When it comes to leading ladies, Marion Ravenwood owns this website’s heart. But if truth be told, there was once another contender: Dr Elsa Schneider – the Austrian art professor in Indiana Jones and The last Crusade. She played our heart like a cheap fiddle, achieving the unlikely feat (in the words of Empire magazine) of making a Nazi sympathizer seem sympathetic. Take the following exchange:
Elsa: [to Indy] I’ll never forget how vonderful it vas.
Professor Henry Jones: Why thank you. It was rather wonderful.
Elsa: [kisses Indy] Zat’s how Austrians say goodbye.
Colonel Vogel: Und zis is how ve zay goodbye in Germany, Dr. Jones.
[punches Indy with the head of his cane; Indy’s head smacks into Henry’s behind him]
Indiana Jones: I liked the Austrian way better.
Professor Henry Jones: So did I.
She eventually came to a grizzly end, mistakenly crossing the temple’s seal with the Holy Grail in hand, causing the temple to collapse whilst she dropped to her death in the resulting chasm. So imagine diggingthedirt’s surprise when we saw pictures this week of the sale of the Crosby Garret Roman Cavalry helmet – sold at auction for £2.2 million – and found that Dr Schneider has been working behind the scenes on this bid all along!
She is now head of antiquities at the prestigious London auction house that handled the sale, and has since changed her name to Georgina Aitken – vut it vill take more zan zat to put our intrepid newshounds off the zcent! Lustily draped around the shiny helmet, Aitken is bang on-trend in the auction’s publicity shots, rocking the look that Vogue’s September issue’s calling ‘Illicit Chic.’ The Staffordshire Hoard is so last season baby. If you really want to turn heads at the antiquities meat market, anonymous international telephone bidders are the way to go.
And so it went. Lost to the nation forever.
With sadness and regret, diggingthedirt would like to congratulate the Government’s loophole makers for ensuring that however the dice is rolled, the auction house always collects.
Tails they win. Heads we lose.
As for Ms Aitken, we’ve removed you from our ‘hot list’ and hope you enjoy your new home on our ‘not list.’
You’ve crossed the Rubicon Sneider. Best of luck getting to sleep at night.
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