Darth's Doppelganger by Pete Vilmur
(1/3) Though a privileged few can claim to have famously worn the iconic Darth Vader costume before the cameras in Episodes III-VI, none are more intimately familiar with the fit of the Dark Lord's original duds than Kermit Eller. That's because Eller, who nowadays goes by his middle name Bryce ("The whole Muppet thing just got old"), was the Vader fans saw, met, shook hands with, and asked for autographs at countless malls, charity events, and awards ceremonies throughout the late '70s and early '80s. For five years, Eller played the Vader among us.
Braving hot weather, a breakneck schedule of appearances, and pressing masses of awestruck fans both young and old, Eller's incognito career as the man in black wasn't strictly limited to street appearances. He was actually the Vader fans saw dancing with Donny & Marie, posing for a famous poster pin-up, presenting Oscars at the Academy Awards, and immortalizing the Dark Lord's footprints in front of the Chinese Theatre. More than a mere publicity gimmick, Eller's Vader had unwittingly become Star Wars' liaison on Earth.
Though Eller's Vader provided one of pop culture's most enduring figures to the masses, his five-year stint donning the black armor and helmet both in the street and on television went by-in-large unnoticed. Occasionally, a reporter was able to coax Eller's name into print, but for the most part, his career as Vader-on-Earth remained safely anonymous.
Eller's role as galactic go-between started casually enough, initiated by a friend who went asking for a t-shirt at the Star Wars Corporation offices on the Universal Studios lot in 1977.
"I was working in the lab at Don Post Studios where we were making movie props and over-the-head masks," remembers Eller, who had worked on the Mayor McCheese and Big Mac costumes used for McDonald's commercials before Don Post landed the license to do Star Wars masks. "One of the guys working in the lab, a guy by the name of Bob Short, came back from a trip over to Lucasfilm to get a sign-off on a [mask] sculpture. He came back wearing this really cool Star Wars t-shirt, and I said, 'Wow that's a great t-shirt! Can you get me one of those?' So a few days later he went over to the Universal lot, Building 426A, and talked to [Star Wars publicist] Charley Lippincott."
Eller understands their brief conversation went something like this:
Short: "Hey, do you have any more of those t-shirts?"
Lippincott: "Whatever we've got left is in a box in the corner. But sorry, all we've got left is extra large."
Short: "That's fine, it's not for me."
Lippincott: "You actually know someone who can wear one of those?"
Short: "Yeah."
Lippincott: "How big is he?"
Short: "He's about 6'5"."
Lippincott: "What kind of build is he?"
Short: "He's got kinda big shoulders and stuff like that."
Lippincott: "Well, how would he like to play Darth Vader?"
The casual offer came as a surprise to Eller, although he came somewhat qualified to the position having had some prior costuming experience. "I had done a whole bunch of suit work," says Eller. "One friend of mine by the name of William Malone [who went on to direct FearDotCom, an episode of "Masters of Horror", and the remake of House on Haunted Hill] built me into a Day the Earth Stood Still Gort suit he ended up using in a TV pilot he'd shot, so it was no big deal to me. I'd done a lot of other suit work, too. It wasn't like I was off the farm."
Lippincott and producer Gary Kurtz hoped that bringing a flesh-and-blood Vader to 1977's American Booksellers Association Convention in San Francisco might garner some attention from the press at the Ballantine booth, where the second printing of the Star Wars novelization was being promoted.
"They just wanted me to be a living mannequin," recalls Eller. "But I kind of have a perfectionist tendency, and I really wanted to know how to do it right. So I said, 'can I see how this guy moves?'"
With the film not yet in theaters, the only way Eller could study the character's movements was to visit the editing facilities where the finishing touches were being put on the international prints. "So I went over and brought along, without telling anyone, a mono-cassette recorder. I thought I'd record how this guy sounds so I don't sound stupid." Eller was shown a couple of scenes which featured Darth Vader entering the Blockade Runner and then throttling the Rebel officer. He delicately asked if he could record the dialog for reference. "Nowadays, I would have been taken out and shot [for asking that question], but at that time there was no internet, and the movie was coming out in less than a week anyway. So they said, sure, go ahead -- an executive decision made by some guy on a Moviola."
"I recorded a bunch of voice dialog, probably around a dozen lines," continues Eller. "I stayed up half the night in the St. Francis Hotel doing the voice over and over again." Eller can still mimic James Earl Jones' baritone timbre today with alarming accuracy -- for the book show, though, few could appreciate his vocal talents, as the film was still unreleased. His Vader vocalizations, paired with the imposing 6'9" costume, proved extremely effective -- so effective, in fact, that it attracted the attention of some executives visiting from the New York offices of 20th Century Fox.
"They came over and said to Charley, 'you really ought to use this guy again -- this would be really effective in promotion,'" remembers Eller. Lippincott agreed, and called on the Don Post employee a few days after the bookseller convention to do a photo shoot in front of a Hollywood movie theater. Lippincott could see that photo-ops with Vader would be effective in marketing the movie, but also thought he could do one better -- he wanted to take Vader to the people.