The "Real" Indiana Jones

     When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the movie character of Indiana Jones and launched the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in 1981, the movie and its fictional hero immediately became a hit.  Harrison Ford, whose movie career had been somewhat lackluster to that point suddenly found new life and became a matinee idol.  The creation of Indiana Jones has become one of the most successful Hollywood enterprises ever launched.  There are spin-offs that range from action figure dolls to video games and theme park characters that are found all over the world.  Indiana Jones is one of the most lucrative "cash cows" to have been created in the last half of the 20th Century.
     But just how did Lucas and Spielberg come up with this character?  Surely Indiana Jones was not a pure figment of their combined imaginations.  In fact, Indiana Jones is a product of a multiple fictional and factual characters, all sort of mixed together, more or less.  Of the fictional characters, going back to the 19th and early 20th Century, the most obvious are H. Rider Haggard's Allen Quartermain of King Solomon's Mines and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger of The Lost World.  Of the silver screen heroes, the Doc Savage series no doubt had a huge impact.  But the fictional characters of books and movies were not the only ones that helped create the Indiana Jones of the late 20th Century.  If anything, the two real life personalities are probably the closest to the "real" Indiana Jones origin.
     In the early 20th Century there was an intrepid American adventurer, explorer by the name of Owen Latimore.  He did not look anything like the Indiana Jones of the silver screen.  He was, in fact, a bespectacled, scholarly looking individual who was indeed more of a scholar than an adventurer.  His wild adventures came about because of his areas of exploration, the locations that he chose.  He specialized in China, Manchuria and Mongolia's outer regions where no outsider had ever set foot before.  Latimore grew up in China where his parents were teachers.  Although he was born in America, he spent all of his early youth in China.  He was completely fluent in Chinese and also spoke Manchu and Mongolian.  Naturally, he was a perfect choice to explore those regions and he was sponsored by various interest groups to explore China, Manchuria and Mongolia.  Latimore unfortunately ran into some problems in the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy accused him of being a communist spy.
     For those who are unfamiliar with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his "work" in the 1950s, let me just give a very brief summary of what he did.  McCarthy was a Senator from Wisconsin whose claim to fame was that he was "rooting out" all of the communist agents in America.  He claimed that there were communist spies in the State Department as well as other agencies, and many private individuals, particularly in Hollywood and academia.  McCarthy's "witch hunts" ruined the lives of many good people and in the process, not a single true communist spy was uncovered!
     McCarthy, whose activities in the 1950s gave birth to the term "McCarthyism," was the biggest self promoter and an unscrupulous, unprincipled individual interested only in promoting himself.  Prior to being elected to the U.S. Senate, he was a practicing lawyer in Wisconsin who was censured for unethical practices! During World War Two, he wrote his own recommendation for a Distinguished Service Cross and claimed that it was written by Admiral Nimitz!  Unfortunately the truth was uncovered much later, after he was awarded the decoration!
     It is amazing how such a flim-flam artist could be elected to the Senate.  It just shows how voters can be clueless.  It is particularly scary today, with the presidential elections coming up, how some voters are supporting some of the candidates that have no business running for office.  But, that is neither here nor there, McCarthy served from 1950 until 1958 (two terms!).  The facts about his lying and phony medal recommendation came to surface before his reelection!  As I said, when it comes to voters, go figure!
     Going back to Owen Latimore, his career was ruined for all practical purposes and he ended up teaching at a university in England until his death in the 1980s.  It was never proven that he was a communist agent, although, like most academics, Latimore did appear at times to sympathize with the left, more out of naivete than anything else!  To this date, Owen Latimore is considered to be one of the most knowledgeable Americans when it comes to northeast Asia, particularly Northern China, Manchuria, and Mongolia.  During World War Two, he was appointed a special political advisor to Nationalist China's President Chang Kai Sheik by President Roosevelt!
     Another explorer/archeologist/adventurer, a contemporary of Owen Latimore, was Roy Chapman Andrews.   Andrews was known for his exploration of remote regions of Siberia, Manchuria, and Mongolia, most notably for discovery of prehistoric animal bones and skeletons.  He made some very important discoveries of Dinosaur remains in Mongolia.  Andrews was never targeted by McCarthy, mainly because Andrews made many of those trips to Northeast Asia under the auspices of U.S. Naval Intelligence, the only so-called foreign intelligence that we had before the war!  It would have been foolhardy for McCarthy to claim that Andrews was a communist spy when in fact he was gathering intelligence for America! 
     Roy Chapman Andrews was more in the mould of Hollywood's Indiana Jones.  He was always armed on his expeditions and often wore clothing similar to what Harrison Ford wore in the movies.  Andrews was also an avid hunter and collected museum specimens.
     Many consider Owen Latimore and Roy Chapman Andrews as the real life models for Hollywood's Indiana Jones.  Latimore may have been more scholarly in appearance and demeanor, but he explored some of the most wild and rugged regions in the world.  Andrews was more like the Hollywood version and was reputedly involved in gun battles with Manchurian bandits, the "hoonhoozy" (Hung Hu Tzu) on several occasions.  Both men contributed a tremendous amount of knowledge about Northeast Asia, and to this day, their writings are considered a must reading for those interested or studying Northern China, Manchuria, and Mongolia.  They were the "Real" Indiana Jones'.