Pat_H said:Oh, way too many options for a fictional character (or maybe not enough)?
Of course, I suppose the ultimate answer is Steven Spielburg gave it to him. Or us, I guess, given that he's just a movie character.
Pat_H said:Oh, way too many options for a fictional character (or maybe not enough)?
Pat_H said:I suppose that, as he's supposed to be a college professor, he (or rather, a real person in his station in life) would likely have bought a relatively common Fedora of the era. Maybe a common Stetson, or one of the other common hats of the time.
Spellflower said:He wasn't exactly your common college professor.
Rick Blaine said:Secret of the Incas
I have also seen another (more legit' looking, frankly) source for this film recently, either here or on COW & I can't seem to find it just now... I will keep looking.
citRon said:
Pat_H said:The movies are sort of well done cartoons, but cartoons none the less. So trying to relate them to the era, precisely, doesn't make any sense anyhow.
Spellflower said:But come on, what's wrong with giving it more thought? Sheesh! If you don't want to play, then go get your own ball.
Spellflower said:Boy, you guys are no fun! I thought I was gong to be the spoiler on this thread, posting about how annoying the cultural association between any brown hat and a certain action hero is. But then AirforceIndy got me thinking, what would this character have worn? I think it's an interesting, if not exactly important question.
With all the hat lore around here, I expected somebody to come up with a few brands or models that might have appealed to the Dr. Imagine you were a salesman in a Haberdasher in 1933, and this guy comes into your store and tells you he wants a hat that can stand up to a lot of abuse while he's traveling. But it also has to be presentable, cause he may need to attend a formal function or two on his trip. No, he does not want to carry multiple hats- just not his style. Yes, it's got to be brown. He tries on every hat in your store, and finally settles on a ....
Try to use your imagination. What would it have been? I know it's impossible to say for sure, but it's just a game.
I for one think he would have found Resistol an appealing brand, given its promise to "resist all". Also, according to Brad Bowers' research, the Cavanagh edge became available on many brands in 1931, and I think Indy would have seen the value in this feature. I'm guessing he would have gone for a wider brim, but I don't know how wide they came at that time. He would likely have gone for the highest beaver content he could afford, and may have opted for a lightweight model, if there was one, considering the warm climates he visited. (The real stretch here, as Kalaponi Craig has pointed out in his thread on Tilleys is that it's insane to wear a fur hat in the jungle. Let's just ignore this fact for the sake of this mental exercise.)
Any one else care to chime in? Or is this silly waste of time just too silly? If so, my apologies. I'm home sick, and I'm bored. You all probably have more interesting things to do.
Brad Bowers said:Well, Spellflower, as much as I like the thought of Indy running around with a Cavanagh Edge, I don't know whether or not he would necessarily have gone for it, since it was more of an upper end brim treatment, and Indy is more of a working-class kind of guy, albeit, a college professor.
That being said, Bogart has a Cavanagh Edge in Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon, so who am I to question this?lol
I don't know enough about the earlier Stetson models to give you names, but I think he probably would have bought a Stetson or Mallory, or perhaps a $6-grade Knapp-Felt (my favorite choice!).
Brad
Spellflower said:If we accept that the character was born in 1899, making him 36 in 1935, then he would have grown up right as proto-fedoras were turning into what we now think of as a fedora hat.
Thus, when he was a young child, there were felt hats with brims, but it wasn't until he was in his twenties that real fedoras came into use. I imagine he wore various hats as a child, and refined his choices over the years.