A long time ago, in an editing bay not too far away…

Born in Modesto, California in 1945 to an Air Force officer father, Marcia Griffin moved all over California, until her parents divorced and she went to North Hollywood, where she and her mother stayed with her grandmother. It was in Hollywood where Marcia finished school, and later got a job cataloguing artifacts at a Hollywood museum from an ex-boyfriend. Soon, she would apply for an editing job at Sandler films, where got her Motion Pictures Editing Guild card, after realizing she had a knack for adding pace, rhythm and energy to films. This was at a time when all films were clunky, photochemical images on strips of celluloid, which had to be manually cut and pasted together to create timing and continuity–not at all like the all-digital editing of today. It was like creating a photochemical mosaic as much as storytelling.

In 1967, Marcia would apprentice for Oscar-winning editor Verna Fields (“El Cid,” “JAWS”) on a movie about President Lyndon Johnson’s tour of Southeast Asia. It was working for Fields where she met George Lucas, whom she’d marry in 1969. That’s when her natural talent for assembling strips of film into unified, cohesive narratives flourished. She helped George assemble his USC student film, “THX-1138 4B: An Electronic Labyrinth” (1967), a 15 minute student short film that soon became the kernel of George’s first feature film, “THX-1138” (1971).

“THX-1138” was a film that Marcia never quite warmed up to, but for which she clearly understood what her husband/director wanted; a harsh dystopia where emotion was forbidden. It was a cold, semi-abstract melding of “Brave New World” and “1984,” but with robots and with a really fast car chase. In an excerpt from biographer Dale Pollock’s book “Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas,” Marcia said, “I never cared for THX because it left me cold. When the studio didn’t like the film, I wasn’t surprised. But George just said to me I was stupid and knew nothing. Because I was just a Valley Girl. He was the intellectual.”

Set to be a banner film for Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope production company, “THX-1138” crashed and burned at the box office, but would go on to become a cult classic–particularly after George’s future successes, which Marcia would have a significant hand in shaping.

George Lucas’ first bonafide hit would be 1973’s “American Graffiti,” which Lucas accepted as something of a challenge from his pal Francis Ford Coppola, with encouragement from Marcia as well. The challenge was to tell a warmer, emotionally-engaging story with relatable characters. With much help and input from Marcia, as well as a few script passes from married friends Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (George hated screenwriting), Lucas created a semi-biographical comedy about several teenagers in 1962 Modesto (George and Marcia’s hometown) enjoying their last night together before going their separate ways into the big world (a theme he’d revisit in “Star Wars”). Marcia worked with editor Verna Fields, though any exact distribution of their work remains unclear. The film was made for under a million dollars and became one of the most successful independent films of its time. The movie’s success would help George eventually get a green light for that weird little ‘space movie’ he’d unsuccessfully pitched to several studios…

Meanwhile, Marcia immediately parlayed her success into making her kind of films, working with talented, neurotic filmmaker Martin Scorsese, for whom she’d edit several films which went on to become landmarks of 1970s cinema. The first of these was “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974), starring Ellen Burstyn (“The Exorcist,” “The Last Picture Show”) as a struggling single mother whose dream of a musical career is routinely sidelined by the personnel challenges of making a living for her and her son. The movie costarred actor/singer Kris Kristofferson and Diane Ladd, and became the unlikely basis for the long-running CBS sitcom “Alice” (1976-1985). This was the kind of movie Marcia preferred; adult-themed movies with relatable characters and situations. Movies with warmth and a pulse.

Marcia’s collaborations with Scorsese would see her editing his much darker followup movie, “Taxi Driver” (1976), which featured Robert De Niro (“Godfather 2,” “Goodfellas”) as a pathologically lonely war veteran and insomniac named Travis Bickle, who takes work as a New York cabbie. Bickle’s disgust with the seedy world around him fuels his growing detachment from it, and adds to his increasingly grandiose desires to impose his own morality upon the hookers, junkies and even politicians who occasionally enter his dark orbit. With a score by famed composer Bernard Herrmann, the movie costarred Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks, and a 12-year old Jodie Foster as a child prostitute who befriends the lonely sociopath. Marcia did some of her best work in this film, with her often hypnotic pacing drawing us into the mind of Travis, like an unwitting insect into a spider’s web, until it explodes in a flurry of violence.

In 1977, Marcia had to divide her time and creativity between Martin Scorsese’s musical romance “New York, New York” and helping to salvage her husband’s troubled space opera, “Star Wars,” after George fired British editor John Jympson (“A Hard Day’s Night”) who wasn’t creating the sense of rhythm or timing that George wanted in his movie–preferring to cut with traditional masters, two-shots, etc.

With Marcia onboard, Lucas also brought editors Paul Hirsch (“Carrie” “Mission Impossible”) and Richard Chew (“The Conversation,” “Risky Business”) to work around the clock to reedit the entire movie from scratch in late 1976, with only months to go before the release date of May 25th, 1977. One editor would work on one reel, while the other two would each work on the next reels (back in the analog days, a typical two hour movie would run about six or seven reels of film).

In addition to the editing, Marcia offered many helpful suggestions to her husband that reshaped the movie in more fundamental ways, including the casting of Harrison Ford as Han Solo, since the actor was already helping out by scene-partnering for the other actors in the auditions. Reluctant to recast actors from his own “American Graffiti,” actor Christopher Walken was Lucas’ final pick, but Marcia insisted Harrison was sexier. She was right. Marcia also suggested killing off Obi-Wan Kenobi (Sir Alec Guinness) during the escape from the Death Star, since the character had nothing meaningful to do in the final act. Both suggestions made Star Wars the classic it is today, as well as the movie that changed my life in that summer of 1977. Marcia, Hirsch and Chew each took home Oscars for their editing of “Star Wars” at the 1978 Oscar ceremony. “Star Wars” ultimately won seven Oscars that evening.

Oscar-winner Paul Hirsch would return to edit the sequel, “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) for Irvin Kershner, a former teacher of George’s who accepted his offer to direct the sequel, since the famously shy George preferred post-production duties than being on set directing actors. Unfortunately, due to Kershner’s slower working pace and spending more time developing the characters, the movie’s production ran both over time and over budget. Frustrated producer George once again called on his wife Marcia to help with the editing to pick up the slack on the post-production schedule. Once again, Marcia helped save the film. While “Empire” made less money than its groundbreaking predecessor, it is widely considered by many critics to be the best Star Wars movie ever made.

Sadly, 1983 was the year that Marcia and George got divorced, citing George’s emotional distance, as well as her frustration with her workaholic husband’s singleminded obsession with developing Skywalker Ranch, Industrial Light & Magic, THX sound, EditDroid and the beginnings of what eventually became Pixar. Marcia would once again help her ex-husband George with the editing of “Return of the Jedi,” along with Duwayne Dunham and Sean Barton. George’s anti-Hollywood Lucasfilm company was quickly becoming “the Empire.”

While Lucas focused on his businesses and his newly adopted daughter (he would adopt two more children after the divorce), Marcia would retire from film after “Return of the Jedi,” and live a relatively solitary life, as many of of their mutual friends fell out of touch. Her contributions to the Star Wars franchise as well as other iconic films of the 1970s have thankfully been reiterated in books such as “Raging Bulls, Easy Riders” (1998) by Peter Biskind, and “The Last Kings of Hollywood” (2026) by Paul Fischer, both of which I own and have read.

A more whimsical take on Marcia’s creative input on Star Wars was found in the 2023 French graphic making-of book, “Lucas Wars” (“Les Guerres de Lucas”), which was written by Laurent Hopman and illustrated by Renaud Roche. The book ends its making-of Star Wars story on the more optimistic note of the movie’s monstrous box office success, and doesn’t delve into the Lucas’ messy divorce, or how George reportedly cut ex-wife’s Marcia’s contributions out of modern Star Wars lore.

Sadly, Marcia Lucas succumbed to cancer at age 80 on May 27th, and I hope the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (which opens in Los Angeles on September 22nd) manages to put aside the bitterness of the Lucas divorce and include Marcia’s contributions to Star Wars, as well as the diverse movies made in her brief, but important career outside of that galaxy far, far away.

Marcia Lucas earned her place among other great women editors, such as her mentor Verna Fields, Margaret Booth (“Mutiny on the Bounty”), Dede Allen (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Dog Day Afternoon”), Anne Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia”), and Thelma Schoonmaker (“Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Goodfellas”). Her contribution to the art of film editing deserves to be remembered.

Marcia Lucas, October 4th, 1945–May 27th, 2026