted,” said
Johnston. “George said I could
be as colorful as I wanted with
it. He wanted it to stand out, not
looking like anything we had seen
before.” Johnston added dents
and weathering as well as the now
iconic dark green, red, and yellow
colors. During the screen test, Lucas
suggested the addition of one fi nal
extra element—a cape, inspired by
the poncho worn by Clint Eastwood
in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns.
Meanwhile, Johnston completed
painting two more helmets,
and with the help of Daydream
Productions a total of six costumes
were turned from white super
troopers into the battered armor of
Boba Fett by the end of the year.
Boba Begins
On September 24, 1978, Boba Fett
made his fi rst public appearance
at the San Anselmo Country Fair
parade. Dunham—who once again
donned the costume, this time
at the request of producer Gary
Kurtz—recalled: “We didn’t even
know how to spell his name at
the time. I was signing autographs
sometimes with a single ‘t’ and
sometimes with a double ‘t’.” He
went on to recount how the 94
degree heat (which caused the Darth
Vader costume wearer to collapse),
“was unbelievably uncomfortable...
Sweat was coming out of my shoes.”
Elsewhere, Fett made his fi rst
screen appearance as a mysterious
bounty hunter in The Story of The
Faithful Wookiee, an animated
segment of the Star Wars Holiday
Special, which aired on November
17, 1978 on CBS. The segment,
made by Toronto animation studio
Nelvana Ltd, saw Boba Fett (voiced
by Don Francks) cross paths with
our heroes on the moon of Panna.
Fifteen animators worked for two
months to complete the segment,and animator John Celestri, who
took the lead on depicting the
bounty hunter, later recalled, “Lucas
had requested that Nelvana design
the show in the style of French artist
Jean Moebius Giraud. So, for Boba
Fett specifi cally, we had Moebius’s
designs, along with a black-and-
white home movie of the prototype
Fett armor, to work from—and that
was it!”
But it wasn’t just the bounty
hunter’s striking armor that would
win him a legion of fans—he also
happened to pilot an extremely
cool ship, thanks to assistant art
director and concept artist Nilo
Rodis-Jamero, who developedFILLING
FETT’S
BOOTS
While Jeremy Bulloch
and Daniel Logan are the
two actors most famously
associated with the role of
Boba Fett, the character has
been portrayed by a fair few
other performers.
Bulloch returned to the
role for the Jabba’s Palace
scenes in Return of the
Jedi, but during fi lming of
the sail barge sequence on
location in Buttercup Valley,
California, Fett was played
by stuntmen Dickey Beer
and Glenn Randall, Jr. In
some of the skiff close-up
shots fi lmed later, it was Bob
Yerkes inside the armor. For
the Special Editions of the
original trilogy, Mark Austin
played the bounty hunter in
Docking Bay 94 for A New
Hope, while Don Bies wore
the helmet for additional
shots in Jabba’s Palace in
Return of the Jedi.
Daniel Logan provided
Fett’s voice in episodes of
The Clone Wars animated
series, following on from his
starring role as the young
Boba in Star Wars: Attack
of the Clones (2002), and
for the 2004 DVD releases
of the original trilogy, Fett’s
dialogue was re-recorded by
Temuera Morrison (the actor
who played Jango Fett in
Attack of the Clones), so that
his lines matched the voice
of his clone progenitor.04 0605