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"...That's a very spirited young woman."
Miss Seymour[src]

Vicky Prentiss was a young British woman who worked as a London bus fare collector during World War I though her aspirations were to become a writer and she penned articles on behalf of the women's suffrage movement. She was the daughter of Sir Peregrine and Lady Prentiss and had at least one sibling.

In May 1916, Vicky and Indiana Jones fell in love with each other during a whirlwind romance as Jones passed through the UK on his way to join the fighting in Europe. Although their feelings were sincere, she ended the relationship before Jones left for the Great War (including correctly anticipating and rejecting his proposal of marriage) in part due to the threat societal expectations on women of that time had to her future career prospects, but also because of how they may have returned to each other as different people by the time the conflict was over.

Decades after they went their separate ways, Vicky and Jones were reunited during a chance encounter at a restaurant in the US and greeted each other with an embrace.

Biography[]

Early life[]

The daughter of Sir Peregrine Prentiss, a diplomat, and Lady Prentiss, a suffragette, Vicky accompanied her father in his travels. During their stay in Egypt, they visited the Pyramids, but having not paid their guide enough, their guide took the camels and left. Growing up, Prentiss became fluent in Welsh from her mother's background and songs and picked up other languages through her father's custom to have her learn the native language of the country where they were living.[1]

Being conscious of her mother's torture in prison which left her disabled, Prentiss joined the suffrage movement to continue her mother's fight with much fervor.[1]

Meeting Indy[]

In 1916, Prentiss was working in London as a ticket collector. In May of that year, she encountered Indiana Jones—who did not pay special attention to her because she was collecting tickets on the bus where Jones was already trying to seduce a young war widow, whom Prentiss had given a pro-suffrage flyer. After being rejected by the woman, Jones continued the bus ride alone until the vehicle was forced to stop due to the upcoming attack of a German Zeppelin—something Jones had not seen up to that point and did not anticipate its danger as a result. Prentiss tried to save his life by moving away from the gasoline-filled bus to a supposedly safer place, which ended up being closer to a Zeppelin bomb hit. As they were knocked down by the bomb explosion, they shared a close moment and he noticed her beauty. However, she refused to meet him again, and after the bus resumed service, he got off at Paddington Station.[1]

Later that evening, Jones, using the flyer, went to the meeting of the East London Suffrage Movement keynoted by Sylvia Pankhurst, and found a seat behind Prentiss. Initially irritated by his presence, she re-evaluated her opinion of him after he caused a male heckler to shut up, and helped give a nervous Maisie Kemp the courage to continue. After the meeting, she accepted Jones' invitation to get tea, where they realized that they had both traveled extensively as children, she as the daughter of a diplomat, and he as the son of a world-traveling lecturer. As they walked in the park after the tea, they encountered a single mother forced onto the streets with her children. Prentiss was impressed by Jones' compassion in arranging for the children to get a bite to eat and ability to provide help to the woman in making her rent to avoid eviction without her feeling like she had accepted charity. Reaching her home, Jones asked to see her again, and she agreed to take a trip with him the next day to Oxford, after she got off of work.[1]

Indy&vicky

Vicky and Indy.

Arriving by train at Oxford, they stayed with Miss Seymour, Jones' former tutor. Prentiss felt a little out of place with her beau's submissiveness to the older woman, who had also known Prentiss' father. Prentiss and Seymour verbally sparred over the issue of women's suffrage - Seymour was sympathetic to the cause, except for the drastic measures that had been used to bring attention to it. Despite feeling like she had insulted her host, Prentiss was relieved to find out from Jones that Miss Seymour liked her and had invited them to accompany her as guests at a dinner party with Winston Churchill.[1]

At the dinner party, when Churchill discussed the issue of allowing the military men abroad to vote, Prentiss brought up the issue of women's right to vote. Jones kept trying to change the subject, but Churchill and Prentiss argued, and she ended the dialogue by accidentally launching part of her dessert - a trifle at the guest of honor, which landed on his head. Embarrassed, she fled from the dinner party. The next morning, she apologized to Seymour, and explained why she felt so strongly about women's suffrage - her mother, an activist herself, had been made disabled after being forcibly fed during a prison hunger strike. Seymour considered that if she had been in Vicky's place, she would have done the same thing at dinner, and the pair shared a laugh over the dessert mishap.[1]

Realizing that she could use a vacation, Prentiss contacted her work and took a bit of an extra holiday, and took Jones to meet her parents near Malvern. They bicycled around the British countryside, where their romance continued to bloom, and they professed their love for each other.[1]

Back in London, Prentiss submitted an article for the suffrage movement's periodical, the Dreadnought, and Jones suggested the title "Deeds, Not Words" - a quote from the speech by Pankhurst that he had heard. Jones informed her that he and Remy Baudouin had received their orders for the Belgian army, and he was heading out the next day. Prentiss went to a fancy dinner with Jones, and after dinner, she correctly guessed that Jones was about to propose marriage. She tried to head him off, saying that she wasn't ready for marriage, as she felt that as a woman, she could not accomplish the things she wanted to do in life if she were married. Rejected, Jones left the restaurant. The next morning, Prentiss showed up at the train station, unsure whether to see Jones off to war. Jones caught sight of her and called to her, and she turned. Their eyes met before the soldier rushed onto the departing train.[1]

Though Jones lost all contact with Prentiss, she remained on his mind, and he mentioned her several times to others over the years.[2][3][4]

Note: The following section is cut content.
It contains information cut from the final release of an Indiana Jones medium, or otherwise unpublished. Everything said in this section and not elsewhere did not happen in the "proper" Indiana Jones continuity.

After the Great War, Indiana Jones returned to the Prentiss family home and spoke with Vicky's father who informed him that Vicky had left on Armistice Day for a newspaper job in San Francisco to pursue a career as a writer. Jones asked that she be told he had stopped by to "make sure she'd made it through the war" and took his leave.[5]

Cut content information ends here.

Later life[]

OldIndyOldVicky-0

Vicky and Indy reunited in the early 1990s.

In 1992, Jones overheard Prentiss talking at a New York restaurant where he and his financial advisor Bob Traynor were eating. Although he didn't recognize the voice to be hers, it reminded him of his experiences with her, so he told their story to Traynor, and showed him the ticket from that initial bus ride when they met. However, after he finished his story, Prentiss, using the phrase "Deeds, Not Words", walked past Indy's table, and he then recognized her. The two were then reunited and embraced warmly.[6]

Personality and traits[]

In her youth, Vicky Prentiss, her sibling(s) and mother traveled with her father, a diplomat, to a number of countries. Her father would then speak to her in each country's respective language. As a result, she developed great skills in learning languages; By 1916, she spoke (in addition to her native English) fluent French, German, Italian, Hungarian, Greek, Swedish, Arabic and Welsh. When she met Indiana Jones, the two were impressed by how similar their upbringings had been.[1]

Behind the scenes[]

"I'm surprised we never met."
"Maybe we did and didn't know it.
"
Indiana Jones and Vicky Prentiss[src]

Vicky Prentiss first appears fleetingly in Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal, the first episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as the establishing shot of Oxford filmed for the next episode "London, May 1916" was also used to show the city in Curse of the Jackal. As a consequence, both she and a sixteen-year-old Indiana Jones can be seen anachronistically in the background on their bicycles in 1908.[7]

In a rare appearance by a character other than Indy in both the main body and bookends of an episode, Elizabeth Hurley portrayed the youthful Vicky of 1916 and Jane Wyatt played the much older Vicky of 1992.[6] When the episode was subsequently re-edited into the second half of Love's Sweet Song, the framing device was edited out (as were most of the show's other bookends), thus completely removing George Hall and Wyatt's older version of their characters.[8] Hall had fond memories over working with Wyatt in "London, May 1916" and thus campaigned for a two-hour series finale for the show in which Vicky and Indy would marry.[9]

In the teleplay of "London, May 1916", Vicky speaks of a brother she has lost in the fighting.[10] Further cut information related to Vicky from the show's teleplays includes Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye, in which her father Peregrine, who was credited for his appearance despite not being featured in the final episode, revealed that Vicky had left on Armistice Day for a career with a San Francisco newspaper.[11]

Appearances[]

Sources[]

Notes and references[]

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