A brown felt fedora worn by Harrison Ford in the second installment of the Indiana Jones film franchise has fetched nearly half a million pounds at auction. The iconic hat, specifically crafted for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, sold for $630,000 (£487,000) in Los Angeles on Thursday.
The auction, conducted by Propstore, featured a range of notable movie memorabilia. Among the items were props from Star Wars, Harry Potter, and James Bond films.
In Temple of Doom, the fedora is prominently worn by Indiana Jones early in the movie, during a dramatic scene where he and his companions escape from a crashing plane using an inflatable raft. The scene includes Jones, played by Ford, along with nightclub singer Wilhelmina “Willie” Scott, portrayed by Kate Capshaw, and his 12-year-old friend Short Round, played by Ke Huy Quan. The trio, after their flight is sabotaged, use the raft to glide down a mountainside.
The auction house noted that the hat was also used in additional photography at George Lucas’s visual effects facilities and was worn by Ford’s stunt double, Dean Ferrandini, who died last year. The hat was sold with previously unpublished photos of Ferrandini wearing the fedora on location.
The fedora, created by the Herbert Johnson Hat Company in London, features a “more tapered” crown compared to the original hat from the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The inside lining is adorned with gold monogrammed initials “IJ.”
Other notable items sold at the auction included an imperial scout trooper helmet from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which went for $315,000 (£243,000), and a light-up wand used by Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which sold for $53,550 (£41,400). A suit worn by Daniel Craig in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall fetched $35,000 (£27,000).
Brandon Alinger, Chief Operating Officer of Propstore, expressed pride in connecting fans with historic pieces they cherish. The Indiana Jones hat achieved a price more than double that of another Temple of Doom fedora auctioned in 2021, which sold for $300,000 (£232,000), according to the Hollywood Reporter.
