Where would filmdom be without the polar ice palace of Superman II, the sleek spacecraft of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Jabba the Hutt’s monastery on the shifting sands of Tattooine in the Star Wars films? It is a question that immediately comes to mind when reviewing the life and stunning career of German-born art director and production designer Harry Lange, who died at the age of 77 on May 22nd.

If these accomplishments seem wondrous in retrospect, bear in mind that few were better suited for the job: Lange himself lived an off-camera life that could easily have ranked among the cinematic plots he helped visualize. A native of Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany, Lange watched his hometown overtaken by the Communists in his mid-teens, and not only bucked Communist rule sans apology, but fled the confines of East Germany and settled in free Europe, where he studied art, then moved to the U.S. and worked in the American advertising industry. Finding it dull and unchallenging to etch out illustrations of consumer products, Lange shifted gears and opted instead to work as an artist for the military, initially by illustrating flight manuals, then – on a loftier note – helping NASA design spacecraft under the aegis of Nazi-turned-American employ Wernher von Braun.

A meeting with acclaimed science-fiction belletrist Arthur C. Clarke introduced Lange, in turn, to Stanley Kubrick, who (fresh off the heels of Dr. Strangelove) was then prepping a new “thinking person’s” sci-fi epic with the working title A Journey to the Stars. That film, of course, later evolved into 2001, and its history scarcely needs to be repeated here; most significant is the fact that Lange drew from his NASA years by bringing to the film the element of realism visible in the look of the spaceships, with their sleek interior panels and technology-conscious design. It revolutionized the presentation of convincing sci-fi cinema per se, and picked up a Best Art Direction Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award for Lange; it also permanently sealed his future in movies, not only as a production designer, but as one associated almost exclusively with science fiction and fantasy. Subsequent credits included Moonraker (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Dark Crystal (1982).

Lange scored three of his most formidable successes, however, under the aegis of visionary fantasist George Lucas, who tapped him to design the onscreen worlds at hand in the initial installments of the Star Wars series: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). For Empire, Lange finally netted the elusive Academy Award that many felt he should have received back in 1968.