Though unnamed in the film, the “Army Intelligence” agents who meet with Indy and Marcus Brody are known as Eaton and Musgrove (the former played by Bill Hootkins, known to Star Wars fans as Jek Porkins in A New Hope). In the first story summary for the film from 1978, three agents meet with Indy and Marcus rather than two, the additional man being named Davona. After their first discussion, the agents confront Indy in his home later that evening and convince him to go on the hunt for the Ark only after revealing that his French nemesis, Victor Lomar (who’d later become Rene Belloq), was already after it…
A Hollywood Opening
Anything Goes. Image: Lucasfilm
Perhaps the most distinctive element of Temple of Doom is its lavish musical opening where Kate Capshaw as Willie Scott sings “Anything Goes” in both English and Mandarin. The standard had debuted in 1934 with Cole Porter’s musical of the same name, just a year before the setting of the film. Capshaw recorded the vocals in early July 1983 at Abbey Road Studios and soon after began shooting the number, including an omitted sequence where white doves appear from underneath the dancers’ glittering hats. Associate producer Kathleen Kennedy even surprised director Steven Spielberg when she dressed as a dancer and struggled to keep up with the professionals during a take. After Temple of Doom’s release, sheet music for “Anything Goes” was specially published in Mandarin as a licensed product…
Father and Son
Drs Jones. Image: Lucasfilm
Both Joneses carry significant emotional baggage in their relationship and have done so for about as long as either can remember. The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones television series, which first aired in the 1990s, illuminates many details about their mutual failure to adequately bond. The elder Jones cares for his son (especially his education), but is distant, cool, and preoccupied with his work. Indy is pugnacious, eager, and quick to judge his father’s intentions. The loss of wife and mother Anna Jones at an early age (even before the events of Last Crusade’s prologue), effectively solidifies their aloofness to each other. A final argument when a 20-year-old Indy returns from World War I service (which his father never agreed to) creates a lasting emotional void, leaving Indy to remind his father in Last Crusade that they’ve “hardly spoken for 20 years”…
Indy: Ad Libbed
One of my favorite Indiana Jones details comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark (which I saw as a 6-or-7-year-old in the hall adjacent to Saint Bernard’s Parish in Enfield, Connecticut as a first-or-second grader; a reward for selling enough candy to augment our tuition at the parochial school – true story! I still wonder what the nuns were thinking when Indy started shooting or the faces started melting.)
There’s one Henry Jones Jr. line that becomes more and more prescient in this 45-year-old’s world: “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”
Now, we know that Harrison Ford ad-libbed the line, “I know…” as a retort to Princess Leia’s “I love you…” in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
And “milage” was another Ford ad-lib. More on Ford’s famous quips can be found in an LA Times article from 2008.
Thankfully, we’re bound to get much more Indiana Jones talk over the next couple of years. I can’t wait for 2022!
