Hiram Bingham III: Did this real-life explorer inspire Indiana Jones?
It’s common for the film industry to draw on real-life to create elaborate stories for the big screen. Reality has allowed cinema to flourish over the years, from drawing on actual events to creating fictional stories set amongst factual happenings. Regarding characters, reality has been something that the realm of cinema has looked to many times, with a host of fictional personalities conceived with an accurate figure (or figures) in mind. One of the most iconic of these is George Lucas’s intrepid archaeologist and professor – Indiana Jones – played by Harrison Ford in four feature films, with a fifth one imminent.
As an intellectual and rugged action hero, there are many real-life figures touted to have formed the basis of Indiana Jones. However, the one that looks the most likely is Hiram Bingham III. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1875, Bingham was an academic, explorer and politician famed for making public the existence of the now-iconic Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in 1911, with the help of local indigenous farmers.
However, Bingham’s dalliance with history doesn’t conclude there. Later, in 1925, he served as the 69th Governor of Connecticut for a single day, the shortest term in history. He then took up a place in the United States Senate until 1933.
In July 1911, Bingham embarked on the expedition that would lead to the discovery of Machu Picchu. This is one of the most significant discoveries in history, with it now revered as one of ‘The New 7 Wonders of the World’. Ironically, Bingham had set out to find the last Inca capital, Vilcabamba. Although he would eventually identify both cities of Vilcabamba and Vitcos, he mistook Machu Picchu for the former. Naturally, due to its impressive scope, Bingham believed that Machu Picchu was the lost city of Vilcabamba. However, he eventually found what he was looking for, just at the site of a settlement with the modern name of Espiritu Pampa. In 1964, Gene Savoy then resoundingly confirmed Espiritu Pampa as the Vilcabamba.
The discovery of Macchu Pichu would prove to be the moment that wrote Hiram Bingham III into the history books, with his exploits becoming the stuff of legend. Interestingly, there’s no evidence that Indiana Jones is based on him, but there are tales that are certainly worth listening to.
The historian Christopher Heaney, who authored the 2010 book Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, A Real-Life Indiana Jones, highlights an intriguing fact that connects both characters. He revealed that the costume designer who worked on the first Indiana Jones film, 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, claimed that Jones’ image was inspired by the 1964 Charlton Heston film, Secret of the Incas. What is the significance of this? Bingham greatly influenced the characters and “situations” in Secret of the Incas.
“What’s interesting is that they made Secret of the Incas after reading a few articles in National Geographic about Hiram Bingham’s explorations,” Heaney writes. “The technical advisor on the movie was Bingham’s friend Albert Giesecke, who was director of the Cusco University in the 1910s and helped Bingham in both his excavations and his explorations. So, Indiana Jones is not Hiram Bingham, but Hiram Bingham was used to create this set of characters and set of situations in Secret of the Incas that then influenced the creation of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark.”