In 2004, after Curt and I sent some restored TOS images to Bob Justman, he called me one afternoon and we had a nice little chat about Star Trek and various other topics. At the end, he asked for my mailing address. He wouldn't tell me why....he said I'd have to wait and see. Several days later, I received a package in the mail that included the following letter. It's in the form you see it here for an important reason: the original was stolen. It was in a special binder that included a lot of Star Trek contact sheets, rare mounted film clips, contact sheets from Diamonds Are Forever, unpublished photos of Marilyn Monroe, and an autographed photo of John Wayne that he sent to me when I was 7 years old. It was a horrible loss. Curt has all of the Star Trek material digitally archived in his computer system, so that is something, anyway.
At the time, my flatbed scanner had bitten the dust and I had not bought another one yet. There was something about Bob's letter that nagged at me, but I couldn't put my finger on it right away. I wanted to keep a copy handy, while safely tucking the original away. (Or so I thought.) So, I just typed up a copy. I didn't bother to note the date, but I think it was in May or June of 2004. Here is the text of it:
What you don't see, that I did not attempt to duplicate, is that between Best Regards and his typed name, he hand-signed Bob beside a little sketch of the Titanic. The bow section was on its way to the bottom, while the stern continued to 'bob' for a moment. It was really cool.
At some point later on, I finally found out what had been nagging me about the letter. He had said George Barris, when he should have said Gene Winfield.
I sent him a letter thanking him for the hat and I recall asking him if things ever got tense enough that he wanted to make a Gene Coonskin hat. I hope he got a little chuckle out of that.
The hat set me off on some deep research for quite a while. The origin story of Indy's hat is more complicated than the (sometimes conflicting) stories from Deborah Nadoolman-Landis and the hatmaker Herbert Johnson. The rest of Indy's costume aside, his hat owes more to one that Spielberg himself wore while filming Close Encounters than it does to the one worn by Charlton Heston in Secret of the Incas. Here are a couple of pics:
Sources say there was a bit of a rift between Spielberg and Lucas over the height of the crown of Indy's hat, but Spielberg managed to get one included for the Streets of Cairo scenes that was closer to his own than others were. Some people like that one and others absolutely hate it.
Anyhow, I was able to track down two more of the behind-the-scenes hats that were experimented with at the studio. None were ever on screen in the movies, but they are pretty cool just the same. One is the prototype for Stetson's 'Temple' fedora. They wanted to displace Herbert Johnson and get the contract to supply the hats, but Paramount did not bring them onboard.
Here is a pic of yours truly, taken last Halloween, complete with Covid mask like Harrison Ford wore between takes while filming Dial of Destiny.
This is the third hat....neither the one that Bob sent me, nor the Stetson. Note the lighter color, including the ribbon:
They experimented with different color variations. There was a gray one, known as the 'Panama Clipper', that as far as I am aware is still MIA.
I will dig out all 3 hats tomorrow and get some pics posted here.
At the time, my flatbed scanner had bitten the dust and I had not bought another one yet. There was something about Bob's letter that nagged at me, but I couldn't put my finger on it right away. I wanted to keep a copy handy, while safely tucking the original away. (Or so I thought.) So, I just typed up a copy. I didn't bother to note the date, but I think it was in May or June of 2004. Here is the text of it:
What you don't see, that I did not attempt to duplicate, is that between Best Regards and his typed name, he hand-signed Bob beside a little sketch of the Titanic. The bow section was on its way to the bottom, while the stern continued to 'bob' for a moment. It was really cool.
At some point later on, I finally found out what had been nagging me about the letter. He had said George Barris, when he should have said Gene Winfield.
I sent him a letter thanking him for the hat and I recall asking him if things ever got tense enough that he wanted to make a Gene Coonskin hat. I hope he got a little chuckle out of that.
The hat set me off on some deep research for quite a while. The origin story of Indy's hat is more complicated than the (sometimes conflicting) stories from Deborah Nadoolman-Landis and the hatmaker Herbert Johnson. The rest of Indy's costume aside, his hat owes more to one that Spielberg himself wore while filming Close Encounters than it does to the one worn by Charlton Heston in Secret of the Incas. Here are a couple of pics:
Sources say there was a bit of a rift between Spielberg and Lucas over the height of the crown of Indy's hat, but Spielberg managed to get one included for the Streets of Cairo scenes that was closer to his own than others were. Some people like that one and others absolutely hate it.
Anyhow, I was able to track down two more of the behind-the-scenes hats that were experimented with at the studio. None were ever on screen in the movies, but they are pretty cool just the same. One is the prototype for Stetson's 'Temple' fedora. They wanted to displace Herbert Johnson and get the contract to supply the hats, but Paramount did not bring them onboard.
Here is a pic of yours truly, taken last Halloween, complete with Covid mask like Harrison Ford wore between takes while filming Dial of Destiny.
This is the third hat....neither the one that Bob sent me, nor the Stetson. Note the lighter color, including the ribbon:
They experimented with different color variations. There was a gray one, known as the 'Panama Clipper', that as far as I am aware is still MIA.
I will dig out all 3 hats tomorrow and get some pics posted here.
