R2D2's head goes under hammer

faceless · admin Joined: 25 Apr 2006

Head Goes Under Hammer
December 11, 2006

The head of Star Wars robot R2D2, which was dumped in a skip because it was too heavy to use, is now set to fetch ?50,000 at auction. The famous dome belonging to Luke Skywalker's sidekick was thrown away after 72-year-old actor Kenny Baker found it too difficult to work with. It was dumped by film studios in Ellestree, Hertfordshire, and replaced with a lighter model.

US auction house Profiles In History, which is putting the prop under the hammer, told the Daily Mirror: "Kenny was almost 70 when he operated R2D2 for The Phantom Menace. He found he wasn't strong enough to move the head around any more. It was replaced for Attack of the Clones and the old one thrown out. Luckily, someone spotted it for the piece of movie history it is."

----------------

Who would throw that out? I smell the dark-side!

IRiSHMaFIA · Admin Joined: 29 Apr 2006

I smell some cash!

eefanincan · Admin Joined: 29 Apr 2006 Location: Canada

Skylace · Admin Joined: 29 Apr 2006 Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Oh man, I would love that! Can't believe someone just threw it out!

6ULDV8 · Joined: 30 Apr 2006 Location: USA

As you know, I grew up between Cape Town SA & Elstree...
(Also worked at the studios).

A good friend of mine's family members worked on the original Star Wars at Elstree...

A lot of stuff was thrown out even up to 3 months after the movie was completed...

It happened a lot with movies until recently, memrobilia was more than just geekish back then for any movie...
Since memrobilia has become mainstream & more movies have sequals items tend to be kept / stored...

Back to my friends family, they collected from skips & trash cans on & around the set. (They were geeks... yes)

I can recall them owning several dif' C3P0 faces & a few hands, arms etc..
Also a couple of darth Vader heads, models...
Enough parts to make a complete R2D2 & a mess of gadgets from the set.

A few years ago his brother attempted to sell a few items on Ebay, he was taken to court by the studios...
I'm not sure of the outcome, but the studios contended that despite being thrown into skips etc these items had been STOLEN from them as the skips were on studio land & permission to take the items had not been granted.

I wish I had grabbed more than I had in the past from various film & TV productions I have worked on, always stuff thrown out...
Most of the stuff I ever 'Collected' from a set outside of scripts & technical scripts I have given away to friends in the past.

Gasman59 · Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:30 am Post subject:

That would be a very nice Birthday/Christmas present for the Gasman !!! Very Happy