There are few “what ifs” in Hollywood history bigger than Tom Selleck almost becoming Indiana Jones. Today, of course, it’s impossible to separate Harrison Ford from the fedora, bullwhip and the role that turned the character into one of cinema’s most enduring heroes. Yet there was a moment in 1980 when Ford wasn’t the first choice. In fact, the role had already been offered to another actor, one who had spent years struggling to break through in Hollywood and was still waiting for the opportunity that would finally make him a star. That actor was Tom Selleck, before Magnum, P.I. and Blue Bloods.
By the time producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg began casting Raiders of the Lost Ark, Selleck had already spent more than a decade paying his dues. Born January 29, 1945, in Detroit, Michigan, to Robert and Martha Selleck, he had built a resume filled with guest appearances, soap operas, commercials, feature film supporting roles and television pilots that never went anywhere (though in 1979 he did star in the Western The Sacketts). He was a familiar face to casting directors, but had not yet become a household name. Then came the opportunity that seemed destined to change everything.
To be fair, Raiders casting director Mike Fenton believed Jeff Bridges would be ideal for the role of Indiana Jones, though Lucas’ late wife, Marcia, disagreed. She’s actually the one who strongly favored Selleck, and eventually Lucas and Spielberg agreed. The filmmakers contacted Selleck’s representatives and offered him the role.
Years later, Selleck recalled just how close he came to becoming cinema’s greatest adventurer. “I did the pilot for Magnum, I tested for Indiana Jones and got the job,” he explained. “Steven and George, my newest pals at the time, offered me the job and I said, ‘Well, I’ve done this pilot,’ and they said, ‘Thanks for telling us; most actors wouldn’t do that. But we’ve got cards to play with CBS.'”
Magnum vs. Indy
At the time, there was no guarantee that Magnum, P.I. would even be picked up, given that only the pilot had been completed. But Selleck’s contract required him to be available if CBS ordered a full season, and when Lucas and Spielberg tried to secure him for Raiders of the Lost Ark, the network refused to release him. “It turned out that CBS wouldn’t let me do it,” Selleck remembered. “They held the offer out for about a month.”
The irony is that history suggests the situation may not have been as impossible as it seemed. Producer Howard Kazanjian later revealed that everyone in Hollywood knew an actors’ strike was approaching and because Raiders was shooting in London under Equity rules outside of SAG jurisdiction, production would have been able to continue even after the strike began.
“Had Tom Selleck done Raiders, whether it would have been successful or not, it would not have hurt his career on Magnum, P.I.,” Kazanjian said. “We could have shot with Selleck and given him back to Universal when the strike was over.”
A man of honor
Selleck had no problem honoring his TV contract, saying. “I’m proud that I lived up to my contract. Some people said, ‘You’ve got to want to get in the car and drive into a brick wall, get injured and get out of Magnum and do this.’ I said that I’ve got to look my mom and dad in the eye, and we don’t do that.”
As Selleck stepped away from the role, Raiders of the Lost Ark suddenly found itself without an Indiana Jones just weeks before filming was scheduled to begin. Costume designer Deborah Nadoolman pointed out that preparations for Selleck were already underway.
“We were looking forward to working with Tom Selleck,” she remembered. “I had already made a prototype of the entire costume at Western Costume Company on Melrose. We were close to shooting and now we were missing an Indiana Jones.”
The search for a replacement ultimately led Lucas and Spielberg back to a familiar face. “We were left with the perennially unemployed Han Solo,” Nadoolman said.
The rest, of course, is movie history. At the time, however, not everyone viewed Harrison Ford as the obvious choice. Lucas had already made Ford a star through Star Wars, and there was concern about pairing the actor with yet another iconic Lucas-created role. Kazanjian, who had been pushing for Ford, remembered that the decision wasn’t immediate. “I really felt Harrison was the guy,” he recalled. “I could see him as Indiana Jones. I could see him with a whip. I could see him with two or three days’ unshaved growth.”
He believed Ford possessed something impossible to ignore. While he respected Selleck’s talent, he wasn’t convinced the actor was right for this particular role. “Selleck is a very, very good and respected actor,” he said, “but had you seen the pilot of Magnum, P.I., like I did, he wasn’t quite the actor that he became.”
Even so, replacing Selleck wasn’t an easy adjustment for everyone involved. Nadoolman admitted that the production initially viewed the change as a disappointment, because Selleck projected a larger-than-life quality that seemed perfectly suited to the serial-inspired adventurer Spielberg and Lucas were creating.
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“Harrison is, or was, an affable, introspective, reticent character, worlds away from the larger-than-life and glamorous Selleck,” she said. “We were disappointed, but we accepted the situation.”
What nobody could have known at the time was that Ford’s interpretation would fundamentally reshape the character and, looking back years later, Nadoolman argued that the actor brought qualities that transformed Indiana Jones from a straightforward action hero into something more relatable. “His natural warmth, intelligence and most of all his vulnerability transformed the character of Indiana Jones from a one-dimensional superhero to an everyman with a wry sense of humor.”
That doesn’t mean Selleck would have failed in the role. In fact, many who have watched his screen test understand exactly why Spielberg and Lucas wanted him. “I always wonder how Tom Selleck really feels about not getting that role?” said film historian and podcaster Zaki Hasan. “When you watch his audition footage, he’s not bad and you can see why they offered the part to him. His version of Indy would have been totally different. It just wouldn’t be what we know… of course, we wouldn’t have known the difference.”
Had Selleck boarded the plane to London and put on the fedora, perhaps he would have become one of the biggest movie stars in the world and Raiders of the Lost Ark would have been just as successful. On the other hand, Indiana Jones could have evolved into a completely different character. What we do know is that Ford became inseparable from the role, while Selleck went on to become Thomas Magnum, the role that turned him into one of television’s biggest stars, and would eventually lead to his playing Frank Reagan on Blue Bloods.
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In retrospect, Selleck has never sounded bitter about the road not taken. If anything, he seems grateful for it. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t pretend I was happy about losing Raiders, but I was not about to think of myself as a victim. Whether I thought CBS made the wrong decision—and I think they did—that did not mean I was treated unfairly. I had learned many times over by now that life isn’t fair, but at least I could be. Nobody made me sign a contract for Magnum. At that moment in time, it was the best thing that had happened to me in about a dozen years as an actor. I caught myself with a little smile on my face when my thoughts wandered to the first scene in the Magnum pilot. Only now it was, ‘Don’t think about Raiders, concentrate on Magnum.'”
“There is very little time for reflection in the life I had chosen,” he added in You Never Know: A Memoir, “at least if you’re living it right. But this time it was earned. I thought again of what my friend George Will wrote: ‘Luck is unpredictable, but talent takes advantage of it. Thus, the talented have, in effect, more of it.’ How lucky I was that serendipity had indeed done its best to smile on me again.”
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