When Darth Vader (David Prowse) revealed his secret to Luke, Hamill was hanging onto a pinnacle above mattresses placed on cardboard boxes about 30 feet off the ground.
A monkey is outfitted with a cane and a mask and measured. The simian was also briefly considered for walking shots of Minch-Yoda that would have been impossible to execute with a puppet.
Des Webb, in his enormous snow-creature costume with gigantic boots on stilts, could walk no more than a few feet without taking what looked like a painful fall. Here he drags a Luke Skywalker mannequin.
Harrison Ford sitting behind an X-wing.
On Sept. 5, 1979, renowned actor Sir Alec Guinness arrived at Elstree Studios, in Hertfordshire, England, where Mark Hamill greeted him. Though not on camera, Hamill would feed his character Luke Skywalkers lines to Guinness, who played Ben Kenobi.
Peter Mayhew, as Chewbacca, with Carrie Fisher.
A never-before-seen peek from the coffee-table book, "The Making of 'Star Wars': The Empire Strikes Back," from the new Vanity Fair.
