What Alec Guinness really thought of Star Wars and its fans: "Idiotic" hobbies and "childish banalities"

Alec Guinness in Star Wars

Sir Alec Guinness brought Star Wars gravitas and star power. In return, it garnered him an Oscar nomination, a new generation of fans, and a good deal of money. But the actor-knight would become increasingly curmudgeonly about Star Wars and its fans, deriding autograph collectors for their "idiotic hobby" and saying of the film: "I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned." 

Here, Episode Nothing takes a look at Guinness's troubled relationship with his most successful film.

Mark Hamill before Star Wars: the Hanna-Barbera series Jeannie

Mark Hamill voiced Corey in the
Hanna-Barbera cartoon Jeannie

How the animated series Jeannie introduced children to Mark Hamill

Back in 1977, which Star Wars performer was the best-known?

It would have been quite an easy question for adults to answer, since it would just have involved a toss-up between Peter Cushing and Sir Alec Guinness. But not so for children.

Those Star Wars mini-posters from 1970s Look-In magazines

Star Wars makes the cover of
Look-In on March 11, 1978

The last in our short series of posts about the British weekly magazine Look-In focuses on the mini-posters that adorned many a bedroom wall after the release of Star Wars.

Watch a 1978 TV ad for Look-In ... with free Star Wars transfers

"Star Wars breaks out ... in Look-In this week"

This Friday, I'll be publishing the last (for the time being) in my short series of posts about how Star Wars was featured in the youth magazine Look-In in the UK. I'll be sharing some of the impressive colour posters that the magazine ran in 1977-78.

In the meantime, though, any child of Britain in the 1970s will find it impossible to resist this TV ad I found on YouTube. It's a commercial for the March 11, 1978, edition of Look-In, which featured plenty of Star Wars, including an interview with Harrison Ford. Watch it and be transported back to a time when 10p could buy you enough glossy entertainment to last a week. And don't forget to return to the 21st century for this Friday's post. 

What did Gerry Anderson think of Star Wars? The Thunderbirds creator told Look-In magazine in the 1970s

Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds fame: What did he think of Star Wars?

Gerry Anderson was a huge figure in millions of childhoods from the 1960s onwards, giving us the television series Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Stingray, Space: 1999 and more. He also, unwittingly, cost Star Wars a fair amount of money. 

But what did he think of the film that threatened to replace his series in kids’ affections? Fortunately, a cutting from the British young people’s magazine Look-In lets us know.