A Disturbance in the Force

Bob Anderson, the Marni Nixon of cinematic swashbuckling, has become more powerful than we can possibly imagine at the age of 89. The common perception of Darth Vader is that David Prowse provided the hulking presence while James Earl Jones gave him his testicle-shrinking voice. In reality, so much badassery could not be the product of just two men. Enter Anderson, a member of the British Royal Marines during World War II and a member of the 1952 Olympic fencing squad, to add a dash of Inigo Montoya to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. While Sarah Lane couldn’t pull back the curtain on The Black Swan fast enough, Anderson, being a British member of the Greatest Generation, kept his stiff upper lip in the background. His sole acknowledgement: a cameo role as an Imperial Officer who doesn’t even get choked to death, until Mark Hamill disclosed his role in interviews following the release of Return of the Jedi, the only example of beneficial retroactive tinkering to the Star Wars franchise. Anderson’s influence draws a fencing line from Errol Flynn in The Master of Ballantrae through several iterations of James Bond, across Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Florin with The Princess Bride and into a galaxy far, far away.