November 17, 1978: The Star Wars Holiday Special airs. It almost kills the franchise. Like a period-specific hairstyle in a high school yearbook photo, it looks worse every year.
Calling it a "Holiday Special" makes it sound like they're trying to tie the events of Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope -- of course, then known simply as Star Wars -- which take place, as the tagline goes, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... " to the Earth holiday of Christmas.
Indeed, in 1980, Domenico Monardo, a.k.a. Meco, who had a Number 1 hit in the Summer of 1977 with a disco version of John Williams' orchestral theme, produced a record album: Christmas in the Stars, starring Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, with special effects making it sound like R2-D2 and Chewbacca were also involved. Other Star Wars characters were mentioned, but none of their portrayers showed up for the recording session. Too expensive, I suppose. It included a song, sung by a droid, titled "What Do You Get a Wookiee for Christmas When He Already Owns a Comb?" (As it turns out, a brush.)
That was bizarre. The Star Wars Holiday Special was so bizarre (How bizarre was it?), it made Christmas in the Stars look like an installment of The Lawrence Welk Show by comparison.
The "holiday" in question is Life Day, on the home planet of Chewbacca's people, the Wookiees, a planet whose name is canonically mentioned for the first time: Kashyyyk. (Yes, 3 straight Y's.) We are introduced to Chewie's wife, Mallatobuck; their son, Lumpawarrump; and Chewie's father, Attichitcuk, the Chief of their tribe.
They are the focus of the episode: Three characters we hadn't seen before, and who didn't speak English. There weren't even subtitles for their language. Meanwhile, Chewie and Han Solo are trying to get to Kashyyyk for the holiday, aboard the Millennium Falcon, with Darth Vader chasing them. They make it, and Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, C-3PO and R2-D2 are already there, and the celebration begins.
There is one non-Star Wars human star: Beatrice Arthur, having recently wrapped up her series Maude, but not yet having begun The Golden Girls, plays Ackmena, the operator of the Mos Eiseley cantina. She sings. Yes, Bea Arthur sings. And there's a mid-special cartoon, with most of the major actors' voices, that introduces the character of Boba Fett, one of the few things about this special that people remembered fondly.
The Special was, in TV parlance, a bomb. A bomb big enough to blow up the Death Star. George Lucas later ruled that Life Day, and all the members of Chewbacca's family who were shown or mentioned, are part of the current Star Wars canon, but the special itself is not.
Paramount Pictures figured audiences would eat anything up while waiting for Episode V -- the Empire Strikes Back to be released. They did, but were sick to their stomach. It was a worse next step than Star Trek: The Motion Picture turned out to be, a year later.
The Star Wars Holiday Special completed a trifecta of the film version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -- with Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees pathetically standing in for The Beatles -- on July 21, and Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park on October 28, that marked 1978 as a year when Hollywood executives must have gotten together over big bowls of cocaine and thought, "How can we squeeze the utmost profits out of popular culture, without spending as much money as we did on the cocaine before us?"
One more thing to consider: Like Elvis Presley's posthumous last special, the year before, The Star Wars Holiday Special has only aired once, and has never had an official release on any form of home video -- not VHS videotape, not laserdisc, not DVD, not Blu-Ray. Come to think of it, Elvis In Concert was also on CBS.
And CBS still had a better late 1970s than did NBC. Sure, they aired Elvis In Concert and The Star Wars Holiday Special, but they didn't air Hello, Larry, or Pink Lady and Jeff, or Supertrain.
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November 17, 1978 was a Friday. Football star Reggie Wayne was born. So were actors Tom Ellis and Rachel McAdams.
Baseball was in the off-season. Football was in midweek. There were 6 games in the NBA:
* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Washington Bullets, 143-94 at the Rutgers Athletic Center (now the Jersey Mike's Arena) in Piscataway, New Jersey. The sale of Julius Erving 2 years earlier meant that the Nets went from the best team in the ABA to the worst team in the NBA.
They had gotten better, but they lost this one to the defending World Champions, at home, by 49 points. Despite the big team score, the leading scorer, Elvin Hayes, had just 30 points. But 9 players scored at least 10. Eddie Jordan, who starred for Rutgers at their previous home, the College Avenue Gym, led the Nets with 19. The Nets did recover enough to make the Playoffs, though.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Denver Nuggets, 120-118 at the Boston Garden.
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Phoenix Suns, 95-94 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
* The Los Angele Lakers beat the New Orleans Jazz, 121-109 at The Forum, outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
* The Chicago Bulls beat the Golden State Warriors, 100-89 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Indiana Pacers, 126-115 at the Kingdome in Seattle.
There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Islanders beat the Washington Capitals, 4-2 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. And the Boston Bruins beat the Atlanta Flames, 6-2 at The Omni in Atlanta.
And there were 3 games played in the World Hockey Association:
* The Birmingham Bulls beat the New England Whalers, 7-1 at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center.
* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Cincinnati Stingers, 10-6 at the Winnipeg Arena.
* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Indianapolis Racers, 6-1 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton. I guess it was a bad night for defensive hockey.
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