Published: July 29, 2024
Publisher: McFarland
Writers: Maria Jose Tenuto & John Tenuto
Formats: Paperback (ISBN 978-1-476-69563-1) & Kindle Edition
Pages: 213
Synopsis;
By 1977 National Public Radio (NPR) was in trouble, plagued by too little funding and small audiences. The phenomenal success of its adaptation of Star Wars as a radio drama in 1981 gave NPR the needed ratings, publicity, and boost in donations that kept it afloat at exactly the time it was threatened the most. Most importantly, Star Wars brought a new audience to NPR. As it did in theaters, where George Lucas’s films redefined movie making, so too did NPR’s Star Wars forever change the artistic world of radio drama.
That a radio network, dependent exclusively on audio, would find a lifeline in one of the most visually dynamic movies ever released is the stuff of irony. Utilizing new interviews with creatives such as Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Ann Sachs (Princess Leia), Perry King (Han Solo), and director John Madden, and archival research, this book details how an unlikely alliance of academics, radio executives, Lucasfilm employees, actors, and behind-the-scenes artists banded together, despite the obstacles, to create a unique and consequential work. It is also the story of how writer Brian Daley was the fulcrum who made it all possible.
The review;
I have always had a love of audiobooks. From a very young age, I struggled to switch my mind off and fall sleep at night. Night after night, I would lie awake and then in the morning would be shattered. When my father realised this could become an issue, he decided that I might need something to help me switch my mind off. Being a child of the nineties, I – of course – had a Walkman, an Aiwa one. My father had the perfect solution. He brought out seven TDK 60-minute cassettes. On the spine of each one was labelled Star Wars with two numbers. I asked my dad what these were? He said he had recorded them off the radio before I was born, in fact one of the episodes he’d recorded while on the beach on an August bank holiday as he didn’t want to miss it (you can perhaps see who started my obsession with Star Wars). He said try listening to these when I needed to sleep.
Not having a clue what to expect, I settled down for the night, placed my headphones on and pressed play. I couldn’t have even begun to imagine what was going to permeate my ears. Star Wars the Radio Drama started to play, with Mark Hamil voicing Luke. But it was a part of the story I didn’t know. It was a part of the story that I hadn’t seen. It was a part of the story that was set before the film as I knew it. It took me away to my favourite place and allowed my mind to relax. I was actually able to get to sleep! Well… until the Walkman clicked at the end of the cassette, wake me up and I’d get started on the second side of the cassette. The pains that the younger generation just can’t even comprehend.
I loved listening to Star Wars, the new parts, the different voice actors, hearing the familiar sounds and music, all of it was a part of my Star Wars experience. It also was my bridge for discovering other audiobooks and dramas (some that had far more than a cassette thirty-minute length), stories such as Just William read by the tremendous Martin Jarvis, Journey Into Space the last time Radio was more popular than TV and many others. A world without the internet may seem crazy, but when I was on this exploration it wasn’t available. When I asked my dad if they had ever recorded The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, my dad just didn’t Know. I imagine while he would have seen advertising for the first Star Wars Radio Drama, he would have been rather busy with me as a baby to take much notice of any others. With no internet to quickly check, it was something that I didn’t think too much about.
Then when I was eight, I was in Birmingham with my parents, visiting Waterstones bookshop. I found the audiobook section. Low and behold, they had The Empire Strikes Back Radio Drama on cassette! I couldn’t contain my excitement! It was very quickly placed on my Christmas list and on Christmas Day, I remember opening it with such a thrill, knowing I was going to hear more of the series that I loved so much. There was still new scenes and extra bits to the movie. There were also some interesting choices of voices! I loved John Lithgow in films and TV but as Yoda, well, it was different! A couple of years later, my parents then found Return of the Jedi Radio Drama on CD, which was also purchased for me for Christmas. This one noticeably didn’t have Mark Hamill, and it wasn’t nearly as expanded as the first two. I loved it none the less.
I loved them as audio dramas, but I also loved them because I associated them with Christmas time. I still can’t sleep without an audiobook or drama playing and frequently listen to them to this day. This Christmas, it was with huge delight that I unwrapped a book from Santa, a book all about the Star Wars Radio Dramas. While it had been out for a few months, it seemed perfect to have it given to me at Christmas time. The full name of the book is The Star Wars Radio Dramas: Brian Daley and the Serialization That Saved NPR and is by Maria Jose Tenuto and John Tenuto.
It didn’t take me long to start the book. While this book commands a high price compared to more commercial released material, it holds a wealth of knowledge. At just over two hundred pages and a seemingly thin book, this is an academic text. There is a huge word count per page, and you can instantly recognise that a vast amount of research has been done for this book. The first part is setting up the National Public Radio and the history behind it before starting to talk about some of the major players involved. Having started to watch documentaries with my daughter about Industrial Light and Magic, it really struck me while I was reading this book, just how little I knew about the people behind the series. You can say Dennis Murren, Phil Tippett and any number of ILM crew and I know exactly who they are, what they look like – heck – what they sound like. Yet for the Radio Dramas, a series I have loved since I was a child, I couldn’t say who these people were. Some of the names were very recognisable to me from the credits read out at the end of each episode. But I didn’t know their history, how they had come to work on the project and what was their influence on it. While so much is known about Star Wars, that so many books have delved into its making, I began to realise that there was very little I knew about this series. More than anything else, this book really highlights who these individuals were and I’m very thankful that I’ve been able to learn more about them. Not only that but the close link Star Wars has with NPR. It wasn’t just filming that Star Wars changed. I think living in the UK and having BBC radio, I have become accustomed to the daily available audio dramas that are so freely available. That was not always the case in America. Star Wars saved National Public Radio. It’s as much a story about that as it is about the series itself.
I have mentioned the research that has been done. Being a more academic text, the pages are littered with quotes and interviews from a variety of sources. Some of these have been done by the authors while others have been collecting from a variety of sources, such as magazines, autobiographies and previously released interviews. It is a sad realisation when reading this book, just how many of the talented people that worked on this radio series have been lost. While they may not be able to contribute to the book directly, the writers have made sure that their voice is heard through the research they have done. It’s also fortunate that they have completed this book now, one can only imagine how many more of this group we will lose in the following years, taking their memories and the history of the project with them.
On that note, while this does chronicle the radio drama, it also closely examines Brian Daley. Daley was the one who wrote all three of the radio dramas as well as the original Han Solo Trilogy. The Tenutos show how passionate Daley was about Star Wars and his many contributions. I have never realised that Daley had originally planned an arc for the Droids animation show that was not used due to the series being cancelled. The radio dramas trilogy is very much Daley’s baby and yet, although he wrote the script for Return of the Jedi, he would never actually hear it. Daley would die from pancreatic cancer in the mid-nineties. While this book is an examination and celebration of the radio dramas, it is also a celebration of Daley and his impact on Star Wars fandom.
The authors aren’t too strict with staying on just the radio shows. There will often be a tangent about one of the people involved, whether that be a producer, writer or actor. While for some, this might seem veering off course a little, I was fascinated to learn all these little bits of information. There isn’t enough about the radio dramas and to have so much collated here I think is worth the little side roads we sometimes are veered onto. As with a lot of things, I would rather have too much to find that it links with something else we find out about in the future, to not have it at all.
Once the book itself finishes the story, there are a couple of Appendices. The latter one is a list of NPR affiliates, I’ll be honest, something that doesn’t particular interest me. However, the first appendix lists (with descriptions), a very comprehensive list of audio projects for Star Wars that are related in some way to the radio dramas. This I found fascinating and I’m sure for those who are just discovering their audio journey in Star Wars, provides a great place to start. Even for myself, there were certain projects that I had no knowledge of.
My personal gold standard for books about the making of Star Wars has always been J.W. Rinzler. His ability to craft a tale out of events has always kept me engaged. Maria Jose Tenuto and John Tenuto don’t have quite the same flair for writing that Rinzler did. Yet they are not far off. They are able to paint the landscape of where all this happened, what the worlds was like when the radio dramas were being made. Radio dramas might have found itself out of step with the seventies, but I think the same could be said of modern audiences and radio dramas now. The Tenuto’s are able to make sure – no matter who you are – you know what things were like. From there, they weave a tale of uncertainty, joy and yes, of loss, that will keep readers learning things that they never knew about the Star Wars Radio Dramas. For any fans of the radio dramas, this is certainly a book for you, to be taken on that journey, to learn the challenges the production faced is incredible. And for fans who don’t know the radio dramas, it’s a chance to read how much Star Wars changed things, not just for movies, but for also radio. We know so much about Star Wars, it’s very refreshing to have something so comprehensive and in depth about something that we know far too little about. This is a great achievement by the authors, something I’m very glad they haven’t left much later to do. Personally, it was wonderful – on Christmas morning – to once again open something from the radio dramas, it’s a treat we rarely get!
Availability;
The Star Wars Radio Dramas: Brian Daley and the Serialization That Saved NPR by Maria Jose Tenuto and John Tenuto is published by McFarland. It is available in paperback and kindle formats from Amazon UK and Amazon US.
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