Pam Pollack - Who Is George Lucas?

On May 14, 1944, George Walton Lucas Jr. was born in Modesto, California. His father, George Sr., and his mother, Dorothy, already had two daughters, Ann and Katy. When George was three, his younger sister, Wendy, was born into the growing family on Ramona Avenue.

As a young boy, George often ran errands for his fathers stationery store after school, but he wasnt interested in greeting cards and writing paper. What George loved was listening to radio shows and picturing everything in his mind. He loved comic books like Scrooge McDuck and pulp magazines like Amazing Stories. When the family got their first television, George was ten. He devoured new shows like Have Gun Will Travel and Gunsmoke. He also watched old serials on TVserials were short movies that always ended on a cliffhanger with the hero in danger. George loved wondering what would happen next.

To George, the stories in his head were more interesting than the things he was studying in school, and his grades showed it. His father wasnt happy with his report cards, but Georges imagination was too big to control. He was always making plans. With the help of his sister Wendy and his best friends, John Plummer and George Frankenstein, he organized a backyard carnival with rides and games, a homemade fun house, and a zoo filled with all the pets in the neighborhood.

At the center of the carnival was a roller coaster that George designed. It rolled down an incline, rotated on a turntable made out of a huge telephone-wire spool, and rolled onto the ground.

George also liked building environmentstiny worlds, cities, and farms made of dirt, berries, and cement poured into carefully made molds.

When George had an idea, it could be amazing.

When George was eleven, his family traveled

to Anaheim, California, for the opening of Disneyland. Disneyland was like one of Georges environments on a grand scale, a whole world built from the imagination of one man, Walt Disney.

George Sr. thought practical things, like earning money, were more important than imagination. All the Lucas children worked hard for a weekly allowance. One of Georges chores was mowing the lawn with the manual mower. He was so small he couldnt do it well. If only they had an electric lawn mower, he could do his chores more quickly and efficiently. But electric lawn mowers were expensive. For four months George saved every penny of his allowance. That gave him $35still not enough for a lawn mower. He borrowed another $25 from his mother and bought a power mower for $60.