I hate to think what little historical tidbits the next of kin of Chang, Jefferies, Theiss, etc. might have innocently thought were nothing. But what really makes me sad sometimes is how most of the original Stage 9 set was discarded or torn apart and recycled. Somewhere in a landfill in California there are probably hundreds of rocker switches, ice-cube-shaped resin buttons, and little blue fake intercoms. What I wouldn't give for half a handful of that TV history.
Edit to add, this reminded me of a story just now. (It's the wrong franchise for this forum, but it's all I've got.) Years ago I worked for a company that was a
Star Wars licensee, and the big boss had a meeting out at Skywalker Ranch. He asked a couple of us idiot youngsters if we wanted to come along (duh, YES), and we were treated to a tour of the Lucasfilm archives -- a barely-organized warehouse full of boxes and piles of movie props from probably every film George had made. I remember seeing flat cutouts of full-scale vintage cars used in
Tucker. If you zoom this crappy old Polaroid photo, you just might be able to make out one or two of those car "standees" against the back wall. (I know some of the R2 units look pasted in, but this is the actual Polaroid I took all those years ago. Maybe some of the R2s in the back were also just standees? I can't remember; we were moving quickly to try to see everything in a short amount of time.) Anyway you can clearly see the generally haphazard storage system.
Multiple tier racks were full of various loose parts, and there was one small, weird-shaped piece of metal that the archive curator told us he'd never been able to identify. We recognized it as the cave-wall switch that Luke flung the rock against to bring the gate down on the Rancor. I wish I had thought to snap a picture of that, too, since it always seems to be the first thing I think of when this old memory occasionally flares up.
Anyway, the memory lesson for today, boys and girls, is that we hoarders are right! Never throw anything away if it looks like it could be something.
