It was interesting to stand by the door of the auditorium and reflect that all these people, representing billions of dollars of wealth, depended for their existence on an idea that seemed utterly uncommercial at the time George Lucas began trying to sell it to studios, in the mid-seventies, when his thirteen-page treatment of “The Star Wars” (as it was then called) was rejected by Universal and by United Artists only Alan Ladd, who was then at Fox, would gamble on it, over the heated objections of the Fox board. Those arriving by car were ushered to parking places by attendants waving glowing and buzzing Luke Skywalker lightsabres, which were one of the cooler pieces of new product seen at the summit this year other arrivals, who were staying in the Embassy Suites next door, strolled across the parking lot in the early-morning sunshine of another beautiful day in Northern California. Almost six hundred people showed up at this year’s summit, which took place in early November in the Marin County Civic Center, in San Rafael, California Star Warsians came from as far away as Australia and Japan. Schwarz and Target who sell the stuff, and for everyone in the far-flung Star Wars universe to get a better sense of “how deeply the brand has penetrated into the culture,” in the words of one licensee. The biannual Star Wars Summit Meeting is an opportunity for the licensees who make Darth Vader masks and thirty-six-inch sculpted Yoda collectibles to trade strategy and say “May the Force be with you” to the retailers from F.A.O.

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