The Great Jawa Village Conspiracy Theory is gaining steam. Hal Wamsley claims he played the Chief jawa in Star Wars: A New Hope movie and saw an entire jawa village set that was created in the California desert. He worked on the Death Valley set of the film with the second photography unit, but was never formally credited on the film, although he is listed in the IMDB database. And LucasFilm won't say he wasn't in the film. But they do deny that there was ever a Jawa village set built in the California desert.
According to Wamsley, both he and the late Jack Purvis (who is in the movie's actual credits) played the Chief Jawa. Wamsley told me, in a 1999 interview, that many of Purvis's scenes, which were filmed in Tunisia, had to be reshot in Death Valley. Thus, the only scene in Star Wars in which Purvis appears is the droid sale at the Lars homestead. Wamsley took credit for spying on R2-D2 and zapping him, carrying the droid to the sandcrawler, putting a restraining bolt on him (the spring 1978 issue of Cinefantastique has a picture of this being shot at Industrial Light & Magic, not Death Valley (CFQ volume 6 no. 4/vol. 7 no. 1, page 90)), and directing the other jawas up the vehicle's stairs.
Wamsley said he stumbled onto the role at the age of 15, when he was still 4'8.' (After a growth spurt at age 17, he reached his current height of 5'2'. See: echostation.com) His mother was an Avon Lady, and one of her clients was a casting director who needed people of Hal's height for "a little science fiction B movie." This project, for which Wamsley never read a script or knew the name, would be shooting second-unit photography near Artist's Palette in Death Valley, California. Hal recalled being ecstatic, and "about three weeks later, [t]hey came and picked me up, and we went down there to Death Valley. We were out there for five days, and then came home for the weekend, and then went out for another five."
"An almost a two-story mock-up" of the jawa sandcrawler figures in many of Wamsley's memories. He said that the sandcrawler was featured in the background of a jawa swap meet (which, according to him, was left out of the final film, and to his disappointment, not restored in the Special Edition). He described tents made of animal hide (probably those of banthas), polygamous jawas, child jawas, and ratlike creatures being roasted over fires.
Most of the components in Wamsley's story have been denied by Lucasfilm's Steven Sansweet (see Cinefantastique August 2002 (vol. 34 no. 5, page 5)). Regarding the sandcrawler set being rebuilt in Death Valley, "that is not true," Sansweet said. "I can tell you that the jawa part of the shoot in Death Valley was a quick one. No sets were built—certainly no part of the sandcrawler set was rebuilt." As for a jawa village, "there was no jawa village scene shot in Death Valley."
It's all very mysterious. We don't know quite what to think.
The Great Jawa Village Conspiracy Theory is gaining steam. Hal Wamsley claims he played the Chief jawa in Star Wars: A New Hope movie and saw an entire jawa village set that was created in the California desert. He worked on the Death Valley set of the film with the second photography unit, but was never formally credited on the film, although he is listed in the IMDB database. And LucasFilm won't say he wasn't in the film. But they do deny that there was ever a Jawa village set built in the California desert.
