When I saw Star Wars originally, during the scene in which Luke Skywalker is in Ben Kenobi’s hut, I am willing to swear that Ben was smoking a hookah. This scene was also in the very first VHS edition of Star Wars (which I have since lost.)
However… since then, that scene appears to have been altered! If you look at the scene in which Luke is in Ben’s hut, you can see Ben moving his hand to his mouth as if he’s holding something, and then he leans back and relaxes with his hand still to his mouth. However - there is nothing in his hand at the time.
So - I’m checking my memory and the memory of others! Does ANYONE remember the original movie, and Ben smoking a hookah? My husband remembers it, and so do some of our friends who are of the same vintage, but in all of the other releases of Star Wars, that scene has been altered. What is weird is that if you go on the Internet, you can’t even find a reference to Ben’s hookah!!! (Go ahead - google it, if you like!!!)
If anyone remembers the original scene with the hookah, please check in to let me know my mind is not giving out on me! Also - if I’m remembering correctly, why did the scene get changed, and why can’t you find any information on the Internet? After all, a hookah is merely a device out of which one smokes tobacco, and I can’t see why they would have changed the scene to take the hookah out…
We did find the site that you referenced, but although it states that Obi-Wan smoked a hookah on occasion, it doesn’t bring up the hookah-smoking in the movie. My husband and I both remember it clearly, and as I recall, the last time we saw the original VHS tape (which would have been about 10 years ago!) we saw him smoking again. It wasn’t until we got the DVD version that we noticed that the smoking had been removed!!! If you look closely at that scene in the movie, it’s pretty clear that he’s got something in his hand that he’s bringing to his mouth.
I have a pretty vivid mental picture of Obi-Wan smoking… something. Not quite sure if it was a hookah, but I have a very distinct mental image of OWK exhaling smoke, while sitting and talking to the young Luke Skywalker, just prior to the Princess hologram being produced by R2D2.
I think this is the scene in question. At about 21 seconds he places his hand to his mouth and he does appear to bite down on the stem of a (now invisible) pipe or hookah mouthpiece or something. I don’t remember one way or the other from when I saw the movie originally, but I agree with the OP the hand motion and mouth movement looks very much like he was originally smoking a pipe in that scene.
I agree. The movement of his hand looks very suspicious. I’m not even certain that it is his hand, and not a hand model’s that was added in as a replacement over the one that they edited out.
That scene was re-edited (originally, that is, before the initial release in 1977) to how it was written and shot, so I imagine the absence of whatever it is he appears to put in his mouth is due to continuity.
It’s possible he was originally smoking a pipe, and you’re conflating that with hookah scenes in other parts of the Star Wars movies. Maybe searching for “pipe” instead of “hookah” will turn something up.
Also, in the picture of his hut from Wombat’s link, can someone point out which is the hookah? (And you can see the pipes on the table.)
I don’t get this. To remove a pipe that would be in front of his face, you’d have to replace the parts of his face and mouth, which is moving as he is speaking. This was 1977 and there was no CGI capable of doing such a seamless job at the time.
Just reading the title of this thread I was sure what the OP was remembering was the scene referenced above because for a long time I thought Ben was smoking in that scene too.
I realized I was wrong when, back in college, I was watching the trilogy with friends and we were basically MSTing it and the joke I said at that point was something about smoking and my friends all looked at me like “whaahh?”. I said in defense, “He’s smoking!” and we rewound and took a close look and I realized he is just kind of twisting his beard. But I can totally see how that memory can be formed.
There was a picture book that came out some time after the original movie’s release, made up of stills from the movie with either speech bubbles or captions underneath. IIRC it included shots of deleted scenes including one of Luke looking up through a pair of binoculars to watch the opening battle from the ground, and another of Luke and Biggs having a conversation on Tatooine, top of a roof for some reason. People of my generation have sworn up and down that they saw these scenes in the actual movie. Maybe sightings of Ben’s hookah have a similar origin?
