The Complete 1977 Star Wars SW-K Publicity Still Catalogue

SW-K-53 — Darth Vader and his Imperial stormtroopers take over the Rebel Blockade Runner.

Long before Star Wars could rely on two words, a logo and the sound of a lightsaber to capture our attention, somebody had to explain it.

Who was Luke Skywalker? What was a Wookiee? Why was an elderly knight living as an outlaw in the mountains? And how on earth could a newspaper editor describe Darth Vader to a reader who had never seen him?

In 1977, Twentieth Century-Fox answered those questions through pressbooks, production notes, advertising material and a remarkable series of black-and-white publicity photographs. Each carried a reference beginning SW-K, followed by its individual number. Taken together, the 64 known stills offer something more revealing than a collection of familiar photographs. They preserve the moment when the language and mythology of Star Wars were still being invented. 

This is the complete SW-K catalogue.

Selling a galaxy no one had seen

It is difficult to imagine now, but before the film’s American opening on 25th May 1977, Star Wars was not a cultural language. Darth Vader was not an instantly recognisable silhouette. The Millennium Falcon was not “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy”. Jedi, droids, Jawas and Wookiees were unfamiliar words competing for space in an already crowded summer film calendar.

Produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox, the film therefore needed the traditional machinery of studio publicity. Press material was supplied to newspapers, magazines, critics and cinema exhibitors, giving them ready-made stories, cast biographies, advertising copy and photographs with which to introduce the film to their audiences.

The SW-K stills belonged to that world. They are predominantly 8×10-inch black-and-white photographs, printed with a generous image area and a white caption panel beneath. The footer identifies STAR WARS, its release through Twentieth Century-Fox, the 1977 copyright and, on many examples, permission for newspaper and magazine reproduction. On the right sits the all-important reference and the studio’s suggested description.

They were working publicity materials rather than precious collectors’ pieces. Some were pinned to office walls, marked by picture editors, stamped on the reverse, cropped for publication or filed away in cinema and newspaper archives. That survival history is part of their appeal. Each is both a photograph from Star Wars and an object from the campaign that taught the world how to see Star Wars.

SW-K-3 — The Jawas, meter-high creatures who collect scrap metal, unload their robots for prospective buyers, Owen Lars and his nephew, Luke Skywalker.

The original American pressbook confirms that numbered SW-K photography formed part of Fox’s promotional material. Its publicity pages reproduced examples and offered photographs in newspaper-ready formats. A separately documented critics’ press kit contains the complete supplementary run SW-K-55 to SW-K-64. This helps explain the visible change in typographic treatment within the final ten captions and suggests that the whole sequence was assembled through more than one publicity issue, rather than arriving everywhere as a single box of 64 photographs.

SW-K-55 — Luke Skywalker and Han Solo protect Princess Leia and Chewbacca from an impending Imperial stormtrooper attack.

Star Wars before Star Wars lore

Read with nearly fifty years of hindsight, the captions are wonderful.

There is no Episode IV and no A New Hope. The film is simply STAR WARS. R2-D2 and C-3PO are introduced phonetically as Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio, while spelling shifts between Wookie and Wookiee. Lightsabers are still “light sabers”, TIE fighters become “Tie fighters”, and the dianoga in the trash compactor is a “Dia Noga monster”. As the Oscars Academy has observed of the film’s earliest advertising, its marketers had to define and outline an unfamiliar mythology that later campaigns could take entirely for granted.

SW-K-64 — Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio search for an escape from the Imperial attack on the Rebel Blockade Runner.

Some descriptions sound like dispatches from a version of the galaxy that had not quite settled into place. Han Solo is repeatedly a “Corellian pirate”, and the Millennium Falcon a “Corellian pirate starship”. Ben Kenobi is not yet presented primarily as a Jedi Master, but as a former warrior, an outlaw and “a once respected name in the galaxy”. The Jawas are “meter-high creatures” and, less flatteringly, “small rodent-like creatures”.

SW-K-37 — Alec Guinness is Ben Kenobi, a once respected name in the galaxy called upon to help the rebellion against the oppression of the powerful Galactic Empire.

Most striking of all is SW-K-50. Its caption tells readers that Darth Vader uses his “extrasensory powers” to keep the Galactic Emperor enthroned and help Governor Tarkin destroy the rebellion. The Force is translated into the language of 1970s paranormal fascination, while the relationship between Vader and the Emperor is expressed in a way no later Lucasfilm reference book would repeat.

SW-K-50 — Darth Vader employs his extrasensory powers to keep the Galactic Emperor enthroned and to aid Governor Tarkin in the destruction of the rebellion.

Sixty-four windows into the original film

SW-K-30 — Darth Vader and the Imperial stormtroopers prepare to board the captured Corellian pirate starship.

SW-K-61 — Han Solo and Chewbacca protect the Millennium Falcon from Jabba the Hutt and his cutthroats.

SW-K-58 — Luke Skywalker repairs See-Threepio’s arm, which was broken in the scuffle with the Tusken Raiders.

The popularity of Star Wars means that there are a great many copies in circulation. Some are innocent later reproductions; others are photocopies, modern photographic prints or scans printed onto glossy paper and then described rather generously as “original publicity stills”. A copied image can reproduce the Fox credit, caption and SW-K number perfectly. Their presence on the front is therefore important, but it is not, by itself, proof of a 1977 printing.

If you are buying from a non-specialist source, ask to see clear, uncropped photographs of both sides. Check the exact dimensions, paper stock, surface, edges and printing method. Look for evidence of genuine working use—period filing marks, editorial annotations, stamps or natural handling wear—but remember that authentic stills can also be clean and unmarked. Equally, a missing caption panel, a trimmed border or a blank reverse does not automatically make a photograph false: press offices frequently cropped and adapted material for publication.

The safest approach is to judge the whole object rather than one convenient feature. Compare its typography, layout and image crop with a verified example of the same SW-K number; ask about provenance; and buy from a reputable source who describes the printing date clearly and offers a meaningful guarantee of authenticity. The question that matters is whether the physical print itself was produced for the original publicity campaign.

SW-K-5 — Imperial stormtroopers find the Rebel Blockade Runner’s abandoned escape pod.

The complete SW-K catalogue

SW-K-1 to SW-K-16

SW-K-16 — Peter Cushing is Grand Moff Tarkin, Governor of the Imperial Outland regions and commander of the frighteningly powerful new battle station, the Death Star.

SW-K-17 to SW-K-32

SW-K-28 — Carrie Fisher is Princess Leia Organa, the young Senator from Alderaan and an important leader of the rebellion against the powerful Galactic Empire.

SW-K-33 to SW-K-48

SW-K-33 — Darth Vader and Ben Kenobi battle with light sabers on the Imperial Death Star.

SW-K-49 to SW-K-64

SW-K-63 — The awesome Darth Vader forces information from a Rebel officer about the missing Princess Leia.

Why these stills still matter

A complete catalogue inevitably encourages the collector’s instinct: the pleasure of the sequence, the missing number and, eventually, the completed run. But the SW-K stills deserve to be appreciated individually too.

Each preserves a carefully selected fraction of a second from a film that would change cinema. Each also carries the voice of a publicity department attempting to describe a galaxy before generations of reference books, toys, sequels and conversations had made that galaxy familiar.

That combination makes them irresistible. They are recognisably Star Wars, but not quite the Star Wars we inherited. The pictures show the film; the captions show the mythology being born.

For nearly five decades the series survived in scattered press packs, cinema files, dealers’ inventories and private collections. By bringing all 64 references and captions together, we hope this catalogue provides a useful point of reference and perhaps helps a few unidentified stills recover their proper names and numbers.

May the Force be with you.

The complete SW-K series — A contact sheet of the 64 numbered publicity stills issued for Star Wars by Twentieth Century-Fox.

Sources and acknowledgements