Twice, for Good Measure

Imagine Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli, armed with a recent option on Fleming’s novels, sorting through their new property and wondering where to start.  

Having just been published, Thunderball was not yet recognized as a course-change, but only another volume in a remarkably eclectic series of adventure stories.  Viewing Fleming’s entire output today we can see the novels falling into three distinct groups.

After Casino Royale, a promising freshman effort (which had been sold to a different film producer), the next few books are evidence of a novice writer struggling to find a solid footing while appealing to a broader audience on both sides of the Atlantic.  As Fleming’s mentor Raymond Chandler pointed out, while not terrible, each successive work from this early period, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, and Diamonds Are Forever, was slightly less interesting than the last.

After apparently choosing Walt Disney as his guiding star, Fleming began crafting his masterpiece, From Russia With Love.  An ingenious mashup of Disney’s Cinderella and the studio’s forthcoming Sleeping Beauty, FRWL lifts the basic story from the unreleased second Disney film, but seasons it with memorable characters from the first, amusingly weaving these borrowed elements into the framework of a classic spy thriller.

A reinvigorated Fleming slightly modified the process with Doctor No,  relocating Disney’s 20,000 Leagues to a mysterious island in the Caribbean, while dropping in the otherworldly jungle waif from W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions to create a spooky love interest for his hero.

Although no prior Disney films seem to provide source material for Goldfinger, the book still fits squarely into Fleming’s playful middle period, with story elements apparently spun from equal parts of “Rumpelstiltskin,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”  

The book is also at least Disney-adjacent, published the same year the Disney studio released Darby O’Gill and the Little People, a project which Walt Disney had been teasing since the early 50’s.  

Fleming could be acknowledging his recent debt to Disney when Bond playfully asks the five-foot-tall Auric Goldfinger, “What are we going to do, rob the end of the rainbow?”  In a similar vein, after Goldfinger conducts a seminar for his prospective criminal confederates, Miss Pussy Galore asks no one in particular, “What was the name of that fairy tale?”  The one she’s thinking of is, of course, “Sleeping Beauty,” 

Despairing of ever finding a suitable plot to rival the one he had crafted for Goldfinger, Fleming mused about confining Bond to short stories such as those comprising his follow-up volume, For Your Eyes Only.  When his publisher insisted on another novel, the writer began to flesh out the screenplay from an abandoned film project sometimes called Longitude 78 West.  

The resulting book, Thunderball, which adopts a far more serious tone than the film with the same name, would mark the start of a five-volume character-arc for James Bond.  Dipping into Greek mythology and Middle English poetry, but always with one eye on popular culture, Fleming would drag his hero through Hell and back in subsequent books, and then across a finish line of sorts, while making sure to leave Bond safely teed up for a fresh start.

Fleming’s Thunderball owes a debt to doomsday literature from the dawn of the nuclear age - think Neville Shute’s On the Beach with the title character from Jean Anouihl’s Antigone.  Make no mistake, Bond is hardly the hero of Fleming’s story.  His most important job is to be a careful listener as Domino Vitale recites her family history, after which he must unleash a vengeful tigress on Emilio Largo, heir-apparent to Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Fleming may be signaling a re-invention of the Bond series, or at least a fork in the road, by creating a mirror-image of Casino Royale.  This time around it is the innocent girl who is subjected to merciless torture of her tender flesh, and Bond who spirals into a deep funk of guilt and regret.  Unlike Vesper, Bond does not take his own life, though in order to make a full recovery a few books on, he will have to die and be reborn.

Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service show Bond digging an ever-deeper pit for himself until finally beginning the long climb toward daylight in You Only Live Twice.  However, he will only achieve full redemption after squaring off against Francisco Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun, while respecting all of the basic tenets of chivalrous conduct.  

The Eon team’s plan to adapt Thunderball for their first Bond film might strike us today as a symptom of insanity or the hubris of ignorance.  Trying to tackle an expensive logistical nightmare right out of the starting gate could have ended the series before it began.  Thunderball must have appealed to Broccoli and Saltzman not only because the book was hot off the presses, but because it tackled the trendy concern of nuclear proliferation.

Learning that the film rights to Thunderball were in dispute, the producers wisely picked Dr. No to get their feet wet, following up with the remaining titles from Fleming’s middle period, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger.  These choices represented Fleming hitting his stride, before embarking on his bold venture into a multi-part saga of tragedy and redemption.  

The team’s first three cinematic adaptations seemed to set the standard for what audiences would come to expect from a Bond film:  an outrageous plot devised by a colorful villain, scenic locales, a parade of beautiful women, and a hero grittily willing to wage war against Her Majesty’s enemies, so long as he’s permitted a few hedonistic perks along the way.

The liberties that were taken while adapting Fleming’s tales for the screen, and why the changes seemed necessary at the time, might deserve a closer look.

O, My Offence It Is...

I haven’t seen a ranking of James Bond novels lately, but you can easily find everything else Bond-related being ranked on a website or YouTube channel because of a convergence of anniversaries.

Last year was the 60th anniversary of the British premiere of Dr. No, the first film in the Bond series.  This year is the 70th anniversary of the publication of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, but also marks 60 years since the American premiere of Dr. No.  A Facebook post just reminded me that 40 summers ago we witnessed the one-two punch of Octopussy and Never Say Never Again.

Several content creators have seized this divisible-by-ten opportunity to take the measure of all 25 Bond films, sometimes even bumping the count up to 27 by including those so-called “unofficial” titles.  In this case I believe the term in quotes simply refers to films whose theatrical release enriched no one named Broccoli.  I would be more willing to sit through even Charles K. Feldman’s vaudevillian 007 pastiche than any of half a dozen titles I could name which bear the Eon imprint.

The idea of ranking the Bond films seems to presuppose the idea that they were all undertaken with a unified aim, that there is some golden standard which all of them aspired to reach, with some coming closer to the mark than others.  The Bond thrillers written by Fleming, at least, are often wildly different from one another.

From Russia With Love is a  twisted fairy tale.  Goldfinger veers close to madcap comedy.  Thunderball dips a toe into the waters of Greek tragedy.  The Spy Who Loved Me is a modern Gothic novel.  On Her Majesty’s Secret Service follows the blueprint for Arthurian Romance.  You Only Live Twice eases into Greek Myth by way of Middle-English poetry.

Even James Bond himself varies from book to book.  He tends to maintain the same likes and dislikes throughout the series, but his role in the story is subject to change.  We usually see the plot unfold from his point of view, but not always.  He even turns up surprisingly late in a couple of books.  He sometimes wades in over his head, makes blunders, gets frightened, needs rescuing.  On rare occasions he’s a complete swine, makes unforgivable choices, puts allies in peril, and winds up paying a terrible price for his conduct.

Of course, Fleming sometimes paid a price for venturing outside the boundaries of his readers’ expectations.  At least one critic took the author to task because he hadn’t managed to work any high-stakes gambling into The Spy Who Loved Me.  Trying something different was permissible, it just mustn’t be too different.

Fans of franchises have something in common with children who want a story read to them before bedtime.  They know when someone’s trying to slip in new material, and they don’t like it.  Connoisseurs of Bond films may permit a tad more leeway, but hard boundaries still remain.  Bond must at some point slip into a tux, Vodka martinis must be invoked, and we had better by God peer down a gun barrel somewhere towards the start of the proceedings - especially if it’s an anniversary year. 

On a personal level, 2023 marks the 60th year since I read my first Bond novel, Goldfinger, a book plucked from the Kansas Traveling Library by my Aunt Irene and handed to me, perhaps without realizing what it was.  A few months later I was served a second course of Fleming, the recently-published On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and discovered to my delight that the author had adapted the plot of a TV Western for the coda of his latest thriller, thus planting the seed for this website.  Six years and a college course in Medieval Literature later, I would amend my thinking on OHMSS to include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as the main source material, but with definite notes of a 1960 episode of The Tall Man, especially towards the end.

Happy anniversary to us all!  I may celebrate by comparing things, but I promise not to rank. 

The Eighties Drought

I hesitate to discuss Bond movies because everyone rates them by a different scale, and every actor who has ever essayed the part is somebody’s idea of perfection.  I’m sure there’s an octogenarian out there who believes the series slid into decline after Barry Nelson appeared as “Card Sense Jimmy Bond” in the live television production of Casino Royale. 

Terry Frost, who hosts "Terry Talks Movies," one of my favorite YouTube channels, recently rendered what I find a completely sensible verdict on Never Say Never Again, calling it one of the best Bond films of the 1980’s.

Terry, an Australian reviewer who seems to live in a video bunker amid towering stacks of various formats of visual media, stressed that NSNA is the only Bond film which is a remake, a fact that surely gives it an edge in the 80’s Bond sweepstakes.

Being a makeover of a film produced during the first decade of the series also means that it’s loosely based on one of author’s better stories, since the cream of the crop had been adapted by 1970.  Thunderball was considered the most cinematic of all, the book having been derived from an earlier screenplay called Longitude 78 West, written by Fleming with a pair of collaborators.  

Director Irvin Kershner equipped himself for the task, not just by studying the immediate source material, but picking his way through the whole series of published titles.  Kershner found creative ways of suggesting matters that are never addressed directly in the script, layering imagery the same way Fleming does in his novels.

For instance, we are meant to see Fatima Blush as the manifestation of a powerful huntress-goddess, entirely through visual clues: the fur and feathers of her costume, the classical statuary which the camera lingers on in her very first scene, even the impatient tapping of her heels, always eager to break into an unbridled dance of death (which they eventually will).

Often wittily written, impeccably cast, and elegantly directed, the film battled legal injunctions, budget woes and weather delays to drag itself across the finish line late in the year.  What survived the chaotic production ordeal resembles a solid rough-cut of a film that still needed one last pass in the edit room and scoring stage, when the money dried up.

Even while facing fewer obstacles, other Bond films of the decade fared little better.  The best of the Roger Moore outings, For Your Eyes Only, mixes two parts Alistair MacLean with a leftover splash of Fleming’s Live And Let Die to produce an acceptable aperitif, but hardly a main course.  At least someone had the good sense to cast Julian Glover as the villain.  

Taking over for Moore, Timothy Dalton makes a terrific entrance in The Living Daylights, and excels in some good scenes early on that carry faint echoes of From Russia With Love.  Though that cumbersome battle inside and outside an airborne cargo plane must have seemed like a brilliant idea on the ground, very little from the climactic sortie in the desert of Afghanistan has aged well.

Dalton had been considered for Octopussy, until the film seemed to be headed for a face-to-face showdown with NSNA, which would have tossed a new Bond into the fray against the original 007.  Broccoli flinched and kept Moore on board for another two films.

As Terry says, by 1983 “audiences were aching for a good Bond film,” and for many of us, Never Say Never Again, came close enough.  Happily, with a Bond who was no longer an amoral young stallion, the remake manages to replace Thunderball’s rampant misogyny with some old-fashioned romance.

Sixty years on, however, no one has dared to adapt Fleming’s actual novel, with its vivid sense of an outmatched Bond embroiled in Greek tragedy, a Bond who is a flawed hero, guilt-ridden by the end and soon to embark on a downward spiral.

Just as well.  Would anyone pay to see that film?  Maybe someday.

The Saintly Side of Bond

A man as good as his word when he claimed to be writing “fairy tales for adults,” Ian Fleming indeed wrote at least two books that are solid adaptations of tales which passed through the hands of the Brothers Grimm.  In these novels we find not just plot threads and characters from three children’s stories but unmistakable references to a pair of animated features from the Walt Disney Company.  

In addition, the last Bond thriller which Fleming saw through to publication is essentially a riff on a Middle English poem about a grieving husband who tracks down the King of the Fairies.  

As I said, the man was as good as his word.

So when Fleming also insistied that each of his Bond novels could be seen as some variation on the tale of St. George and the Dragon, should we accept the statement as a bit of self-deprecation, or try digging a little deeper?  Well, you can guess where I stand, spade in hand.

The cast of characters from the legend of St. George and the Dragon, a slithering predator running a protection racket, a winsome young lady in peril, and the gallant hero who’s just passing through the neighborhood in time to effect a rescue, do seem to be suitable fodder for an Ian Fleming James Bond thriller.  But is there more to the comparison?

Said to have been martyred in 303 CE, the man known to us as St. George was evidently a Roman soldier born to a Syrian mother and a Greek father.  Could the saint’s parentage have anything to do with Fleming’s description of his hero as “saturnine…dangerous,” definitely “un-English,” more at home perhaps in Malaya or Nairobi, “…a difficult man to cover up.  Particularly in England.”  It’s a picture of the hero that may have led Christopher Nolan to consider Timothy Dalton as the ideal casting choice to play Fleming’s Bond.  As my wife quickly pointed out, the same might be said about Sean Connery. 

Given the current predicament of the movie Bond, being dead and all, it may be comforting to examine the martyred Saint on the subject of mortality as well.  One of the persistent legends about St. George is that he was resurrected - not once but three times.  Old George (or Jorge) did eventually give up the ghost for good, but not until he was good and ready.

So, while we’re at it, let’s examine Bond’s resurrection tally, beginning with the book where Fleming held nothing back. 

Fleming’s hero dies first and quite unexpectedly at the end of From Russia With Love, undertaking his subsequent adventure with Dr. No only after being brought back to life thanks to some incredible serendipity.  You see, a specialist in exotic poisons happened to be attending a convention held at the very hotel where the floor rose up to smack Bond in the head. 

I suppose we could chalk this up as either a miraculous recovery or a resurrection, but since Fleming appears to have flipped a coin over whether to end the series with From Russia With Love, I’m going with resurrection.  The next one, off the coast of Japan, is a little less clear-cut.

This death is highly symbolic, coming near the end of You Only Live Twice, after Bond emerges from his battle with Ultimate Evil in the Land of the Dead, drops into the sea from his wounded weather balloon, and finds himself being pulled under the waves by the weight of his sodden kimono, with his memory wiped clean.  With Bond missing in action and presumed dead,  his obituary (quoted in part in No Time to Die) provides him with a heritage that aligns not only with the casting of the first actor to play the part on film, but, amusingly, with Fleming’s evaluation of the relationship between Bond and Quarrel back in 1957’s Dr. No, as that “of a Scots laird with his head stalker.”

Supposed-death number three occurs in the very last book, The Man With the Golden Gun, when the bullet fired from Scaramanga’s derringer rips through Bond’s abdomen carrying “enough poison to kill a horse,” just before Bond returns fire.  Alerted by Felix Leiter, a local policeman finds two apparently lifeless assailants.

Incredibly enough, the doctor treating Bond’s wounds at Sav-La-Mar Hospital spots the telltale signs of snake venom poisoning immediately - shades of Dr. Gregory House, MD (although House would have made two or three wrong guesses before pulling the patient through, ahead of the end credits).

Admittedly, Bond ended almost every major adventure rather the worse for wear or under a doctor’s care.  Yet, the three example cited feel different from the rest, perhaps because they come towards the end of their respective novels, and the circumstances are more dire than usual.  In each case we seem to be intended to believe that Bond is dead or dying.  

The first occurs on the final page of what Fleming thought might be the end of the series.  The second supposed death, coming nearly at the end of a book which is all about death and grief, immediately precedes a chapter containing Bond’s obituary.  The third was known to be the final and, perhaps unpolished, manuscript from Fleming’s golden typewriter.  Who knew how it might end?

Yanked back from the Great Beyond twice by miracles of medicine (plus almost unbelievable good luck) and once by the superhuman lifeguarding skills of Kissy Suzuki, Fleming’s Bond seems to emerge from a string of thrillers battered, bruised and scarred, but with at least one more life to live.  In addition to his many narrow escapes, he does seem to have literally cheated death three times.

It’s as if Fleming, preparing to hand off the series to others, tried to use up all of St. George’s resurrections himself.  If the hero survived his creator’s death, then when James Bond did return, he would be entirely on his own. 

007 Becomes a Movie Star

My first glimpse of Sean Connery in action as James Bond came late in 1964 when my parents took me to see Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie at the Ute Theater in Mankato.  

Previously I had viewed only still shots of the actor in magazine articles touting the latest Bond film - nothing at the cinema, so far as I remembered.  The two Bonds released thus far hadn’t ventured to my part of rural Kansas.  Only later would I realize that I had not only watched Connery act, but had heard him sing in Darby O’Gill and the Little People.  Though I did not know the actor’s name at the time I had noticed that the leading man’s appearance was much more striking than the dull drawings in the Sunday comics promised.

But I should get back to Marnie.  Sometimes belittled as an old-fashioned movie, Marnie might seem to have little appeal for a thirteen-year-old.  However, Bernard Herrmann’s operatic score, Albert Whitlock’s atmospheric matte paintings and Alfred Hitchcock’s nerve-tickling suspense sequences combined to hold me in their grip.  Hitchcock knew how to stage an entrance, and the title character of Marnie gets a doozy.  Moments later Connery has one that is slyly masterful, tipping off the audience that the movie will be about him at least as much as her.

Several months later I saw certain parts of the film playing out again in the same theater, this time calling itself Goldfinger.  Nothing old-fashioned here.  This version exploded off the screen like a blast of dynamite determined to separate every movie before it from every one yet to come.  Connery, however, looked just the same and played Bond exactly as he had played Mark Rutland, as a well-mannered predatory animal who patiently stalks his victim and waits for the right moment to pounce.

The association between the two films was no doubt heightened for me because I had previously read Fleming's Goldfinger and knew Miss Galore’s backstory.  As with Marnie Edgar, an incident from Pussy's childhood had given Goldfinger’s gorgeous associate an instinctive distrust of men and led her to a life of thievery.

As Mark Rutland in Marnie, Connery eventually forces himself on his catatonic bride, then decides to get to the bottom of her affliction through patient investigative work and psychodrama.  Eventually Marnie comes to understand the root of her problem and honestly wants to seek help, believing she could grow to love Mark.  It’s at least a hopeful ending  and the small crowd at the Ute seemed pleased as they left the theater.  

On the other hand, as Bond in Goldfinger, Connery maneuvers Miss Galore onto a bed of straw and forcefully “cures" her right on the spot.  

Hitchcock’s Marnie seems tender and enlightened by comparison.  However, it was Goldfinger, playing Pussy's conversion for laughs, that made all the money.

Watching Marnie today is a peek inside a Mad-Men world which the characters, especially the women, understand and dryly take for granted.  But it is also a look inside the development of the Bond series. Connery’s witty repartee with a flustered Sidney Strutt (Martin Gabel) could easily be a snippet culled from an early Bond film.

A few months after Marnie wrapped shooting, James Bond removed a waterproof covering to reveal the white dinner jacket underneath, lit a cigarette, glanced at his watch, and, as plastic explosives blew a storehouse full of heroin out of the supply chain, strolled into a nightclub as if he owned the place.  Fresh from being directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 007 seemed to hit his stride.