A rchive Date
[ 18-03-2005 ]
Category
[ Art & Literature ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/macadam.html
Bond ... James Bond
Ian Fleming's most famous creation has spawned an industry worth billions - not bad for a secret agent named in jest after a noted ornithologist
By PAT MacADAM - For the Ottawa Sun
October 21, 2001
James Bond turns 80 in December. Will a grateful Albion light bonfires along the coasts to salute the man who kept the sceptred isle from SMERSH and SPECTRE? Will Buck House announce a knighthood in New Year's Honours?
Nineteen Bond films have earned $3 billion US. The skimpy white bikini Ursula Andress wore playing Honey Ryder in the 1962 film, Dr. No, was auctioned at Christie's for #41,125 to Planet Hollywood. Bond was not on the other end of a telephone when Honey's nicies were knocked down. The 1965 Aston Martin Pierce Brosnan drove in Goldeneye sold for #157,750. England's Beaulieu National Motor Museum owns seven movie Bondmobiles.
When Bond was 17 in 1938 he joined the British Secret Service. Ian Fleming introduced him to the world in Casino Royale in April 1953. Code-named 007, he was licensed to kill by Her Majesty's government. London publisher, Jonathan Cape, printed 4,750 copies.
Today a first edition of Casino Royale is worth $3,500 US - someone in the U.S. is asking $12,000 US for one. A copy signed by Fleming sells for $7,500 US. Someone in the U.K. has one which includes Fleming's signature, the signature of Lord Cadogan, the original owner, and correspondence (one letter) between Cadogan and Fleming. The asking price is #17,500. Most first editions of his other novels are worth $800 US and up.
For the sake of comparison, Sotheran's, an antiquarian book shop on Sackville St., Piccadilly, sells Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens first editions for under $200 US. (Sotheran's asking price for a first-edition Casino Royale - when one comes available - is $3,000 US, $7,500 US for one signed by Fleming.) First-edition Bonds sold originally for $7.95 at W.H. Smith, Sparks St.
40 MILLION COPIES
Fleming's royalty cheque for Casino Royale was #218, less than $500. Casino Royale was reprinted five times in hardcover. Fleming went on to write 12 more Bond novels before his death in 1964 at 56. His books have sold more than 40 million copies and have been translated in 18 languages.
Fleming could write a Bond book in eight weeks. He wrote one a year for 13 years.
After his death, American author John Gardner contracted with Fleming's literary executors to carry on 007 adventures. Gardner has written 10 "Bonds." Although Fleming wrote 13 Bonds, the movie industry produced 19 films and a 20th is under way.
Thunderball was first filmed in l965 with Sean Connery as 007 and remade in 1983 as Never Say Never Again with Connery making a comeback after a 12-year absence.
Bond films have been launch pads for film careers for Bond girls Jane Seymour, Kim Basinger, Honor Blackman, Barbara Bach, Ursula Andress, Shirley Eaton, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams, Diana Rigg, Claudine Auger and Jill St. John. The films also provided steady screen work for a quarter century for regulars Lois Maxwell ("Moneypenny"), Bernard Lee ("M") and the late Desmond Llewelyn ("Q").
Llewelyn appeared in 17 of 19 Bond films, making his debut in the second in the series, From Russia, With Love; he was written out of Live And Let Die because the producers wanted to get away from gadgetry.
The films have been screen vehicles for the music and songs of Burt Bacharach, Shirley Bassey, Sheena Easton, Tom Jones and Sheryl Crowe.
Six actors have played Bond: David Niven, George Lazenby, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.
There is a brisk trade in Bond look-alikes for hire for shopping plaza openings and trade shows. One London agency has on its books two Sean Connery look-alikes, one "Jaws," one "Oddjob," a Pierce Brosnan and a Roger Moore.
Who was the role model for 007? Was it someone Fleming met when he served in Naval Intelligence during World War II, at Canadian spy school, Camp "X" near Whitby or during his years as a Fleet Street journalist? Did Fleming invent the secret agent he wished he had been?
It is widely accepted Fleming chose the name James Bond as a joke. The real-life James Bond was an ornithologist, author of Birds of The West Indies and far removed from real life spies and spy fiction.
The head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, until recently, was known only as "C." When Fleming began his Bond books it was punishable under the Official Secrets Act to mention "C" in print or even to suggest SIS existed. In 1932, Sir Compton Mackenzie was prosecuted because he wrote about "the mysterious consonant by which the Chief of the Secret Service was known."
And, so, "C" became Fleming's "M."
Vera Atkins, the woman generally accepted as the model for Fleming's "Moneypenny" passed way in Hastings, England, in June 1999, at age 92. She was born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Romania and studied at the Sorbonne and in Lausanne. When war broke out, she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as principal assistant to Col. Maurice Buckmaster, generally thought to be the model for "M."
Atkins recruited and trained 400 Allied agents who were parachuted into occupied Europe. After the war, 118 were unaccounted for. She traced 117: All were dead. She then personally tracked down their Nazi killers and saw them brought to justice at war crime trials.
"Moneypenny" was unmarried and had no surviving relatives.
Many of Fleming's old friends from Eton turned up in his stories. Ivor Bryce appeared in Dr. No and Live And Let Die. Ernest Cuneo was a New York cab driver in one book and a visitor to the Saratoga Springs mud-bath in Diamonds Are Forever.
John Fox-Strangways lent his name to SIS's head of station in Jamaica. Albert Whiting, the golf pro at Fleming's Royal Sandwich club, appeared in Goldfinger as Albert Blackling.
Allen Dulles, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, monitored Fleming's books carefully. Dulles was especially interested in 007's hi-tech spy gadgets - homing devices, weaponry, attache cases containing concealed gas cartridges, 50 rounds of .25-calibre ammo, throwing knives and belts of gold sovereigns.
Fleming was a dinner guest of the Kennedys in Washington shortly after JFK won the Democratic presidential nomination. When he was introduced to Fleming they shook hands; Kennedy studied him for a few seconds and said: "James Bond!"
Other guests at the dinner on "N" St. were columnist Stewart Alsop, painter William Walton, CIA agent John Bross and Mrs. Marion Leiter. Felix Leiter crops up in Bond novels as 007's CIA pal.
Kennedy was very much impressed with the urbane and witty Englishman. Fleming had a new fan.
UNKNOWN NOVELIST
In 1961, when Kennedy was in the White House, he gave the unknown British spy novelist an enormous leg-up. In a March 1961 article in Life journalist Hugh Sidey published an authorized list of the president's 10 favourite books. Fleming's From Russia, With Love was on the list behind such classics as Lord David Cecil's Biography of Lord Melbourne, Peter Quennell's Byron In Italy, Winston Churchill's Life of Marlborough and John Buchan's Montrose.
When it became public knowledge that Fleming was one of the president's favourite authors, Bond books flew off bookstore shelves.
Bond has a fictitious London address on Royal Ave. between King's Rd. and Chelsea Royal Hospital - yards from the Sloane Square tube station. Unlike Sherlock Holmes' digs on Baker St., there is no street number for 007.
The Bond industry has spawned fan clubs with 3,000 members in 40 countries. The flagship club in England produces Double-O-Seven, a slick quarterly magazine.
Bond movies are "spoofs," totally unlike the "straight" spy stories Fleming wrote. But they are lots of fun and Fleming would probably be first to say so. Screen writers have taken extreme liberties. The Goldfinger movie has only four lines of script from the book. It probably would not have mattered to Fleming. In a letter to American detective story author Raymond Chandler he wrote: "My books are straight pillow fantasies of bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety"
Money was Fleming's main concern. He had a home in England and a vacation retreat - Goldeneye - in Jamaica to keep up plus a wife with very expensive habits.
Fleming said: "God knows what even successful authors live on unless the films take a book. My royalties will barely keep Annie in asparagus over the coronation."
INVENTED STORY
How did Fleming come up with the code name 007? He said he took it from a zip code for the Georgetown section of Washington where many CIA "spooks" lived - 20007. His biographer, Donald McCormick, says this is highly unlikely and that Fleming probably invented the story for publicity in the U.S.
Fleming very cleverly pitched 007's urbane lifestyle to the "wannabes" who lived Bond's life in their daydreams - pre-war Wolfschmidt Vodka from Riga, vintage Krug champagne, Beluga caviar, Morland cigarettes with triple gold bands. Rolex watches, Floris bath essence and Guerlain soaps.
McCormick wrote: "Britain was just coming out of long years of food rationing, shortages of all kinds of desirable commodities and, subconsciously, many people yearned to be introduced to the things they had either missed or luxuries they had never heard of. This sense of luxury is what appealed to Fleming's readership and, shrewd psychologist that he was, those were the people for whom he catered."
If you are strolling along London's Royal Ave. and spot a 1954 Continental Bentley with an "R" type chassis, 13-40 back-axle ratio, Arnott supercharger with magnetic clutch, body by Mulliner, battleship grey with black morocco upholstery and twin two-inch exhausts, it is Bond's - parked outside his flat.
He didn't drive an Aston Martin - only in the movies.
Pat MacAdam's column runs Sundays. He can be emailed at eyeopener@home.com]
|