The James Bond Bedside Companion (15 page)

Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli received the Irving Thalberg Award at the 1982 Oscar ceremony. The proud producer stands alongside his current star, Roger Moore. (Reprinted by permission of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences.)

The thirteenth film in the United Artists/Eon Productions series,
Octopussy
,
was released in June by MGM/UA Entertainment Co. It was received extremely well by critics and audiences alike, and in the face of such tough competition as
Return of the Jedi
and
Superman III
,
was one of the highest grossing pictures that summer. Although Roger Moore once again announced that
Octopussy
would be his last appearance as 007, it was proclaimed in December, 1983 that he would play Bond a seventh time in
From a View to a Kill
(one of the short story titles from the FOR YOUR EYES ONLY anthology. The title has since been changed to
A View to a Kill.
The film is slated for a summer 1985 release.

Complementing the release of
Octopussy
,
a one-hour television special was produced in both England and the United States. "James Bond—The First 21 Years" assessed the two decades of James Bond on film. Several luminaries were interviewed, including Alexander Haig, Burt Reynolds, Alistair Cooke, and even President Ronald Reagan, and each expressed his opinion on the social significance of 007. Other events kept the renewed Bond mania from waning—a "Spy Con" was held in New York in July, bringing together secret agent fans from the surrounding areas. A new generation of 007 lovers had been born.

K
evin McClory and Jack Schwartzman had their share of problems with
Never Say
Never
Again
in the latter part of the spring and early summer—the Trustees of the Ian Fleming Estate (financed by Eon Productions/Danjaq/UA) brought an injunction against them to stop the release of the film, and fought them with appeal after appeal; but the court ruled in favor of the new Sean Connery Bond. The final appeal court verified McClory's rights in the original copyright assignment
Never Say Never Again
was released by Warner Brothers on October 7 in the U.S., and has grossed $25,000,000 to date (as per
Variety,
1/11/84). Encouraged by this success, McClory has been engaged to launch a series of James Bond films based on the copyrights of the "The Film Scripts" and the film rights to THUNDERBALL. Paradise Productions III made an announcement in February 1984 that the first film would be titled
SPECTRE.
Broccoli's reaction to this remains
to be seen at the time of writing.

If James Bond survives the eighties, he will have lived four decades. If the films continue to be made throughout the eighties, James Bond will be the only character in cinema history to span a series of films made over three decades. When Ian Fleming first sat down at Goldeneye and wrote those opening sentences of CASINO ROYALE, he had no idea what he was creating. The James Bond phenomenon has far outlived Fleming, and still shows no signs of dying. If asked today how it felt to be finally successful, Fleming would probably reply as he did in 1964 when an old Etonian friend asked him the question. "Oh," Fleming said with a sigh, "it's all been a tremendous lark."

Ian Fleming in a pensive moment in Jamaica, circa 1951. (Photo
by
Josephine Bryce.)

M
any people have attempted to describe Ian Fleming, the man. Those who knew him did so
individually;
his relationships were such that he was a man who appeared to be different things to different people. Ian was a complex person, a man of many moods and conflicts, but with an obvious passion for life and boyish zeal for adventure. His friend Ernest Cuneo describes him as "a knight out of phase; a knight errant searching for the lost Round Table and possibly the Holy Grail, and unable to reconcile himself that Camelot was gone and still less that it had probably never existed." One close friend remembers that it was his "innocence, geniality, merriment, wonderful sense of humor and of the comic; bashfulness under the scorching criticism poured on him—all that and his zest for extracting what cheer he could from the daily situation, and injecting
joie de vivre
into companions, that rendered him so attractive to be with. He was privately, almost secretly, generous minded, and there was nothing petty about him."

Former Attorney General Francis Biddle once said that the British were "an incredibly brave and incredibly boyish people," and Ian Fleming was both of these things. He carried himself with the Etonian air sometimes described as the "consciousness of effortless superiority," which gave him sophistication and nobility; but he also had an almost childlike sense of playfulness, and was willing to try anything once. This mixture of conflicting traits gave Ian Fleming a great deal of charisma. It has been said that he radiated so much energy that he "lit up the room."

Fleming was considered extremely good-looking. He had a fine, high forehead topped by a head of thick brown, almost black, slightly curly hair, which he parted on the left. He had a strong jawline and possessed striking blue eyes. His nose was broken. One close friend said that Fleming carried himself more like an American than an Englishman. In a typical stance, he would rest his weight on his right leg, left foot and shoulders slightly forward. He was very "smooth-muscled," and stood six feet tall, or perhaps a shade under. Ian wasn't a fancy dresser by any means. One might have
caught him in a short-sleeved white shirt and a
blue bowtie with white polka dots. Outdoors, he always carried a battered, soft black felt hat. For casual wear, Fleming chose shorts and cotton shirts, much like
James Bond. For swimming in his private cove at Goldeneye, Fleming chose to wear nothing.

Ian Fleming was a man of intense energy and curiosity, with a mind for detail and organization. "He wrote such succinct and trenchant Intelligence reports that I was somewhat scandalized later when he wanted to publish CASINO ROYALE under his own name!" says Clare Blanshard, who had known Fleming since the war. The author was obsessive about accuracy as well. He extracted ideas and fine points with the fervor of a sharp detective, scribbling down notes in a little pad which he always kept with him. He loved questioning people about their jobs, learning what they did, how they did it and why. He was the sort of person who wanted to know a little about everything. He longed to be "learned," like his elder brother, Peter.

Geoffrey Boothroyd, the arms expert who helped "re-arm" James Bond, once said that Fleming wanted to know the
whys
and the
hows
of something, but could care less about all the other details. He would become attached to an object simply because he liked the sound of its name. Boothroyd claimed that Fleming chose a Walther PPK for Bond to use because the name "rolled off the tongue nicely." And Fleming liked "double-barreled" words, like "Rolls-Royce," "Smith and Wesson," or "Aston Martin." This attraction to the sound of words is nowhere more evident than in the names Fleming gave his characters: Le Chiffre, Hugo Drax, Pussy Galore, Vesper Lynd, Auric Goldfinger, Vivienne Michel, Kissy Suzuki, Tiger Tanaka. . . the list goes on and on.

Fleming appreciated fine craftsmanship, especially in objects of value. He had a fascination for diamonds and how they were cut and polished. He was extremely interested in gold and its metallurgical qualities. Ian respected the
thought
behind all works of art, which underlies his appreciation for books and first editions. He had particular interest in schemes and plots and how they were devised and a passion for crime—not to commit one, but to learn how it was done. Gambling odds intrigued him, and he would pursue a system for beating the odds in almost every game he played. At the end of Chapter Five in a proof copy of MOONRAKER, in which Bond warns M that he is about to be dealt a "Yarborough," Fleming asterisked "Yarborough" and wrote an explanation in ink: "A hand containing no card higher than nine. The odds against it are 1,827 to 1." He was always collecting bits of information to plug into the Bond books.

That Ian Fleming was a lover of nature is certainly apparent in the novels. He liked pretty things, like shells, and took pleasure in collecting them. He loved the underwater world, and enjoyed exploring it in his private cove at Goldeneye. Outdoor sports went hand in hand with Fleming's penchant for nature, for he was an avid skier in his younger days and found mountain climbing especially invigorating. Ernest Cuneo tells a story of a time when he and Ian climbed the mountain next to Cuneo's farm. "Let's climb Goose Egg Mountain," Ian suggested one day, and Cuneo agreed. The two friends, both at this time in their forties, scrambled up the steep cliff. Cuneo remembers tiring halfway up and making an excuse to stop by pointing out the view. A little later, it was Ian who suggested stopping for a "view." "Aha!" Cuneo thought "Now
he's
tired." Cuneo had worked up a sweat, but Fleming appeared undaunted. After they had reached the top, Fleming proclaimed that it was harder to go down a mountain than to climb it because one's muscles had to fight the force of gravity. Cuneo refuted him, saying that the best way of descending Goose Egg Mountain was to "brake your speed by grabbing a pine bough as you hurtle past it." Fleming accepted the challenge and the two men raced down the cliff like "whirling dervishes," laughing like mad.

Al Hart, editor of the first six Bond books in America, remembers that Ian Fleming had the uncanny ability to make one feel witty. He laughed a lot, and found ways of turning everyday things into absurdities. Fleming's sense of humor was sharp and jocular. He enjoyed a good joke, a nuance, or a play on words. A favorite expression was "What fun!" (a telling clue to his personality). "The Bond books were amusing to him," Al Hart says. "We used to laugh about sections together." Once, while Hart was reading the manuscript of LIVE AND LET DIE, he couldn't help laughing at a certain line of dialogue. Near the end of the book, Bond and Solitaire are tied together, naked, about to be pulled behind Mr. Big's boat over a coral reef. It was over one hundred pages into the story and Bond
still
had not
made it to bed with Solitaire. Now, here they were, and she says, "I didn't want it to be like this." Hart called Fleming and asked, "Listen, do you want to leave this line like this?" And Fleming, roaring with laughter, said, "Yes! Leave it. . . leave it!!" When the name Pussy Galore first came up, Hart called Fleming again and said, "You can't use this name." And Fleming grandly stated, "Oh yes I will, and not only that, we're going to get away with it!"

Being a bachelor for over forty years tended to make Fleming a bit particular in his ways. Cuneo remembers, "His favorite drink was a martini, and the instructions were maddening. He didn't want the gin 'bruised,' and was painfully specific about both the vermouth and the gin and explained each step to the guy who was going to mix it as if it were a delicate brain operation. Several times I impatiently asked him why the hell he didn't go downstairs and mix it himself, but he ignored me as if he hadn't heard and continued right on with his instructions. Equally annoyingly, he always warmly congratulated the captain when he tasted it as if he had just completed a fleet maneuver at flank speed." While on their celebrated cross-country train ride, Fleming, in grandly pronouncing the oysters and steak as excellent, managed to inflect that slight touch of surprise that makes it patronizing.

Ian Fleming did not necessarily consider himself a gourmet, but did appreciate fine food. He was amused by the sounds of fancy menus and often had a good laugh concocting the meals James Bond ate. Naomi Burton remembers, "A good way of teasing Ian was to tell him we were going to take him out and make him eat one of James Bond's meals. Indeed, "Beef Brizzola" which appears in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER was a bastardization of a dish served at New York's "21" club. Fleming liked scrambled eggs for breakfast, simple and straightforward. In Jamaica, his favorite meal was ackee and sailfish (codfish), the national Jamaican dish. He also liked baked black crab and fish done in any form.

Fleming's particular "charming conceits" gave critics the excuse to accuse him of snobbery. One of these "charming conceits" was the way he carefully chose his friends and kept them all in separate compartments. He had his golfing friends, and he had his
Sunday Times
friends. He had his acquaintances with whom he shared adventure, and he had his companions with whom he shared his personal problems. None of these friends knew the same Ian Fleming. He would reveal different sides of himself to various people, but was intentionally inconsistent with what he chose to reveal to whom. Some might consider this compartmentalizing of relationships a form of snobbery; in truth, Fleming simply valued his privacy. He only associated with those he considered "fine people," and couldn't be bothered by those who bored him. Once, while Ian was in New York, a friend of his agent, Naomi Burton Stone, invited him to accompany her for drinks at the Stones' apartment "You must come and meet Naomi's husband," she told him, but Fleming was evasive. "No, no, I need to do some other things," he told her, making excuses. She persisted, and finally he said, "Oh, all right; but I can only stay for half an hour." He was afraid of getting caught in a situation in which he would have to feign interest in the conversation when he might be bored to tears. But as it turned out, Fleming took to Naomi's husband immediately (they had both served in Naval Intelligence during World War II), and the men talked for hours!