Day 210 – Marcia Lucas

Marcia Lucas

Marcia Lucas won an Academy Award for her editing work on A New Hope. She also worked on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Lucas began her career as an editor working as an assistant editor on films such a The Rain People directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Candidate, and THX 1138 directed by George Lucas (who she would later marry). Marcia Lucas edited George’s next project American Graffiti which earned Marica and her co-editor Verna Fields an Academy Award nomination for best editing.

Before stepping in to help George Lucas out with editing A New Hope (she was not hired originally as that film’s editor but her work on the film is largely credited as being one of the reasons the film became such a classic) Marcia worked on several films directed by Martin Scorsese including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York.

Lucas went on to edit The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Sadly for filmgoers, Return of the Jedi was the last film she worked on as an editor. She is credited on IMDB as a producer on the 1996 film No Easy Way and the 1998 short The Good Son.

Below is a clip of an interview with Marcia Lucas and Duwayne Dunham who was an assistant film editor on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Marcia talks about editing Star Wars and Duwayne tells a wonderful story about how Marcia influenced the ending of Steven Spielberg’s classic film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Listen to this episode of Blast Points to learn more about Marcia Lucas’s career and her contributions to the Star Wars universe. If you love the trench run at the end of A New Hope trust me, you are already a big fan of Marcia Lucas.

The video below looks at how important the role of an editor is to a film – in this case – A New Hope.

Check out the entire list of women in 365 Days of Star Wars Women in the Women in Star Wars Index. It includes highlights from each post plus notes which posts include new 365 interviews with actresses, writers, artists, and more.

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