“It was Jan. 2, 1982 at 2 p.m. I’ll never forget it.”
A fan of Mark Hamill recounted the moment that Hamill called her, which started a long-lasting friendship at the peak of his Star Wars fame.
As if there were any doubt before, Mark Hamill is definitely not on the dark side. In 1982, Hamill was still a year away from starring in Return of the Jedi, which was the highly-anticipated conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy.
A fan reached out and wrote Hamill a letter to which he understandably didn’t respond. However, every couple months, another letter from that fan arrived, with an interesting little idea.
That fan’s name is Lisa Cowan. She was a sci-fi fan who was thrilled about Star Wars, and then after seeing Empire Strikes Back, she decided to start a Mark Hamill fan club. She called it On The Mark, and enlisted fellow Mark Hamill fans Shari Stitt and Lee Vibber to help run it. All three were married, grown-up women, and wanted to celebrate Hamill in a non-teenage heartthrob way, while also informing fellow fans about news regarding Hamill. With all these fan clubs for other big stars, why not Mark?
Lisa wanted to do things the right way, and thought it would be wise to reach out to him directly for permission.
In 1984, she spoke to journalist Mary Martin from the San Bernardino County Sun in California about what happened next.
After having sent Mark Hamill a few mockup newsletters over the course of about six months without hearing back, she decided to give it one last try. She explained to Martin, “I sent him the latest mock-up and told him I would be at such and such date and time and asked him to please call me.”
That date was January 2, 1982. At the designated time of 2pm, Mark Hamill actually called her.
It wasn’t the first time Hamill was involved in an unusual phone call, thanks to someone once calling him and offering him money for secrets to Empire. This phone call was thankfully much less bizarre.
In a baritone voice over the phone Hamill said, “Luke. I am your father!” Ok, maybe that part is totally made up by me, but it would’ve been great if he had.
After getting over the initial shock after Mark calling her, Lisa gathered herself and spoke to him about the newsletter. “He said at the time he didn’t want to have an official fan club because he didn’t have the time to get involved.”
However, he told her how impressed he was with the mock-ups and advised her not to spend too much time or money on the project. Lisa was impressed by his unselfishness. With his permission, she published the first one the following month, and the three women maintained the newsletter for a couple years, releasing it quarterly, until Mark actually decided to make it official.
So, beginning in 1984, On The Mark became the official Mark Hamill fan club. It was already being sent out to fans nationwide, with subscribers in 42 states overall, but also worldwide, with subscribers in 11 other countries. It was $4 U.S. dollars per year to subscribe, and was released quarterly.
It soon became recognized by Lucasfilm Ltd., and often received help from them, and from the official Star Wars Fan Club.
Each newsletter was about eight pages long and is filled with info on Mark Hamill, including career updates, tidbits, trivia, articles about his previous films, artwork, Star Wars info, reviews, ways to connect with other Hamill fans, and more. Some copies can even be viewed online at fanlore.
The three women and their husbands even had dinner with Mark Hamill after attending a performance of Amadeus when Hamill was starring in the lead, a show slightly more successful than his 3-week run on The Elephant Man.
In 1987, Cowan was no longer able to run the newsletter so it was handed off to someone else but didn’t last long after that. However the reason why she could no longer commit to it was because she was hired to write for the official Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine.
In 2019, she was a guest on the Star Wars At The Movies podcast and discussed On The Mark in detail, as well as some of her assignments for Lucasfilm.
She also tells the story of how she figured out where Jabba’s Sail Barge scene was being filmed in 1982 that might intrigue Star Wars fans.
Thanks to Lucasfilm, she enjoyed a 20-year career and it never happens if Mark Hamill wasn’t generous with his time and supportive of her endeavor. She was even hired to handle his fan mail at one point.
Sometimes, it literally pays to be a fan.