May 10, 2021 • 28 mins
McQuarrie is responsible for some of the most recognizable imagery in cinema and culture. In part one, we’ll talk about his early life, his work before Star Wars, and how he started collaborating with George Lucas.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I Heart three D Audio. Thank This special three D
episode is sponsored by Audible, Conjuring, The Devil Made Me
Do It, Ratedar, and World of Warcraft. This episode is
brought to you in My Heart three D Audio. For
(00:23):
maximum effect, headphones are recommended. Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
trade C. V. Wilson. Oh, this is a special one.
(00:45):
The person that we are talking about on today's show,
Uh could easily be said to have shifted and perhaps
even defined the cultural visual landscape of the late twentieth
century thanks to his work on Star Wars. And if
that sounds overblown or it seems like it's really only
about hardcore Star Wars fans, I would invite you to
think about the last time, for example, you shopped in
(01:07):
a big box store. There were probably Star Wars branded
housewears there, or clothing items, or even candy or toothpaste
on display. I also see those sorts of things at
the grocery store, and a lot of the imagery that
we think of us so identifiably Star Wars came from
the work of Ralph McQuary. He laid the groundwork for
the visual feel of the entire franchise through his work
(01:29):
that started in the late nineteen seventies, and he worked
on a lot of other films and provided some of
their most iconic imagery as well. So this is gonna
be a two parter, uh, because there's a lot of
art ground to cover, and we're going to talk about
the life and some of the work of Ralph McQuary.
There will be a lot of Star Wars. I'm not
gonna lie. But one of the wonderful things about his
(01:50):
life story too, is that he lived long enough to
see Star Wars become a cultural juggernaut, and as a consequence,
he was interviewed a lot, and he is extremely quotable. Uh.
He puts together wonderful turn of phrase sometimes in his
honesty and his humility about his work is really quite charming.
So we have the luxury of being able to reference
(02:12):
his own words throughout this particular story. And so in
this first episode, we're going to talk about mcquarie's early life,
which makes it very clear how he ended up being
the perfect person to work on Star Wars. Uh. We'll
talk about his work before Star Wars, and then how
he started collaborating with George Lucas, and then in the
second part we're going to cover his career in life
after the first Star Wars film came out. So let's
(02:34):
dive into part one. Ralph Angus mcquarie was born in Gary,
Indiana on June. When he was one, the family moved
to Billings, Montana, and they stayed there for nine years.
This was a move really to keep the family afloat
as the Great Depression began. They moved in with Ralph's
grandparents on their farm, and Ralph's mother was an artist.
(02:57):
She worked in pastel's and McQuary recall that in Billings
as a child, he started to get interested in art
because of that exposure. His grandfather was an engineer in
a brewery, but he also found ways to express himself artistically.
He published a regular poetry pamphlet and he illustrated that
pamphlet himself. His grandfather also painted in oils, so clearly
(03:19):
there is a familial proclivity for creativity at play. One
of the hobbies that Ralph picked up as a kid,
which really continued to occupy his free time for most
of his life, was building model airplanes. He recalled that
he became really fascinated with planes at around the age
of six, and that fascination never waned at all. This
(03:39):
attraction to plane design and the model building hobby really
clearly informed some of the work that he would later
become the most well known for. He later said in
an interview quote, I suppose there's a sort of glamour
about it. I've learned to know what war is about
in the interim, but the interest in airplanes kind of
hung on. Yeah, we'll talk about his exposure to war
(04:02):
in just a moment. But McQuary's father was a wood
pattern maker and during the depression his work fell off,
but as the war created more opportunities, he moved the
family first to Seattle in nineteen forty for better job
prospects than he could find in Billings, But it was
actually while they were visiting Vancouver that he found a
job in a shipyard, and so the family moved to
(04:23):
and stayed in Vancouver, British Columbia for the next eight years.
It was during that time, as McQuary entered his teenage years,
that he started to seriously consider art, not as a
hobby but as a career. He described looking at the
art and advertisements and thinking that or illustration could be
appealing job paths. Just as McQuary was finishing high school,
(04:47):
the family moved again to Seattle, and at that point
Ralph took a job in a bakery and uh, he
described in one interview like how he was, you know,
basically like putting in and removing bakery items to the ovens,
and that was not something he enjoyed. That job cemented
his thinking that art was really a much better choice
as a vocation. But he also knew that he needed
(05:08):
some additional training if he wanted to draw for a living,
and the y m c a was offering technical drawing classes,
so he enrolled. So he worked during the day and
then he took these drawing classes at night. After he finished,
he got his first art job with Boeing And this
maybe it wasn't the coolest art job. He was illustrating
a parts catalog. I used to write catalog copy, so
(05:31):
I feel an affinity there and like your creative interest
versus your job. But he made connections there with a
lot of other artists and continued to do his own
work at the same time. In the nineteen fifties. Ralph
served in the Army after he was drafted, and he
was deployed in the Korean War. He had initially thought
(05:52):
that because he was working in aerospace, he might get
a deferment, but that was not the case, and then
he thought he would primarily work as an engine near
in the army, which is how he started out. But
he got assigned to the seventh Cavalry Regiment and he
saw active combat. He later said that he never expected
to make it out alive, and he had many brushes
with death. He was shot during his service. He later
(06:15):
told a biographer, quote, I got hit in the side
of the head with a round from a Russian burp gun.
I felt this tremendous bang, and it spun me for
a second. It penetrated my helmet. A guy sat me
down and put a bandage on my head. I looked
down and found my helmet and put it back on.
For all I knew, it had lost its temper, but
it had saved my life. McCrory was discharged and went
(06:37):
back home, and he later described this feeling of being
quote embarrassed to be around for some reason, because he
had seen so many of his fellow soldiers die in combat.
This put a pause on his art career, but it
also enabled him to move it forward because once he
got back to the States, he was able to enroll
at Art Center College of Design in California on a
(06:58):
g I bill, And at that point he wasn't entirely
sure what direction he wanted his art career to go in.
He considered working in advertising, or illustration or industrial design,
but then he decided that commercial art wasn't really the
right fit for him. It felt a little too much
like being a salesman, so he quit Art Center and
(07:19):
he went back to technical illustration. He worked for a
while for the defense contractor Litton Industries, that was from
nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty two, drawing guidance and control equipment,
among other things, but eventually he went back to Boeing.
He worked on images while he was there that were
used in Pentagon proposals and brochure's about Boeing's various projects,
(07:39):
and he also got a little bit into film because
he started storyboarding some of the internal films that the
company was making for presentations. After a while, though, his
work for Boeing felt less and less fulfilling, although his
work there was spectacular. For example, when you look at
his illustration of Boeing's Model seven thirty three supersonic transport
(08:00):
concept gliding above a lower altitude jet in the land below,
that it really looks almost like a photograph. But there
wasn't enough variety in the work. The hours are also
really long. He later joked, quote rows of windows, that's
what got me. This boredom may have been rooted in
a more romantic idea of his art as well, and
(08:22):
he later said in an interview quote, I've always had
sort of a dream world approach to sitting and sketching
for myself. I go for the romantic and what looks interesting,
while half my mind is occupied with practicality. So he
decided to move back to Los Angeles in in the
hope of finding more fulfilling work in the art field,
and he and two fellow artists started a studio together
(08:44):
called three Real Studio, and they took what they could
get in terms of contract jobs. For a while. McQuary
even drew detailed illustrations of teeth and dental tools for
a dental firm. And it was after this move to
l A that the connection started that would lead Ralph
to his most well known work, and we're going to
talk about that after we first paused for a sponsor break.
(09:12):
It was while working in Los Angeles that McQuary got
a call to work on a movie, but not the
kind of movie most often associated with Hollywood. As NASA's
Apollo program was building up, they wanted to create coverage
of the process for CBS News special events, and as
McQuary put it, quote, they were looking for someone who
could do an accurate painting of a rocket ship. You know,
(09:34):
Ralph was the perfect choice for this project. He could
indeed draw rocket ships, and he also had worked on
a number of short film projects with Boeing already, so
he understood how a technical artist fit into production. He
ended up working for a number of years with NASA
and CBS storyboarding out animation sequences for short films that
(09:56):
showed the various trajectories and workings of the Apollo space raft.
He also took a job for a while at Encyclopedia Britannica.
He was working on a film about time for them
when they hosted a screening of th h X that
was George Lucas's student film version well before he made
the full length version of it with Robert Duval, and
(10:17):
mcquarie said that his reaction to this was, quote, that's
a really wonderfully good student film. I didn't really know
much about student films at the time, but it struck
me as really wonderful and excellent. But he didn't know
or meet or collaborate with Lucas until several years later.
He also started illustrating movie posters in the early nineteen seventies.
(10:38):
The first was a poster for a film called The
Legend of Boggy Creek, and Ralph's art for it was
a departure from the technical work that dominated his career
up to that point. This shows a humanoid monster covered
in for trapesing through shallow water, with a dark and
moody background of trees and the sun on the horizon,
creating dramatic silhouettes and contrast throughout the scene. After that,
(11:02):
he had a fairly steady stream of movie poster jobs. Yeah,
I feel like when you read about his career, and
we'll talk about this some more, but like he was
always hustling, like multiple projects at a time, in part,
I think because he was rather fast and he was
able to do so, but early in the nineteen seventies,
two screenwriters reached out to Ralph for some assistance, and
(11:24):
through them, his life took a significant turn. Although this
may not be who you're expecting, it's Hal Barwood and
Matthew Robbins who had created a screenplay called Star Dancing,
and they were trying to get financing for that movie,
but they needed visuals to show potential investors to get
their ideas across, and Ralph was who they got to
create those visuals. So if the title Star Dancing isn't
(11:47):
ringing any bells, it's because this didn't work. Even though
by Ralph's account they all had a great time working together,
the picture just never got made. Barwood and Robbins continued
to work together and eventually wrote Dry Gagin, Slayer and MacArthur,
and other films that did get finance for production. Robbins
also collaborated later with Guerro del Toro on Crimson Peak,
(12:10):
and prior to this project, McQuary didn't really think about
science fiction as an avenue for his work, later saying
of his time on the Star Dancing project quote, I'd
worked for Boeing and was in love with airplanes and spacecraft,
and I had an interest in fantasy architecture. Although I
hadn't thought about doing much in science fiction, but I
enjoyed working with Hollan Matt so much on their science
(12:31):
fiction film. I felt like that was really the place
I should be. I had found what I should be doing.
The important connection here was that how Barwood was friends
with George Lucas, and Lucas saw the artwork that mcquarie
had created for the Star Dancing Pitch and actually really
liked it. So when it came time for him to
similarly try to convey his ideas for Star Wars, it
(12:53):
was Ralph that he wanted. But not long after they met,
Lucas got to work on American Graffiti, which came out
at Night teen seventy three, and mcquarie kind of thought
that the science fiction fantasy project that they had discussed
had just been abandoned. He once told a biographer that
George Lucas quote came by my house one evening. He
talked about his idea for a galactic war picture, Intergalactic War.
(13:16):
He said it would involve all aspects of Flash Gordon,
but done in a sort of two thousand one manner
with real high fidelity effects, and I thought, gee, that
sounds ambitious, you know, And we said goodbye, and I
never expected to see him again. Obviously, that was not
the case. In nineteen seventy five, Lucas once again reached
(13:36):
out to continue their discussion, as did Gary Kurtz, who
was Lucas's producing partner at the time. The usual story
goes that even though American Graffiti had been a success
and Lucas was seen by many in Hollywood as a
young visionary, he still found that he couldn't count on
studio execs to just envision the things that he was
(13:57):
describing in his Space opera project. But there's a little
bit of a myth or confusion here. Alan Ladd Jr.
At twentieth Century Fox was already on board for the
film for about a year when Lucas regrouped with the illustrator.
The reality was that, according to Kurtz quote, the script
was not easy to read, so we knew we needed
(14:18):
artwork to show the crew. McQuary's work was a little
like a roadmap, something tangible that Lucas and Kurt's could
share with their collaborators to let them see exactly where
they wanted the film to go. Ralph described his next
meeting with Lucas in an interview years later, quote, Gary
Kurtz and George stopped by with the script and we
arranged right there, in a twenty minute meeting what I
(14:40):
was going to get paid and what I was going
to do. They wanted four or five paintings, so they said,
just read it and find some things I thought would
be good to illustrate. I learned that one of George's
good traits is that he doesn't swamp you with tons
of pep talk. His first script was quite thorough, but
he doesn't hang over your shoulder. And another account of
the story, A mcquarie confirmed again that Lucas gave him
(15:02):
a lot of freedom and those early conceptual pieces. He
once said, quote, George gave me a script and I
went away for a while. He said, do what interests you.
It was like hearing music and seeing what you hear.
In a later interview, he described the freedom of this
unfettered creative process as quote a special opportunity to start
(15:23):
from the ground up, being able to create new characters,
vehicles and different worlds. And since when I started it
wasn't even clear that the film would be made. I
didn't have to limit myself. McQuary did a lot of
quick little sketches based on the script. He described himself
as a person who sees things as he reads, and
the script Lucas gave him, which had the working title
(15:46):
at the time, Adventures of the Star Killer, had, in
the artist words quote boodles of chances to invent interesting
objects and characters. And he started showing those little thumbnail
sketches to Lucas and Kurt's very early on to confer
on what was right, what needed tweaking, et cetera, before
he moved to the more intensive paintings. Lucas was also
(16:08):
sharing with mcquarie the concept designs of another artist, Colin Cantwell,
who was working on ships and vehicles to the film.
Can't Well and mcquarie compared notes often, and as Ralph
incorporated the ship designs into his paintings, he would sometimes
go back and update the paintings As can't Well's work evolved.
He turned in his first Star Wars concept piece in
(16:30):
it was of the two now famous droids R two,
D two and C three po. Although they looked a
bit different than Ralph described his decision to start with
this image quote. I read the script early on, and
there was an occasion in the script for R two
D two and C three PO to eject from a
spacecraft and land in a pod on this desert planet tattooing.
(16:52):
I chose that as a moment in the film as
an interesting way to show our two D two and
C three PO. I put those three things together, made
a drawing, and made the painting at about two days
all total. That was the first painting for Star Wars.
That's one of those moments where you realize when he
says all of this took him two days, like he's
operating on another level. It's a whole lot of painting
(17:16):
to churn out in two days. Coming up, we're going
to talk about how Ralph's art created instantly recognizable imagery
for the film. But first we will take a quick
break to hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history class going. You can see in those
(17:37):
early production paintings that this first painting of our two
and C three p O is where Ralph unknowingly changed
culture forever. And when you look at any of the
early illustrations he did for the movie. It's clearly his
hand that brought imagery into the world that we are
all very familiar with today. Even if you have never
seen a Star War, it is a safe bet that
(18:00):
you know what an Imperial stormtrooper looks like, and that
you could identify ARE two and C three p O
pretty easily, and that you would never not recognize an
image of Darth Vader if you saw it. Part of
what makes these images so compelling is how much they
draw the viewer in what's obvious and has been commented
on by numerous prominent artists since then, is how much
(18:22):
movement and tone and intensity is captured in these pieces.
They don't feel like static drawings, but cinematic scenes that
look almost as though you might have pulled a frame
from a film. He illustrated Vader in a defensive posture,
holding his lightsaber in front of him, while the protagonist,
then known as Star Killer holds asaber in the right
(18:44):
hand that has either finished a swing or as preparing
for one. The two are in a sterile looking hallway
that appears to be part of a spaceship, with light
spilling into the scene from a corridor just behind and
to the left of the action from the viewer's perspective.
If you compare this image to the finished film, becomes
apparent that the hallways of Leah's ship the Tantivy for
(19:08):
almost exact recreations of this painting setting. And his image
of the droids out in the desert that we mentioned
shows the little astromach R two with his manipulator arms extended,
looking as though he is trying to plead with his
Protocol droid counterpart. From the background, an escape pod is
shown in the far background, its cargo doors popped open
(19:31):
as it sits on its side in the sand. A
huge rock formation looms in the far distance, and the
entire vista just feels huge. Despite being bright, The empty
expanse of this scene also has a sense of danger
and even loneliness. Incidentally, actor Anthony Daniels has long told
the story that it was Ralph's art that convinced him
(19:53):
to take the part of C three po which he
originally wanted to turn down. The Protocol droid, which at
a stage resembled the robot from the film Metropolis, gazes
directly at the viewer. The expression manages to be static
and expressive all at once, something that spoke to Daniels
and made him really connect with the character. And much
(20:15):
of that art that was created was driven by the
practicality that McQuary had developed as a technical illustrator. In
his words, the design of Darth Vader was really one
that started with thinking about how a human could survive
in space. Quote. The first thing I thought was, shouldn't
he have some sort of breathing apparatus if he's entering
the vacuum of space? I asked George, and he said, fine,
(20:37):
give him a breath mask, which now we couldn't imagine
him without. Even after the film was moving forward and
mcquarie was called upon to make more images, he continued
to produce both quick sketches and full illustrations at that
high level that those initial illustration pieces had been. Ralph
explained in an interview in the early two thousands that
(20:59):
he just assumed that was what George Lucas wanted. Quote.
I started with shots of the Blockade Runner coming out
from behind a planet, chased by an Imperial fighter. That
was the first scene that I read and started sketching
right away. I did some sketches of Darth Vader and
R two D two right off the bat and the
sand Crawler and some stuff on the Death Star. Then
(21:20):
I started getting photographs of models being done by Colin Cantwell,
and then Joe Johnson was brought on and he started
supplying sketches and I would put those into my paintings,
thinking that's what George wanted, that's what was offered to me.
I made illustrations originally designed to sell the film. We
could have dispensed with doing color illustration after the film
(21:40):
was a go. I'm so glad they did not. Ralph's
concept designs were then used by costume designer John Molow
and production designer John Barry and his team as the
basis for the film's entire look. Incidentally, Barry and Molow
both won Oscars for their work on the film, and
knowing that other designers would be refined the ideas that
(22:01):
he was coming up with, allowed Ralph to work really quickly.
He would sketch and paint out things for George and
they were usually pretty close to what the director wanted,
so they would just move right on to the next thing.
And one thing that might have really helped here is
that McQuary was a well seasoned professional. At this time.
He was in his forties. He had been producing art
(22:22):
for clients for more than two decades and he was
a great collaborator. But he was also confident in his
skills and abilities, and he knew what he could bring
to the discussion or add to a design that would
serve the work. Ralph also created Matt paintings to be
used on film and Star Wars, specifically The Planets and
the Death Star. This was work that he did alone
(22:43):
in his garage. Harrison elenched Off from Disney was also
doing Matt paintings for the film and was the supervisor,
and the newly formed I l M was based in
the San Fernando Valley, but simultaneously, macquarie had other jobs
that he also had deadlines for, so it wasn't as
though he could just pick up and move out to
the I l M offices. So Ralph would produced these
(23:05):
large six foot long pieces and then strap them to
the top of his car and drive them to the
effects house to be photographed. He spoke about how his
technical and mechanical style was a little too precise to
really work well for Matt painting because it just didn't
feel right to a viewer. Quote. If you made a
tight illustration that was carefully tickled up so that everything
(23:26):
was reading to the naked eye there right before you,
it didn't look real there on screen. We had to
kind of blend things and make it a little casual
in order to have it come off as a Matt painting.
I got by as a Matt painter. Let's say that
when it became apparent that the death star he painted
on glass to use for a shot in the film
just didn't quite work, he had to take another approach.
(23:49):
According to mcquarie, once they photographed his flat painting, that's
exactly what it looked like. Quote, like flat art coming
at you. The solution was to keep Ralph's persist and work,
but to add dimension to it. Quote. So we made
this three and a half the diameter plexiglass sphere, and
I painted that and detailed it with tape and all
kinds of layers of paper glued on to make details,
(24:12):
and I cut a lot of little holes through the
paint to let light shine through. We put a light
inside of it and photographed that, and that made a
very convincing death star. In the final shot. There were
innumerable other projects that came with the Star Wars gig.
McQuary produced promotional images as well, including logos and posters,
(24:32):
and one of the projects that he worked on was
a possible poster for the film, which was listed in
the request for it as Fabulous five, but which Ralph
titled Fantastic five. The main characters look a little different here.
Han looks more like a battle reading warrior and less
like a casual, scruffy scoundrel, complete with a cape and
a lightsaber. Luke is a female figure wearing what looks
(24:55):
like a blue body suit and tan boots and a
fitted tunic. Chebacco looks are a very different, wearing an
armored tunic with a more orc like face and fur
that looks kind of bluish or possibly lavender see three.
Bio still looks more art deco, with Metropolis aesthetics still
driving the appearance are too shape and various armatures look
(25:16):
much like we're accustomed to today, although his blue accents
aren't there, He's almost entirely white. The five are posed
in the foreground with an orange to purple gradient sky
in the background, why wings fly overhead and a proto
death star looms in the background at the top of
the image. This was only ever used on a magazine
cover and never as a poster, which makes sense since
(25:40):
the characters changed so much. There were later versions of
this image with Luke and Leah in the foreground and
the Droids and Chewy looking a lot more as we've
come to know them, but ultimately the studio went in
a different direction for the poster. And this is where
we're gonna end part one because it's where McQuary wrapped
up his work on Star Wars at least for a
time and moved on to other projects. And our next
(26:03):
episode we'll talk about how things progressed after Star Wars
was released in theaters and how the franchise became Ralph's
primary work for several more years. UM, I have listener mail. Great.
That is about our interview with Jeremy Cats sort of.
It's also about everyone's shared love of images of America. Uh.
(26:24):
This is from our listener, Ari, who writes, Hi, Holly
and Tracy. I'm writing because your recent interview with Jeremy
Cats sent me into a spiral of book browsing. I
of course wanted to see the book after the interview
I am Jewish myself, and I'm always interested in learning
more of our history. And when I saw the cover,
I was transported. I worked in a bookstore for several
years when I was younger, and we always had some
(26:45):
of these books and I loved flipping through them, but
never bought any. I had no idea there were so many,
and before I knew it, I had added way too
many to my car on my local bookstores website. I
ended up only buying to Jeremy's as well as a
Gaze of Lesbians of San Francisco book. But I have
so many I want definitely going to be a treat
myself for some time to come. So thank you for
(27:08):
reminding me about these and for all your wonderful work
on this podcast. I really enjoy every episode. Uh, thank you, Ari.
They're so kind to send us this lovely email. I
feel like that episode three stoked images of America love
for many people, including myself, because I similarly have a
cart full of them. Uh. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so History Podcast at
(27:31):
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(00:23):
maximum effect, headphones are recommended. Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
trade C. V. Wilson. Oh, this is a special one.
(00:45):
The person that we are talking about on today's show,
Uh could easily be said to have shifted and perhaps
even defined the cultural visual landscape of the late twentieth
century thanks to his work on Star Wars. And if
that sounds overblown or it seems like it's really only
about hardcore Star Wars fans, I would invite you to
think about the last time, for example, you shopped in
(01:07):
a big box store. There were probably Star Wars branded
housewears there, or clothing items, or even candy or toothpaste
on display. I also see those sorts of things at
the grocery store, and a lot of the imagery that
we think of us so identifiably Star Wars came from
the work of Ralph McQuary. He laid the groundwork for
the visual feel of the entire franchise through his work
(01:29):
that started in the late nineteen seventies, and he worked
on a lot of other films and provided some of
their most iconic imagery as well. So this is gonna
be a two parter, uh, because there's a lot of
art ground to cover, and we're going to talk about
the life and some of the work of Ralph McQuary.
There will be a lot of Star Wars. I'm not
gonna lie. But one of the wonderful things about his
(01:50):
life story too, is that he lived long enough to
see Star Wars become a cultural juggernaut, and as a consequence,
he was interviewed a lot, and he is extremely quotable. Uh.
He puts together wonderful turn of phrase sometimes in his
honesty and his humility about his work is really quite charming.
So we have the luxury of being able to reference
(02:12):
his own words throughout this particular story. And so in
this first episode, we're going to talk about mcquarie's early life,
which makes it very clear how he ended up being
the perfect person to work on Star Wars. Uh. We'll
talk about his work before Star Wars, and then how
he started collaborating with George Lucas, and then in the
second part we're going to cover his career in life
after the first Star Wars film came out. So let's
(02:34):
dive into part one. Ralph Angus mcquarie was born in Gary,
Indiana on June. When he was one, the family moved
to Billings, Montana, and they stayed there for nine years.
This was a move really to keep the family afloat
as the Great Depression began. They moved in with Ralph's
grandparents on their farm, and Ralph's mother was an artist.
(02:57):
She worked in pastel's and McQuary recall that in Billings
as a child, he started to get interested in art
because of that exposure. His grandfather was an engineer in
a brewery, but he also found ways to express himself artistically.
He published a regular poetry pamphlet and he illustrated that
pamphlet himself. His grandfather also painted in oils, so clearly
(03:19):
there is a familial proclivity for creativity at play. One
of the hobbies that Ralph picked up as a kid,
which really continued to occupy his free time for most
of his life, was building model airplanes. He recalled that
he became really fascinated with planes at around the age
of six, and that fascination never waned at all. This
(03:39):
attraction to plane design and the model building hobby really
clearly informed some of the work that he would later
become the most well known for. He later said in
an interview quote, I suppose there's a sort of glamour
about it. I've learned to know what war is about
in the interim, but the interest in airplanes kind of
hung on. Yeah, we'll talk about his exposure to war
(04:02):
in just a moment. But McQuary's father was a wood
pattern maker and during the depression his work fell off,
but as the war created more opportunities, he moved the
family first to Seattle in nineteen forty for better job
prospects than he could find in Billings, But it was
actually while they were visiting Vancouver that he found a
job in a shipyard, and so the family moved to
(04:23):
and stayed in Vancouver, British Columbia for the next eight years.
It was during that time, as McQuary entered his teenage years,
that he started to seriously consider art, not as a
hobby but as a career. He described looking at the
art and advertisements and thinking that or illustration could be
appealing job paths. Just as McQuary was finishing high school,
(04:47):
the family moved again to Seattle, and at that point
Ralph took a job in a bakery and uh, he
described in one interview like how he was, you know,
basically like putting in and removing bakery items to the ovens,
and that was not something he enjoyed. That job cemented
his thinking that art was really a much better choice
as a vocation. But he also knew that he needed
(05:08):
some additional training if he wanted to draw for a living,
and the y m c a was offering technical drawing classes,
so he enrolled. So he worked during the day and
then he took these drawing classes at night. After he finished,
he got his first art job with Boeing And this
maybe it wasn't the coolest art job. He was illustrating
a parts catalog. I used to write catalog copy, so
(05:31):
I feel an affinity there and like your creative interest
versus your job. But he made connections there with a
lot of other artists and continued to do his own
work at the same time. In the nineteen fifties. Ralph
served in the Army after he was drafted, and he
was deployed in the Korean War. He had initially thought
(05:52):
that because he was working in aerospace, he might get
a deferment, but that was not the case, and then
he thought he would primarily work as an engine near
in the army, which is how he started out. But
he got assigned to the seventh Cavalry Regiment and he
saw active combat. He later said that he never expected
to make it out alive, and he had many brushes
with death. He was shot during his service. He later
(06:15):
told a biographer, quote, I got hit in the side
of the head with a round from a Russian burp gun.
I felt this tremendous bang, and it spun me for
a second. It penetrated my helmet. A guy sat me
down and put a bandage on my head. I looked
down and found my helmet and put it back on.
For all I knew, it had lost its temper, but
it had saved my life. McCrory was discharged and went
(06:37):
back home, and he later described this feeling of being
quote embarrassed to be around for some reason, because he
had seen so many of his fellow soldiers die in combat.
This put a pause on his art career, but it
also enabled him to move it forward because once he
got back to the States, he was able to enroll
at Art Center College of Design in California on a
(06:58):
g I bill, And at that point he wasn't entirely
sure what direction he wanted his art career to go in.
He considered working in advertising, or illustration or industrial design,
but then he decided that commercial art wasn't really the
right fit for him. It felt a little too much
like being a salesman, so he quit Art Center and
(07:19):
he went back to technical illustration. He worked for a
while for the defense contractor Litton Industries, that was from
nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty two, drawing guidance and control equipment,
among other things, but eventually he went back to Boeing.
He worked on images while he was there that were
used in Pentagon proposals and brochure's about Boeing's various projects,
(07:39):
and he also got a little bit into film because
he started storyboarding some of the internal films that the
company was making for presentations. After a while, though, his
work for Boeing felt less and less fulfilling, although his
work there was spectacular. For example, when you look at
his illustration of Boeing's Model seven thirty three supersonic transport
(08:00):
concept gliding above a lower altitude jet in the land below,
that it really looks almost like a photograph. But there
wasn't enough variety in the work. The hours are also
really long. He later joked, quote rows of windows, that's
what got me. This boredom may have been rooted in
a more romantic idea of his art as well, and
(08:22):
he later said in an interview quote, I've always had
sort of a dream world approach to sitting and sketching
for myself. I go for the romantic and what looks interesting,
while half my mind is occupied with practicality. So he
decided to move back to Los Angeles in in the
hope of finding more fulfilling work in the art field,
and he and two fellow artists started a studio together
(08:44):
called three Real Studio, and they took what they could
get in terms of contract jobs. For a while. McQuary
even drew detailed illustrations of teeth and dental tools for
a dental firm. And it was after this move to
l A that the connection started that would lead Ralph
to his most well known work, and we're going to
talk about that after we first paused for a sponsor break.
(09:12):
It was while working in Los Angeles that McQuary got
a call to work on a movie, but not the
kind of movie most often associated with Hollywood. As NASA's
Apollo program was building up, they wanted to create coverage
of the process for CBS News special events, and as
McQuary put it, quote, they were looking for someone who
could do an accurate painting of a rocket ship. You know,
(09:34):
Ralph was the perfect choice for this project. He could
indeed draw rocket ships, and he also had worked on
a number of short film projects with Boeing already, so
he understood how a technical artist fit into production. He
ended up working for a number of years with NASA
and CBS storyboarding out animation sequences for short films that
(09:56):
showed the various trajectories and workings of the Apollo space raft.
He also took a job for a while at Encyclopedia Britannica.
He was working on a film about time for them
when they hosted a screening of th h X that
was George Lucas's student film version well before he made
the full length version of it with Robert Duval, and
(10:17):
mcquarie said that his reaction to this was, quote, that's
a really wonderfully good student film. I didn't really know
much about student films at the time, but it struck
me as really wonderful and excellent. But he didn't know
or meet or collaborate with Lucas until several years later.
He also started illustrating movie posters in the early nineteen seventies.
(10:38):
The first was a poster for a film called The
Legend of Boggy Creek, and Ralph's art for it was
a departure from the technical work that dominated his career
up to that point. This shows a humanoid monster covered
in for trapesing through shallow water, with a dark and
moody background of trees and the sun on the horizon,
creating dramatic silhouettes and contrast throughout the scene. After that,
(11:02):
he had a fairly steady stream of movie poster jobs. Yeah,
I feel like when you read about his career, and
we'll talk about this some more, but like he was
always hustling, like multiple projects at a time, in part,
I think because he was rather fast and he was
able to do so, but early in the nineteen seventies,
two screenwriters reached out to Ralph for some assistance, and
(11:24):
through them, his life took a significant turn. Although this
may not be who you're expecting, it's Hal Barwood and
Matthew Robbins who had created a screenplay called Star Dancing,
and they were trying to get financing for that movie,
but they needed visuals to show potential investors to get
their ideas across, and Ralph was who they got to
create those visuals. So if the title Star Dancing isn't
(11:47):
ringing any bells, it's because this didn't work. Even though
by Ralph's account they all had a great time working together,
the picture just never got made. Barwood and Robbins continued
to work together and eventually wrote Dry Gagin, Slayer and MacArthur,
and other films that did get finance for production. Robbins
also collaborated later with Guerro del Toro on Crimson Peak,
(12:10):
and prior to this project, McQuary didn't really think about
science fiction as an avenue for his work, later saying
of his time on the Star Dancing project quote, I'd
worked for Boeing and was in love with airplanes and spacecraft,
and I had an interest in fantasy architecture. Although I
hadn't thought about doing much in science fiction, but I
enjoyed working with Hollan Matt so much on their science
(12:31):
fiction film. I felt like that was really the place
I should be. I had found what I should be doing.
The important connection here was that how Barwood was friends
with George Lucas, and Lucas saw the artwork that mcquarie
had created for the Star Dancing Pitch and actually really
liked it. So when it came time for him to
similarly try to convey his ideas for Star Wars, it
(12:53):
was Ralph that he wanted. But not long after they met,
Lucas got to work on American Graffiti, which came out
at Night teen seventy three, and mcquarie kind of thought
that the science fiction fantasy project that they had discussed
had just been abandoned. He once told a biographer that
George Lucas quote came by my house one evening. He
talked about his idea for a galactic war picture, Intergalactic War.
(13:16):
He said it would involve all aspects of Flash Gordon,
but done in a sort of two thousand one manner
with real high fidelity effects, and I thought, gee, that
sounds ambitious, you know, And we said goodbye, and I
never expected to see him again. Obviously, that was not
the case. In nineteen seventy five, Lucas once again reached
(13:36):
out to continue their discussion, as did Gary Kurtz, who
was Lucas's producing partner at the time. The usual story
goes that even though American Graffiti had been a success
and Lucas was seen by many in Hollywood as a
young visionary, he still found that he couldn't count on
studio execs to just envision the things that he was
(13:57):
describing in his Space opera project. But there's a little
bit of a myth or confusion here. Alan Ladd Jr.
At twentieth Century Fox was already on board for the
film for about a year when Lucas regrouped with the illustrator.
The reality was that, according to Kurtz quote, the script
was not easy to read, so we knew we needed
(14:18):
artwork to show the crew. McQuary's work was a little
like a roadmap, something tangible that Lucas and Kurt's could
share with their collaborators to let them see exactly where
they wanted the film to go. Ralph described his next
meeting with Lucas in an interview years later, quote, Gary
Kurtz and George stopped by with the script and we
arranged right there, in a twenty minute meeting what I
(14:40):
was going to get paid and what I was going
to do. They wanted four or five paintings, so they said,
just read it and find some things I thought would
be good to illustrate. I learned that one of George's
good traits is that he doesn't swamp you with tons
of pep talk. His first script was quite thorough, but
he doesn't hang over your shoulder. And another account of
the story, A mcquarie confirmed again that Lucas gave him
(15:02):
a lot of freedom and those early conceptual pieces. He
once said, quote, George gave me a script and I
went away for a while. He said, do what interests you.
It was like hearing music and seeing what you hear.
In a later interview, he described the freedom of this
unfettered creative process as quote a special opportunity to start
(15:23):
from the ground up, being able to create new characters,
vehicles and different worlds. And since when I started it
wasn't even clear that the film would be made. I
didn't have to limit myself. McQuary did a lot of
quick little sketches based on the script. He described himself
as a person who sees things as he reads, and
the script Lucas gave him, which had the working title
(15:46):
at the time, Adventures of the Star Killer, had, in
the artist words quote boodles of chances to invent interesting
objects and characters. And he started showing those little thumbnail
sketches to Lucas and Kurt's very early on to confer
on what was right, what needed tweaking, et cetera, before
he moved to the more intensive paintings. Lucas was also
(16:08):
sharing with mcquarie the concept designs of another artist, Colin Cantwell,
who was working on ships and vehicles to the film.
Can't Well and mcquarie compared notes often, and as Ralph
incorporated the ship designs into his paintings, he would sometimes
go back and update the paintings As can't Well's work evolved.
He turned in his first Star Wars concept piece in
(16:30):
it was of the two now famous droids R two,
D two and C three po. Although they looked a
bit different than Ralph described his decision to start with
this image quote. I read the script early on, and
there was an occasion in the script for R two
D two and C three PO to eject from a
spacecraft and land in a pod on this desert planet tattooing.
(16:52):
I chose that as a moment in the film as
an interesting way to show our two D two and
C three PO. I put those three things together, made
a drawing, and made the painting at about two days
all total. That was the first painting for Star Wars.
That's one of those moments where you realize when he
says all of this took him two days, like he's
operating on another level. It's a whole lot of painting
(17:16):
to churn out in two days. Coming up, we're going
to talk about how Ralph's art created instantly recognizable imagery
for the film. But first we will take a quick
break to hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history class going. You can see in those
(17:37):
early production paintings that this first painting of our two
and C three p O is where Ralph unknowingly changed
culture forever. And when you look at any of the
early illustrations he did for the movie. It's clearly his
hand that brought imagery into the world that we are
all very familiar with today. Even if you have never
seen a Star War, it is a safe bet that
(18:00):
you know what an Imperial stormtrooper looks like, and that
you could identify ARE two and C three p O
pretty easily, and that you would never not recognize an
image of Darth Vader if you saw it. Part of
what makes these images so compelling is how much they
draw the viewer in what's obvious and has been commented
on by numerous prominent artists since then, is how much
(18:22):
movement and tone and intensity is captured in these pieces.
They don't feel like static drawings, but cinematic scenes that
look almost as though you might have pulled a frame
from a film. He illustrated Vader in a defensive posture,
holding his lightsaber in front of him, while the protagonist,
then known as Star Killer holds asaber in the right
(18:44):
hand that has either finished a swing or as preparing
for one. The two are in a sterile looking hallway
that appears to be part of a spaceship, with light
spilling into the scene from a corridor just behind and
to the left of the action from the viewer's perspective.
If you compare this image to the finished film, becomes
apparent that the hallways of Leah's ship the Tantivy for
(19:08):
almost exact recreations of this painting setting. And his image
of the droids out in the desert that we mentioned
shows the little astromach R two with his manipulator arms extended,
looking as though he is trying to plead with his
Protocol droid counterpart. From the background, an escape pod is
shown in the far background, its cargo doors popped open
(19:31):
as it sits on its side in the sand. A
huge rock formation looms in the far distance, and the
entire vista just feels huge. Despite being bright, The empty
expanse of this scene also has a sense of danger
and even loneliness. Incidentally, actor Anthony Daniels has long told
the story that it was Ralph's art that convinced him
(19:53):
to take the part of C three po which he
originally wanted to turn down. The Protocol droid, which at
a stage resembled the robot from the film Metropolis, gazes
directly at the viewer. The expression manages to be static
and expressive all at once, something that spoke to Daniels
and made him really connect with the character. And much
(20:15):
of that art that was created was driven by the
practicality that McQuary had developed as a technical illustrator. In
his words, the design of Darth Vader was really one
that started with thinking about how a human could survive
in space. Quote. The first thing I thought was, shouldn't
he have some sort of breathing apparatus if he's entering
the vacuum of space? I asked George, and he said, fine,
(20:37):
give him a breath mask, which now we couldn't imagine
him without. Even after the film was moving forward and
mcquarie was called upon to make more images, he continued
to produce both quick sketches and full illustrations at that
high level that those initial illustration pieces had been. Ralph
explained in an interview in the early two thousands that
(20:59):
he just assumed that was what George Lucas wanted. Quote.
I started with shots of the Blockade Runner coming out
from behind a planet, chased by an Imperial fighter. That
was the first scene that I read and started sketching
right away. I did some sketches of Darth Vader and
R two D two right off the bat and the
sand Crawler and some stuff on the Death Star. Then
(21:20):
I started getting photographs of models being done by Colin Cantwell,
and then Joe Johnson was brought on and he started
supplying sketches and I would put those into my paintings,
thinking that's what George wanted, that's what was offered to me.
I made illustrations originally designed to sell the film. We
could have dispensed with doing color illustration after the film
(21:40):
was a go. I'm so glad they did not. Ralph's
concept designs were then used by costume designer John Molow
and production designer John Barry and his team as the
basis for the film's entire look. Incidentally, Barry and Molow
both won Oscars for their work on the film, and
knowing that other designers would be refined the ideas that
(22:01):
he was coming up with, allowed Ralph to work really quickly.
He would sketch and paint out things for George and
they were usually pretty close to what the director wanted,
so they would just move right on to the next thing.
And one thing that might have really helped here is
that McQuary was a well seasoned professional. At this time.
He was in his forties. He had been producing art
(22:22):
for clients for more than two decades and he was
a great collaborator. But he was also confident in his
skills and abilities, and he knew what he could bring
to the discussion or add to a design that would
serve the work. Ralph also created Matt paintings to be
used on film and Star Wars, specifically The Planets and
the Death Star. This was work that he did alone
(22:43):
in his garage. Harrison elenched Off from Disney was also
doing Matt paintings for the film and was the supervisor,
and the newly formed I l M was based in
the San Fernando Valley, but simultaneously, macquarie had other jobs
that he also had deadlines for, so it wasn't as
though he could just pick up and move out to
the I l M offices. So Ralph would produced these
(23:05):
large six foot long pieces and then strap them to
the top of his car and drive them to the
effects house to be photographed. He spoke about how his
technical and mechanical style was a little too precise to
really work well for Matt painting because it just didn't
feel right to a viewer. Quote. If you made a
tight illustration that was carefully tickled up so that everything
(23:26):
was reading to the naked eye there right before you,
it didn't look real there on screen. We had to
kind of blend things and make it a little casual
in order to have it come off as a Matt painting.
I got by as a Matt painter. Let's say that
when it became apparent that the death star he painted
on glass to use for a shot in the film
just didn't quite work, he had to take another approach.
(23:49):
According to mcquarie, once they photographed his flat painting, that's
exactly what it looked like. Quote, like flat art coming
at you. The solution was to keep Ralph's persist and work,
but to add dimension to it. Quote. So we made
this three and a half the diameter plexiglass sphere, and
I painted that and detailed it with tape and all
kinds of layers of paper glued on to make details,
(24:12):
and I cut a lot of little holes through the
paint to let light shine through. We put a light
inside of it and photographed that, and that made a
very convincing death star. In the final shot. There were
innumerable other projects that came with the Star Wars gig.
McQuary produced promotional images as well, including logos and posters,
(24:32):
and one of the projects that he worked on was
a possible poster for the film, which was listed in
the request for it as Fabulous five, but which Ralph
titled Fantastic five. The main characters look a little different here.
Han looks more like a battle reading warrior and less
like a casual, scruffy scoundrel, complete with a cape and
a lightsaber. Luke is a female figure wearing what looks
(24:55):
like a blue body suit and tan boots and a
fitted tunic. Chebacco looks are a very different, wearing an
armored tunic with a more orc like face and fur
that looks kind of bluish or possibly lavender see three.
Bio still looks more art deco, with Metropolis aesthetics still
driving the appearance are too shape and various armatures look
(25:16):
much like we're accustomed to today, although his blue accents
aren't there, He's almost entirely white. The five are posed
in the foreground with an orange to purple gradient sky
in the background, why wings fly overhead and a proto
death star looms in the background at the top of
the image. This was only ever used on a magazine
cover and never as a poster, which makes sense since
(25:40):
the characters changed so much. There were later versions of
this image with Luke and Leah in the foreground and
the Droids and Chewy looking a lot more as we've
come to know them, but ultimately the studio went in
a different direction for the poster. And this is where
we're gonna end part one because it's where McQuary wrapped
up his work on Star Wars at least for a
time and moved on to other projects. And our next
(26:03):
episode we'll talk about how things progressed after Star Wars
was released in theaters and how the franchise became Ralph's
primary work for several more years. UM, I have listener mail. Great.
That is about our interview with Jeremy Cats sort of.
It's also about everyone's shared love of images of America. Uh.
(26:24):
This is from our listener, Ari, who writes, Hi, Holly
and Tracy. I'm writing because your recent interview with Jeremy
Cats sent me into a spiral of book browsing. I
of course wanted to see the book after the interview
I am Jewish myself, and I'm always interested in learning
more of our history. And when I saw the cover,
I was transported. I worked in a bookstore for several
years when I was younger, and we always had some
(26:45):
of these books and I loved flipping through them, but
never bought any. I had no idea there were so many,
and before I knew it, I had added way too
many to my car on my local bookstores website. I
ended up only buying to Jeremy's as well as a
Gaze of Lesbians of San Francisco book. But I have
so many I want definitely going to be a treat
myself for some time to come. So thank you for
(27:08):
reminding me about these and for all your wonderful work
on this podcast. I really enjoy every episode. Uh, thank you, Ari.
They're so kind to send us this lovely email. I
feel like that episode three stoked images of America love
for many people, including myself, because I similarly have a
cart full of them. Uh. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so History Podcast at
(27:31):
i heeart radio dot com. You can also find us
everywhere on social media as Missed in History. You can
also subscribe to the show on the I Heart Radio app,
at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. This
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To experience more podcasts like this. Search for I Heart
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You Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcast from I Heart Radio, visit
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