He said he “was born under a lucky star”. Yet, Roy Chapman Andrews, that good ‘ole American chaser of bandits, dinosaur eggs and lost civilisations, was always the kind of man who made his own luck. He charmed a generation of daydreamers with his stories of the Gobi desert — and that hat —and while there’s been a lot of speculation as to who could’ve inspired George Lucas’ beloved Indiana Jones, no one fits the bill quite like Andrews. After all, he may not have battled Nazis, but who else charges into a pack of robbers head-on, just to shoot the hats off their heads?
Before the fame, he was just a Wisconsin boy who dabbled, as one does in the Midwest in the 1800s, in marksmanship and taxidermy. He set out to get his foot in the door at the American Museum of Natural History while pursuing a Masters in Mammalogy. Never one to turn down an opportunity, he started out as a Janitor at the storied institution, bringing in his own specimens to try to pique the staff’s interest.
