When”The Empire Strikes Back,” the second film of the “Star Wars” saga, opened in Salt Lake City in May 1980, many Mormons left the theater convinced that they had seen a familiar face. By the time “Return of the Jedi” hit Utah’s rental shelves in the mid-1980s, the rumor was hard to escape in Mormon country: The Jedi Master Yoda was based on Spencer W. Kimball, who served as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, from 1974 to 1985.
The reasons ranged from the trivial to the telling. Like Yoda, Kimball was short, with large ears, thin white hair, and a slightly squashed, wrinkly face. Both had a knack for gnomic, oracular axioms. Kimball was famous for urging Mormons not simply to believe in their faith, but to “do it,” and even to “do it now,” advice Yoda inverted into “Do, or do not.”
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