The Devious Imp

According to the movie’s theme song, Goldfinger is about the man with the Midas Touch.  Understanding something about Fleming’s method, we're tempted to see the book as the Midas myth turned on its head.

Midas renounces his power when the mere act of hugging his daughter turns her into a lifeless statue, while Mr. Goldfinger will only embrace a woman after she’s been transformed into his glistening trophy.  

But Fleming seems to tip us off that he’s up to something deeper, darker, and sillier.Promised a million pounds in gold for his clerical services, 007 cheekily asks a wee man with flaming red hair, 

Later, when Goldfinger reveals his plan to put an entire town to sleep, his associate, Miss Galore, inquires, “What was that fairy tale?”  Of course the one she’s referring to is “Sleeping of Beauty.”  Bringing up a fairy tale already adapted only two books back, might be Fleming’s way of informing readers that they’ve just found themselves inside another one - another one in which a spinning wheel plays a major role.

We’re told that spinning wheels in literature can be symbols of life’s cycles, especially a woman’s life, since the wheel was a daughter’s domain.  If she stayed at the family wheel past the normal age for marriage, she became a “spinster.”  Another term arising from textile work was “kink.”  Stubborn fiber or hair that refused to remain straight was termed “kinky.”  Just as Fleming was about to write Goldfinger, the word started being applied to human predilections which seemed to veer from the mainstream.

We began to learn psychological explanations for aberrant behavior from popular books and films.  Psychologists explained that what happens to us during those early spins of the wheel can put a kink in our fiber.  For instance, a childhood incident with an overattentive uncle causes Miss Galore to prefer the company of sister acrobats and cat burglars. 

In 1959 her full name landed with such a resounding slap that readers barely noticed all the other playful names provided to Mr. Goldfinger’s associates:  Jack Strap, Billy “The Grinner” Ring,  The Spangled Mob,  Mr. Solo, Oddjob.  And of course, given his proclivities, perhaps Mr. Goldfinger’s own name was meant to raise an eyebrow.

What do we know about Auric Goldfinger?

He’s supposed to be an Englishman who emigrated from eastern Europe.  He also seems to have stepped straight out of a fairy tale.  It’s a common fairy tale with many points of origin and called by many names.  

The most familiar?  You’ll never guess.  And that’s a clue.  

He’s an imp with a specialized skill for spinning all endeavors into gold - a thousand fine.  He can deliver all the gold you could want, but you have to do something for him in return, and the price can be dear.  It might not have been deliberate, but Fleming must have been pleased to note that there are fifteen letters in “Auric Goldfinger,” just the same number as “Rumpelstiltskin."

The burly film actor Gert Frobe makes the part so much his own, we forget that despite having a large, perfectly round head, Fleming’s Goldfinger is barely five feet tall.  That is two inches outside the dwarfism spectrum.  He’s what the brothers Grimm termed “manikin,” or “little man.”  Their gold-spinning manikin is often depicted with flaming red hair, like Goldfinger.  He’s a trickster, like Goldfinger, who loves to play games and cheats at all of them.

Goldfinger is also a b.s. artist whose words seem to spin an enchantment, putting listeners under the ether like a rapt audience at a timeshare seminar.  Even as she struggles to name the fairy tale alluded to in Goldfinger's presentation, “Miss Galore's eyes were shining with the vision."  Almost everyone succumbs, except that straight-arrow Bond, whose vanilla-flavored manliness seems to make him somehow immune, and ultimately holds the key to breaking Goldfinger’s golden spell.

In the movie, Sean Connery seems to be auditioning for the part of the heroine’s randy uncle rather than her tender rescuer, subjecting her to forcible conversion therapy on a stud farm.  Fleming make his point by subtler means.  In the book, Bond manages to put the kibosh on the whole fantastic scheme because he’s the only passenger on Goldfinger’s flight who lifts a toilet seat.

Flying an earlier reconnaissance mission, Goldfinger bluffs his way out of trouble by pretending to scout locations for a film which will star Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor.  Fleming did give considerable thought to turning his books into movies, and though a bit mature for the part, Cary Grant seemed a natural choice for Bond.  

Goldfinger was published mere months before the premiere of Hitchcock's North By Northwest, which some film buffs consider a blueprint for the Bond movies.  While actress Honor Blackman would perform the honors superbly in the film adaptation of Goldfinger, Fleming wrote his heroine as a Southern brunette with violet eyes.  As Fleming put the finishing touches on his manuscript for Goldfinger, Miss Taylor was making headlines by playing another Southern cat, “Maggie" in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The fact that the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” has no moral, no life-lesson, and makes very little sense, may be part of the reason Goldfinger is one of Fleming’s most freewheeling thrillers.  We have no idea at any point what might happen next, or which part of Mr. Goldfinger’s fractured personality will take center stage.  One minute Goldfinger is threatening to split Bond in two, the next he’s offering him a million pounds in gold for his middle-management services.  As befits the book’s time period, Miss Masterton will be paid half as much for assisting him.  

Like every other entry in the series, this one also seems to be free of any ambition to be good for us.  Yet there is something cozily familiar about most of them, as if we may have heard a simpler version read to us as children.  That sense of instant familiarity may be part of what kept readers coming back for more.

Both Bond in Goldfinger and the miller’s daughter in the fairy tale are helpless prisoners for much of the story.  With the aid of the devious gold-spinning imp, the girl in the fairy tale becomes queen.  However, instead of handing over the promised payment of her first-born child, she dispatches an agent on a fact-finding mission.  The spy turns up nothing on his travels until he ventures deep into the woods one night and overhears the proud manikin blurt out a secret name.  Sounds like something out of a movie.  You know, that movie. 

In his second book based on a fairy tale that features a spinning wheel, Fleming even manages to work one into the narrative.  An ominously noisy model made of steel with nasty, serrated teeth, it would be traded for a laser beam in the film.  At the end of his fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin is so enraged at being bested, that he tears himself in half.  But if you’re as rich as Auric Goldfinger, why not vent your rage by shearing your opponent in half?

A greedy, conniving, boastful imp seemed to fit nicely into Fleming’s growing gallery of villains.  In his next novel he would begin crafting his ideal adversary, a shapeshifting Bond baddy for all time.

*For more about Goldfinger see "Looking Under the Helmut” and "Once More Into the Vault"

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