Irvin Kershner (1923 -- 2010), Philly Vanguardist, Hollywood Yoda

Irvin Kershner, the Yoda-like director who mentored George Lucas and directed The Empire Strikes Back (1980), died Saturday in Los Angeles of lung cancer. He was 87, and is the only man to have directed both a Star Wars movie and a James Bond movie.

Born and raised in South Philadelphia in  a working-class neighborhood near 4th and Lawrence, he was encouraged in the arts by his parents. He was a vanguardist who made his mark in the mainstream.

Mr. Kershner studied violin and viola at the Settlement Music School, where at the age of 10 he performed a recital before Albert Einstein, then a board member. "I was sweating, shaking," Kershner recalled in 2006. "Afterward he told me how good I was — which wasn't true."

Einstein was one in a long line of Mr. Kershner's distinguished fans.

After attending South Philadelphia High, he served in the Air Force during World War II and for the duration worked as a flight engineer on B-24 bombers. He studied painting with avant-gardist Hans Hoffmann in New York and film  with montage artist Slavko Vorkapich at USC before joining the faculty there.

After doing some journeyman work in television (The Rebel) and B movies (Stake Out on Dope Street), he made a series of unconventional character studies, among them A Fine Madness (1966), with Sean Connery as a struggling poet, Loving (1970), with George Segal as a husband juggling wife and mistress, and Up the Sandbox (1972), with Barbra Streisand as an unfulfilled young mother. The Eyes of Laura Mars, his 1978 thriller starring Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer who sees murders before they occur, was his first mainstream hit.

A student of Mr. Kershner's and also an admirer of Laura Mars, Lucas begged the professor to direct the sequel to his blockbuster Star Wars. Mr. Kershner initially declined. Western.

When Lucas persisted, Kershner asked, "Why?" Lucas answered, "Because you know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood."

With its emphasis on character development the resulting 1980 movie, the second filmed and the fifth in the chronology, is generally considered the first or second best in the Star Wars series. Never Say Never Again (1983), Kershner's last major film, reunited him with Connery, reprising his role of 007.

Mr. Kershner is survived by two sons. Funeral arrangements were not announced. May the Force be with him.
I'm a big admirer of A Fine Madness and Laura Mars and love love love Empire Strikes Back. You?