Aug. 31, 1981, was a cloudless Monday afternoon, and Marilee Heyer, a 39-year-old Hayward-based illustrator, found her way to her car in the parking lot of an unmarked two-story building near downtown San Rafael. She put the key in the ignition, but before she could coax the car to life, the tears started to come.
“I’ve never cried at the end of a job before — never, not before that and not since,” she tells SFGATE. “But, you know, if there was one worth losing tears over, that was it.”
For Heyer, the job had elicited emotions of elation, uncertainty and being thrust into a once-in-a-lifetime environment with generational talent. It had only started on Aug. 6, a three-week freelance gig for Lucasfilm working on “Return of the Jedi” — the third and final installment in the original “Star Wars” trilogy.
Though some of Marilee Heyer's sketches of the bikini Carrie Fisher wore in "Return of the Jedi" did not make the final cut, other looks for Fisher's Princess Leia signaled a transition for the character and set in motion the way women would look and be portrayed in the "Star Wars" universe from then on.
Photos By Andrew PridgenAt the time, Heyer’s work was mostly known from her day job, meticulous pen-and-ink renderings of hats, dresses and boots in newspaper ads sharing prime real estate next to notable gadfly scribes of the day, like Herb Caen, Art Hoppe and Leah Garchik.
Her ability to work fast, yet with an eye for detail, led Lucasfilm to tap her to draw what she referred to as a new version of Carrie Fisher’s character Princess Leia. But since that short gig, Heyer says it has been an almost four-decade battle to receive credit for her work.
It’s a fight she’s still in the middle of today.
‘I was the only woman in the room’
Heyer, a Southern California-born graduate of ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, started her career in the late 1960s, working on layouts and background design for Saturday morning cartoons like the “Lone Ranger” and “The Archie Show.” For “Star Wars,” the studio initially brought her on as a fresh set of eyes, storyboarding some of the Jabba the Hutt/Tatooine scenes in the movie’s first act.
Anthony Daniels, Carrie Fisher and Michael Carter on the set of "Return of the Jedi."
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesShe worked on layouts and sketches of characters navigating the desertscape, including Leia in her now-famous gold bikini outfit during the sail barge sequence. But her background in fashion and the way she drew Leia caught the eye of Nilo Rodis-Jamero, the head costume designer on the film. (Rodis-Jamero and costume designer Aggie Rodgers are ultimately credited for the design of the piece, according to a 2015 Smithsonian traveling exhibit on the costumes of Star Wars.)
“There wasn’t any other work that showed her as a pretty woman,” she says.
Rodis-Jamero mined Heyer for her knowledge of fabric and fashion to help him solidify Carrie Fisher’s other new looks as Princess Leia for the film.
And though to that point she had only been at Lucasfilm for a week, she suddenly found herself in pitch meetings that included director Richard Marquand and Lucas himself.
“My first meeting, [Marquand] asked me to get him a cup of coffee,” Heyer says. “I was the only woman in the room.”
Moving Leia ‘into a different moment in her life’
Rodis-Jamero soon paired Heyer with Paul LeBlanc, the legendary Canadian-born hairstylist whose stories-high wigs of 1750s Salzburg won him an Oscar for best makeup and hairstyling in 1984 for “Amadeus.” LeBlanc was also the creator of Javier Bardem’s bowl cut in 2007’s “No Country for Old Men”; Bardem, who won a best supporting Oscar for the role, affectionately referred to the sinister look as “one of the most horrible haircuts in history.”
Two of Marilee Heyer's sketches of Princess Leia's later-fabled bikini for "Return of the Jedi," drawn while at Lucasfilm in 1981 during the movie's preproduction, were left on the drawing board.
Photo By Andrew PridgenFor “Return of the Jedi,” LeBlanc “replaced Princess Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) side buns with loose waves for ‘Return of the Jedi,’” according to Hollywood Reporter.
The famed hairstylist shared his ideas with Heyer and provided her with rudimentary pencil sketches to direct her on how Leia’s hair should define the look, as it had in the first two films but also set the tone for growth. The overall goal was to transition the character from princess into Luke Skywalker’s sister and General Leia Organa.
“At the time, the focus was moving the Leia character into a different moment in her life,” Heyer says. “It was going beyond the cinnamon buns or the white robes. She needed a forest look as an infantry person, the woodsy look at the end with her hair down and crimped, and — you know — the slave girl in bondage.”
Heyer describes the work she did as “fast, but thorough.”
“I wasn’t in all of the pitch meetings,” she says, “but I know they were pushing [Lucas] hard to go in new directions and there were great ideas flying around. I just happened to have the background they needed. I knew how hair worked, how fabrics hung on a female form. I was there, I suppose you could say, to pretty it up.”
Marilee Heyer talks about some of the work she did for Lucasfilm in August of 1981 that later surfaced in the movie "Return of the Jedi" as well as in material that has lived beyond the film.
Photo By Andrew PridgenLucas reportedly loved Heyer’s renderings, and a new look for Leia was cemented. Towards the end of the gig, Heyer was asked to stay on, but at the time, it didn’t seem like she fit in with the culture at Lucasfilm.
“Everybody around me was about 10 years younger and were all gung-ho young men willing to work all night or all weekend,” she says. “I wasn’t in that mind space. I conferred with [visual effects and art director] Joe Johnston, and said, ‘Aren’t there going to be like six more movies?’ And he said, ‘Well this is going to be the last one for a while and George is going to take a hiatus for I don’t know how long.’ So I went back to my old job, and in the evenings, did children’s books.”
‘Maybe I’ll run into Harrison Ford’
More than 40 years later, Heyer, 80, who now lives in Los Osos, a small unincorporated beachfront community on the Central Coast, admits her motivation for taking the job at Lucasfilm wasn’t exactly because it was a strategic career move. “I mean, I was single and feeling pretty good about myself,” she laughs. “I thought, you know — maybe I’ll run into Harrison Ford.”
Harrison Ford relaxes at his home in Los Angeles in the early '80s.
Nancy MoranThough a meet-cute with the superstar behind the swashbuckling anti-hero never materialized, Heyer’s work did. Her drawings and sketches surfaced in ways she hadn't counted on in the film’s final cut. She was even hired once more on a freelance basis to illustrate a three-quarter profile of Yoda. The drawing was commissioned to become the official cast and crew patch during the movie’s filming. Heyer displays one of the patches with the film’s working title “Revenge of the Jedi” stitched above it in her art studio today.
“When it came out, I went to the movie like everyone else, watched it in wonder like everyone else. It was only when I was driving home I realized, ‘Wow, I had a hand in that.’”
By the time the movie was released in May 1983, Heyer had resumed her “normal life” working in San Francisco, producing ads for high-end department stores like Neiman Marcus and I. Magnin. She also went on to publish four children’s books with Viking Press (now Penguin Random House), including “The Weaving of a Dream” in 1989, which Publisher’s Weekly called “a breathtaking debut.”
‘There was my drawing on the screen!’
Cut to the fall of 1983, just months after the film’s release, Heyer was dozing on her couch late one evening, watching a PBS membership drive.
At that point, it had been more than two years since her brief stint at Lucasfilm. Her work on “Return of the Jedi” had come and gone, but for some reason, it had been on her mind that week. “I was watching KQED and they may have mentioned it, I’m not sure,” Heyer says. “I fell asleep during their pledge drive and I woke up — and there was my drawing on the screen!”
Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill on the set of "Return of the Jedi."
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesHeyer says she shot up from her couch. The portrait was one she did of Princess Leia, styled with a long braid. The hosts were showcasing the image as one of the many stunning examples of art from a new book that showed what was behind the scenes on the production of “Return of the Jedi.”
“I picked up the phone and gave a pledge right there,” she says. “I told the operator, ‘Please, send me that book!’”
A week later, she received a package containing “The Art of Return of the Jedi,” published by Ballantine Books, and started flipping through the volume.
When she got to pages 49, 80 and 92, where five of her drawings were showcased along with several rudimentary sketches of early Ewoks, she was surprised to find that her name wasn’t in the credits.
Heyer doesn’t take issue with the direction of hairstylist LeBlanc, who was cited in the credit of her images, and said his influence and vision are largely responsible for Leia’s “Jedi” transition.
Rather, she just wanted to be acknowledged for her work. “Paul was incredible to work with, and I think his career speaks for itself,” she says. “But he didn’t have the ability to sketch out what he needed to to convince George.
“That’s, I guess, where I came in.”
George Lucas looks at the Death Star from "Return of the Jedi."
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesDisappointed that her name wasn’t in the book, Heyer reached out to Kathy Wippert, who worked in the archives and photo library department of Lucasfilm in San Rafael.
Wippert, on Lucasfilm letterhead, sent Heyer back a note taking responsibility for the oversight saying, “I just wanted to say how badly I feel that I gave the wrong credit to Ballantine for your illustrations, especially since they are the prettiest illustrations that have been done of her. I really thought I had everyone credited and credited correctly. Please accept my apology. It was totally my fault. It should be taken care of in the next pictures. Thanks, Kathy.”
Heyer took the note to a San Rafael-based attorney. In December 1983, Lucasfilm sent a letter signed by Wippert, copying Heyer and her attorneys, to Ballantine; it said, “Prior to a reprint of the book, the following correction should be made … Hair styles by Patricia McDermott and Paul LeBlanc. Designed by Paul LeBlanc and illustrated by Marilee Heyer.”
Indeed, in a 1997 reprint of the book, then re-titled “The Art of Star Wars, Episode VI — Return of the Jedi,” Heyer is given credit for her illustrations.
Case closed, or so she thought.
A fight that continues today
In the years that followed, Heyer says her work from “Jedi” has turned up in various books about Star Wars, Hollywood or movie fashion in general. Her illustrations were even part of the Smithsonian exhibition. Sometimes she’s credited, other times her name is nowhere to be found.
Jabba's slave bikini worn by the character Princess Leia in "Return of the Jedi" on display in "Star Wars and the Power of Costume: The Exhibition" at Discovery Times Square in New York, Nov. 10, 2015.
HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTWhen Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4 billion, it kicked off a raft of new interest around the work that Heyer and her contemporaries did for the original films. Not only did their artwork become the inspiration for a number of sequels and spin-offs — including “Rogue One,” “The Mandalorian” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” — Heyer’s work has also appeared in other Disney-owned properties.
Most notably, and most recently, her original drawing appears on a variant cover of Marvel’s “Star Wars Age of Republic Princess Leia #1.” Heyer, who says she frequently combs eBay for antiquities, continues to run across new publications of her work on the auction site.
“It doesn’t really surprise me much anymore,” she says. “It’s more like seeing an old friend now.”
Last year, Heyer hired another attorney in another attempt to get through to Disney, once more, for attribution. She understands there is no money involved in getting the credit for her work. “There were no royalties,” she says, “I know that for sure.”
Over the passage of time, her name has once again fallen off her illustrations. She says she understands why. But she also believes that this could be the last time she will have a chance to have her name attached to her work.
When SFGATE reached out to Disney and Lucasfilm for comment, neither responded.
‘I would like to be remembered if this is my legacy’
Leia’s seismic shift in “Jedi” redefined the way female characters looked in the “Star Wars” canon. When British actress Daisy Ridley came on as Rey, the heir apparent to Leia Organa in Disney’s 2015 film “The Force Awakens,” Fisher had some pointed advice for her.
“You should fight for your outfit,” she said in a 2015 interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “Don’t be a slave like I was …you keep fighting against that slave outfit.”
Marilee Heyer looks at drawings and illustrations she's done for Lucasfilm, including a now-famous illustration of Yoda that became the cast and crew's official patch for what would become "Return of the Jedi."
Photo By Andrew PridgenHeyer acknowledges the shifts that have happened culturally and in fashion since her days drawing on contract for Lucasfilm — shifts away from an environment that ultimately informed her decision at the time to go. “I remember thinking, ‘[If] I stayed on, would I be doing artwork, or would I be a coffee fetcher?’” she says, discussing the work of many women of the time that has gone similarly uncredited.
“I would like to be remembered if this is my legacy,” she concludes. “If this is what I’m most noted for, I want to make sure I’m getting credited when I’m no longer around. I view my artwork like my children. You have to be able to send them out and give them the tools they need to fight.”
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