BTS Did Alec Guinness know about Luke being Vader's offspring in 1976?

The documentary evidence is very clear on the question. They were two separate characters until spring 1978.

In the early drafts of The Star Wars, the character of Father Skywalker (or rather, Starkiller) is a distinct personage from both Darth Vader and General Valorum (the cyborg villain who would be amalgamated into Vader). The father of the hero, and these two villains who would become the Darth Vader we know, exist in the same time frame as separate individuals.

In Leigh Brackett's draft of Star Wars II from late 1977, Luke sees his father's ghost. The man is dead, and it's not Vader.

They were clearly not intended to be the same person until Kasdan's first draft of ESB in spring 1978. Any claim that Lucas conceived of Vader and Annikin/Father Skywalker as the same personage prior to that time is without any supporting evidence.

 

Lucas contention was that he never told Brackett about his decision to have Vader be Luke's father (as to not "confuse" the issue) and that he would decide whether or not to reveal that in ESB or a later film. Brackett, of course, ended up passing away after the first draft. So Kasdan was the one to get the first crack at the "Father Vader" version. It could be that Lucas was keeping his plans close to the vest. It's one of those things that will always be debated I suppose.

 

To the op...no, Alec didn't know. But I think that Lucas did know, in some form or another. I think 'Father Vader' goes back as far as the third draft, but that it was an entirely different beast to what it ended up being. Like the 'orthodox' story, Vader (whatever his real/birth name was) was indeed a separate character from "Skywalker Sr.", aka 'Tan'-Annikin-Anakin Starkiller/Skywalker, but unlike the ret-con that we got circa ROTJ, Vader was the actual father, and "Skywalker Sr." was not (and...Ben either knew or didn't know the truth).

I think the above scenario became a possibility once "Starkiller Sr." retreated from the story, Ben's character was introduced, and...Vader's character makes it out alive at the end of the story. These three crucial elements all came together in the third draft. I'll even be more bold and say that Lucas' metaphorical 'good father vs. bad father' aspect went beyond just a mere metaphor re: Kenobi and Vader's roles, but that the 'good father Annikin/Skywalker Sr.' was becoming somewhat of a chimaera. Kenobi's character was practically created out of Luke's father. Lucas, if he had wanted, had the option of a plot twist whereby Obi-Wan/Ben was Luke's (literal) father, but I think he was already going in the direction of it being Vader. Either way, I think a plot-twist concerning Luke's father was sort of 'built-in' to the story since the third draft, at the earliest.

 

This could explain why Lucas always maintained since the 90's that Vader was envisioned as Luke's father from the beginning...

But somehow I have a hard time believing he came up with such a convoluted story arc.

Doesn't change anything to the issue, but the 2nd and third drafts (spring 1978) are from Lucas himself. Kasdan entered later on in the picture as screenwriter (October 1978).

 

Well, I used to have a hard time believing it as well, until I considered a few things. One, the documentary evidence..things like, Lucas saying in Dec '75 "we find out WHO Darth Vader is" . Then, the fact that even in the second draft (from Lucas, no less), where "I am your father" first appears, Yoda tells Luke that both Ben AND Luke's father trained under him on the Bog Planet. Now, unless either Vader was supposed to be lying about his paternity in that draft, or Yoda was telling lies about who trained who..or...both were telling the truth, the man who was-supposed-to-be-Luke's father and Vader were still separate people at this point, with the kicker/twist being that Vader was the actual father (and my further idea, that Ben, Yoda, and the Emperor didn't know the truth and had merely assumed that Skywalker was the father).

Plus, when I thought about it, I thought that the above convoluted story arc wasn't really any more 'convoluted' than Skywalker Sr. being seduced by the dark side and transforming into Vader. I thought it made better sense out of the things that Ben told Luke in the first film, Ben and Yoda's curious decision not to warn Luke about what Vader might claim should he confront him (TESB), ditto on the Emperor speaking of him as a separate person from the legendary Jedi Skywalker. To me, the ROTJ ret-con made total hash out of Ben's exposition to Luke in SW, for one thing.

Granted, placing too much weight on Yoda saying that he trained both Ben AND Skywalker would seem to conflict with the idea of Skywalker Sr becoming somewhat of a story chimaera, but when you stop and think about it, Luke's father isn't given a name in Lucas' draft either, so it kind of fits with the whole 'chimaera' aspect.

Minutiae time.....

Actually, if we go by Rinzler's book, the "3rd draft" being from Lucas was a mistake on the part of L. Bouzereau in his "Annotated Screenplays" book, whereby the he construed the type-written version of the second draft as being both a 'revised second draft' AND 'draft three'. In Rinzler's MOTESB, Kasdan completed the actual 'Third' draft in August of '78 based on story meetings, then did a fourth draft in October, more meetings in November, then completed the fifth draft in February.

 

Well, there are a couple of bits of shaky evidence which suggest that the idea was being considered a bit earlier (as an alternative to the 'orthodox' storyline being followed in Brackett's Feb 1978 draft), but there's no smoking gun, or what I'd be inclined to call proof:

- the most interesting is an April 1978 article from Future magazine:

OK, couple of things to mention about this - firstly, there's no cited source, the info could have come from anywhere (my suspicion is the same source of the next bit of 'evidence'), but it's pretty close to the mark.
Second, before anyone points out the bleeding obvious - yes, it was published two months after the Brackett draft was completed, but it makes no mention of said draft having been finished, or the very crucial fact that Leigh Brackett died in March. The article would have definitely been written quite some time before publication (this was 1978 - printing processes would have been ridiculously slow compared to today), and most probably before February 1978, if the language in the article is anything to go by.
However, it's certainly possible that this information was hastily added to an earlier-written article at the last minute if it suddenly came to light in March or April.

- starwars.com published an interesting discovery on its blog back in 2010 (unfortunately, it's not archived), it alleged that they'd discovered an April 1978 fanzine with some interviews with David Prowse from late 1977. In one, he was quoted as saying:

Make of that what you will - lucky guess on Prowse's part, or was he genuinely leaking information he'd become privy to? Or was SW.com playing a bit fast and loose with the facts and dates?
An authentic San Francisco Examiner article from July 1978 reveals that Prowse continued to tell this story, and the quote's extremely similar:

http://www.retroist.com/2010/11/08/1978-style-star-wars-spoilers/

(Prowse seems to think this revelation would be coming in the third film)


So there you have it. No real proof, but certainly something to chew on.

 

Alright, alright...

"Most interesting..."

 

That would seem to back-up Lucas' (1997?) claim* that in the beginning of the writing process for TESB, he was going 'back-and-forth' as to the revelation being put in the second or third film, though his Dec '75 story meeting quote "in the second book, we find out who Darth Vader is" indicates that he was early on wanting it to be in the second film.

* from 'The Annotated Screenplays' by L. Bouzereau

 

David Prowse has stated many times that he did not know, and other discussions of this article have led to accusations that it is fake.

I don't know if the article is real or not. I'm not yet convinced in either direction.

Edit: Similar discussion on Snopes

 

Well, there is that. However, what I've proposed doesn't rely on the Prowse article - real or fake.

 

Indeed. Guinness was proud of his other roles. He was old-fashioned and didn't see Star Wars as high-end. It's okay, though. I respect how he felt. He still did a magnificent job as Obi-Wan.

 

I'm not convinced one way or another, either - but it doesn't really matter when it comes to this discussion, as the SFE article is from July 1978 ('Father Vader' was established in GL's March 1978 second draft of ESB).

The alleged fanzine article from April 1978 which was said to have late 1977 quotes from Prowse was more intriguing, but SW.com decided not to archive it. Make of that what you will.
The April 1978 Future magazine article is probably the most solid piece of 'evidence' - it was published, and wasn't fake - but it's still shaky. Could have been speculation.

My guess is that, yes, David Prowse shot his mouth off around late 1977 & 1978 about Darth Vader being Luke's father, but it's just as likely that he guessed it, as opposed to genuinely knowing anything (he might have become aware of that 1975 quote about how "we find out who Darth Vader really is" and went from there). While it's possible that he could have been privy to ideas being tossed around LFL in the earliest stages of developing ESB, I doubt it. He was just the guy who stomped around in the Darth Vader suit and wasn't required to even speak.

I found an article from 1982 (quoted in other threads) which speculated upon the promised Prequel Trilogy - and while it was full of all sorts of nonsense (Boba Fett is a clone of Anakin Skywalker, the Emperor was a clone of Obi-Wan, etc), it did uncannily hit the mark once. It speculated that Darth Vader, perhaps Luke Skywalker's father, was once a slave.
There is nothing anywhere else to suggest that this was the case - most likely the writers of the article put Vader's Force-choke together with mentions of slave collars in the Brian Daley Han Solo novels and came up with something GL wouldn't even be thinking about for another decade. Particular details were way off, but they still picked that fundamental detail out of next to nothing. It's called luck.

Point being, David Prowse could have been just babbling about his own theories for the character of Darth Vader, while not actually knowing if they were correct or not. In which case, it doesn't matter when he started spouting such theories.

 

continuing on from post #55:

Poster Samuel Vimes brought up something that I hadn't fully considered at the time...this line from TESB:

Vader: "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father"....

Now, I believe this line does originate from Lucas/his draft(s), even though it appears in Kasdan's re-writes (?). My point is, how could Vader be so sure that Obi-Wan had "never told" Luke what had happened to his father? Unless...Vader figured that Obi-Wan himself didn't know the full truth of what really happened (?). The line, imho, makes more sense under the operating assumption that "Obi-Wan assumed that Anakin/Annikin was the father of Luke, whereas Vader knew* better", than either "Annikin/Anakin really was the father, and Vader really did kill him", or "Anakin was the father, but turned evil and became Vader (of which Obi-Wan was fully aware)."

* or, Ben DID know, but was so disgusted with it that he wanted Luke to believe that he was Annikin's son, despite the truth.

 

Absolutely....an amazing coincidence is all it was

 

No. If I'm correct, that was a last minute change by George while they were making TESB.

 

Vader could sense that Luke didn't know the truth about what happened twenty years ago, since he never addresses him as his father and he couldn't feel anything that would support that. He could sense hate and anger towards him, but nothing about compassion and love. He might have even felt any positive feelings that Luke would have had towards both Obi-wan and Anakin.

It is much like Luke sensing the conflict in Vader later on.

 

Basically agree here.

To me, in-universe speaking, Vader infers Luke hasn't been told the truth, simply because the later is about to fight and possibly destroy him, without any apparent hesitation.

Had Luke known the truth, it would logically be a lot more difficult, if not impossible, for a young Jedi apprentice in training, to confront and destroy his father.

See ROTJ ("I can't do it Ben.......But I can't kill my own father")

 

Jumping back a bit:

Well...consider the fact that years later, Lucas would write a draft of TPM (the second draft?) whereby Obi-Wan - the Jedi master character of the story - actually dies...and his student Qui-Gon-Jinn takes the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi, thus the Obi-Wan of SW, was/is not the 'original' Obi-Wan Kenobi. This version also has echoes of the rumor/fan theory circa 1981 (from Fangora magazine) that Annikin/Anakin Skywalker had (in Episode 2 or 3???) killed the 'real' Darth Vader, and then took his name and identity.

 

I didn't think anyone did at that point, even Lucas.