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Beardless George
Lucas?
Okay, so this
hardly deserves the attention I'm giving it. I just
couldn't resist.
You know
George Lucas' beard has become almost as much a symbol for the man as
has Chuck Norris'. Since he started growing it sometime around
1969, he's never let up; initially it was a goatee, as can be seen
from some early photographs, but he quickly began a full-out mimicry
of the full beard that his best friend Francis Coppola had. Since
then, no one's ever seen him without it; the only documentation of a
clean-shaven Lucas are the photos of him as a young man.
  
But, I have some
material that may shock and awe you, something that you may find
hard to believe: I have obtained evidence of an older, beardless
George Lucas.
The year was 1985*. Lucas was the most
successful filmmaker alive, his facial hair was legendary and
the only face of his the public knew,
and he had just finished with his divorce trial. He was still only 40
years old, and, now an eligible millionaire bachelor, he got back into
the dating game and started going out with singer Linda Rondstat.
Maybe in an attempt to look and feel younger, he did something
drastic, something that may even seem shocking: he shaved the
beard.
Yes, that is real. There is even video footage
of this. The video footage is taken from the opening of either
Disney-MGM studios or Captain EO; I was unable to locate it but I
had seen it before, maybe a year ago, on Youtube.
How long Lucas
remained babyfaced is unclear; likely it was only a matter of
months, due to the rarity of such images. In any case, he soon
grew the beard back. He just wouldn't be George Lucas without the
beard.
*it may have actually
been 1984; that was when he and Rondstat started seeing each other.
I thought I remembered the beardless video footage being from 1985
though.
-update: Michael Heileman sends this link,
which has a (very) brief clip of archival footage from the grand
opening of Captain Eo in the first couple minutes: http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=mHK-CQPCh0Y
01/28/08
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