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

[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.