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I have heard that the original film was to be "The Star Wars" and somewhere along the line they dropped "The".

One person says they have seen a windbreaker or T-shirt in a Star Wars collection that has the familiar logo and includes "The" that came from somebody involved in the film.

Was the title originally "The Star Wars"?

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    The Star Wars: First Draft was the first title of the idea, and later transformed into Adventures of the Starkiller, Saga I: The Star Wars, which in turn was turned into The Star Wars: From The Adventures of Luke Starkiller
    – Petersaber
    Jan 25, 2017 at 11:09
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    Then, Lucas had lunch with Sean Parker...
    – Darrick Herwehe
    Jan 25, 2017 at 13:33
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    The phrasing in the question body, "was to be", matches the answer about a first draft, but the phrasing in the title, "originally called", implies to me that it would have had to have been released under that title for the answer to be 'yes'.
    – DCShannon
    Jan 25, 2017 at 18:42

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Yes, this is correct

One of Lucas' earliest drafts of the script, penned in 1974, sold at auction in 2013; that script bore the title "The Star Wars" (click to embiggen):

enter image description here

And fan-made scans of the early script drafts continue to support this (click to embiggen all images):

  • The 1973 treatment, titled "The Star Wars"

    enter image description here

  • The 1974 rough draft script, which bears the title "Star Wars" on the outside cover but "The Star Wars" on the inside:

    enter image description here

  • The 1975 second draft, titled "Adventures of the Starkiller (episode one) The Star Wars":

    enter image description here

However, I'm not aware of any official merchandise bearing this title; certainly there wouldn't have been any at the time, because merchandise production was famously limited before the film was actually in theatres, and the title had changed by that time; Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) posted some images of his copy of the 1976 script on Twitter, where the definite article had already been dropped (click to embiggen):

enter image description here

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    +1 for embiggen, one of the very best words not in the English language.
    – CHEESE
    Jan 25, 2017 at 2:36
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    It's a very cromulent word
    – Richard Ev
    Jan 25, 2017 at 3:54
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    A Stanford University physicist managed to slip "embiggen" into an actual scientific journal article. Incidentally, this article was called "Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking", so I can't imagine "embiggen" was the biggest hurdle to overcome in order to understand it.
    – maguirenumber6
    Jan 25, 2017 at 7:15
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    @CHEESE embiggen is being used regularly; it probably can be defined as being in the English language by now.
    – Simba
    Jan 25, 2017 at 11:39
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    -1 for no freehand circles
    – Gallifreyan
    Jan 25, 2017 at 14:02
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The "Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" is notable for surveying the field just before "The Star Wars " came out. Published in 1976, it's an excellent guide to fandom the moment before Star Wars broke, and the upcoming movie is always referred to as "The Star Wars".

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Bonus: Dark Horse produced an eight-volume comic series in 2013 called "The Star Wars", based on the original script treatment and incorporating all the stark differences between the original concept and the 1977 movie

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Star_Wars

enter image description here

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  • Welcome to SFF:SE, you haven't seemed to answer the question but instead provided a comment. I recommend you either edit it to include an answer to Was the title originally "The Star Wars"? or delete your answer and provide it as a comment to the question.
    – Edlothiad
    Jan 26, 2017 at 16:03
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    Unless you mean to say that the title of the comic series indicates that it was originally called The Star Wars, in that case it should probably made a little clearer.
    – Edlothiad
    Jan 26, 2017 at 16:12

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