A ROYAL TRIBUTE TO STAR WARS PRINCESS CARRIE FISHER

Yes we did have to show this picture of Carrie Fisher at Jabba's Place

What helped make STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK so incredible was the back-to-basics pulp styling: morphing that "Used Future" from a noun to a verb...

George Lucas hired one of his former USC directing instructors to take controls behind the camera, and Irvin Kershner had done a few crime melodramas and, originally, dime novel sci-fi author Leigh Brackett penned the first sequel's first draft, and Lawrence Kasdan took over after she passed away. Also on the nostalgic front, it was Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher who went from a GONE WITH THE WIND style Rhett and Scarlett bickering duo into an opposites-attract couple extremely deserving of a long anticipated kiss (interrupted by that perfectly annoying droid). And like Ford improved shooting the showboat swordsman with a lazy pistol a year later in Lucas and Steven Spielberg's pulp collaboration, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, neither Brackett or Kasdan came up with a response fitting the maverick, and it was Ford who, on the cuff, responded to Leia's admission of love with, "I know."

Carrie Fisher looking right through her prey in SHAMPOO circa 1975

For an American kid who grew up not only on STAR WARS but along with STAR WARS, Carrie Fisher was then and remains still the only "royalty" we ever knew. The daughter of singer/actress Debbie Reynolds and comedian Eddie Fisher, she was a darker, more willowy and mysterious, subtle beauty than her mother's baby-faced, fireworks explosion of candy apple delight. Without trying too hard, or pushing that just-sealed envelope too far, Carrie played Princess Leia as strong as any man, and this was during the 1970's when assertive women had to stand out and, more often than naught, overdo to be noticed. Nothing doing with Fisher's take on the Rebellion's one and only Princess. What she had was very natural, even going back two years previously in SHAMPOO as the spoiled, melancholy daughter of a rich dame having an affair with hairdresser Warren Beatty: it's Fisher's character who really puts the breezy womanizer in his place...

In Woody Allen's HANNAH AND HER SISTERS

And a few years after wearing her now famous Jabba's Palace bikini in the, at that point, final STAR WARS installment, RETURN OF THE JEDI, Carrie Fisher, no longer a Princess but a bonafide actress (and singer), provided what was to be her last standout role — in this galaxy...

In THE BLUES BROTHERS

For without her important role of a stable, well-balanced, beautiful and downright lucky New York auditioning actress, the most grounded and sympathetic of Woody Allen's HANNAH AND HER SISTERS sister, Dianne Wiest, would mean nothing if not by comparison (a review of the cult misfire UNDER THE RAINBOW is under way): Then there's one of her most action packed roles, and she really just sits around, letting a flame thrower do all the work, trying to kill John Belushi's Jake Blues of THE BLUES BROTHERS and sending he and brother Elwood... Dan Aykroyd... rocketing towards the sky in an ignited telephone booth...

And now we shall end this tribute for the late Carrie Fisher with this: While there have been several worthy ingenues to carry on the franchise lately, from Daisy THE FORCE AWAKENS Ridley to Felicity ROGUE ONE Jones, let's put a twist on Yoda's famous cliffhanger-quote, standing on his murky planet with a ghostly Obi Wan Kenobi: "There will NEVER be another..." quite like Carrie Fisher.