I don’t know the woman’s name but I’ve kept her close to my heart for over 30 years.  The one and only time I saw her was when my family went, as a unit (rare, so very rare) to see STAR WARS back in 1977.  I was 16 years old, an untested youth possessing man-sized hormones and lonely for love.  I needed a woman… and I found her in a galaxy far, far away. 

This extra crosses the frame from right to left in scenes midway through the film as Luke Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi make contact with smuggler Han Solo.  I was blown away by the movie at the time, really just drank it up, all that dusty, lived-in detail and the shopworn mythology George Lucas had cobbled together from equal parts of Joseph Campbell and Alex Raymond.  I collected the books, the action figures, the trading cards, I was a total STAR WARS geek… and yet 30 years later I could care less about the ever-expanding series.  I outgrew George Lucas and his two-dimensional characters, who grew heavier as he heaped additional mythology onto their rounded shoulders.  I found other interests, other passions, other things to obsess about… but I never forgot about The Girl in the Vest (as I call her), whom you will see in the frame grab above, to the left of the Imperial Storm Troopers (hiss!).  Isn’t she great?

I can’t overemphasize how fleeting is her presence in STAR WARS; she’s like a radar blip, there and gone.  But I saw her right away and my heart skipped the proverbial beat.  I loved her boyish, athletic build, her rugged adventurer’s vest and boots and that she seemed to be wearing jeans even in a port town as distant and dangerous as Mos Eisley.  She had a smart little short haircut with a side part that gave her an intelligent look (in the Kate Jackson mold, I thought to myself) but even better than that was that she was walking alone.  Alone!  Unprotected!  Unaccompanied!  But clearly, clearly (it seemed to me then, as it does not) not vulnerable.  She’s so very obviously a stomper, a scrapper, an intergalatic ass-kicker of the first water.  By the way she’s slightly hunched over, I imagined she had just come back from having a snort at the cantina… but probably left because she’s not a fan of Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes.  I was so in love with this movie extra that I went home and began to write a science fiction novel in which the character appears prominently (and drinks frothy red beer, for some reason which eludes me now).  Never finished it, though.

When George Lucas “improved” STAR WARS with all kinds of digital snap-ons, he flew a little android drone gizmo whatzit in front of the Girl in the Vest, impeding my view of her, and that’s where I parted company with Lucasfilm.  Go ahead, Lucas, compromise your masterpiece, let Greedo shoot first – knock yourself out- but you didn’t have to mess with my imaginary intergalactic girlfriend.  That’s why I’ll have nothing more to do with clones and ‘droids and storm troopers and such… but I’ll always remember the Girl in the Vest.  She was alone and I was alone.  We might have had something once… but that was a long time ago.

 Special thanks to Domenick E. Fraumeni and a pilgrim shadow I know only as Given to Hyperbole for help with these screen grabs.