Early Script for ‘A New Hope’ Owned by Harrison Ford to Be Sold at Upcoming Auction
When it comes to collecting, few franchises offer fans as many options as Star Wars. The saga has spawned a massive amount of tie-in merchandise over the decades, and older items in good condition can go for incredibly high prices online. Perhaps the most coveted collectibles are props from the movies themselves, especially the beloved original trilogy. Unsurprisingly, these items almost always sell for staggering amounts, as plenty of Star Wars fans want to own a piece of the saga’s history.
In recent years, we’ve seen plenty of props from the original trilogy get auctioned off, sometimes by the stars themselves. Now, yet another stash of treasures from the saga’s early days has been found and will soon be sold at an auction in the UK.
Outlets including Fox Business and the BBC have reported that two sets of papers owned by Harrison Ford during the filming of the original Star Wars movie will be for sale at an event hosted by Excalibur Auctions on February 17. Better yet, the first set up for grabs is a copy of the fourth draft of the film’s script. This copy of the screenplay doesn’t include all of the pages and is unbound. Additionally, the incomplete script has pages of several different colors, which is meant to represent rewrites during production.
As one might expect from an earlier draft of a screenplay, there are some scenes which weren’t included in the version of the movie that audiences saw in the summer of 1977. In fact, when this draft was written, the film hadn’t even gotten its final title yet. The first page reads The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the “Journal of the Whills”. Thankfully, that title was later changed to the much-better Star Wars.
The other group of papers for sale includes some interesting miscellanea that Ford owned during the first movie’s production in 1976. There’s a typed letter to the then-up-and-coming actor from his agent, Patricia McQueeney, a pair of shooting schedules for the film, a call sheet, and a handwritten note that seems to be a reminder for Ford to meet with Robert Watts, who was a production manager on the movie.
What’s more, the story behind how these items came to be put up for auction is about as interesting as the papers themselves. Ford left them behind in a London residence that he rented for the summer of 1976 while he was filming scenes for Star Wars at the nearby Elstree Studios. According to the family who owned the building, the actor rented the top two floors of the large house for the summer. At first, they didn’t entirely know the man who was living with them, but all that changed when their cleaner recognized Ford and fainted. As production continued, they received visits from Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher as well.
By all accounts, the family enjoyed having Ford reside with them. As the BBC reports:
“The landlords got on well with their tenant, and they recalled how he drank with them in the garden and attended their son’s first birthday party.
“Mr. Ford also gave his landlords money to buy ‘a lot of plants’ from the garden center.
“‘He was an ideal tenant. It really was a fun time,’ said the family in a statement, released via the auction house.”
If you’ve got lots of money ready to spend and you’re interested in obtaining some unique pieces of Star Wars history, you can find details about the upcoming auction at Excalibur Auctions’ website.
Sources: Fox Business, BBC
Eric has been a fan of Star Wars ever since the age of five (or so) when his parents sat him down in front of a TV with pizza and a Sprite and showed him the original trilogy. He keeps trying to convince more fans to read the amazing 1980s Star Wars newspaper comics by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. When he's not reading, watching or playing Star Wars media, he's often enjoying other great fantasy and science fiction sagas or playing roleplaying games with his friends.
