At ↑Best of Behind-the-Scenes I just stumbled over the above still of German actress Brigitte Helm (1906/08-1996) on the set of ‘Metropolis’ (Lang 1927). Obviously it was quite hot inside the costume of the Maschinenmensch, which rendered the actress more or less helpless. Half a century later British actor Anthony Daniels suffered similar hardships as ↑C3P-O on the set of ‘Star Wars’ (Lucas 1977), as the following stills show, which I collected from somewhere on the Net ages ago:
It may or may not be that the designs of Lord Vader and C3P-O were inspired by ↵vintage firefighters’ equipment, but the golden droid for sure was inspired by ‘Metropolis’. Here is a detail from an early production sketch of C3P-O by Ralph McQuarrie:
LANG, FRITZ. 1927. Metropolis [motion picture]. Berlin: Ufa.
LUCAS, GEORGE WALTON. 1977. Star Wars [motion picture]. Century City: 20th Century Fox.
LOL, giving C-3PO a light, hilarious!
Nice seeing you dropping by here, anthronaut :-) When I saw the picture of Brigitte Helm in costume getting a drink via a straw, I remembered that I had seen a picture of Anthony Daniels on the set of the original ‘Star Wars’. Under a sunshade he was leaning against a wooden board, slightly tilted backwards, as the C3P-O armour didn’t allow him to sit down. Some kind hand on the set gave him a drink with a straw—it looked just like Helm on the set of ‘Metropolis’. Unfortunately I can’t remember where I saw that picture, only could dig up from my HDD the two pics in the post, which both are not what I remember. So if somebody finds or has other pics of C3P-O drinking on set, let me know, please.
Cheers! http://www.murschhauser.net/index.php?s=metropolis