I think it’s common knowledge that the Indiana Jones series owes its origins to pulp traditions. Surfing the net I came across mention of three specific movies that allegedly bear more than a slight resemblance to what Hollywood produced under the Indiana Jones name. I tracked them down to make up my own mind.
Secret of the Incas, 1954
Charlton Heston is Harry Steele, an expat fleecing tourists in Cuzco, Peru. He wears a big outdoor fedora and a leather jacket. Look familiar?
There’s rumors of some Incan antiquity in the shape of a sunburst.
Ed Morgan, a poor man’s Sidney Greenstreet, is after it but Steele won’t play ball. (See what I did there?) He’s going to get it himself. Not because it belongs in a museum; he just wants to be rich.
Elena Antonescu is a beautiful Romanian refugee from beyond the Iron Curtain, trying to get to the US without money or papers. The Romanian Ambassador, Anton Marcu, is after her in his own private plane. Steele has been waiting for a private plane… Marcu is the poor man’s Peter Lorre. I can’t help but chuckle.
Steele is a bit of a cad, with questionable morals. He’s not going to rob or abandon Elena, but he’s definitely not going out of his way to be nice. He’s a tough guy, and has his own agenda.
We have both a plane and a rubber boat. Plus a little romance.
Harry’s goal? Machu Picchu, where Robert Young as Dr Stanley Moorehead is leading an archaeological expedition.
Shenanigans ensue.
Valley of the Kings, 1954
It is the year 1900. Robert Taylor plays archaeologist Mark Brandon. Brandon is asked by the recently-married Ann Mercedes (daughter of a great archaeologist, Brandon’s “mentor”) to find the tomb of Ra-Hotep. Her father believed that tomb held definitive proof that the biblical tale of Joseph was true. It had been his lifelong ambition to prove this. Sound familiar?
The ruins of Memphis. A chase through Cairo.
The Valley of the Kings. Mischief and betrayals and camels!
Too bad Brandon’s head gear is no fedora.
Plunder of the Sun, 1953
Mexico. Zapotecans. The ruins of Monte Alban. And Al Colby, San Francisco insurance adjuster. Wait, what? Yep, that’s Glenn Ford’s role in this pic.
Colby goes to Havana (ooh na na) to collect a debt. Penniless six days later, he meets Anna Luz who introduces him to this movie’s Sidney Greenstreet, an antiquarian with a bad heart named Thomas Berrien. Berrien hires Colby to smuggle a small package into Oaxaca for him.
Berrien and Anna Luz are also aboard Colby’s freighter to Mexico. Colby meets Jefferson, our Peter Lorre this time around. Also aboard are Julie Barnes, a wealthy socialite, accompanied by the young Raul Cornejo.
Shenanigans again, and Colby, who isn’t very nice, takes advantage of a murky situation.
But everyone’s into double-dealing in this one. It’s more like film noir.
Well OK, with some archaeology, but it’s not really pulp adventure.
It’s a lot more like The Maltese Falcon than it is Indiana Jones. And the story’s a bit of a mess that doesn’t really tie up by the end.
Conclusions
So how much did Indiana Jones “borrow” from these three movies in particular?
Let’s respond in reverse order. Glenn Ford is an insurance man who wears a business suit throughout Plunder of the Sun, and stays in urban hotels every night. It really does channel The Maltese Falcon. Granted, there is actually a scene with a treasure vault, but hell how many short stories, movies, serials and novels had a pivotal scene in a treasure vault? No, I don’t think Plunder of the Sun is any kind of direct antecedent of Indiana Jones. Also, this is the worst movie of the three.
Mark Brandon is an archaeologist, and his “mentor’s” daughter has the clues to find a lost tomb. There’s a tie-in to the bible, the chase through Cairo, romance, betrayal and tomb-raiding. Brandon could be any two-fisted archaeologist from the pulps, but there are enough common threads here that I’d grant Valley of the Kings could’ve served as some measure of inspiration for Indy.
And the winner is Secret of the Incas. There are only two components missing from the tale of Charlton Heston’s Harry Steele. First, he’s not actually an archaeologist. And second, he doesn’t have a whip. He’s a shady character when compared with Indy, but come on, the rest of it all fits. From his look to his adventures, this could’ve been an Indiana Jones movie.
If you’re a fan of Indy, and you like old films, it would be worth your while to track these down.
The Michlin Guide 