A Star Wars script found in a flat once rented by Harrison Ford is going up for sale at an auction in Hertfordshire, and could fetch up to £12,000.
The fourth draft of a screenplay for the first filmed Star Wars movie, originally titled as The Adventures Of Luke Starkiller, will be auctioned off at Excalibur Auctions in Kings Langley on Saturday, February 17.
Incomplete and unbound, with differing-coloured pages indicating revisions, the script includes scenes and characters that were cut from the final edit.
The historic piece of film memorabilia is expected to sell for between £8,000 and £12,000.
According to Excalibur Auctions, Ford was filming the now titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, at Hertfordshire's Elstree Studios in 1976, when, in need of somewhere to stay, he responded to a newspaper advert for a flat to rent in Notting Hill.
He was the first person to come and view the Elgin Crescent property and decided to take it.
The owners of the flat did not know who Ford was, despite him starring as a drag racer in Francis Ford Coppola’s American Graffiti, but the cleaner, who fainted when she saw him, did.
While living there, co-stars Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, and Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia, visited the property, with Ford also buying new plants for the owner's garden, and attended their son’s first birthday party.
“He was an ideal tenant. It really was a fun time," they added.
When Ford moved out, there were other items left behind which are also going up for auction.
These include an April 16, 1976-dated typed letter from his long-term agent, Patricia McQueeney, talking about future film prospects and asking why his wife Mary Marquardt has not heard from him.
There is also a call sheet for the Death Star hallway scene, featuring Hamill and Fisher, and on the back there appears to be a reference to a meeting involving Star Wars producer Robert Watts at Browns Hotel in Dover Street.
"Although other copies of this script have come to market previously, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to offer a version with such wonderful provenance and attribution to Harrison Ford," said Excalibur Auctions’ auctioneer Jonathan Torode.
"The touching backstory to these items adds even more appeal for avid Star Wars fans and we anticipate huge interest from around the globe."
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