{"id":8494,"date":"2018-05-04T14:25:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T19:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/?p=8494"},"modified":"2020-05-04T10:18:23","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T15:18:23","slug":"star-wars-day-harrison-ford-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/star-wars-day-harrison-ford-wisconsin\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Star Wars Day! Han Solo lived in Wisconsin."},"content":{"rendered":"

While May 4 is just an unofficial holiday for Star Wars<\/em> fans, there are so dang many of us out there that you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find someone not<\/em> celebrating \u2014 even Wisconsin\u2019s Department of Transportation got in on the fun<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

So in observance of the day, let\u2019s take a moment to highlight the Badger State\u2019s greatest Star Wars<\/em> connection, a man who happens to be one of the faces of the beloved franchise and<\/em> made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs: Harrison Ford.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right, Han Solo himself has some deep ties to the state of Wisconsin. A Chicago native, Ford enrolled at Ripon College in 1960<\/a>, but flunked out during his senior year after losing interest in academics altogether. At that point, he was making money by hustling pool, which is admittedly a very Han Solo thing to do.<\/p>\n

But Ford\u2019s final semester ended up being a life-changer. He took an acting class (more or less on a whim) and appeared in Thornton Wilder\u2019s The Skin of Our Teeth<\/em>. Soon after, Ford took his first professional acting job, a summer stock gig in Williams Bay that saw him performing in a converted Mormon church with the Belfry Players.<\/p>\n

The gig was so low-paying that Ford often had to help out with the carpentry, a skill that would incidentally lead to his casting as Han Solo. As legend has it, Ford was building a door<\/a> at Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s office when he ran into George Lucas, his American Graffiti <\/em>director a few years earlier who now was casting a new science fiction film.<\/p>\n

Seeing as Ford was an actor, Lucas would frequently pull him away from his carpenter duties to sit in on auditions for the film, often reading the part of a galactic smuggler named \u201cHan Solo.\u201d And the rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n

Lucas eventually decided that Ford was perfect for the part (sorry Kurt Russell<\/a>) and had him read for Han officially, which you can see in the clip below.<\/p>\n

And for bonus Wisconsin connections, Ford\u2019s other<\/em> iconic role \u2014 the academic adventurer Indiana Jones \u2014 is based on an archaeologist named Roy Chapman Andrews<\/a>, a native of Beloit.<\/span>\n