Lucy Autrey Wilson

"I love doing things with Star Wars that nobody has ever done before. There's always a new challenge —what can we do that nobody has done before?"

―Lucy Autrey Wilson^[2]

Lucy Autrey Wilson was the Director of Publishing for Lucasfilm.^[3] In 1974, she became the first permanent employee at Lucasfilm.^[4] As an assistant to George Lucas, she typed his handwritten script for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.^[1] After managing Lucasfilm's accounting for over a decade, she became Director of Finance at Lucasfilm Licensing in 1987.^[1]

In 1989, Wilson showed interest in launching a new Star Wars line of fiction, in books and comics.^[1] After approaching Howard Roffman and George Lucas with the idea, they agreed, and she became Director of Publishing for Lucasfilm Licensing in 1991.^[1] She selected Timothy Zahn to launch the new Star Wars book line at Bantam Spectra, with the novel Heir to the Empire, and she negotiated moving the comic book license from Marvel Comics to Dark Horse Comics, launching their comic line with Dark Empire.^[5] This started a wave of Star Wars fiction, and Wilson spearheaded the production of the following material, including commercially successful projects such as Shadows of the Empire and the New Jedi Order.^[6]

By the end of her tenure as Director of Publishing in 2003, Wilson had worked on over 1,500 titles for the company.^[7] Celebrated with launching the Expanded Universe as it came to be known, Bantam editor Tom Dupree would deem Wilson "the godmother of the Star Wars publishing program."^[8]

Biography

Youth and Education

Lucy Autrey Wilson was born in 1949, in Wisconsin, and her family soon moved to Santa Barbara, California, where she spent most of her youth.^[1] Wilson enjoyed the West Coast lifestyle of her youth, referring to herself as a true "California girl"; her family didn't encourage movie-going and she grew up without a television.^[1] Instead, Wilson was an avid reader of books as a child, and she would cherish the memory of receiving her first library card at age five.^[1]

Wilson attended college at the University of California, San Diego, earning her Bachelor's degree in English literature in 1971.^[7] After living in Spain for a couple years, she worked as a bookkeeper for the machine shop at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, in La Jolla, from 1972 to 1974.^[5]^[6]^[7]

Joining Lucasfilm

Lucy Autrey Wilson, as Lucas' secretary in 1975

Upon her sister's recommendation, while searching for work, Wilson applied as a bookkeeper for George Lucas in 1974.^[1] While not an avid moviegoer, she had been a fan of Lucas' first film American Graffiti and thought working for Lucas "might be fun."^[1] She met with Gary Kurtz and Lucas for the position and was hired, making her Lucas' first permanent employee at Lucasfilm.^[4]^[1] She soon moved to Northern California to work at the small Lucasfilm offices, converted from a house.^[6] Managing the young director's finances would prove to be a unique experience; Wilson would later remark, "Money just didn't seem to matter to him. He'd keep one check at a time in his wallet, and the only way I noticed his getting wealthier was that it used to be made out for fifty dollars and then it turned into a couple of hundred dollars."^[9]

In addition to managing Lucas' financial affairs, Wilson's duties soon blossomed into larger secretarial work. "I bought his pencils and office supplies, booked travel, set up all the books, and started keeping all the production costs they were incurring on Star Wars. I also kept the books for his office," Wilson reminisced.^[1] Lucas was exacting about the types of paper and color used when writing his scripts, and Wilson strove to make sure her office work and purchases met his specifications, noting his preference for blue-lined writing paper.^[6]^[9]

Wilson typed the Star Wars script — Wilson typed the *Star Wars* script

Soon, Wilson was given the important task of typing Lucas' handwritten screenplay for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, taking over typist duties from Bunny Alsup.^[6] Following Alsup's lead, Wilson would correct his grammar and spelling frequently, checking with Lucas as to the proper final renderings.^[9] She noted, "The hardest part was deciphering George’s hard to read handwriting."^[10] Wilson would type most of the drafts for the film from Lucas' notes and drafts, working on her IBM Selectric typewriter.^[1]^[8] The final script would be completed on January 28, 1975.^[6]

As the film entered production, Wilson managed affairs back at the Lucasfilm offices, paying for company bills and managing their finances.^[1] With most of the company out shooting the film, work could sometimes slow to a crawl back at the Marin County offices; at times, she would set up an easel in the office and simply start painting.^[1] She remembered these early times at Lucasfilm to be very relaxed, saying, "We would all have lunch together every Friday. Someone would cook and it was a little family environment, it was quite nice."^[6]

During this time, Ben Burtt was hired to work on sounds for the film downstairs in the Lucasfilm office ("We'd hear these weird sounds emanating from downstairs — Ben doing all his weird stuff," Wilson recalled), and he enlisted fellow employees to help.^[6] Wilson was no exception, and Burtt recorded sound foley of her footsteps while walking in different shoes, sometimes while singing.^[1] Burtt also recorded chatter between Wilson and Bunny Alsup, after having inhaled helium, and then edited their voices in order to provide some alien babble in the soundscape of Chalmun's cantina.^[11]

Postcard to Wilson, from Lucas in Tunisia, in 1976

As work on the film neared completion, after seeing some of the dailies, some at Lucasfilm, including Wilson, started to sense something special was being created.^[6] Of the early footage, Wilson commented, "There was a screening room George had built behind the house. We'd go back once in a while and watch rough cuts. It was such a thrill. Nobody ever expected it to be a big success, but you could get goosebumps watching it because it looked so great."^[6]

The May 1977 release of the film was an overwhelming and positive experience for those at Lucasfilm, including Wilson: "Before Star Wars came out, everybody was having a blast, but nobody knew we were about to explode onto the face of the Earth."^[6] After the film released to huge success, she recalled, "It was crazy. If I wore anything that said Lucasfilm or Star Wars, people would chase me down the street! Everywhere you went, it was Star Wars, Star Wars, everywhere. It was amazing."^[12] In the final film, Wilson was credited as assistant to director in the end credits for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.^[13]

Blockbuster Accounting

Lucasfilm's financial situation rapidly changed after the blockbuster success of the film — "The company exploded after Star Wars was released," Wilson recalled.^[6] As the overseer of those affairs, Wilson had a front row seat to it all: "The studio mailed us our first royalty check -- it was millions of dollars! I would walk downtown to this little dinky Wells Fargo bank... and I came in with this multi-million dollar check. And I had to keep telling the woman, 'Add another zero. No, add another zero to that...'"^[5]

Lucas and Wilson, pictured here in the 1970s

As Lucas' secretary, she also managed his growing finances, and she felt his success was well deserved, remarking, "I always felt that if anyone had to make millions of dollars, George is the best person to do it. Because he shares it, he's fair with it, he didn't turn into a monster egomaniac, and he's got real good ideals. He's really a good person."^[9] Lucas biographer Dale Pollock corroborated this, saying, "He shared his wealth with the people he felt had contributed to it. To do otherwise would be immoral, George believed."^[9]

Following the film's success, Wilson became Lucasfilm's full-time financial bookkeeper, as Jane Bay took over the role of Lucas' personal secretary.^[1] Wilson continued in her position until 1980, when she moved to Industrial Light & Magic to work in the accounting group there, being witness to many breakthroughs in computer technology at the time.^[1] Simultaneously, work began on the construction of Skywalker Ranch, and Wilson managed the construction accounting for the realization of Lucas' architectural dream.^[1] Following this, in 1984, Wilson gained an MBA in Finance, with her tuition fully funded by Lucasfilm.^[1]^[5]

Expanding Publishing

Wilson had the initial inception for the Shadows of the Empire project, during a dinner with Bantam Spectra's Lou Aronica, who suggested that Lucasfilm's multiple licensing deals would make it easy for them to create a multimedia project that could tell an over-arching story throughout multiple mediums. After George Lucas approved the concept, Wilson and Howard Roffman wrote a brief outline of the premise. Wilson has a relationship with a Portuguese named "Xico" and loved the initial sound of the name; Prince Xizor's name was created by Wilson, who combined the Portuguese pronunciation of the letter X (sh-) with the second syllable of the English word "razor."^[14] Xizor's official pronunciation was established in the Shadows of the Empire novel and Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption as "shē'zōr".^[15]^[16]