Danny writes:
Early into the COVID-19 pandemic when we were all in lockdown, I was able to acquire this Star Wars vinyl soundtrack that is stamped “Demonstration Not for Sale.”
In addition to the DEMO stamp on the outside, the inner contents are complete and include the sleeved records, inserts, and the folded poster with artwork by John Berkey featuring the infamous 4 Millennium Falcons. But the best thing about this item was that the inside of the album was hand signed by John Williams with a nice vintage signature!
Normally, demos or promotional copies of music albums would be sent to broadcasters to help promote not yet released music. I had never heard of a demo for a movie soundtrack that didn’t have tracks intended to be played on the radio. I was able to trace the provenance of this particular record through the previous owners back to Gary Kurtz, producer for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. This record was bought from Gary along with a bunch of cast and crew memorabilia, but with my limited knowledge of cast and crew collectibles, I hadn’t heard of soundtracks being given out to the cast and crew before. Furthermore, nothing turned up in any online or forum searches. Over the years, a few of these records have popped up at various auction houses and the auction descriptions have never said where they came from or if they were known cast and crew items. Each one was also signed by John Williams. While each signature is very similar, the placement and lettering are all slightly different -- a good indication that they were personally hand signed one at a time.
Why did this item exist? There are several of them out there so it wasn’t a lucky fan getting John Williams to sign something at a concert.
A few years later, I stumbled upon a post of a person who went to the Highland Hall Waldorf School during the Original Trilogy era. This was the private school that both Gary Kurtz and Harrison Ford sent their kids to in the '70s and '80s (you may also know that the Kurtz children played Jawas in Star Wars and later were background extras for Echo Base and Cloud City to make the sets appear deeper using forced perspective). In that post, the person mentioned that they saw Star Wars as part of a school function before it was in theaters. More digging turned up similar posts from other students who mentioned going to a benefit screening and a dinner with some of the cast and crew, including Gary Kurtz, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.
I was able to chat with another former student who went to this benefit screening. She showed me some of the items that she and her sister were given from that screening including buttons, patches, the demo album and a Star Wars Exhibitor Brochure. Her sister’s brochure box was even signed and inscribed by Mark Hamill! I asked her to check her demo album to see if it was signed by John Williams and it was! I don’t think she ever opened it before and didn't know it was autographed.
As a collector of Star Wars theatrical memorabilia, I have a few screening tickets to the original movies, including some for Highland Hall. There were two screenings as a Benefit Fundraiser for Highland Hall on May 21, 1977 -- four days before the official release of the movie on May 25th. The earlier screening at 1pm was intended to be more kid friendly while the later 8pm screening was more for adults “followed by Dining and Dancing and Meeting the Stars from the film with Johnny Williams conducting excerpts from his Film Score.”
These screening invitations occasionally pop up for sale, but they are usually incomplete, especially missing their RSVP cards as those would have been filled out and returned to the school. However, in 2024 I was able to finally complete my invitation set by getting the RSVP cards. The 1pm and 8pm invitation RSVP cards have slightly different wording and prices because of the dinner and bus transportation arrangements, but both contain “for this special commitment [you] will...receive an autographed album...”
So this signed John Williams soundtrack was given out as the first official SWAG to kids at a benefit fundraiser for the Highland Hall Waldorf School before the movie was even in theaters. The album was probably stamped DEMO to denote that it was to be given away and to prevent re-sale later. Gary Kurtz must have had a few left over after the screenings and sold them to collectors later.
No comments:
Post a Comment