Royal Navy Commander James
Bond, CMG, RNVR, is a fictional character created by British
journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the protagonist of
the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games.
Fleming wrote twelve Bond novels and two short story collections
before his death, although the last two books, The Man with the
Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights, were published posthumously.
The
Bond character is a Secret Service agent, code number 007, residing
in London but active internationally. Bond was a composite character
who was based on a number of commandos whom Fleming knew during his
service in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II, to
whom Fleming added his own style and a number of his own tastes;
Bond's name was appropriated from American ornithologist James Bond.
Bond has a number of character traits which run throughout the books,
including an enjoyment of cars, a love of food and drink, and an
average intake of sixty custom-made cigarettes a day.
Since Fleming's death in
1964, there have been other authorised writers of Bond material,
including John Gardner, who wrote fourteen novels and two
novelizations and Raymond Benson, who wrote six novels, three
novelizations and three short stories. There have also been three
authors who wrote one book each, Kingsley Amis (writing as Robert
Markham), Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver. Additionally, Charlie
Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote
three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.
The fictional British
Secret Service agent has also been adapted for television, radio,
comic strip, and video game formats in addition to having been used
in the longest continually running and the second-highest grossing
film series to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean
Connery as Bond. As of 2013, there have been twenty-three films in
the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond Daniel Craig is the
sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two
independent productions of Bond films: Casino Royale (a 1967 spoof)
and Never Say Never Again (a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced
film, Thunderball).
The Bond films are renowned
for a number of features, including the musical accompaniment, with
the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several
occasions, and one win. Other important elements which run through
most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with
which he is supplied by Q Branch
During
World War II, Ian Fleming had mentioned to friends that he wanted to
write a spy novel. It was not until 1952, however, shortly before his
wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, that Fleming began
to write Casino Royale, to distract himself from his forthcoming
nuptials. Fleming started writing the book at his Goldeneye estate in
Jamaica in February 1952, typing out 2,000 words in the morning,
directly from his own experiences and imagination. He finished work
on the manuscript in just over a month. Describing the work as his
"dreadful oafish opus", Fleming showed it to an ex-girlfriend,
Clare Blanchard, who advised him not to publish it at all, but that
if he did so, it should be under another name. He didn't take her advice.
Fleming then showed the
manuscript to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read.
Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape,
who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the
recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established
travel writer. Fleming went on to write a total of twelve Bond novels
and two short story collections; he died in August 1964. The last two
books, The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living
Daylights were published posthumously.
Fleming
based his creation on a number of individuals he came across during
his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World
War, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret
agents and commando types I met during the war". Among those
types were his brother, Peter (right), whom Fleming worshipped and
who had been involved in behind the lines operations in Norway and
Greece during the war.
Aside
from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some
aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, a skiing
spy whom Fleming had met in Kitzbühel in the 1930s, Patrick
Dalzel-Job, who served with distinction in 30 AU during the war, and
Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale, station head of MI6 in Paris, who
wore cufflinks and handmade suits and was chauffeured around Paris in
a Rolls-Royce. Sidney Reilly who was an agent for Scotland Yard's
Special Branch and the British Secret Service Bureau. In 1918, Reilly
was employed by Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming as an operative for
MI1(c), an early designation for the MI6. Reilly's friend Sir Robert
Bruce Lockhart knew Fleming for many years and told him of Reilly's
espionage adventures; Fleming subsequently mentioned to a colleague
at The Sunday Times that he had created Bond after hearing about
Reilly. Another inspiration for the character of James Bond was
William Stephenson who was a Canadian spymaster, best known by his
code name, Intrepid; Stephenson was the head of the British Security
Coordination, an MI6 organisation based in New York. Regarding him,
Fleming wrote in The Sunday Times of 21 October 1962, that Bond was:
"a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing,
the man who became one of the great agents of the [Second World War]
is William Stephenson." Not least of Stephenson's contributions
to the war effort was the setting up by BSC (British Secret Service)
of Camp X in Whitby, Ontario, the first training school for
clandestine operations in Canada and North America. Some 2,000
British, Canadian and American covert operators were trained there
from 1941 to 1945, including students from ISO, OSS, Federal Bureau
of Investigation,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, United States Navy and Military
Intelligence, and the United States Office of War Information, among
them five future directors of what would become the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency. Camp X graduates operated in Europe (Spain,
Portugal, Italy and the Balkans) as well as in Africa, Australia,
India and the Pacific and may have included Ian Fleming future author
of the James Bond books. It has been said that the fictional
Goldfinger's raid on Fort Knox was inspired by a Stephenson plan
(never carried out) to steal $2,883,000,000 in Vichy French gold
reserves from the French Caribbean colony of Martinique.
Fleming took the name for
his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a
Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds
of the West Indies; Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy
of Bond's guide. Later Fleming would met the ornithologist and his
wife, he described them as, "A charming couple who are amused by
the whole joke." Felemming would add, "It struck me that
this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was
just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born". The
ornithologist was obliquely referred to in the film Die Another Day
with Pierce Brosnan's Bond picking up a copy of Birds of the West
Indies and posing as an ornithologist.
The
007 number assigned to James Bond may have been influenced by any
number of sources. In the films and novels, the 00 prefix indicates
Bond's discretionary 'licence to kill', in executing his duties.
Bond's number - 007 - comes from the English spy and polymath John
Dee, who would sign his letters to Elizabeth I with 00 and an
elongated 7, to signify they were for her eyes only. The number was
also assigned by Fleming in reference to one of British naval
intelligence's key achievements of World War I: the breaking of the
German diplomatic code. One of the German documents cracked and read
by the British was the Zimmermann Telegram, which was coded 0075, and
which was one of the factors that led the US entering the war.
Subsequently if material was graded 00 it meant it was highly
classified and, as journalist Ben Macintyre has pointed out, "to
anyone versed in intelligence history, 007 signified the highest
achievement of British military intelligence."
Fleming also endowed Bond
with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf
handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs and using the same brand of
toiletries. Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming's
own as was his behaviour, with Bond's love of golf and gambling
mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his
espionage career and all other aspects of his life as inspiration
when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances,
relatives and lovers throughout his books.
Fleming decided that Bond
should resemble both American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself and
in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather
of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless."
Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that
Bond is "certainly good-looking ... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael
in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much
the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and
the eyes were cold."
It was not until the
penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a
sense of family background. The book was the first to be written
after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Sean Connery's depiction
of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give
Bond both a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not
present in the previous stories. In a fictional obituary, purportedly
published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond,
from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from
the canton of Vaud, Switzerland.
Untitled
Created by Ian Fleming
First appearance:
Casino Royale, 1953 novel
Family:
Andrew Bond (father)
Monique Delacroix (mother)
Spouse:
Teresa di Vicenzo (widowed)
Children: James Suzuki Bond
(with Kissy Suzuki)
Relatives:
Charmian Bond (aunt)
Max Bond (uncle)
In
1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt his novel Casino Royale
into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.
The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as
"Card Sense" James 'Jimmy' Bond and Peter Lorre as Le
Chiffre. The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as
an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence",
while the character Felix Leiter, American in the novel, became
British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".
In 1956, the novel
Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob
Holness providing the voice of Bond. According to The Independent,
"listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as
he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".
In
1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories
into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of
takings from syndication. After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt
the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed. To aid the
Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to
create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The
illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked
too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to
give him a more masculine look. The first strip, Casino Royale was
published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958 and was written by
Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.
Most of the Bond novels and
short stories have since been adapted for illustration and several
comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published
through the years. Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book
adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was
published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology
series. It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as
part of its Showcase anthology series, in January 1963. This was the
first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy
for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being
reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of
the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones
and dialogue were changed for the American market). With the release
of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a
two-issue comic book adaptation of the film. When Octopussy was
released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying
comic; Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill,
although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used. New
Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards
through Marvel, Eclipse Comics and Dark Horse Comics.
The BBC adapted four of the
Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990, You Only Live Twice was
adapted into a 90 minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael
Jayston playing James Bond. On 24 May 2008, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an
adaptation of Dr. No. Actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain
Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day,
played James Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet. Following
the success of Dr. No, a second Bond story was adapted and on 3 April
2010, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Toby Stephens again
playing Bond. Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die
Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was
adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by
Martin Jarvis. In 2012, the novel From Russia, with Love was
dramatized for Radio 4; it featured a full cast starring Toby
Stephens as James Bond.
James Bond on Film
In
1962 Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and
American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, released the first
cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No, featuring Sean
Connery as 007. Connery starred in a further four films before
leaving the role after You Only Live Twice, which was taken up by
George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Lazenby left the
role after just one appearance and Connery was tempted back for his
last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.
In 1973, Roger Moore was
appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die and played Bond a
further six times over twelve years before being replaced by Timothy
Dalton for two films. After a six-year hiatus, during which a legal
wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films, Irish actor
Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in GoldenEye, released in 1995; he
remained in the role for a total of four films, before leaving in
2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role of Bond for Casino
Royale, which rebooted the series. The twenty-third Eon produced
film, Skyfall, was released on 26 October 2012. The series has
grossed just over $6 billion to date, making it the
second-highest-grossing film series (behind Harry Potter), and the
single most successful adjusted for inflation.
Cinematically,
Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the
release of Dr. No in 1962, with 22 secret agent films released in
1966 alone attempting to capitalise on its popularity and success.
The first parody was the 1964 film Carry on Spying showing the
villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind
(Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor). One of the
films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer
series, whose first film, The Ipcress File was released in 1965. The
eponymous hero of the series was what academic Jeremy Packer called
an "anti-Bond", or what Christoph Lindner calls "the
thinking man's Bond". The Palmer series were produced by Harry
Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond series,
including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John
Barry. The four "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin were
released between 1966 and 1969, the "Flint" series starring
James Coburn provided two films in 1966 and 1969, whilst The Man
from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films
released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular
culture. More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer
and comedian Mike Myers and other parodies such as the 2003 film
Johnny English have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.
Following the release of
the film Dr. No in 1962, the quote "Bond ... James Bond",
became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular
culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No
that the "signature introduction would become the most famous
and loved film line ever". In 2001 it was voted as the
"best-loved one-liner in cinema" by British cinema goers
and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema
history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years
Series. The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series also
recognised the character of James Bond himself in the film as the
third greatest film hero. He was also placed at number eleven on a
similar list by Empire. Premiere also listed Bond as the fifth
greatest movie character of all time.
Television also saw the
effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,
which was described as the "first network television
imitation" of Bond, largely because Fleming provided advice and
ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main
character the name Napoleon Solo. Other 1960s television imitations
of Bond included I Spy, and Get Smart.
By 2012, James Bond had
become such a symbol of the United Kingdom that the character, played
by Craig, appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London
Olympics as Queen Elizabeth II's escort.
James Bond Theme
The
"James Bond Theme" was written by Monty Norman and was
first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No,
although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of
controversy for many years. In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel
damages from the The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that
Barry was entirely responsible for the composition. The theme, as
written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another
Bond film composer, David Arnold, as "bebop-swing vibe coupled
with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an
instrument of rock 'n' roll ... it represented everything about the
character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark,
dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two
minutes." Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films and
had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the
Bond Theme.
A Bond film staple are the
theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known
popular singers. Several of the songs produced for the films have
been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul
McCartney's "Live and Let Die", Carly Simon's "Nobody
Does It Better", Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only"
and Adele's "Skyfall". Adele won the award at the 85th
Academy Awards. For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt
Bacharach's score included "The Look of Love", which was
nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.
007Guns,
Cars and Gagets
For
the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418 until
he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and
gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of
firearm for Bond, calling it "a lady's gun – and not a very
nice lady at that!" Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap
his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65mm and this exchange of arms made
it to Dr. No. Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin
triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by
SMERSH and other villains. In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer
in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M introduces
him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the
world". Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage
Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308
target rifle in "The Living Daylights". Other handguns used
by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and
a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.
The first Bond film, Dr.
No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the
Walther PPK, which the film Bond used in eighteen films. In Tomorrow
Never Dies and the two subsequent films, Bond's main weapon was the
Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.
In the early Bond stories
Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4½ Litre with an
Amherst Villiers supercharger. After Bond's car was written off by
Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental
Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series. During
Goldfinger, Bond was issued with an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a
homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond
returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.
The
Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston
Martin V8 Vantage, during the 1980s, the V12 Vanquish and DBS during
the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit; the BMW Z3, BMW 750iL and the
BMW Z8. He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other
vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus,
amongst others. Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston
Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger; it later featured in
Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale and
Skyfall. The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for
filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an
auction in the US for $2,090,000 to an unnamed European collector.
Fleming's novels and early
screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the
booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia with Love, although
this situation changed dramatically with the films. However, the
effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia
with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun,
through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.
For the film adaptations of
Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs
that ran through the series. Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets,
but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey
observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the
attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he
described as "a classic 007 product". The gadgets assumed a
higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success
encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied
to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an
accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in
the later films. Bond's gizmos move from the potential
representations of the future in the early films, through to the
brand-name obsessions of the later films. It is also noticeable that,
although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch,
including the Little Nellie autogyro, a jet pack and the exploding
attaché case, the villains are also well-equipped with
custom-made devices, including Scaramanga's golden gun, Rosa Klebb's
poison-tipped shoes, Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat and Blofeld's
communication and bacteriological warfare agents vanity case.
Bond Girl
A
Bond girl is a character (or the actress portraying a character) who
is a love interest of James Bond in a film, novel, or video game.
Bond girls occasionally have names that are double entendres or puns,
such as Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress pictured right) Pussy Galore,
Plenty O'Toole, Xenia Onatopp, or Holly Goodhead, and are considered
"ubiquitous symbols of glamour and sophistication."
There is no set rule on
what kind of person a Bond girl will be or what role she will play.
She may be an ally or an enemy of Bond, pivotal to the mission or
simply eye candy. There are female characters such as Judi Dench's M
and Miss Moneypenny, who are not romantic interests of Bond, and
hence not strictly Bond girls. However, M and Miss Moneypenny may be
considered special Bond girls in Skyfall, even though he is not
romantically involved with either of them, because M plays a pivotal
role in the plot and her emotional backstory with Bond is explored
and Moneypenny works with Bond in the field as previous Bond girls
had done.
The
inspiration for all of Fleming's Bond girls may be Muriel Wright
(pictured left), who, has a claim to be the origin of the species:
pliant and undemanding, beautiful but innocent, outdoorsy, physically
tough, implicitly vulnerable and uncomplaining, and then tragically
dead, before or soon after marriage. Wright was 26 and
"exceptionally beautiful" when she and Fleming met in 1935.
A talented rider, skier, and polo player, Wright was independently
wealthy and a model. She was slavishly devoted to Fleming despite his
repeated unfaithfulness until dying in an air raid in 1944,
devastating him, who called Wright "too good to be true".
Nearly
all of Ian Fleming's Bond novels and short stories include one or
more female characters who can be said to qualify as Bond girls, most
of whom have been adapted for the screen. While Fleming's Bond girls
have some individual traits (at least in their literary forms), they
also have a great many characteristics in common. One of these is
age: The typical Bond girl is in her early to mid-twenties, roughly
ten years younger than Bond, who seems to be perennially in his mid-thirties.
Bond's youngest sexual partner in the books is Mariko Ichiban, an
18-year-old masseuse in You Only Live Twice (played by Mie Hama in
the film, pictured below). The eldest Bond girls are Pussy Galore
(Honor Blackman pictured right), whom Bond speculates is in her early
30s, and 29-year-old Domino Vitali.
Bond
girls conform to a fairly well-defined standard of beauty. They
possess splendid figures and tend to dress in a slightly masculine,
assertive fashion, wear little jewellery, and that in a masculine
cut, wide leather belts, and square-toed leather shoes. There is some
variation in dress, though: Bond girls have made their initial
appearances in evening wear, in bra and panties and, on occasion,
naked. They often sport light though noticeable suntans (although a
few, such as Solitaire, Tatiana Romanova, and Pussy Galore, are not
only tanless but remarkably pale), and they generally use little or
no makeup and no nail polish, also wearing their nails short. Their
hair may be any colour and they typically wear it in a natural or
casual cut that falls heavily to their shoulders. Their features,
especially their eyes (usually blue) and mouths, are often widely
spaced. The first description of a Bond girl, Casino Royale's Vesper
Lynd, is almost a template for the typical dress as well as the
general appearance of later Bond girls; she sports nearly all of the
features discussed above. In contrast, Dominetta "Domino"
Vitali arguably departs to the greatest degree from the template,
dressing in white leather doeskin sandals, appearing more tanned,
sporting a soft Brigitte Bardot haircut, and giving no indication of
widely-spaced features. (The departure may be due to the unusual
circumstances behind the writing of the novel Thunderball, in which
Domino appears.) Even Domino, however, wears rather masculine jewellery.
The best-known
characteristic of Bond girls apart from their uniform beauty is their
pattern of sexually suggestive names (the most risqué and
famous being Pussy Galore). Names with less obvious meanings are
sometimes explained in the novels. While Solitaire's real name is
Simone Latrelle, she is known as Solitaire because she excludes men
from her life; Gala Brand, is named for her father's cruiser, HMS
Galatea; and Tiffany Case received her name from her father, who was
so angry that she was not a boy that he gave her mother a thousand
dollars and a compact from Tiffany's and then walked out on her.
Fleming's penchant for double-entendre names began with the first
Bond novel Casino Royale. Conjecture is widespread that the name of
the Bond girl in that novel, "Vesper Lynd," was intended to
be a pun on "West Berlin," signifying Vesper's divided
loyalties as a double agent under Soviet control. Several Bond girls,
however, have normal names (e.g. Tatiana Romanova, Mary Ann Russell,
Judy Havelock, Viv Michel, Tracy Bond [née Teresa Draco, aka
Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo]).
Most
Bond girls are apparently (and sometimes expressly) sexually
experienced by the time they meet Bond, although there is evidence
that Solitaire (Jane Seymour right) is a virgin. Quite often those
previous experiences have not been positive, and many Bond girls have
had sexual violence inflicted on them in the past which has caused
them to feel alienated from all men - until Bond comes along. This
dark theme is notably absent from the early films. Tiffany Case was gang-raped
as a teenager; Honey Ryder, too, was beaten and raped as a teenager
by a drunken acquaintance. Pussy Galore was subjected at age 12 to
incest, and rape, by her uncle. While there is no such clear-cut
trauma in Solitaire's early life, there are suggestions that she,
too, avoids men because of their unwanted sexual advances in her
past. Kissy Suzuki reports to Bond that during her brief career in
Hollywood, when she was 17, "They thought that because I am
Japanese I am some sort of an animal and that my body is for
everyone." The implication is often that these violent episodes
have turned the Bond girls in question against men, though upon
encountering Bond they overcome their earlier antipathy and sleep
with him not only willingly but eagerly. The cliché reaches
its most extreme (perhaps absurd) level in Goldfinger. In this novel
Pussy Galore is portrayed as a practising lesbian when she first
meets Bond, but at the end of the novel she sleeps with him. When, in
bed, he says to her, "They told me you only liked women,"
she replies, "I never met a man before."
In Fleming's novels, many
Bond girls have some sort of independent job or even career, often
one that was considered inappropriate for women in the 1950s. Vesper
Lynd, Gala Brand, Tatiana Romanova, Mary Ann Russell, and Mary
Goodnight are in intelligence or law-enforcement work. Those who are
criminals, such as Tiffany Case and Pussy Galore, tend to be
similarly independent-minded in how they approach their work, the
latter even running her own syndicate. Even those Bond girls who have
more conventional or glamorous jobs show themselves to be invested in
having an independent outlook on life. While the Bond
girls are clearly intended as sex objects, they are nevertheless
portrayed in the novels as having a degree of independence that the
Bond films, in contrast, tended to dispense with until nearly 1980.
Most of the novels focus on
one particular romance, as some of them do not begin until well into
the novel (Casino Royale is a good example). However, several
exceptions have been made: In Goldfinger, the Masterton sisters are
considered Bond girls (although Tilly is supposedly a lesbian), and
after their deaths, Pussy Galore (also supposedly a lesbian) becomes
the primary Bond girl. In Thunderball, Bond romances first Patricia
Fearing, then later Domino Vitali. In On Her Majesty's Secret
Service, Bond enters into a relationship and an eventual marriage
with Teresa 'Tracy' di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg left), and also sleeps
with Ruby Windsor, a patient he meets in Blofeld's hideout while
posing as a genealogist. In You Only Live Twice, Bond mainly has a
relationship with Kissy Suzuki, but also romances Mariko Ichiban, as
well as another a girl who is too insignificant for Fleming to give
her a name.
In
the Bond films, Ursula Andress as "Honey Ryder" in Dr. No
(1962), is often considered the quintessential Bond girl. In a
well-known scene, she rises out of the Caribbean Sea in a white
bikini. The scene is a classic moment in cinema and Bond history. The
famous Andress Bond Bikini sold at auction in 2001 for $59,755. In a
nod to the bikini worn by Andress, Halle Berry's Bond girl (right)
wears an orange bikini with a similar belted look in Die Another Day (2002).
In several of the Bond
films, the Bond girl is revealed, after her tryst with Bond, to be a
villainess. As of 2013 there have been only two films in which James
Bond falls in love with the Bond girl. The first was On Her Majesty's
Secret Service (1969), in which Countessa Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana
Rigg) marries Bond but is shot dead by Irma Bunt and Ernst Stavro
Blofeld at the story's end. (It was originally intended that she
would instead die at the beginning of Diamonds Are Forever (1971);
but that idea was dropped during the filming of On Her Majesty's
Secret Service when George Lazenby announced that he would not play
the James Bond role in future films.) The second was Vesper Lynd (Eva
Green) in Casino Royale (2006). Bond confesses his love to her and
resigns from MI6 so that they can have a normal life together. He
later learns that she had been a double agent working for his
enemies. The enemy organisation Quantum had kidnapped her former
lover and had been blackmailing her to secure her cooperation. She
ends up actually falling in love with Bond, but dies, as Quantum is
closing in on her.
With the exception of these
two doomed Bond girls, it is never explained why Bond's love interest
in one film is gone by the next, and is never mentioned or even
alluded to again. This is not always the case in the novels, which do
sometimes make references to the Bond girls who have appeared in
previous books. Tiffany Case and Honey Ryder are revealed to have
married other men (in From Russia With Love and The Man With the
Golden Gun respectively), and in Doctor No, Bond briefly wonders
about Solitaire. A unique case is Mary Goodnight, who appears in the
novels, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice as
Bond's secretary, before becoming a full-fledged Bond girl in The Man
With the Golden Gun.
The role of a Bond girl, as
it has evolved in the films, is typically a high-profile part that
can sometimes give a major boost to the career of unestablished
actresses, although there have been a number of Bond girls that were
well-established beforehand. For instance, Diana Rigg and Honor
Blackman were both cast as Bond girls after they had already become
stars in England for their roles in the television series, The
Avengers (in an unusual twist, an unknown Joanna Lumley played
"The English Girl" in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and
went on to play the lead in the television series The New Avengers).
In addition, Halle Berry won an Academy Award in 2002, the award was
presented to her while she was filming Die Another Day. Teri Hatcher
was already famous for her role as Lois Lane in the television series
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman before she was cast
in Tomorrow Never Dies. A few years after playing a Bond girl, she
became one of the most highly paid actresses on television, starring
in Desperate Housewives. Kim Basinger had perhaps the most successful
post-Bond career. After her break-out role in Never Say Never Again,
Basinger went on to win an Academy Award for her performance in L.A.
Confidential and to star in the blockbuster films Batman and 8 Mile.
At
one time it was said that appearing as a Bond girl would damage an
actress's career. Lois Chiles is often cited as a case in point, even
though her career did not suffer because of her portrayal of Holly
Goodhead, but rather because, after she lost her younger brother to Non-Hodgkin
Lymphoma, she decided to take a three-year break from acting, from
which her career never recovered. Notable exceptions to the so-called
"curse" (actresses who went on to have successful careers)
include Jane Seymour, Famke Janssen, Teri Hatcher, Halle Berry, Diana
Rigg, and Kim Basinger. Casting for the female lead in Casino Royale
was hindered by potential actresses' concerns about the effect that
playing the role might have on their careers. At that point, some
thought that the Bond series had become stale and would therefore be
a less desirable vehicle for young actresses. Nevertheless, the
up-and-coming actress Eva Green agreed to play the role of Vesper
Lynd, and showed those fears to be unfounded when she won BAFTA's
Rising Star Award for her performance.
Denise Richards (left) was
criticised as not being credible in the role of a nuclear scientist.
Her outfit comprising a tank top and shorts also met a similar
reaction. She was ranked as one of the worst Bond girls of all time
by Entertainment Weekly in 2008. Richards, proving she has a great
sense of humor, whould play a parody of herself on an episode of the
TV series 30 Rock (2012) and say, "And idiots can do anything we
put our minds to. I played a nuclear psychiatrist in a James Bonk movie."
The character of Sylvia
Trench is the only Bond girl character who recurs in a film. Dr. No
(1962) and From Russia with Love (1963). She was meant to be Bond's
regular girlfriend, but was dropped after her appearance in the
second film.
In the series of films,
five actresses have made reappearances as different Bond girls:
Martine Beswick and Nadja Regin both first appeared in From Russia
with Love, and then appeared in Thunderball and Goldfinger
respectively. Maud Adams played Andrea Anders in The Man with the
Golden Gun (1974) and the title character in Octopussy (1983); she
also is an extra in A View to a Kill (1985). Tsai Chin also appeared
in two small roles, first as the Chinese/British agent
"Ling" in You Only Live Twice and later as one of the poker
players, Madame Wu, in Casino Royale. Diane Hartford also appeared in
two small roles: Bond's pick-up dance partner at the Kiss Kiss Club
in Thunderball and as a card player in the Bahamas in Casino Royale.
If the "unofficial" James Bond films, Casino Royale and
Never Say Never Again, are included, several actresses have also been
a Bond girl more than once: Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962) and
Casino Royale (1967); Angela Scoular, in On Her Majesty's Secret
Service (1969) and Casino Royale (1967); Valerie Leon in The Spy Who
Loved Me (1977) and Never Say Never Again (1983).
AV
CLUB SLIDESHOW DEPARTMENT
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The
Bond character is a Secret Service agent, code number 007, residing
in London but active internationally. Bond was a composite character
who was based on a number of commandos whom Fleming knew during his
service in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II, to
whom Fleming added his own style and a number of his own tastes;
Bond's name was appropriated from American ornithologist James Bond.
Bond has a number of character traits which run throughout the books,
including an enjoyment of cars, a love of food and drink, and an
average intake of sixty custom-made cigarettes a day.
During
World War II, Ian Fleming had mentioned to friends that he wanted to
write a spy novel. It was not until 1952, however, shortly before his
wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, that Fleming began
to write Casino Royale, to distract himself from his forthcoming
nuptials. Fleming started writing the book at his Goldeneye estate in
Jamaica in February 1952, typing out 2,000 words in the morning,
directly from his own experiences and imagination. He finished work
on the manuscript in just over a month. Describing the work as his
"dreadful oafish opus", Fleming showed it to an ex-girlfriend,
Clare Blanchard, who advised him not to publish it at all, but that
if he did so, it should be under another name. He didn't take her advice.
Fleming
based his creation on a number of individuals he came across during
his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World
War, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret
agents and commando types I met during the war". Among those
types were his brother, Peter (right), whom Fleming worshipped and
who had been involved in behind the lines operations in Norway and
Greece during the war.
Investigation,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, United States Navy and Military
Intelligence, and the United States Office of War Information, among
them five future directors of what would become the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency. Camp X graduates operated in Europe (Spain,
Portugal, Italy and the Balkans) as well as in Africa, Australia,
India and the Pacific and may have included Ian Fleming future author
of the James Bond books. It has been said that the fictional
Goldfinger's raid on Fort Knox was inspired by a Stephenson plan
(never carried out) to steal $2,883,000,000 in Vichy French gold
reserves from the French Caribbean colony of Martinique.
The
007 number assigned to James Bond may have been influenced by any
number of sources. In the films and novels, the 00 prefix indicates
Bond's discretionary 'licence to kill', in executing his duties.
Bond's number - 007 - comes from the English spy and polymath John
Dee, who would sign his letters to Elizabeth I with 00 and an
elongated 7, to signify they were for her eyes only. The number was
also assigned by Fleming in reference to one of British naval
intelligence's key achievements of World War I: the breaking of the
German diplomatic code. One of the German documents cracked and read
by the British was the Zimmermann Telegram, which was coded 0075, and
which was one of the factors that led the US entering the war.
Subsequently if material was graded 00 it meant it was highly
classified and, as journalist Ben Macintyre has pointed out, "to
anyone versed in intelligence history, 007 signified the highest
achievement of British military intelligence."
Fleming's
own as was his behaviour, with Bond's love of golf and gambling
mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his
espionage career and all other aspects of his life as inspiration
when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances,
relatives and lovers throughout his books.
In
1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt his novel Casino Royale
into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.
The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as
"Card Sense" James 'Jimmy' Bond and Peter Lorre as Le
Chiffre. The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as
an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence",
while the character Felix Leiter, American in the novel, became
British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".
In
1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories
into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of
takings from syndication. After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt
the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed. To aid the
Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to
create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The
illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked
too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to
give him a more masculine look. The first strip, Casino Royale was
published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958 and was written by
Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.
In
1962 Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and
American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, released the first
cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No, featuring Sean
Connery as 007. Connery starred in a further four films before
leaving the role after You Only Live Twice, which was taken up by
George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Lazenby left the
role after just one appearance and Connery was tempted back for his
last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.
Cinematically,
Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the
release of Dr. No in 1962, with 22 secret agent films released in
1966 alone attempting to capitalise on its popularity and success.
The first parody was the 1964 film Carry on Spying showing the
villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind
(Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor). One of the
films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer
series, whose first film, The Ipcress File was released in 1965. The
eponymous hero of the series was what academic Jeremy Packer called
an "anti-Bond", or what Christoph Lindner calls "the
thinking man's Bond". The Palmer series were produced by Harry
Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond series,
including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John
Barry. The four "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin were
released between 1966 and 1969, the "Flint" series starring
James Coburn provided two films in 1966 and 1969, whilst The 
Man
from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films
released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular
culture. More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer
and comedian Mike Myers and other parodies such as the 2003 film
Johnny English have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.
For
the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418 until
he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and
gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of
firearm for Bond, calling it "a lady's gun – and not a very
nice lady at that!" Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap
his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65mm and this exchange of arms made
it to Dr. No. Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin
triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by
SMERSH and other villains. In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer
in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M introduces
him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the
world". Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage
Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308
target rifle in "The Living Daylights". Other handguns used
by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and
a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.
The
Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston
Martin V8 Vantage, during the 1980s, the V12 Vanquish and DBS during
the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit; the BMW Z3, BMW 750iL and the
BMW Z8. He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other
vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus,
amongst others. Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston
Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger; it later featured in
Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale and
Skyfall. The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for
filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an
auction in the US for $2,090,000 to an unnamed European collector.
A
Bond girl is a character (or the actress portraying a character) who
is a love interest of James Bond in a film, novel, or video game.
Bond girls occasionally have names that are double entendres or puns,
such as Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress pictured right) Pussy Galore,
Plenty O'Toole, Xenia Onatopp, or Holly Goodhead, and are considered
"ubiquitous symbols of glamour and sophistication."
The
inspiration for all of Fleming's Bond girls may be Muriel Wright
(pictured left), who, has a claim to be the origin of the species:
pliant and undemanding, beautiful but innocent, outdoorsy, physically
tough, implicitly vulnerable and uncomplaining, and then tragically
dead, before or soon after marriage. Wright was 26 and
"exceptionally beautiful" when she and Fleming met in 1935.
A talented rider, skier, and polo player, Wright was independently
wealthy and a model. She was slavishly devoted to Fleming despite his
repeated unfaithfulness until dying in an air raid in 1944,
devastating him, who called Wright "too good to be true".
Nearly
all of Ian Fleming's Bond novels and short stories include one or
more female characters who can be said to qualify as Bond girls, most
of whom have been adapted for the screen. While Fleming's Bond girls
have some individual traits (at least in their literary forms), they
also have a great many characteristics in common. One of these is
age: The typical Bond girl is in her early to mid-twenties, roughly
ten years younger than Bond, who seems to be perennially in his mid-thirties.
Bond's youngest sexual partner in the books is Mariko Ichiban, an
18-year-old masseuse in You Only Live Twice (played by Mie Hama in
the film, pictured below). The eldest Bond girls are Pussy Galore
(Honor Blackman pictured right), whom Bond speculates is in her early
30s, and 29-year-old Domino Vitali.
Bond
girls conform to a fairly well-defined standard of beauty. They
possess splendid figures and tend to dress in a slightly masculine,
assertive fashion, wear little jewellery, and that in a masculine
cut, wide leather belts, and square-toed leather shoes. There is some
variation in dress, though: Bond girls have made their initial
appearances in evening wear, in bra and panties and, on occasion,
naked. They often sport light though noticeable suntans (although a
few, such as Solitaire, Tatiana Romanova, and Pussy Galore, are not
only tanless but remarkably pale), and they generally use little or
no makeup and no nail polish, also wearing their nails short. Their
hair may be any colour and they typically wear it in a natural or
casual cut that falls heavily to their shoulders. Their features,
especially their eyes (usually blue) and mouths, are often widely
spaced. The first description of a Bond girl, Casino Royale's Vesper
Lynd, is almost a template for the typical dress as well as the
general appearance of later Bond girls; she sports nearly all of the
features discussed above. In contrast, Dominetta "Domino"
Vitali arguably departs to the greatest degree from the template,
dressing in white leather doeskin sandals, appearing more tanned,
sporting a soft Brigitte Bardot haircut, and giving no indication of
widely-spaced features. (The departure may be due to the unusual
circumstances behind the writing of the novel Thunderball, in which
Domino appears.) Even Domino, however, wears rather masculine jewellery.
Most
Bond girls are apparently (and sometimes expressly) sexually
experienced by the time they meet Bond, although there is evidence
that Solitaire (Jane Seymour right) is a virgin. Quite often those
previous experiences have not been positive, and many Bond girls have
had sexual violence inflicted on them in the past which has caused
them to feel alienated from all men - until Bond comes along. This
dark theme is notably absent from the early films. Tiffany Case was gang-raped
as a teenager; Honey Ryder, too, was beaten and raped as a teenager
by a drunken acquaintance. Pussy Galore was subjected at age 12 to
incest, and rape, by her uncle. While there is no such clear-cut
trauma in Solitaire's early life, there are suggestions that she,
too, avoids men because of their unwanted sexual advances in her
past. Kissy Suzuki reports to Bond that during her brief career in
Hollywood, when she was 17, "They thought that because I am
Japanese I am some sort of an animal and that my body is for
everyone." The implication is often that these violent episodes
have turned the Bond girls in question against men, though upon
encountering Bond they overcome their earlier antipathy and sleep
with him not only willingly but eagerly. The cliché reaches
its most extreme (perhaps absurd) level in Goldfinger. In this novel
Pussy Galore is portrayed as a practising lesbian when she first
meets Bond, but at the end of the novel she sleeps with him. When, in
bed, he says to her, "They told me you only liked women,"
she replies, "I never met a man before."
Bond
girls are clearly intended as sex objects, they are nevertheless
portrayed in the novels as having a degree of independence that the
Bond films, in contrast, tended to dispense with until nearly 1980.
In
the Bond films, Ursula Andress as "Honey Ryder" in Dr. No
(1962), is often considered the quintessential Bond girl. In a
well-known scene, she rises out of the Caribbean Sea in a white
bikini. The scene is a classic moment in cinema and Bond history. The
famous Andress Bond Bikini sold at auction in 2001 for $59,755. In a
nod to the bikini worn by Andress, Halle Berry's Bond girl (right)
wears an orange bikini with a similar belted look in Die Another Day (2002).
At
one time it was said that appearing as a Bond girl would damage an
actress's career. Lois Chiles is often cited as a case in point, even
though her career did not suffer because of her portrayal of Holly
Goodhead, but rather because, after she lost her younger brother to Non-Hodgkin
Lymphoma, she decided to take a three-year break from acting, from
which her career never recovered. Notable exceptions to the so-called
"curse" (actresses who went on to have successful careers)
include Jane Seymour, Famke Janssen, Teri Hatcher, Halle Berry, Diana
Rigg, and Kim Basinger. Casting for the female lead in Casino Royale
was hindered by potential actresses' concerns about the effect that
playing the role might have on their careers. At that point, some
thought that the Bond series had become stale and would therefore be
a less desirable vehicle for young actresses. Nevertheless, the
up-and-coming actress Eva Green agreed to play the role of Vesper
Lynd, and showed those fears to be unfounded when she won BAFTA's
Rising Star Award for her performance.
