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JOHN THE OBSCURE ™

The Woolly Wookiee: A Play, A ‘Star Wars’ Character, And a Word that Demands to be Misspelled

Three weeks ago, I didn’t know how to spell “Wookiee.”

I’m in good company. The name of the “Star Wars” alien species most famously represented by Chewbacca turns out to be based on a misspelling. Likewise, “Wookiee” itself is now often misspelled. I recently found that the word, in its prominent confusion, may have worked like a Jedi mind trick to alter the title of an old play that has nothing to do with “Star Wars.”

An actor named Farley Granger died last month. He was well known around 1950 for the Hitchcock films “Rope” and “Strangers on a Train.” Reading his New York Times obituary, I learned that Granger was discovered by movie studio scouts in 1943 in a play called “The Wookie.”

I thought that is the spelling of the “Star Wars” species; and in any case, it’s still close enough to make me wonder if it had anything to do with the sci-fi epic. In Granger’s 2007 autobiography, “Include Me Out,” he elaborated that “The Wookie” was “an English play about Londoners during the blitz [sic] in World War II.” But he did not explain the title—a word that does not appear in the dictionary. With “Star Wars” being an obvious World War II allegory, the possibility of Chewbacca’s origin here was intriguing; but the mystery of the title remained.

The mystery deepened as I could find almost no trace of “The Wookie” existing, save for a couple of references to its performance in Midwestern repertory theater. No library had a copy. No used bookseller could sell it to me.

The breakthrough came in one of Louella Parson’s old gossip columns, where she mentions another movie actor, Heather Angel, as having appeared in “The Wookie” on Broadway.¹ Cross-referencing that info, I learned that the play is actually called “The Wookey.”²

The title comes from the main character, Mr. Wookey, a Cockney who is sometimes referred to as “The Wookey,” apparently due to him symbolizing all salt-of-the-Earth Londoners.³ It is in fact an American play, and debuted on Sept. 10, 1941.⁴

“Wookey” is a fairly common English surname (as well as the name of an English town). I suspect that playwright Frederick Hazlitt Brennan was inspired by a 1940 “Life” magazine article called “Churchill, England: ‘What We Fight For,’” about a quintessential English town that happened to share a name with the wartime prime minister. The article noted that the town’s “old names” included Wookey: “There are a hundred Wookeys.”⁵

It’s still a weird choice for a title, and the real surprise is that it wasn’t misspelled more. Still, there is something odd about Granger misspelling the play that launched his career. When Cleveland Amory put together his “Celebrity Register” entry on Granger years later in 1960, he got the name of the play right.⁶ Granted, Granger was in his 80s by the time of his autobiography, and he misremembered the nationality of the play as well. But I have to wonder whether the near-religious cultural impact of “Star Wars,” and especially one of its hairy characters, influenced Granger toward a particular misspelling of the key play of his life.

“Wookie” was, in fact, the most common spelling of the Chewbacca species in mass-media articles shortly after the original “Star Wars” movies came out.⁷ (Official sources always gave it as “Wookiee.”)

Which brings us to the question of where the “Star Wars” term comes from. It turns out that it indeed comes from a Wookey—just not “The Wookey.”

The term comes from a background-radio line in “Star Wars” creator George Lucas’s film “THX 1138” (1971), where voice actor Terry McGovern ad-libbed a line about having run over a “wookiee.” (“Wookiee” is of course the orthodox spelling now, but at that moment it was just a word.)

There are varying stories as to whether the line was completely improvised or based on an earlier conversation between Lucas and McGovern.⁸ Whatever the details, McGovern himself says that the word ultimately came from the last name of his best friend, a Texan named Bill Wookey.

“Coincidentally, Bill Wookey is well over six feet tall, [and] has a thick mane of reddish hair and a full beard,” McGovern says on his web site.⁹

Lucas was struck by the name-turned-science-fiction-joke, and recycled it when inventing his hairy species for “Star Wars.” Whether deliberately or out of ignorance of its source, Lucas misspelled it: first as “Wookee” in the first draft of “Star Wars,” then later as “Wookiee.”¹⁰

Odd, this tendency to misspell “Wookey” that crops up in two World War II-inspired dramas 35 years apart. Coincidences abound in this subject, from Bill Wookey happening to look something like a Wookiee, to a “Life” magazine image from “The Wookey” that shows the title character clad in Chewbacca-style bandoliers.¹¹

There is the oddity that “The Wookey,” obviously intended to rouse American sentiment to enter the war, ended up financially ruined and even banned after Pearl Harbor a few months later, due to the play’s relentless realism—including actual sound recordings from the Blitz.¹²

There is the weird fact that one of Granger’s last film roles was as a murderous prowler—a crazed World War II vet, no less—in a 1980s slasher flick, while Robert Sinclair, who directed the premiere of “The Wookey” was later killed by a murderous prowler.¹³

It would be nice if all these strands could be tied together into a neat package, and of course, they can. Even in plays and movie characters, we can see the human propensity for contingency and error, and my own taste for the intellectual puzzling-for-puzzling’s-sake. Now I know exactly how to spell “Wookiee,” and perhaps that means I have lost something rather than found it.

¹ “Heather Angel Signed to Long Term Contract” by Louella O. Parsons, Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Sentinel, July 31, 1942, p. 7.

² Internet Broadway Database entry at www.ibdb.com.

³ I am not sure of the exact use of the term “The Wookey” in the play because I was only able to access select pieces of it via Google Books. My attempt to examine a hard copy was frustrated when the Boston Public Library, which claims to have a copy in its archives, failed to produce it without explanation and a fair amount of rudeness. As the point is ancillary, I have left off the pursuit for now.

⁴ “‘The Wookey’ Is First Broadway Play About England Now At War,” anonymous, “Life” magazine, Sept. 8, 1941, p. 36-37.

⁵ The Nov. 18, 1940 issue of “Life.”

⁶ “Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables” by Cleveland Amory.

⁷ From my review of Google search results of books and periodicals of the era, including an early “Rolling Stone” interview with Lucas.

⁸ For a review of the claims, see “George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay” by Michael Heilemann at www.binarybonsai.com/2010/09/18/george-lucas-stole-chewbacca-but-its-okay/#artifact.

⁹ www.terrymcgovern.com/starwars.html.

¹⁰ Heilemann, op. cit.

¹¹ “‘The Wookey Is First Broadway Play About England Now At War,” op. cit.

¹² As discussed in such sources as “New York Day by Day” (column) by Charles B. Driscoll, Washington (Pennsylvania) Reporter, Jan. 5, 1942, p. 4; and “The Legitimate Theater in 1942,” anonymous, “The Billboard” magazine, Jan. 9, 1943, p. 13.

¹³ The Granger film was “The Prowler” (1981), via Netflix. Sinclair fate as described at the Internet Movie Database at www.imdb.com. In yet another mild coincidence, a “Lieutenant Wookey” was one of two British aviators in World War I who dropped propaganda leaflets behind enemy lines, were caught, and faced prosecution as spies in a notable case. (Source: “Textbook of Aerial Laws and Regulations for Aerial Navigation, International, National and Municipal, Civil and Military” by Henry Woodhouse.)

Significant sources not cited in the text or footnotes include: “Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway” by Farley Granger with Robert Calhoun; Lucasfilm Ltd., publicist “Amy C.,” personal e-mail, April 14, 2011; “Port Players Given Praise,” anonymous, Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal, Aug. 15, 1954, p. 8; “Success Scored by Port Players in ‘The Wookey’” by Cecil Smith, Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1942; and “‘The Wookey’ Is Ambitious Port Drama,” anonymous, Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal, July 19, 1942, p. 5. All books and newspapers via Google Books and Google News. Posted April 24, 2011.

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