This week back in March 1992 – 30 years ago – saw George Lucas write a piece for TV Guide introducing the world to the television incarnation of Henry Jones Jr, in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles following the end of his big screen adventures in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and taking us back in time to his childhood.
That week, the publication TV Guide sported the 10-year-old Indy (Corey Carrier) on its cover. As the image of the young adventurer filled millions of American mailboxes, TV Guide readers were treated to a rare statement from executive producer George Lucas himself about the new Lucasfilm series and why he’d set out to make it.
In the piece titled “Indy & Me,” Lucas discussed his roots with television. At the age of 10 in the mid-1950s, his family had acquired a TV set, and the young Lucas soon discovered syndicated adventure serials that would help inspire both the Indiana Jones and Star Wars film series. As a young college student, Lucas was then influenced by anthropology and studies of other cultures, religions, and philosophies. These interests synthetized into the adventurer-archaeologist first played by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
For the new television series, “I had to go backward and create a history that filled in the blanks,” Lucas wrote. “I had to show how Young Indy evolved into the Harrison Ford character.” With Indy’s father an academic, Lucas could send the boy on “exciting adventures” around the world while the elder Jones conducted lectures. Indy encountered historic figures from T. E. Lawrence to Pablo Picasso. “My daughters have been with me for many of my trips,” said Lucas. “Exactly what effect all this will have on their lives I don’t know, but in the end, they’re typical kids. I wanted that to be true of Indy, too.”
From boyhood through to his teenage years (when the older Sean Patrick Flannery assumed the role), Indy’s experiences reflected George Lucas’ interests. He’d encounter artists and thinkers, soldiers and statesmen, who collectively influenced the course of events in the early 20th century.
“It’s always exciting to watch Indy grow up,” Lucas said, “his life is exciting and intense. But for me, life is better when it is quieter.” Perhaps bringing Young Indy to the television screen was a way for everyone, regardless of their ability for world travel, to embark on an adventure of the mind.
