Henry Walton Jones, Senior

"You call this archaeology?"

- Henry Jones, Sr.

Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Sr. was a professor of medieval literature and expert on the Holy Grail, and the father of archaeologist Indiana Jones.

Early years
Henry Jones was born in Scotland in 1872. He was educated at Oxford, where he developed friendships with classmates Marcus Brody and Richard Medlicot, and was tutored by Helen Seymour. Henry graduated from Oxford in 1893 then fell in love with an American woman named Anna. The two married in 1898, and Jones moved his growing family to Princeton, New Jersey, where his son Henry Jones, Jr. was born a year later.

World lecture tour
Jones' scholarly pursuits at Princeton University led to a two-year worldwide lecturing tour beginning in May of 1908, for which he would be speaking at various institutes around the world on the topics of the medieval chivalric code and the Holy Grail. Jones brought his wife and son with him, believing the experience to be a once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity for young Henry Jr. They traveled to England where they hired Miss Seymour as a tutor for Junior. Jones took his family to Egypt, visited a friend in Tangier, and traveled around Europe, including stops in Florence, Paris, Vienna. The family travels also included a safari in British East Africa with Theodore Roosevelt. In 1910, the family traveled to Russia, where through his son's misadventures, Henry got to meet Leo Tolstoy and Greece, where Henry spent time teaching Junior about Greek philosophy. They traveled eastward to India and China, where Junior became ill with Typhoid Fever. Soon after Junior recovered, the Jones family returned home. However, Anna developed influenza, which led to her death.



Returning home
Following Anna's death, Henry and his son relocated to Utah, where Henry began work at the Four Corners University in Las Mesas. Henry's relationship with his son had always been difficult, but Anna's untimely death in May of 1912 caused him to withdraw even further into his studies. The gap between them would only widen over the following years as Henry Sr. became obsessed with the Holy Grail.

By 1916, Jones had resumed his teaching duties at Princeton University, while his son attended high school locally. During spring break, Jones took his son to New Mexico to visit his sister Grace. During the trip, Junior and his cousin Frank found a ride into Mexico, and got caught up in the Mexican Revolution. While in Mexico, Henry Jr. ultimately decided to join the Belgian army in order to participate in the war in Europe, which would later beome known as World War I.

During the war, father and son were severely estranged. The senior Jones never received direct communication from his son, though was able to pass messages through third parties, including Miss Seymour in England, and Professor Levi in Paris. When Henry Jr. returned home in 1919, Henry Sr. finally expressed his anger at Jr. for joining the war, and Jr.'s revelation that he had decided to attend the University of Chicago rather than Princeton further angered Henry. His son then left for Chicago, and the two rarely spoke to or saw each other for nearly the next two decades.

Quest for the Holy Grail
In 1938, Jones was hired by wealthy industrialist Walter Donovan to recover the Holy Grail, after Donovan's acquisition of a Grail tablet. Jones traveled to Venice to search for the tomb of a grail knight, believed to be buried in or near the city. He conducted his research in an old library that was formerly a church. Realizing that his associate Elsa Schneider was actually a Nazi spy, Jones mailed his grail diary to his son, hoping to keep its information from Nazi hands. For hiding his diary from her, Jones was then captured by Nazi agents and taken to Castle Brunwald.



Upon learning of this, his Henry Jr. (now known even professionally as "Indiana") traveled to the castle and rescued him from his prison cell. However, Indy was soon captured through the deceit of Dr. Schneider. Henry and Indy then discovered that Donovan was also working for the Nazis. Father and son soon escaped from the castle and traveled to Berlin to recover the grail diary, before heading to Hatay via zeppelin and biplane to find the Canyon of the Crescent Moon outside of Iskenderun and stop the Nazis.

During a Nazi attack, the senior Jones was captured by the German soldiers and placed in a tank along with the captive Marcus Brody. While Jones managed to defeat a soldier in the tank with a pen, Colonel Vogel apprehended Jones. With the tank running toward a cliff edge, Indy, on horseback, managed to save his father and Brody. Reaching the Grail Temple, the elder Jones was captured along with Indy, Sallah, and Brody. Donovan shot Henry, Sr. to force Indiana to retrieve the Grail in order to save his father's life. Indy passed through the lethal traps of the Grail Temple, and eventually returned with the Grail, which was used to heal Henry's fatal gunshot. After Dr. Schneider caused the temple to collapse and fell to her death in a chasm trying to reclaim the grail, Henry convinced his son to let the grail go in order to save his son, no longer addressing him as Junior, but instead as Indiana. Reconciled and restored as a family, they escaped the temple with Sallah and Marcus.

Behind the scenes
Henry Jones, Sr. was first portrayed by two actors in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Alex Hyde-White played the character briefly during the film's prologue, and his lines were dubbed by Sean Connery, who played the character later in the film. Although Connery is only twelve years older than Harrison Ford, he portrayed Jones Senior as an older man while Ford was playing a character younger than himself.

Lloyd Owen portrayed a younger version of the character in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, imitating Connery's voice and wearing brown contact lenses during the first production. However, during the second production, the TV movies and the new bridging segments, Owen can be seen with his own blue eyes. Lloyd Owen is actually a year younger than Sean Patrick Flanery, who appeared opposite Owen in two episodes of the series. Apart from the fact that Flanery&mdash;like Ford&mdash;was playing a character younger than himself, it can also be argued that Owen was cast to portray Henry Jones, Sr. at an age corresponding to the nine-year-old Indy as played by Corey Carrier.

Sean Connery was asked to reprise the role for a cameo in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but opted out, claiming that he found retirement too enjoyable.

The opening narration to My First Adventure reveals that Henry Jones and his son share the same middle name, Walton. This is also the middle name of George Lucas.

Appearances

 * The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
 * "Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal"
 * "Florence, May 1908"
 * "Paris, September 1908"
 * "Vienna, November 1908"
 * "British East Africa, September 1909"
 * "Benares, January 1910"
 * "Peking, March 1910"
 * "Princeton, February 1916"
 * Spring Break Adventure
 * "Paris, October 1916"
 * "Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom"
 * "Petrograd, July 1917"
 * "Palestine, October 1917"
 * Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father (Winds of Change)
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Titanic Adventure
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Pirates' Loot
 * Indiana Jones Jr et le Fantôme du Klondike
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Lost Gold of Durango
 * Indiana Jones Jr et l'Ampoule Radioactive
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Princess of Peril
 * Indiana Jones Jr et le Violon du Metropolitan
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Ghostly Riders
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Circle of Death
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Gypsy Revenge
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Journey to the Underworld
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Ruby Cross
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Secret City
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Mountain of Fire
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Face of the Dragon
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Eye of the Tiger
 * Indiana Jones Jr et le Spectre de Venise
 * Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade novel
 * Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny
 * Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull