Would "Raiders" have been as popular if the character had been hatless?

[Yeps]

... hence the return of the outfit in Temple, the snatching the hat from under the dropping stone door, and so on.

In the opening sequence of raiders, he does the same thing with the whip.

 

[avedwards]

Thing is, though, when you watch Raiders, it's all disposable. There's no sentiment about dumping the jacket and hat in the Nazi submarine base. They were simply clothes, not costume.

I don't mean to be nit-picking here, but he doesn't dispose of the hat in the submarine base. The last time he's seen with it is on is in the cabin of the ship he was travelling on. Therefore, he presumably wouldn't have lost the hat since he never wore it in the submarine base. I like to think that he had it mailed to him once he was back in America.

 

[Not-Bogart13]

I don't mean to be nit-picking here, but he doesn't dispose of the hat in the submarine base. The last time he's seen with it is on is in the cabin of the ship he was travelling on. Therefore, he presumably wouldn't have lost the hat since he never wore it in the submarine base. I like to think that he had it mailed to him once he was back in America.

Unless Belloq found it and burned it out of spite before leaving the ship.

 

[The Good]

Unless Belloq found it and burned it out of spite before leaving the ship.

I like to think that maybe Indiana Jones bought several hats over the years. Maybe he did lose the Raiders fedora, and his replacement could very well just have been the sort seen in The Temple of Doom (or maybe he just liked a little variety now and again), and the same can be said for later films too.

 

[elvisroe]

Hat = mojo

A man who wears hits hats that hard probably turned them over every year or two at least!

Would he be the same without the hat? I think not. It's so evocative of the era and those adventure series Lucas/Spielberg were emulating.

Indy is essentially a comic book character and (like the above mentioned zorro, superman etc.) needs to be instantly recognisable. The fact that they use the silhouette so often in the movie shows how important the hat is to the overall look. You see that shadow on the wall or against the skyline and it's not the whip or the jacket that tells you who you're looking at!

Interesting to note that the original poster didn't include the jacket at all.

I think the fact that it was such an oversized lid only added to the iconography. Charlton Heston wore almost the same outfit in "The Greatest Show on Earth" and it wasn't nearly as memorable.

I agree too that it was the way Ford wore it that sold the look. he looked so comfortable in that outfit that you accepted it as a package - and lets face it few can wear a whip around and look natural!

Hat, whip, jacket, holster, safari shirt etc.. were all crucial parts of the look but it was the hat that gave Indy his mojo!

 

[TomS]

I, for one, do not think so. I know that the era the movie was set in was "when every man wore hats". I just think that if you took the hat out of the film I would not have enjoyed it near as much. I grew up watching the old Untouchables TV series and all kinds of other things like Superman and never thought "cool hat(s)". After seeing Raiders that is the first thing I thought! The hat made the film, not the other way around!

I think the hat gives the character/s more depth, and makes the move a lot better. It's just my .02.

 

[Not-Bogart13]

From a realistic POV, Indy probably went through a lot of hats in his time. But from the angle of cinematic icons and Hollywood magic, the implication is that Indy has had the same hat since that fateful day as a kid. And I think that movie magic implication is born out of how iconic that hat became just in the first movie alone.

It should also be noted that it was probably the most marketable item to older kids and young adults. That helped keep the focus of the public memory on the hat, regardless of intent. Especially when Temple of Doom came out and the Stetsons hit the shelves.

 

[Sam Craig]

On the one hand, I don't buy it

The hat the guy gave him as a kid, still being worn for work, grave robbing ... oops, "archeology" ... and adventure in the late 1950s?

To quote the immortal ... "Come on ..."

On the other hand

What did John Wayne do with that great silver belly dress hat he was wearing when he came into town at the beginning of Big Jake? Did he leave his suit and dress hat by the side of the road when he changed back into his iconic Duke hat?

Does it matter?

Why doesn't Bogey use part of his lottery winnings to get a decent lid in Treasure of Sierra Madre? Is it because his "look" was already established for that film?

Again, does it matter?

Keep repeating ... it's only a movie!

Sam

 

[avedwards]

If we're going to be picky then we could say the hat Indy is given in 1912 cannot be his later fedora because the hat he's given is more of a Western hat than a fedora. Not only that, the ribbon isn't right. So if they are to be the same hat then Indy obviously had to convert it in the same way that so many here have done on the conversion corral thread.

It's evident that he must have had at least two hats throughout his life (plus the light grey dress hat he briefly wears in Raiders).

However, it's also evident that the Indiana Jones films aren't supposed to be picked apart for continuity errors. Otherwise we could fault him for having a bag which was only issued in the 1940s and a number of other errors.

To be on topic, the hat made me enjoy the film more in a way as I'd always been fascinated by hats. The costume designer for Raiders claims that the hat had to look both individual and like every other hat, whilst having a recognisible silhouette. IMO it achieved all three of those.

 

[Edward]

I don't mean to be nit-picking here, but he doesn't dispose of the hat in the submarine base. The last time he's seen with it is on is in the cabin of the ship he was travelling on. Therefore, he presumably wouldn't have lost the hat since he never wore it in the submarine base. I like to think that he had it mailed to him once he was back in America.

I may well be wrong, it's been a long time since I found a spare afternoon to sit down with Raiders... I really should rectify that.... the point remains, though, that he's pretty quick to drop the hat when it suits him, whereas it's much more a constant in the others. It only disappears much when he's indoors (and hat would be removed anyhow), in disguise as a Wehrmacht officer (Crusade, sequence with the Nazi book burning and the 'Hitler autographs the Grail Diary' gag), or (perhaps intriguingly, given the general opinion as to the importance of the hat to the character) when under the influnence of "The black sleep of Kali" and thhis not himself (Temple)...

Refresh my memory, here.... in the Washington scene at the end of Raiders,isn't the hat grey? But then in both Temple and Crusade we only see him wearing the by then iconic brown one. In Skull he only wears the grey one for that brief period where he is headed away from everything familiar to him - the brown one comes right back out when he gets a sniff of adventure once more.... and - of course- it is te brown he wears following his wedding. My point being, in the first film, it's just one of his hats - by the time Temple was being made, it was [ithe[/i] hat.

I like to think that maybe Indiana Jones bought several hats over the years. Maybe he did lose the Raiders fedora, and his replacement could very well just have been the sort seen in The Temple of Doom (or maybe he just liked a little variety now and again), and the same can be said for later films too.

To be anal for a minute, the hat and jacket from Temple could well bethe same items, as that film was set in 1935, one year before Raiders. (This of course makes some of the reference gags a bit anahchronistic, such as reaching for the gun to shoot the show-off swordsman only - in Temple - to realise it's not there).

Way I've always seen it is it's a lot like.... well, like Joey Ramone. Joey probably wore a hundred Schott Perfectos during the Ramones' touring career, gigging pretty hard most years from 1974 right up to 1996. Most likely he went through at least as many pairs of drainpipe jeans, and Chuck Taylors. But i was his (the band's ) look, totally iconic, instantly recognisable... to the casual observer, and for all intents and purposes, it was the same outfit. So with Indy, in my opinion.

 

[Not-Bogart13]

I may well be wrong, it's been a long time since I found a spare afternoon to sit down with Raiders... I really should rectify that.... the point remains, though, that he's pretty quick to drop the hat when it suits him, whereas it's much more a constant in the others.

You are somewhat correct, in that Indy ditches the hat not only while in disguise, but for the end of Raiders. But since we would have to believe that he kept it somehow while being dragged through the sea on the periscope of a submarine, we should forgive that.

Refresh my memory, here.... in the Washington scene at the end of Raiders,isn't the hat grey? But then in both Temple and Crusade we only see him wearing the by then iconic brown one. In Skull he only wears the grey one for that brief period where he is headed away from everything familiar to him - the brown one comes right back out when he gets a sniff of adventure once more.... and - of course- it is te brown he wears following his wedding.

Yes, the Washington hat is gray, as is the hat he wears when he boards the plane for Nepal to find Marion. Spielberg wanted Indy to have a "travel hat" that was different from his "field hat". The gray travel hat was dropped until Indy 4, when Spiel insisted upon it's return. The gray hat is then lost in the restaurant brawl, thus being unavailable for the wedding.

 

[scottyrocks]

Its pretty obvious to me that when he woke up on the Bantu Wind the next morning because the engines had stopped, and walked out of the cabin to investigate, that he did not have any of his iconic stuff with him. So therefore, when he jumped off the boat, and wound up on the sub, his gear was still in the room he and Marion shared that night before. Captain Katanga is a friend of Sallah's, so Im pretty sure that Indy got his stuff back when he returned to the states.

All that needs now is a bow.

 

[scottyrocks]

The hat was, to me, the most important costume piece ever created for a film. That hat was the centerpiece of the whole character. Im such a stickler on it that any of the hats in any of the later movies are not even close to what the Raiders hat(s) mean to me (and neither do the movies).

Everything fell into place to make Raiders the picture it is, but the hat was key for me. Indiana Jones is not Indiana Jones without the hat.

 

[chum]

The hat was, to me, the most important costume piece ever created for a film. That hat was the centerpiece of the whole character. Im such a stickler on it that any of the hats in any of the later movies are not even close to what the Raiders hat(s) mean to me (and neither do the movies).

Everything fell into place to make Raiders the picture it is, but the hat was key for me. Indiana Jones is not Indiana Jones without the hat.

Exactly what I meant with the first post in this thread!

 

[fedoracentric]

I guess it is a matter of perspective. I found the hat to be just a hat and don't think anyone in the non-hat obsessed public would care if it was there or not. Don't get me wrong, but I think that it was a great part of the costume, but I don't think it was as important as some of us here might wish.

 

[Seb Lucas]

What I can tell you is that to my friends and I in 1981 (or whenever we saw it) we didn't notice the costume. We had no time. It was a just a very cool action film with bad guys who melted. I don't think the hat mattered. In fact, to the contrary. You'd often hear from folks back then that they didn't go and see it because it was a period film. Others did go but would have preferred the movie if it had been set in the present time. It was a wild ride, roller coaster and that was the key to the success it had. Some of us got into the costume after seeing it a few times. A year or so later in Melbourne and Sydney there were piss-poor distressed flying jackets in every second store inspired by Indy but very few hats.

 

[gtdean48]

I knew the importance of the hat when the scene showed Indy silhouetted against the sky & he threw off the robe & put on the hat...it was THE hat & it mattered!

 

[TheDane]

The movie was enormously popular in many European countries, but the Indy-hat fad seems primarily a local American phenomenon. From what I hear, the importance is also a pretty personal thing among Americans. If the hat was the thing, that made the movies popular, I think a lot more people would wear fedoras. Millions of people saw and loved the movies - but I constantly hear members complain about the lack of interest in fedoras. I think we're quite a lot, who wear fedoras inspite of the Indy-fad.

 

[hatophile]

That's a good point, Ole. I think those of us that are hat-wearers, or enjoy hats, like to watch certain films for that reason, beyond them being good films. Others just enjoy the film at face value. Of course, since hats were a routine part of men's wardrobe up until about 50-60 years ago, most period films will have men wearing hats, for which I like to observe the style. Even though Lawless was a pretty popular movie, other that those of us on this forum, I don't think it caused a spike in hat wearing or recreation of the hats in the movie.
It is interesting to see the hat wearers among many of the newer artists such as Bruno Mars, John Mayer and the like. Will this inspire more hat wearing in the youner generation?

 

[TheDane]

It is interesting to see the hat wearers among many of the newer artists such as Bruno Mars, John Mayer and the like. Will this inspire more hat wearing in the youner generation?

Thats's a very interesting question, Perry. Many artists have pretty good sense of, what's going on in the streets - if not, they have advicers, that do. And the audience is very aware of stage-wear fluctuations. Pop/rock musicians and their audiences are usually in pretty good sync on those matters.

Another interesting point is, that the Gatsby movie from the mid-70s had a very much deeper impact on the fashion overhere, than any of the Indy-movies had.