Marilee Heyer

"I wasn't in all of the pitch meetings, but I know they were pushing [George Lucas] hard to go in new directions and there were great ideas flying around. I just happened to have the background they needed. I knew how hair worked, how fabrics hung on a female form. I was there, I suppose you could say, to pretty it up."

―Marilee Heyer^[3]

Marilee Heyer is an illustrator who made uncredited contributions to Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi as a freelance artist. Her concept artwork for Princess Leia Organa's hairstyles, which were designed by Paul LeBlanc, have sometimes been attributed to Heyer and other times misattributed. She also states that she created storyboards for some sequences on Tatooine.

Biography

Return of the Jedi

"My first meeting, [Marquand] asked me to get him a cup of coffee. I was the only woman in the room. […] I remember thinking, '[If] I stayed on, would I be doing artwork, or would I be a coffee fetcher?'"

―Marilee Heyer, on the atmosphere in pitch meetings with director Richard Marquand and creator George Lucas^[3]

Marilee Heyer's 1981 illustration for Paul LeBlanc's hair design

Marilee Heyer, born May 7, 1942,^[1] is an illustrator who worked on the 1983 original trilogy film, Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.^[2] Heyer is not credited on the film;^[4] however, biographical information in print by 1996 has included "Assistant storyboard artist for Return of the Jedi, 1982 [sic]" among her career highlights. She was working as a fashion illustrator at I. Magnin when she presented a series of science fiction drawings to Lucasfilm in the hopes of getting freelance work on the final Star Wars film. She subsequently used those drawings for her own book, The Forbidden Door.^[1] Her break with Lucasfilm came through having a friend who knew Nilo Rodis-Jamero.^[5]

In 2022, Heyer stated to the SFGATE news website that she worked on Return of the Jedi in August 1981 as a freelancer. In her three weeks of work, she storyboarded scenes on Tatooine, including Princess Leia Organa in the sail barge sequence. She described herself as the only woman in the room; when she met director Richard Marquand in a pitch meeting, he asked her to get him a cup of coffee.^[3] George Lucas viewed her sail barge storyboards, but he felt they needed to be faster and more dramatic. Heyer said she worked with artist Joe Johnston and with Rodis-Jamero, who at that time had duties divided between storyboarding and costume design.^[5] Paul LeBlanc, one of the two hairdressers on the film,^[4] designed Leia's numerous hairstyles. However, he was not an illustrator; he would sketch his hair designs, but he needed another artist to produce polished illustrations of the concepts.^[3]^[5] Working at LeBlanc's direction from his sketches as well as portrait photographs of Carrie Fisher for her likeness, Heyer produced several illustrations of LeBlanc's concepts for Leia's hair^[5]—her braided updo in the dancing-girl costume, her crown braids in her rebel uniform on Endor, and her loose waves in the Ewok village.^[2] Heyer's artwork has been reproduced ever since.^[5]

On the podcast Skywalking Though Neverland, she clarified a misconception from the SFGATE article: she did not work on Leia's dancing-girl costume designs herself. The sketches seen in the article were made during her lunch hour based on conversations about the costume, not on commission. Since her signed agreement with Lucasfilm was that any artwork created for the film became their property, she retained those two pieces because they were done on her own time, unlike the storyboards and hairstyle artwork.^[5]

Concerns about credits

"I would like to be remembered if this is my legacy. If this is what I'm most noted for, I want to make sure I'm getting credited when I'm no longer around. I view my artwork like my children. You have to be able to send them out and give them the tools they need to fight."

―Marilee Heyer^[3]

After the film's release, Heyer saw a televised PBS membership drive with the 1983 artbook The Art of Return of the Jedi as a pledge incentive. Recognizing one of her illustrations, she made a pledge and received the book;^[2] however, her own name does not appear in it.^[6] She subsequently contacted Kathy Wippert at Lucasfilm and a local attorney to notify publisher Ballantine Books of the error. Wippert told her it would be corrected in future republications, and Heyer confirmed it was in the ressiued edition^[3] in 1994, retitled The Art of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.^[2]

The website for the former Star Wars: The Magic of Myth museum exhibition, which was presented from 1997 to 1999 at the National Air and Space Museum, includes a concept drawing for Leia's hairstyle in the dancing-girl costume. On the website, the illustration is attributed to Heyer and the hair design to LeBlanc.^[7]

Marilee Heyer still wishes to have her Star Wars work credited to her and said it has sometimes happened, but she has continued to see her artwork republished without her name. Disney and Lucasfilm did not respond to a request for comment before SFGATE published the story.^[3]