Garth

CHARACTER
Garth
Gender	Male
Nationality	American
Profession(s)	Treasure Hunter
Allegiance(s)	Panama Hat Fedora's Gang

"You lost today, kid, but that doesn't mean you have to like it."

―Garth to Indiana Jones

Garth, also known as "Fedora", was the leader of a gang of hired treasure hunters who retrieved the Cross of Coronado from a canyon site in Utah in 1912 for the antiquities collector Panama Hat.

Biography

Encounter with Indiana Jones

"Coronado's dead, and so are all his grandchildren!"

―Garth

The leader of a group of private treasure hunters, Garth was hired alongside his gang by Panama Hat for a looting excavation in Utah in 1912, to search for the Cross of Coronado. After not shaving for a few days, Garth and his grave robbers looted the state's caverns until they found the Cross, unaware that they were being observed by two young boy scouts named Indiana Jones and Herman Mueller. While Garth's back was turned, Jones sent Herman to get help then stole the Cross of Coronado, racing away on horseback.

Garth 'recovered' the Cross of Coronado in Utah.

Garth and his men drove after Jones in cars, and followed on foot when the boy transferred to the top of a passing circus train from the Dunn & Duffy Combined Circus. The man in the fedora confronted Jones who backed away and fell through the roof of the lion car. Garth helped Jones escape the dangerous situation but after the scout declared that the artifact should be in a museum he retreated into Doctor Fantasy's Magic Caboose. Garth directed his men to make sure Jones couldn't double back and entered the coach in time to see Jones hide inside a magic box. Knowing he had the boy trapped, Garth urged him to come out when the box suddenly collapsed with no-one inside. Garth rushed to the back of the train to see Jones flee home. He cursed in frustration but allowed himself a small grin as he watched the kid escape.

Garth consoles the young Jones for failing.

Eventually, Garth and his gang approached the Jones residence and recovered the salvaged artifact for his client Panama Hat with the assistance of the local sheriff. However, Garth admired young Jones' attempt to claim it, for which he gave the boy some words of encouragement, along with his hat, which he placed on Jones' head before walking out the door. As he left, Indy warned hime he would recover the Cross, so Garth told him he would tell his boss before Indy slammed the door behind him, leaving Garth to chuckle as he walked down the sidewalk. He didn't know what the future held for Indy, but he knew Jones would eventually grow into that hat.

Legacy

"I never knew his name. This hat was his. I think he took a shine to me after we went 'round. He gave me some good advice, and this hat, as a consolation prize."

―Indiana Jones, on Garth.

Consciously or otherwise, Indiana Jones would adopt similar attire to Garth.

Indiana Jones drew a sketch of Garth shortly after he left his house for his journal. Among his notes, Jones described Garth's attire, physical traits and accepted that he didn't like losing to him that day. He also wondered whether or not Garth was some sort of adventure-seeker for hire given his association with Panama Hat, concluding that his father would not have liked him. In fact, Henry didn't even believe in his son's story, even going as far as joking with Indy's failure to recover the Cross. He even didn't let Indy wear Garth's hat but a straw one when they visited Georgetown University the following year due to not being in the "country".

Following his experience and confrontation with Garth and his gang, Indy drew a self-made comic book relating his attempt to retrieve the Cross of Coronado. During his early days at the Sorbonne, Jones gave it to his then-friend René Emile Belloq, who ended up becoming one of his rivals. By 1938, the comic was uncovered by Belloq's son, who had found it among his deceased father's old possessions around the same time Indy managed to finally recover the Cross of Coronado from Panama Hat aboard his Vasquez de Coronado ship.

While hardly a substitute to the priceless relic he lost that day, Indy would go on to become attached to the fedora Garth gave to him, refusing to leave it behind even in danger of death or buying a new hat, apparently because of his liking for the look. In 1943, during World War II, after nearly losing his fedora in a plane crash off the coast of Haiti, Jones told his friend George McHale the story of how he acquired his fedora when he was a boy scout and discovered Garth robbing the Cross of Coronado, assuring Mac that Garth taught him that you can't always win and you must wait until another day, something in which he was right, as he eventually recovered the Cross off the coast of Portugal.

Personality and traits

"Toss up the whip!"

―Garth urging Indiana Jones to toss him the whip to pull him to safety

A rapscallion leader described as "some sort of adventure-seeker for hire", Garth was a grave robber who held little for the historical value of the Cross of Coronado he found with his gang in 1912, choosing to sell it to a private collector rather than giving it to a museum, excusing his actions because Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and all his descendants were dead, therefore the Cross no longer belonged to anyone.

However, Garth sympathized with the young Indiana Jones who got into trouble with a lion aboard the Dunn & Duffy Combined Circus train after he had taken the Cross from the gang. Garth urged the boy to throw the bullwhip to him so he could be pulled to safety. The moment Jones outwitted him and escaped from the train, Garth cursed but cracked a grin for the kid, really admiring his spirit. When Jones lost the Cross back to the gang, Garth stayed behind to pass on his fedora and provide him with some words of encouragement.

When met by Indy in 1912, Garth was dressed in a leather jacket and brown fedora, an attire later adopted by Jones during his adult years.

Behind the scenes

Richard Young played Fedora in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Garth/Fedora was portrayed by Richard Young in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. A few months after the film's premiere, Young allegedly reprised the role in a live performance for director Steven Spielberg-produced opening show of the 1989 National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, but Young debunked this in 2018, thinking he might have been invited but declined due to his commitments with other productions at that moment.

Around 1985, Young was called in to audition for Davey Crockett in an episode of Spielberg's television series Amazing Stories at Alamo, Texas. Instead of reading together, Young and Spielberg talked, with the former telling the latter about how he had just returned from Guatemala, where he looked for ancient artifacts and photographed Tikal's ruins. Spielberg cast him on the spot but told him he had an idea, which he didn't tell him until 1988. Garth was originally intended to wear a brown leather jacket and carry a whip which wasn't written in the script, but according to costume designer Anthony Powell, the filmmakers decided after seeing the dailies to change the jacket's color to block and apparently Harrison Ford requested for that to be changed even though he and Young got along, so Young proposed Spielberg, who had rejected his idea of Garth handling a whip, to have the whip already in the scene so Garth could Indiana Jones to safety.

During the development of the film's script, written by Jeffrey Boam, Fedora was originally going to be the central antagonist of the prologue sequence, before the Panama Hat character was created. The 50 Fascinating Facts About Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade article in Indiana Jones: The Official Magazine 4 asserts that an early draft alluded to him being Abner Ravenwood, Indiana's future mentor. However, The Complete Making of Indiana Jones doesn't note this detail at all. When asked in 2018, Young didn't recall any connection to Ravenwood ever being discussed, instead assuming Spielberg cast him because of his Amazing Stories role and their chemistry. Nevertheless, any references to such an identity have been removed by the final cut. Foreshadowing the film's climax where Indy implores Elsa Schneider to save herself, in the storyboards for the prologue, Fedora was depicted urging Jones to leave the Cross of Coronado behind at the lion wagon of the Dunn & Duffy Combined Circus train so he can be pulled to safety.

During filming, Young and Ford had a good laugh when a train of tourists mistook the former for the latter and the latter for a random individual in his first day on set. His first scene was that of Garth gifting Indy his hat. He enjoyed working with River Phoenix, whom he regarded as a "little brother" who had good chemistry with to the point there was a talk about making a prequel movie starring the two, a notion that came to a halt when Phoenix had another commitment after the film and naturally ended with Phoenix's death in 1993 despite their hopes to reunite. He didn't share scenes with Alex Hyde-White due to him not being needed for those. Young felt tricky to shoot how his character jumped onto the train and considered the hardest scene to pull off being that of the Doctor Fantasy's Magic Caboose wagon, as he had to avoid hitting the camera operator. Young became famous for his role in the film, but after his subsequent project tanked, opted to quietly retire from Hollywood to leave his legacy as Garth intact. Ironically, his role in the film saved Young and a man he hired to assist him while working as a cameraman during the Bosnian War, as corrupt Croatian cops arrested them in Karlavach and chained them up to a bench to beat them up or worse out of frustration but the girlfriend of one of them recognized Young as Garth and the cops were excited upon learning they had an "American movie star", possibly mistaking Young for Ford.

The encounter with Garth as depicted in the comic adapation of Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure.

In Les Martin's 1989 junior novelization, Fedora and Panama Hat are presented as the same character. Thus, instead of leaving Indy his hat as a consolation prize, Fedora does it out of spite, teasingly telling him the hat is so he can have something to remember him by. In Randy Thornton's Read-Along Adventure adaptation, Fedora seemingly doesn't retrieve the Cross of Coronado from Indiana Jones, who apparently keeps it after escaping from Fedora, with the subsequent 1938 opening sequence omitted due to Panama Hat's absence.

In LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, Fedora and his men chase both Indy and Herman Mueller onto the train after discovering them at the canyon site. After the defeat of his men, Fedora manages to reach the magic car but after realizing that the scouts have escaped, he surrenders, so he never regains the Cross of Coronado nor gives Indy his hat. Although the Young Indy sequence is omitted from the sequel, Fedora still appears in a photograph while Marcus Brody speaks with Indy and, in this version, Sallah about their mission to recover the Cross of Coronado, implying Indy and Herman did meet him offscreen back in their youth.

There were plans by Hasbro in 2009 for an action figure of Garth and an Adventure Heroes set with action figures of the Young Indiana Jones and Garth, but the toyline was cancelled before these could be made.

Identity

"Fedora" is the name of the character given in the script and credits. While the subtitles on both the 2003 and 2008 editions of the Last Crusade DVD acknowledge the Fedora name spoken by Roscoe, Ryder Windham's 2008 junior novelization of the film (as does the Spanish dub of Last Crusade) gives his name as Garth. This may have been an error brought about through using Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Original Movie Script, the only officially released version of the story in screenplay form, as a source for the adaptation. However, the "Original Movie Script", which uses the Garth name, isn't a copy of the original screenplay at all but a transcript of the film retroactively mocked up to look like a screenplay. That the Inside the World of Indiana Jones article at Lucasfilm.com acknowledges that "in a handful of other sources, he is sometimes referred to as "Garth"", this may be an indication that Lucasfilm Ltd. doesn't see the name as definitive. High definition home and streaming releases of the movie have continued to caption the name as Garth on-screen.

Fedora seems to reappear in Wolfgang Hohlbein's German novel Indiana Jones und das Verschwundene Volk (Indiana Jones and the Lost People) where he is known to Indiana Jones as "Jake". The context of Jones remembering him as the leader of a gang hunting down the Cross of Coronado who left a lasting impression all but states that he is the Fedora of Last Crusade. However, the man is introduced in the book as a "halbblut" which translates to "Half Breed".

Appearances

• Young Indiana Jones and the Lost Gold of Durango (Mentioned only)
• Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure (Indirect mention)
• Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure comic (Flashback)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (First appearance)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade novel
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade comic
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 1989 junior novel
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 2008 junior novel
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Storybook
• Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead (Mentioned only)
• Indiana Jones und das Verschwundene Volk (Possible appearance)
• LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (Non-canonical appearance)
• LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues (Non-canonical appearance) (Portable consoles exclusive)

Sources

• From Star Wars To Indiana Jones - The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives
• Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide
• The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones
•  Indiana Jones Heritage trading cards (Card: The Rightful Owners Return)
• Indiana Jones: The Official Magazine 4
• Top Trumps: Indiana Jones
• The Diaries of Indiana Jones
•  Inside the World of Indiana Jones on Lucasfilm.com (backup link on Archive.org)
•  40 Great Indiana Jones Quotes on Lucasfilm.com (backup link on Archive.org)