He also had the benefit of excellent timing. When Star Wars first came out, a good portion of the viewing public was sick and tired of Hollywood's increasingly convoluted attempts to create 'Art'. A perfect expression of it was the 1974 Statler Brothers song, "What Ever Happened to Randolph Scott?" which has the lyrics, "Everybody’s trying to make a comment about our doubts and fears./True Grit's the only movie I've really understood in years./You gotta take your analyst along to see if it's fit to see."

So when a good old-fashioned popcorn adventure movie came out, with clear-cut good guys and bad guys and swashbuckling, people flocked to it. It was something the whole family could enjoy, and it didn't take a five hour discussion afterward to figure out what you just watched. So I think a lot of people latched on to him, and Spielberg shortly thereafter, because they were making fun movies.