Gloria Katz, 'American Graffiti' Writer and 'Star Wars' Script Doctor, Dies at 76

TMS: You and Willard were Oscar-nominated for your American Graffiti screenplay. How did you get involved with writing dialogue for Star Wars?

Katz: George was writing the script and he had a lot of reservations about it, but he knew filming had to start. He said, “Polish it–write anything you want and then I’ll go over it and see what I need.” George didn’t want anyone to know we worked on the script, so we were in a cone of silence.

TMS: It seems the best kind of banter in the script—the rapid fire, witty interchanges—came from you and Willard rather than George.

Katz: We just tried to help with the characterization, to add as much humor as possible (they wrote about 30 percent of the film’s dialogue). We didn’t want to take the credit away from him—he had been working on Star Wars for a very long time. It was his vision. We did go visit the set once (in London) and George was very depressed. The whole production was very wrought with drama. Nobody had ever done any of this stuff before, the special effects weren’t working, the English crew were very unsympathetic towards George. He wasn’t getting what he wanted on screen—the technology wasn’t there for him. We kept telling him “it’s going to be wonderful George!” (laughs) no matter what it looked like, to try and cheer him up.