AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: PUPPET MASTERS!

Frank Oz at Elstree with the reference mock-up of Yoda, where the face was still in development. 

As Ralph McQuarrie and Joe Johnston spend 1978 and early 1979 trying to visualize the character, early ideas for the creation and filming of Yoda may have included shooting him as a stop-motion character but this has never been confirmed. In the end, having him as a live action presence seemed the best solution, creating a puppet. But a puppet needs an operator (or two). Jim Henson, creator of The Muppet Show, is the obvious choice to create and operate the puppet, but he is not available. Henson recommends his friend and associate Frank Oz, best known then as the voice and manipulator of Miss Piggy on the hit Henson show. Oz recalls of his involvement playing Yoda to Star Wars Insider magazine: “We were doing The Muppet Movie in Los Angeles, and Gary Kurtz came. In my trailer, I saw a picture of what Gary described as a little guy called Yoda. Sometimes I have trouble getting characters and it takes a while, like Bert took me a year to get. Other characters evolve, like Grover. And other characters hit immediately somehow. Yoda hit immediately off that page to me... I strongly felt what he should be like.” Oz adds to this in a later interview: “So all I remember was that he (Kurtz) said, “Come over here, I want you to meet this guy and look at this character.” So I went in my trailer on the set, and Gary talked about it a little and showed me this character, and sometimes you "get" a character immediately. So he opened up this book and I saw this drawing, and for some reason, I immediately knew what this guy was. I can't tell you why. I just knew it. Can’t tell you why. I just knew it. From then on, I was the one who kind of put all the elements of Yoda together, and although Jim (Henson) didn't make Yoda, George and he had an understanding that they would exchange technology information. George would give to Jim and Jim would give some of his people to George to help. Wendy Froud helped out a little bit with the character and two other people from Jim's company worked the cables for me. It was not Jim who made the puppet, he just consulted on it, then I continued on after that.”

Once filming began, Frank Oz would provide the voice of Yoda on set but it was by no means set in stone that George Lucas would be using it in the film during its final post production ADR process later in the year, a  similar situation of which occurred with Anthony Daniels, whose original voicing of Threepio for the original Star Wars was also almost replaced. 

The Yoda reference doll as later presented in an auction.

Muppet Show legend Jim Henson would offer invaluable advice on the plans to puppeteer Yoda at Elstree Studios.

Joe Johnston shares a prop-testing drink with his new friend.

An important production meeting to discuss the future mechanics and puppeteering skills needed for Yoda, as Kathryn Mullen (with Frank Oz) consults the reference dummy.

Stuart Freeborn has fun with the Yoda dummy during filming of promotional material at Elstree.