Staff photo / Andy Gray Herald Fenn goes through a suitcase of old photographs, newspaper clippings, letters and other artifacts that had been saved by writers Leigh Brackett and Edmond Wilson at their summer house in Kinsman. Fenn started working as a caretaker for the couple as a teenager in the 1950s and continued to take care of the property when they were away until Brackett’s death in 1978.

KINSMAN — In the movies and multitude of spinoff television series that make up the “Star Wars” universe, Yoda’s homeland never is revealed.

But some hardcore “Star Wars” fanatics and northern Trumbull County residents know the small but wise Jedi master was “born” in an old farmhouse on Kinsman Orangeville Road.

Leigh Brackett worked on the first draft of “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” in the summer home she shared with her husband, author Edmond Hamilton. She died in 1978, a year after her husband and two years before “Empire” was released on May 21, 1980, but she and Lawrence Kasdan are the two credited screenwriters on what many consider the best of the “Star Wars” films.

It’s also the film that introduced Yoda, a character that immediately became popular when “Empire” debuted and enjoyed a resurgence when Baby Yoda was featured in the 2019 series “The Mandalorian.” Brackett’s first draft differs significantly from the final film, but it contains the Yoda character — who was named Minch in her draft — and many other pivotal scenes and plot twists in the saga.

A week before the 45th anniversary of the film’s release, Herald and Nancy Fenn and Emily Webster Love shared some of their memories of Brackett and Hamilton.

The Fenns were the custodians of the property when Brackett and Hamilton lived there. Love has lived in that farmhouse for the past 30 years, and she first met Brackett in the mid-1970s in her role as a reporter for the former Youngstown Vindicator, which is now known as The Vindicator and is owned by the (Warren) Tribune Chronicle.

SUITCASE FULL OF MEMORIES

It’s a conversation that started with prying open a suitcase that had been locked for years.

Herald Fenn, 82, began working for the couple when he was in ninth or 10th grade, which would have been about 1959 or ’60. He mainly kept the property mowed and had a set of keys so he could check on the house in the winter.

“She wanted it to look like someone was there all the time,” he said.

After he and Nancy got married 57 years ago, she helped him take care of the property.

Brackett gave the Fenns one of her luggage sets before she died, and Herald used the largest one to store some of the things he saved from the house. At some point, the suitcase got locked, and it hadn’t been opened for years.

After several minutes of prying, he forced it open.

The packed case included a few candid photos of Brackett, including one with a Corvette Stingray she purchased one summer.

“Anytime they went anywhere, she always did the driving,” Herald said. “The only time Ed did any driving was when he got in the car, drove from the garage down to the mailbox and then turn around and drive the car back up to the garage.”

There were photo albums, old letters and newspaper articles about Hamilton’s family and Hamilton’s and Brackett’s careers. He was a child prodigy who started high school in New Castle, Pa., at age 10 and attended Westminster College at age 14. Inside was a postcard his mother used to promote the book she wrote about the educational methods she used with him.

It was a treasure trove of information about two important 20th century science-fiction writers. Hamilton wrote for science-fiction pulp magazines and comic books (primarily Superman and Batman) and published several novels. Brackett wrote screenplays for Westerns (“Rio Bravo,” “El Dorado” and “Rio Lobo”) and Raymond Chandler adaptations (1946’s “The Big Sleep,” starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and 1973’s “The Long Goodbye” with Elliott Gould) as well as 10 science-fiction novels and dozens of short stories.

That trove could have been much larger, but many of their possessions were destroyed after Brackett was diagnosed with cancer.

“When she knew she wasn’t coming back, she said go out back and get the fire started, and we started hauling her stuff out and burning it,” Herald said. “I worked all afternoon with her burning stuff … lots of pictures, pictures of her family. I wanted to keep some of them, but there was no way I could do it. She was standing there saying, ‘We’ll burn this stuff.’ I didn’t want to get her mad. I found a few things around the house, and I kept them there in that suitcase.”

He also saved several firearms that were recommended to Brackett by someone who handled more than a few weapons in his movie career — John Wayne. As far as Herald knows, she only fired them one time at targets, and the avowed animal lover kept her husband from firing at the woodchucks on the property.

A FRUITFUL ASSIGNMENT

Love, 87, knew nothing about Brackett’s and Hamilton’s careers the first time she traveled to their home. Hamilton’s sister, Esther Hamilton, was a longtime columnist for the Vindicator, and Love said she was told by an editor that, “Esther’s sister wrote something,” and to do a story on it.

“I could have killed that editor when I got back,” Love said. “I’m driving up here, trying to find the place, saying, ‘Oh, great. One more person who thinks they can write. And I’ve got to write a story about them, right?’ And then I get faced with what I got faced with. Yeah, humble pie.”

She didn’t have much interaction with Hamilton — he said “Hi” when she arrived and “Goodbye” when she left but kept writing — but she had a long conversation with Brackett.

When Love asked what she was working on, she mentioned a sequel to “Star Wars.” Not being a science-fiction fan, Love wasn’t particularly impressed. What did catch her attention was Brackett’s coffee mug.

“She’s drinking coffee in this big mug, and the mug says ‘To Leigh with love, Duke.’ I didn’t say anything for a minute. She turned the cup around and it said, ‘Rio Bravo.’ I said, ‘Is that a cast gift? … Did John Wayne give you that?’ And she said yes.”

When Love asked if she brought it all the way from California, Brackett replied, “No, he dropped it off one day when he was here.”

Wayne visited on multiple occasions, sleeping on an Army cot at the small house. Love also has heard stories from folks who remember glimpsing other celebrities there, such as Angie Dickinson reading a book out in the front yard.

“The people in this town knew it. They kept her secret, guarded their privacy,” Love said. “In most towns they would have had people gawking, right? It’s crazy.”

After Love’s story was published, Brackett sent her a note with a copy of one of her books, and the two corresponded until Brackett’s death.

A SUMMER HOUSE AND A WORKPLACE

The farmhouse in Kinsman might have been a summer home to the couple, but it wasn’t a vacation home. Most days Brackett and Hamilton were upstairs in their respective offices working on their latest projects.

Herald Fenn remembered Hamilton typing on a manual typewriter with only two fingers, but pounding away at “900 miles a minute.”

Brackett worked on an electric typewriter in the adjacent room. The way their metal typewriter stands were positioned, Brackett and Hamilton would have been facing each other if there wasn’t a wall between them.

Despite working largely in the same genre, they worked separately.

“He (Hamilton) said to me, ‘We don’t talk back and forth. She takes care of her stuff, and I do mine. We don’t ask each other questions or answer. She does hers and I do mine,'” Herald said.

“That’s the feeling I got,” Love added. “They worked together, but they weren’t together. They were working at the same time in separate rooms.”

In addition to the suitcase full of photos and papers, Herald saved something else from the trash barrels — their typewriters. He gave Brackett’s electric typewriter to Love, and it’s in the same room where Brackett wrote, along with a worn, crumbling life-size Yoda figure that someone gave Webster.

‘THE LONG TOMORROW’

There may not be much of Kinsman in that movie franchise set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but the house and its location provided direct inspiration for one of Brackett’s novels.

“The Long Tomorrow” was published in 1955, five years after they bought the house. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic future following a nuclear war. The survivors, with a deep distrust of science, only allow people to live in small communities and have banned technology.

Kinsman and Gustavus are among the places mentioned in the book, and the opening paragraph includes a reference to the Canfield Fair.

“It’s set in a post-nuclear America,” Love said. “A kid finds a box with funny noises coming out of it. It’s a radio. There’s someone else in his world that he couldn’t see, and he leaves home to go find them. It’s a wonderful adventure and, of course, in the end, he comes home to Kinsman. … Critics have called it her best novel.”

Either inspired by her own writing or by the Cold War, Brackett and Hamilton had a bomb shelter installed on the property.

The first one was tiny and leaked, Herald said, so they installed a bigger one.

Love said they found crushed food cans and shards of broken pottery near it when installing a driveway on the grounds. An overgrown peach tree blocks access to it now, but a rusted metal pipe sticking out of the ground still is visible.

“If the whole intent is to save yourself from radioactive fumes,” Love asked, “what is the pipe doing sticking out of the ground? Do they think they’re getting fresh air from there? They’re getting radioactive air.”

FROM A CABIN TO A HOME

The house on Kinsman Orangeville Road was little more than a cabin with no electricity when Hamilton and Brackett bought it in 1950. They installed electricity and expanded the kitchen and made other improvements while they owned it.

The owners before Love added a front porch, and Love has made plenty of changes as well and there is other tinkering she’d like to do. The house still is filled with eccentricities and quirks from the various expansions and repairs it’s endured.

When her husband died, Love considered moving, but now she can’t imagine leaving.

It’s a far different opinion than she had when it was for sale in 1995.

“Kenny thought it was a perfect place to keep horses,” Love said. “I said, ‘Well, I think the house needs to be knocked down, but it’s a beautiful piece of land.”

But when she started talking about house plans, he told her she was crazy, only he said it more profanely.

“I put the plans away,” she said. “And probably that was a good thing. I didn’t realize then how important the house itself is to the village. Right now, it’s probably the oldest house still standing.”

And it’s the only one where one movie icon slept and another was conceived.