Irvin Kershner

ALTHOUGH he dabbled in acting, Irvin Kershner was better known for directing possibly the most successful movie sequel of all time, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

He had a string of hits after that, including Never Say Never Again and RoboCop 2, but nothing approached the stellar box-office appeal of The Empire Strikes Back.

Legendary Hollywood producer George Lucas had become a hot property in Tinseltown after the release of the first Star Wars movie (although it was actually episode four) and was able to take risks with The Empire Strikes Back.

One of those risks was choosing the relatively unknown Kershner as director (although the director was certainly not an unknown to Lucas, who considered him his mentor and had studied under him when he was a film lecturer in the 1960s).

Kershner himself was so surprised he asked Lucas why he had been chosen out of about 100 directorial candidates.

Lucas replied: "Well, because you know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood."

In reality, Lucas was attracted by the fact that Kershner was a Zen Buddhist and, as such, Lucas felt Kershner would understand the philosophical undertones which he hoped to bring out in The Empire Strikes Back.

Another important consideration was Lucas's admiration for the director's work on 1976's The Return of a Man Called Horse. He regarded it as one of very few sequels which were actually better than the original.

That was ironic considering Kershner, who was chosen to direct A Man Called Horse in 1970, was unceremoniously taken off the project and even had his credentials removed from the trailer despite the work he had put into the film.

Nevertheless, despite Lucas being so powerful and the allure of making a movie with such a huge budget, Kershner initially turned Lucas down.

He then put three years of his life into the film, considered the best of the six-part series.

"The world has lost a great director and one of the most genuine people I've had the pleasure of knowing," Lucas says. "Irvin Kershner was a true gentleman in every sense of the word."

Kershner's entree to film was unusual, to say the least. He studied violin, viola and composition at university in Philadelphia before moving to New York to study painting and then to Los Angeles where he enrolled in a photography course.

During World War II, he served in the airforce as a flight engineer on B-24 bombers.

In a reversal of the usual career progression, after he was discharged, Kershner taught film and photography at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts before taking a job as a government stills photographer on an assignment in Iran.

That led to him making government documentaries on Iran, Greece and Turkey's public health and sanitation before he returned to California to work on a documentary TV series called Confidential File.

He later directed TV series The Rebel and the pilots for Peyton Place, Cain's One Hundred and several others before switching to the big screen.

Apart from his better-known blockbusters, Kershner directed some critically acclaimed films including Hoodlum Priest, The Luck of Ginger Coffey, The Return of a Man Called Horse and TV movie Raid on Entebbe.

Although he was Jewish, Kershner thought of himself as an "internationalist" and was wary of the patriotism of his countrymen.

"The world has gotten very small and cosmic awareness makes patriotism seem an adolescent notion, which is why immature minds are easily manipulated by it," he once said.

"I really believe that patriotism in its generally accepted sense means accepting social prejudices, and the fewer we have of them the freer we shall be."

Despite almost assured work as a director, Kershner remained true to his life's philosophy and kept on dabbling in side projects.

One of those was acting. He made his debut in the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), playing Zebedee, the father of the apostles James and John. He also played a film director in Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground.

Kershner died after a three-year battle with lung cancer. He is survived by his sons Dana and David.