He has long been the lost Bristolian voice of the classic Star Wars movies. The Southmead lad David Prowse who played the evil emperor Darth Vader, but whose words were overdubbed after filming by deep-voiced American star James Earl Jones.
So generations of Star Wars fans might well not have known what the giant of a man playing the black-cloaked baddie sounded like when he was ordering the Storm Troopers around his ship, or threatening Princess Leia - apparently until now.
For a Twitter account that shares classic movie scenes has now released a series of little clips that claim to be the original footage shot by George Lucas of the first Star Wars movie, complete with the sound of David Prowse saying the lines that were later read with a bit more of an evil baritone by James Earl Jones.
Read more: Star Wars legends George Lucas and Mark Hamill pay heartwarming tribute to 'essential' Dave Prowse
And the video clip also then shows the exact same scene with the exact same line as the movie-going public saw it, with Prowse’s acting and Earl Jones’ voice.
The video, shared below, has gone viral on Twitter, with more than 600,000 views in little more than a day. The subject of David Prowse’s voice being dubbed over has long been a source of intrigue and a bit of controversy.
The muscleman and actor said afterwards that he’d been told by George Lucas that his face and voice would eventually be seen and heard at the end of Return of the Jedi, when Vader’s mask is removed, but in the end the actor Sebastian Shaw was used. When David Prowse passed away at the age of 85 in November 2020, Lucas paid tribute to the 6ft 6ins actor.
“David brought a physicality to Darth Vader that was essential for the character. He made Vader leap off the page and on to the big screen, with an imposing stature and movement performance to match the intensity and undercurrent of Vader’s presence. David was up for anything and contributed to the success of what would become a memorable, tragic figure,” he said.
In the 2004 documentary Empire of Dreams, Carrie Fisher joked that they nicknamed Prowse ‘Darth Farmer’ because of his accent, and in 2010, George Lucas banned Prowse from the official Star Wars fan conventions, saying he ‘burnt too many bridges’ between them. In 2011, his autobiography was called ‘Straight From the Force’s Mouth’.
When the first Star Wars film was released in 1977, Prowse - his face, but not his voice - were already well known to British children. From 1975, he appeared as the Green Cross Man, a superhero extolling the virtues of the ‘Green Cross Code’ road safety rules for children. Even then, in the first two adverts broadcast from 1975, his voice was dubbed by another actor because of his Bristolian accent, and it was only until the third advert that his real voice was kept.
In 2019, Bristol comedian Stephen Merchant revealed he would love to make a biopic of David Prowse’s life, on Russell Howard’s chat show, where the pair talked about the controversy of David Prowse’s voice being overdubbed by George Lucas.
“The legend goes that he was in the outfit and he would go on set, and he would do all of the Darth Vader lines - he’d learned all the lines and obviously he speaks like us, so he would be going ‘I’m your father Luke, me old babber!’ and then he’d get to the premiere and that’s the first time he discovered that wasn’t his voice, that they had overdubbed him with the amazing James Earl Jones," said Stephen Merchant.
“I just think it would be amazing to make a movie with The Rock as Dave Prowse, but I’m doing his voice, but we don’t tell The Rock until the premiere,” he added.
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