How An Elephant Ruined A Famous Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom Costume

One of the highlights of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is Kate Capshaw's energetic and flashy opening musical number. It's a rousing rendition of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" sung in Mandarin against an ever-increasing backdrop of complicated musical numbers harkening back to the heyday of famous choreographer and director Busby Berkeley. The song is a classic, and even appeared during the recent musical episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." In "Temple of Doom," it's a stunningly photographed sequence by Steven Spielberg's cinematographer, the late, great Douglas Slocombe with head-spinning camera moves and eye-popping color. 

If you watch that sequence, everything seems to be designed to draw your eye to Willie Scott, just as if you were in the club watching her. While there are many reasons for this (framing, her vocal chops, her natural charisma, etc.) the main reason you can't take your eyes off of her is very simple: she's got on a super shiny dress.

This dress was specially made for "Temple of Doom" by Barbara Matera who used all original 1920s/1930s fabric, beads, and sequins. It was a true one-of-a-kind made from a very limited supply of authentic, period-accurate materials ... so, of course, it almost got completely ruined before they shot that opening number. That's the magic of the movies!

What was the culprit? A distracted costume designer not paying attention while altering it? A mishap during shipping perhaps? How about Short Round spilling some Coca-Cola on it as a goof? Turns out, the guilty party was a hungry elephant. 

That's right, an elephant used during the filming of the movie decided that 1920s sequins were the next best thing to circus peanuts and it literally ate the back off of the dress before costume designer Anthony Powell jumped in to save the remains.

As far as I know, no specific elephant has been named in this flagrant attempt to shut down this production, but I'd bet it's the one in the picture above. You can even see the red and gold dress on the right side of the image. It was definitely this scene where the production almost lost their key piece of wardrobe, so I feel like I have enough probable cause to formally accuse the above elephant. Better lawyer up, buddy.

Movies shoot out of order all the time for all sorts of reasons. "Temple of Doom" had a ton of wrenches thrown into the churning gears of production, including a very serious back injury for its star, Harrison Ford, and a crazy shooting schedule that had the production company shooting all over the world. So, while the dress-eating happened during a scene from around the middle of the movie, they hadn't yet shot the opening number.

Powell said that in order to repair the dress, they had to fly Matera out to the production and provide her with whatever remaining period-accurate material they could muster up and she was fortunately able to get the dress back in filmable condition. 

As a funny side note, Powell recalled having to fill out insurance paperwork for this extra, unexpected expense and found himself confronted with explaining why he was filing a claim. He told the truth: "dress eaten by elephant." What I wouldn't give to have seen that insurance person's face when they read that claim.