Donald Montgomery Hutson (January 31, 1913 – June 26, 1997) was the first star wide receiver in National Football League history. He is considered by many to have been the first modern receiver.^[1]

In his senior season at the University of Alabama in 1934, Hutson was a first team All-American for six different organizations and a second team selection by one other. After his career at Alabama, he joined the Green Bay Packers in 1935 and retired in 1945 after 11 seasons.

Hutson is credited with creating many of the modern pass routes used in the NFL today. He was the dominant receiver of his day and is widely considered to be one of the greatest wide receivers in NFL history, holding almost all important receiving records at the time of his retirement. As of the end of the 2009 NFL season, Hutson still holds the following records: Most seasons leading league in pass receptions (8), Most consecutive seasons leading league in pass receptions (5), Most seasons leading league in pass receiving yards gained (7), Most consecutive seasons leading league in pass receiving yards gained (4), Most seasons leading league in pass receiving touchdowns (9), Most consecutive seasons leading league in pass receiving touchdowns (5), Most seasons leading league in scoring (5), and Most consecutive seasons leading league in scoring (5) (Source: NFL Record and fact book).

NFL career[link]

Wide receiver[link]

When he graduated from Alabama, Hutson was not highly regarded by several NFL teams because of his thin stature.^{[citation needed]} Many coaches felt that he would not be able to handle the rigors of football,^{[citation needed]} but Curly Lambeau of the Packers saw Hutson as the perfect receiver for his passing attack, which at the time was headed by quarterback Arnie Herber and end Johnny "Blood" McNally.

Before the draft existed, college players could sign with any team they wanted, and while Hutson did sign a contract with Green Bay, he had also signed a contract with Brooklyn, and both contracts came to the NFL office at the same time. NFL president Joseph Carr declared that Hutson would go to Green Bay, as the Green Bay contract had an earlier date of signing.^[2]

Fans of the Packers received a preview of things to come in Hutson's first game. On his first-ever play, Hutson caught an 83-yard touchdown pass from Arnie Herber. It was the first of 99 receiving touchdowns, an NFL record that would stand for 44 years after his retirement. Steve Largent broke Hutson's record in 1989, although 3 of Largent's 100 touchdown receptions came against replacement players. Hutson's single season record of 18 touchodown receptions in 1942 stood for 42 years until broken by Mark Clayton in 1984, a year in which Miami's quarterback Dan Marino had more completions (362) than the entire 1942 Packers team's pass attempts (330).

Hutson became the key component to the Packers lethal offensive attack, as the Packers won the NFL title in Hutson's second year, 1936, beating the Boston Redskins 21-6. The Packers went on to win two more titles during Hutson's career, in 1939 and 1944. Hutson shocked the fans of Green Bay in 1945 when he announced his retirement after playing 11 seasons. He stayed with the Packers as an assistant coach in 1946, but then left the organization.

In an era when successful passing attacks were virtually unheard of, Don Hutson and the Green Bay Packers flourished via the air. Hutson held 18 major NFL records at the time of his retirement, several of which stood for decades; some have yet to be broken.

Twice, in 1941 and 1942, he was named the league's MVP. In 1941 Hutson became the first receiver to catch more than 50 passes in a season, and the next year he became the first with over 1,000 receiving yards in a season. In all, Hutson caught 488 passes for 7,991 yards. He rushed for three touchdowns and returned three interceptions for touchdowns for a career total of 105. Hutson led the NFL in receptions eight times in his 11 seasons, including five consecutive times (1941–1945). He led the NFL in receiving yards seven times, including four straight times from 1941-44. He led the NFL in scoring five times (1941–45). Hutson still holds the highest career average TDs per game (0.85) for a wide receiver.

Defense and special teams[link]

For many of his 11 seasons, Hutson was also the Packers' kicker. He added 172 extra points and 7 field goals for another league record, 823 points. He led the league in extra points made and attempted in 1941, 1942 and 1945 and in field goals made in 1943.

As did almost all players in his day, Hutson played both offense and defense. On defense, Hutson was a very good safety who intercepted 30 passes over the final six years of his career. Hutson's highest season total was in 1943, when he intercepted eight passes in only 10 games. In 1940, he led the NFL with 6 interceptions.

Honors and recognition[link]

Hutson's number was retired by the Packers in 1951

Hutson has been honored in a variety of ways. He was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1951. His number 14, was the first number retired by the Packers (in a public ceremony at a game at City Stadium) on December 2, 1951. Hutson Street in the Packerland Industrial Park in Green Bay is named for him, and in 1994 the Packers named their new state-of-the-art indoor practice facility across the street from Lambeau Field the "Don Hutson Center". Hutson was inducted as a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, and he is a member of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. Current and former Packer executives, such as Bob Harlan and Ron Wolf, have traditionally referred to Hutson as the greatest player the game has known. There is a park named after him in his hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Super Bowl XXII was dedicated to Hutson on the occasion of his 75th birthday. He performed the ceremonial coin toss to end the pregame ceremonies.

In 1999, he was ranked sixth on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the highest-ranking Packer and the highest-ranking pre-World War II player.

In 2005, the Flagstad family of Green Bay donated to the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame an authentic Packers #14 jersey worn by Hutson. The jersey was found in a trunk of old uniforms in 1946 at the Rockwood Lodge, the Packers' summer training camp from 1946 to 1949, owned by Melvin and Helen Flagstad. The jersey, a rare NFL artifact valued at over $17,000, was donated by son Daniel Flagstad in memory of his parents.

Most sportswriters and football enthusiasts consider Jerry Rice the best receiver ever, but a few critics believe Hutson could have been as good as Rice if he'd played in the same era.^[3] Hutson played in an era where the run dominated the game, the pass interference rule favored defenses, and players played both offense and defense. Rice's career touchdown reception record of 197 almost exactly doubled Hutson's 99 TD receptions. Yet Rice played 20 seasons in the modern pass-friendly NFL with 16 regular season games, plus playoffs. In comparison, Hutson played 11 seasons in an era of 10-12 games per season, and when there was a championship game but no playoffs. However, in Rice's defense, it should be noted that Hutson's most productive seasons were from 1942-1945, a time in which the NFL was severely depleted with many its most talented players and prospective college athletes serving in the military during World War II [1]. Hutson's record 99 TD receptions stood for 44 years, not being broken until well into the modern era.^[4][5]

NFL records[link]

Records held as of retirement^[6][7][8][9]

• Most seasons led league, scoring: 5*
• Most consecutive seasons led league, scoring: 5*
• Most points scored in a quarter: 29*
• Most touchdowns scored in a quarter: 4*
• Most touchdown receptions in a quarter: 4*
• Most seasons led league, touchdowns: 8*
• Most consecutive seasons led league, touchdowns: 4*
• Most seasons led league, receiving touchdowns: 9*
• Most consecutive seasons led league, receiving touchdowns: 5*
• Most seasons led league, receptions: 8*
• Most consecutive seasons led league, receptions: 5*
• Most seasons led league, receiving yards: 7*
• Most consecutive seasons led league, receiving yards: 4*
• Most receptions, career: 488
• Most receptions, season: 74
• Most receptions, game: 14
• Most receiving yards, career: 7,991
• Most receiving yards, season: 1,211
• Most receiving yards, game: 209
• Most receiving touchdowns, career: 99
• Most touchdowns, season: 17
• Most touchdowns, game: 4

Note: * = remains an NFL record.

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Eisenberg, John (2009), That First Season:: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory. New York:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. ISBN ISBN 978-0-618-90499-0

External links[link]

• "Packers.com - Don Hutson". Packers.com. http://www.packers.com/team/players/hutson_don/. Retrieved April 6, 2008. ^{[dead link]}
• "Member - Pro Football Hall of Fame - Don Hutson". Pro Football Hall of Fame. http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.jsp?PLAYER_ID=104. Retrieved April 6, 2008. 
• "Long before Rice, Hutson defined WR". ESPN. http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=sando_mike&id=3310847. Retrieved April 6, 2008. 
• "Hutson was first modern receiver". ESPN. http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00014269.html. Retrieved April 6, 2008. 
• Video NFL Top 100 Players #9
• "Packers Hall Of Fame Receives Rare Don Hutson Jersey". Packers.com. http://www.packers.com/news/releases/2005/09/02/1/. Retrieved April 6, 2008. ^{[dead link]}
• New York Times Obit

George Lucas
George Lucas in 2009
Born	George Walton Lucas, Jr. (1944-05-14) May 14, 1944 (age 68) Modesto, California, U.S.
Residence	Marin County, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Modesto Junior College
Alma mater	University of Southern California (B.A. and B.S.)[1]
Occupation	Chairman & CEO of Lucasfilm
Years active	1965–present
Influenced by	Frank Herbert,[2] Joseph Campbell, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford
Home town	Central Valley, California, U.S.
Net worth	US$3.2 billion (2011)[1]
Spouse	Marcia Lucas (1969–1983)
Partner	Mellody Hobson (2007–present)

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm.^[3] He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.^[1]

Early life and education[link]

George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.^[4][5]

Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.

As a child, Lucas never learned to swim, which became a source of embarrassment and frustration as he became older. Lucas has expressed in several interviews that his inability to swim was "the passion that drove me to succeed in filmmaking... [It] gave me the chip on my shoulder that I think was critical to my later success"^[6]

During this time, an experimental filmmaker named Bruce Baillie tacked up a bedsheet in his backyard in 1960 to screen the work of underground, avant-garde 16 mm filmmakers like Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage and Bruce Conner. For the next few years, Baillie's series, dubbed Canyon Cinema, toured local coffeehouses. These events became a magnet for the teenage Lucas and his boyhood friend John Plummer. The 19-year-olds began slipping away to San Francisco to hang out in jazz clubs and find news of Canyon Cinema screenings in flyers at the City Lights bookstore. Already a promising photographer, Lucas became infatuated with these abstract films.

"That's when he [George] really started exploring" Plummer recalled. "We went to a theater on Union Street that shows art films, we drove up to San Francisco State for a film festival, and there was an old beatnik coffeehouse in Cow Hollow with shorts that were really out there." It was a season of awakening for Lucas, who had been an uninterested slacker in high school. At an autocross track, Lucas met his first mentor in the film industry — famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler, a fellow aficionado of sleek racing machines. Wexler was impressed by the way the shy teenager handled a camera, cradling it low on his hips to get better angles. "George had a very good eye, and he thought visually," Wexler recalls.^[7]

Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, Steven Spielberg. Lucas was deeply influenced by the Filmic Expression course taught at the school by filmmaker Lester Novros which concentrated on the non-narrative elements of Film Form like color, light, movement, space, and time. Another huge inspiration was the Serbian montagist (and dean of the USC Film Department) Slavko Vorkapich, a film theoretician comparable in historical importance to Sergei Eisenstein, who moved to Hollywood to make stunning montage sequences for studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount. Vorkapich taught the autonomous nature of the cinematic art form, emphasizing the unique dynamic quality of movement and kinetic energy inherent in motion pictures.

Lucas saw many inspiring films in class, particularly the visual films coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett's 21-87, the French-Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles, the work of Norman McLaren, and the documentaries of Claude Jutra. Lucas fell madly in love with pure cinema and quickly became prolific at making 16 mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, 1:42.08, The Emperor, Anyone Lived in a Pretty (how) Town, Filmmaker, and 6-18-67. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to being a director, and he loved making abstract visual films that create emotions purely through cinema.^[7]

After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, he tried joining the United States Air Force as an officer, but he was immediately turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army for military service in Vietnam, but he was exempted from service after medical tests showed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather.

In 1967, Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student in film production. Working as a teaching instructor for a class of U.S. Navy students who were being taught documentary cinematography, Lucas directed the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which won first prize at the 1967–68 National Student Film Festival, and was later adapted into his first full-length feature film, THX 1138. Lucas was awarded a student scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe and work on the making of a film of his choosing. The film he chose was Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who at the time was revered among film school students of the time as a cinema graduate who had "made it" in Hollywood. In 1969, George Lucas was one of the camera operators on the classic Rolling Stones concert film Gimme Shelter.

Film career[link]

George Lucas is a filmmaker, with a film career dominated by writing and production. Aside from the nine short films he made in the 1960s, he also directed six major features. His work from 1971 and 1977 as a writer-director, which established him as a major figure in Hollywood, consists of just three films: THX 1138, American Graffiti, and Star Wars. There was a 22-year hiatus between the original Star Wars film and his only other feature-film directing credits, the three Star Wars prequels.

Lucas acted as a writer and executive producer on another successful Hollywood film franchise, the Indiana Jones series. In addition, he established his own effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), to make the original Star Wars film. The company is now one of the most successful in the industry.

Lucas co-founded the studio American Zoetrope with Coppola—whom he met during his internship at Warner Brothers—hoping to create a liberating environment for filmmakers to direct outside the perceived oppressive control of the Hollywood studio system^{[citation needed]}. His first full-length feature film produced by the studio, THX 1138, was not a success. Lucas then created his own company, Lucasfilm, Ltd., and directed American Graffiti (1973). His new-found wealth and reputation enabled him to develop a story set in space. Even so, he encountered difficulties getting Star Wars made. It was only because Alan Ladd, Jr., at Fox Studios liked American Graffiti that he forced through a production and distribution deal for the film, which ended up restoring Fox to financial stability after a number of flops.^[8]

Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up-front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights (for novelizations, T-shirts, toys, etc.)^{[citation needed]}—rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless^{[citation needed]}. This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars^{[citation needed]}, as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed games, toys, and collectibles created for the franchise. This accumulated capital enabled him to finance the sequel himself.

Over the two decades after the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and/or producer, including the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, TV, and other media. He acted as executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, assigning the direction of The Empire Strikes Back to Irvin Kershner and Return of the Jedi to Richard Marquand, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. Lucas also acted as executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films, which he convinced his colleague and good friend, Steven Spielberg, to direct. Other notable projects as a producer or executive producer in this period include Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980), Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat (1981), Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986), Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi (1986) and the animated film The Land Before Time (1988). There were also some less successful projects, however, including More American Graffiti (1979), the ill-fated Howard the Duck (1986), which was arguably^{[citation needed]} the biggest flop of his career; Willow (1988, which Lucas also wrote); and Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988). Between 1992 and 1996, Lucas served as executive producer for the television spinoff The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In 1997, for the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas went back to his trilogy to enhance and add certain scenes using newly available digital technology. These new versions were released in theaters as the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. For DVD releases in 2004, this series has received further revisions to make them congruent with the prequel trilogy. Besides the additions to the Star Wars franchise, Lucas released Special Edition director's cuts of THX 1138 and American Graffiti containing a number of CGI revisions.

Lucas at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

The animation studio Pixar was founded as the Graphics Group^{[citation needed]}, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan^[9] and Young Sherlock Holmes,^[9] and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple after a power struggle at Apple Computer. Jobs paid U.S. $5 million to Lucas and put U.S. $5 million as capital into the company. The sale reflected Lucas' desire to stop the cash flow losses from his 7-year research projects associated with new entertainment technology tools, as well as his company's new focus on creating entertainment products rather than tools. A contributing factor was cash-flow difficulties following Lucas' 1983 divorce concurrent with the sudden dropoff in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi.

The sound-equipped system, THX Ltd, was founded by Lucas and Tomlinson Holman^{[citation needed]}. The company was formerly owned by Lucasfilm, and contains equipment for stereo, digital, and theatrical sound for films, and music. Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, the sound and visual effects subdivisions of Lucasfilm, respectively, have become among the most respected firms in their fields^{[citation needed]}. Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, is well respected in the gaming industry^{[citation needed]}.

In 1994, Lucas began work on the screenplay for the prequel Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which would be the first film he had directed in over two decades. The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, beginning a new trilogy of Star Wars films. Lucas also directed Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith which were released in 2002 and 2005, respectively. Numerous critics considered these films inferior to the previously released Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.^[10][11][12]

In 2008, he reteamed with Spielberg for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.