George Lucas And Steven Spielberg's First Vision For Indiana Jones Had Harrison Ford Asking Questions

Simplicity is often the key to success when it comes to design, and in the case of Indiana Jones, all it took was a whip and a fedora to create one of pop culture's most enduring characters. But dressing Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones wasn't as simple as it might seem. For one thing, the costume department needed multiple versions of his outfits on every Indy movie, to accommodate the inevitable wear and tear that comes from filming an action-adventure on the scale of an Indiana Jones film.

But even designing the costumes proved difficult. At one point, before Harrison Ford donned the fedora, Tom Selleck was cast as the adventuring archaeologist in 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and seemed to perfectly embody the bulky hero envisioned in Jim Steranko's original concept art. Ultimately, however, Selleck couldn't get out of his "Magnum P.I." contract and director Steven Spielberg had to draft in Ford to replace him. This series of events led to rushed costume redesigns as designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis had to re-envision Indy's outfit to better match Ford's slight frame.

The result wasn't too far from what Steranko had drawn — the leather jacket, fedora, and whip remained but they had a more lived-in quality than the more pristine garb worn by Steranko's muscle-bound action hero. Spielberg and Indy creator George Lucas have never hidden their inspirations for the character's look, openly talking about how they were inspired by Humphrey Bogart's character in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." And if you take one look at Charlton Heston's Harry Steele in 1954's "Secret of the Incas," you've pretty much got the prototype Indy right there. Unfortunately, it seems all of this was lost on Harrison Ford when he first came on board "Raiders."

In a GQ interview, Harrison Ford admits to being somewhat confused by the costume choices for Indy at first. As the star told the outlet:

"It was presented to me as an aspect of character in the first film. My questions about it were many. 'Why am I wearing a leather jacket in the jungle? Isn't it hot here? Why am I carrying a whip? What am I going to do with a f*****g whip? I'm going to whip people?' And the hat, well it's an evocation of a time, a period, a reflection of movies past. I said 'ok' and that makes it my own."

That "evocation of movies past" was perhaps the most important point considering the similarities between Indiana Jones and Harry Steele. It's well-known that when he first conceived of the character of Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., George Lucas was inspired by the adventure serials he grew up watching. But the real inspiration for the character's look clearly came from movies like "Secret of the Incas." And for whatever reason, Ford sounds like he was unfamiliar with such films at the time.

Still, he undoubtedly embraced the costume, even going so far as to pretend to staple his famous headwear to his head to prevent it from flying off in a behind-the-scenes clip from 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." And despite his initial confusion over the whip, it turns out it came in handy, saving the hero's life multiple times and even being used to prevent his father from going under the tracks of a tank in "Last Crusade." It also made for one of the best moments in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." Shame that the film wasn't very good otherwise, though.