On Saturday, visitors to the Los Angeles office of Bonhams, an international auction house, will be able to view a 1979 costume of Darth Vader to be sold at auction May 14. It is owned by Kermit Bryce Eller, a computer storage engineer from Thousand Oaks, California, who was hired from 1977 to 1982 on behalf of the movie’s makers to attend conventions, book parties and marketing events and even perform at the Academy Awards dressed as the dark lord.
Bonhams estimates it will fetch a minimum of $1 million, an optimistic sum given auctioneers cannot confirm the costume was worn in any of the franchise’s films. “Sometimes it’s go big or go home,” said Catherine Williamson, Bonhams’ director of entertainment memorabilia, of the eye-popping price.
The costume is made up of a number of pieces and garments, including a fiberglass face mask, stitched leather pants, vest and gloves, shin guards, two wool capes and a black leather codpiece.
Over the years, some props and costumes from “Star Wars” — or pieces of them — have sold well, while others failed to pique interest. In 2017, an R2-D2 unit from “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” sold for $2.75 million. Last year, though, a light saber said to have been used by Mark Hamill in the first film was pulled from an auction after fans questioned its authenticity and the $200,000 price tag.
And in 2010, a Darth Vader costume made for “The Empire Strikes Back” — including helmet, mask and armor — was offered at auction and expected to sell for $250,000. No bidder emerged.
Sure, the early 2010s were a tough time for sellers of any kind. America was in the midst of a punishing recession, for one, and buyers fled the art and collectibles market. At the same time, interest in “Star Wars” wavered as it had been at least five years since the release of “Revenge of the Sith,” the last movie in the “Star Wars” franchise to be directed by George Lucas.
Since then, the franchise has expanded under the Walt Disney Co., which bought Lucasfilm, the production company founded by Lucas, in 2012. (Lucasfilm declined to comment Wednesday.) What makes Eller’s costume notable, Williamson said, is that it was created by John Mollo, a British military illustrator and wardrobe consultant who designed the costumes for “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Star Wars,” the first in the series and for which he won an Oscar in 1978.
Born in London in 1931, Mollo had a particular interest in military outfits and also designed costumes for movies like “Alien,” “Barry Lyndon” and “Chaplin.” (He won a second Oscar in 1983 for the movie “Gandhi.”) Mollo died in 2017 and, last December, Bonhams auctioned off some of his artwork, including original sketchbooks for “Star Wars,” which sold for $162,583.
The Darth Vader costume is the second of two costumes Eller wore to promote “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” Darth Vader’s outfit was modeled on clerical robes, a military helmet, a gas mask and even a motorcycle suit. “The costumes of Star Wars are, really, not so much costumes, as a bit of plumbing and general automobile engineering,” Mollo said when he accepted the Academy Award in 1978.
Eller was onstage that night, dressed in the first costume he was given in 1977, before the release of “Star Wars.” He said he had met executives at Twentieth Century Fox, the distributor at the time of “Star Wars,” who were looking for someone to appear at a three-day meeting of the American Booksellers Association in San Francisco.
“They asked me to come over, and the costume fit,” said Eller, who is 6 feet, 5 inches tall. Eller was then working in a lab that made costume masks. “I spent nights working on the voice,” he said. “I’d stand like a mannequin and recite lines of dialogue.”
In 1977, he said, he appeared at Mann’s Chinese Theater when Darth Vader’s footprints were captured in cement. A year later, he said, Lawrence Kasdan, the Oscar-nominated writer of “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of The Lost Ark,” asked Eller to perform at his young son’s birthday party.
Eller said he also appeared at a Halloween party at the New York City apartment of John DeLorean, the famed automaker who was accused of trafficking cocaine in 1982, but was found not guilty. “George was considering investing in his car company,” Eller said.
Within a few years, though, the costume was worn out from his many appearances, and he gave it back to Fox executives. In 1979, Eller said, he was given a second costume — the one to be auctioned off at Bonhams — based on Darth Vader’s outfit in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Within two years, his appearances became less frequent until they stopped altogether. He said he put the suit in its carrying case and stowed it in the garage.
Eller said he is selling the costume because he has left the character behind. “It’s not doing me any good,” he said. “I think somebody who really wants it should have it.”
Besides, he added, “I have a different life now. I don’t need it anymore.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.