Indiana Jones & Marion Ravenwood

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Indy and Marion already have history by the time they hook up in Raiders, the pair having had a fling 10 years earlier when he was her father’s student. Small wonder there is some tension as they swap Nepal for Cairo, with Indy only softening after she is apparently killed in a fiery truck explosion.

Marion isn’t dead, of course – and she’s mightily pissed at him when they are reunited again in a snake-infested Well of Souls. But nobody can stay mad at Indy for long, and a romantic recoupling beckons after they find themselves sharing a cabin on a tramp steamer bound for Europe. Well, it would, were not Indy so exhausted that he promptly falls asleep. “We never seem to get a break, do we?” sighs Marion, unaware that more adventures await them before they can finally have a breather back in Washington DC. (Their final scene only came about after somebody realised there was no resolution for their relationship, requiring a new scene to be written and filmed at San Francisco’s City Hall.)

“The first time we were together, we didn’t know each other,” said Karen Allen of Harrison Ford in 2017. “It took time to find our rhythm, but I had an awfully good time working with him.” (Her co-star might have more painful memories, having been clipped more than once while shooting the scene where Marion slugs him.) “It was one of those great relationships, where they are just kind of driving each other crazy,” the actress went on. Yet it could have been very different, Allen having shot her screen-test with Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck coming within an inch of being cast alongside Sean Young. NS

MEET-CUTE Of all the bars in all the world, he walks into hers.

BEST BANTZ

Marion: “You’re not the man I knew 10 years ago.”

Indy: “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”

FURTHER ADVENTURES

Indy and Marion reunite (and get married) 21 years later.