These days, Steven Spielberg is a box office draw all by himself, but that wasn’t always the case. His first big hit came in 1975 with the critically adored “Jaws,” the iconic shark attack movie that paved the way for Spielberg’s illustrious career. Hot on the heels of that, he followed up with the sci-fi epic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” another smash hit.

At this point, it seemed like he could do no wrong. And then came “1941.” A spoof World War II film with an ensemble cast including Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Lee, and Mickey Rourke, “1941” sounds like it should have been another hit for Spielberg. Unfortunately, audiences didn’t turn out for it — at least, not in the kinds of numbers that were expected after “Jaws” and “Close Encounters.” Spielberg said it himself — he played it safe:

“On ‘1941,’ I became a bit like Colonel Kurtz. After my big successes, the studio was too afraid to dispatch Martin Sheen to terminate my command with extreme prejudice. Now I just wanted to make a movie where people would say he’s a responsible director who came in under budget and under schedule.”

Unfortunately, the studios wanted another hit release to follow Spielberg’s earlier hits, and despite earning over $90 million, “1941” was considered a failure. And that made studios nervous when it came to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Actor Jon Rhys-Davies, who played Sallah, said:

“Steven had just had a relative critical failure with 1941 and the knives were out — the whizz-kid had clay feet, he was just a flash on the pan.”

But despite trepidations, his old pal George Lucas wouldn’t budge. He wanted Spielberg on the film.