If I remember correctly, the original Star Wars did *not* say 4 of 9 or anything like that.
But... when Return of the Jedi came out, it did say, in big letters, "Episode 5" at the beginning, and news articles of the time were saying at that point that Lucas had revealed that there were 9 episodes.
Then when 6 came out, story goes that people were so pissed off with the ending of 5, that Lucas rewrote the story and tied everything up all neat and tidy, thereby eliminating what he'd written as stories 7-9.
I dunno how much of any of that is true, just what I read at the time. (I'm old...
