The Man With the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

Fleming began writing The Man With the Golden Gun in the same month that principle filming began on Goldfinger. Exploring just how much the Goldfinger movie inspired the Golden Gun novel would make a fascinating research paper, but I'm not going to do it. I don't need to quantify the influence in order to know that Fleming's writing was affected by the Bond films in general. Putting aside Ursula Andress' appearance in the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as soon as the movies started coming out Fleming immediately started tweaking his Bond. The literary character not only became a Scot like Sean Connery, but a notorious public figure whose life could be read about in the newspaper and speculated upon. Though Fleming died before The Man With the Golden Gun was completely polished, the novel suggests that the book series was going to continue to read more and more like the films.

That's not a good thing. I started writing about the Bond novels with the theory that Bond actually grows as a character over the course of the series. And that's been born out. It's been a great and interesting trip watching the selfish, sullen spy take more and more interest in the people around him. That comes to a head in You Only Live Twice, which would've made a perfect ending to the series if Bond had more say about his fate at the end of that book. Fleming had a wonderful opportunity to wrap up the series with Bond's making a conscious choice to either continue in the Secret Service or stay with Kissy on the island. Either decision would have made a powerful statement about Bond's character and contrasted beautifully with the Bond of Casino Royale. But instead of Kissy's encouraging and supporting Bond in determining what kind of life he wanted, Fleming had her deceive Bond, raising his curiosity and propelling him into another adventure. That's great for the continued potential financial success of the series, but not for its artistic achievement. Fleming gave up a great ending in order to keep the series going.

Not that The Man With the Golden Gun is a bad book. The first chapters resolve the cliffhanger from You Only Live Twice in a really tense and exciting way. From there, the story goes in a direction that's reminiscent of Bond's early adventures, especially Dr. No. Bond is supposed to stop an assassin named Francisco Scaramanga who's working for Cuba and helping Soviet interests in the Caribbean. Bond finds Scaramanga in Jamaica and that's where the rest of the story takes place. While there, Bond does a lot of recollecting about his previous missions there. We learn that he lost touch with Honey Rider, but that last he'd heard she was married to a doctor from Philadelphia and had a couple of kids.

Unfortunately, Scaramanga isn't a great villain. He's really just a glorified henchman. But he's still plenty dangerous and Fleming does a nice job keeping Bond in danger. Fleming's always made Bond squeamish about killing in cold blood (though Golden Gun makes it clear that that's just something Bond finds extremely distasteful as opposed to something he believes is objectively immoral). Because of that, Bond chooses not to assassinate Scaramanga when he has the chance, but decides to go undercover as Scaramanga's personal assistant. It's rooted in Bond's established character, so it sort of works, but it also smacks loudly of dragging out a very thin plot. Even so, Fleming is able to create tense moments all throughout and Golden Gun is a fun, adventurous read.

That's faint praise though, especially compared with how epic the rest of Fleming's later novels are. Instead of building on those, he just seems interested in writing a passable adventure for future adaptation into film. Bond finds Scaramanga not through serious investigation, but purely by luck. His relationship with Mary Goodnight - no longer the admin for the Double-O section and recently assigned to Jamaica - is especially flirty and Connery-esque. Bond even pokes fun at Q-Branch like Connery does and a couple of things feel lifted right out of Goldfinger in particular, starting with the title character's gold-covered revolver. Bond also uses a hollow safety razor as a hiding place for spy stuff and there's a scene where the bad guy murders a squeamish ally who wants out of the caper.

I have such mixed feeling about The Man With the Golden Gun. It's simultaneously a solid little entry in the series and a horrible disappointment. As the final book in Fleming's series, it sucks and I'd prefer if it didn't exist. But as the start of something different - a new chapter in Bond's life - I kind of dig it and wish Fleming had been given more time to convince me he was headed in a worthwhile direction.

Goldfinger (1964) | Music

For Goldfinger's title sequence, designer Robert Brownjohn went back to the same well he'd pulled from in From Russia With Love. He got more creative though and instead of just projecting the credits over a woman's body, he projected images from the film with the credits running alongside. That makes the credits easier to read, but also gave Brownjohn more to play with in terms of the images. Drawing inspiration from what happens to Jill Masterson in the movie, Brownjohn painted model Margaret Nolan (who also plays Dink) gold and made fun choices about what images he projected where. At one point he superimposes Oddjob's face over hers, for example. Later, he has the Aston Martin's license plate replace her mouth. It was the most fun and creative sequence so far and it ties in well with the theme of the movie, even if it does feel a bit easy and on-the-nose to just use shots right out of the film.

For the title song, composer John Barry finally had complete control. He'd created the Bond Theme in Dr. No, written the entire score in From Russia With Love, but with Goldfinger he also got to write the music for the theme song. The lyrics were by the popular songwriting team of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse (who would go on to also write the lyrics for the theme to You Only Live Twice and the songs for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). Newley and Bricusse teased Barry about the melody for "Goldfinger" and its similarity to Henry Mancini's "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. They're not wrong about the opening bars, but for the most part it's a decent, versatile melody. It's a bit light and airy for my taste though, even with the heavy brass in the recording.

Maybe because of Barry's involvement with the "Goldfinger" song, the Bond Theme gets a lot less play in Goldfinger than it had in the first two movies. We hear it during the teaser when Bond's infiltrating the heroin refinery, then again when he introduces himself to Jill Masterson, but the third time isn't until Felix is tailing Oddjob and Solo. And even then, the Bond Theme quickly morphs into the Goldfinger Theme. There's something meta going on there, with the hero's giving way to his much more interesting villain. As cool and suave as Bond still is, he's also becoming more goofy in this one and the real star of the show is the title character. Like I said earlier in the week, I'm cool with that in this movie, but it's too bad that it inspired so many of the later, less inventive films.

To sing the title song, Barry hired pop singer Shirley Bassey. He'd conducted her orchestra when she'd toured the year before and they were apparently a couple as well. Nepotism aside though, she's got a fantastic voice and makes the song work in spite of its simple, and (frankly) silly lyrics.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
2. Dr No
3. Goldfinger
4. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)
5. TBD
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. Dr No
2. Goldfinger
3. From Russia With Love
4. TBD
5. TBD
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Goldfinger (1964) | Villains

Gert Fröbe may have been dubbed for his performance as Auric Goldfinger, but he's still the best thing in the movie. Like I said the other day, his Goldfinger isn't the over-compensating blowhard that Fleming wrote. The movie Goldfinger is a calm, self-assured man. Part of that may be vocal, like the laugh in his voice when he says, "No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!" But just as much of it is body language: Fröbe's boredly picking a bit of sleep from his eye after Bond's made a threat, or the minimal gestures he uses to command Oddjob. Fröbe's perfect fusion of restraint and humor gives Goldfinger a sense of power that's never been equalled by another Bond villain.

Goldfinger is well-written, too. The movie fixes the novel's problem of how to move all that gold, so its Goldfinger feels smarter than Fleming's. He's in control almost the entire movie and it's tough to pick the place where his plan goes wrong. He has a good reason to keep Bond alive until it's time to incinerate him by nuclear explosion. What better way of getting rid of Bond's body and keeping a cloud of reasonable doubt around Goldfinger's involvement in the caper? If Bond hadn't have convinced Pussy to betray Goldfinger, the bad guy would have easily won.



Oddjob's iconic, but I don't love him. In the novel, he's agile and deadly, but movie Oddjob moves so slowly that it's hard to take him seriously. All Bond really has to do is avoid the flying hat and then keep out of Oddjob's way.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love)
3. Doctor No (Dr. No)
4. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
5. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Grant (From Russia With Love)
2. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
3. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
4. Professor Dent (Dr. No)
5. Morzeny (From Russia With Love)
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Goldfinger (1964) | Women

Goldfinger is especially notorious for the way it treats women. Forgetting for a second about Felix's wink-wink-nudge-nudging up the joint, none of the women Bond hangs out with are great characters. That starts with Bonita (Nadja Regin), the dancer in Mexico who betrays Bond. She has an interesting role to play, but the movie says nothing about why she does what she does. Is she committed to the drug dealers' cause? Is she just being paid? Is she afraid? The movie neither knows nor cares.



Dink (Margaret Nolan), the woman Bond's hooked up with in Miami, is even worse. Or rather, Bond is worse around her with his dismissing her for "man talk" and smacking her on the butt. The one thing that makes her kind of special is when Bond tells Felix that "the girl is dead" and Felix assumes he's talking about Dink. It's a natural reaction, but somehow seems like a victory that Felix hasn't forgotten about Dink as quickly as Bond has.



Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) - or rather, Masterton, as Fleming wrote it - is my favorite of the women in the book. She's not as crucial to the plot as Pussy, but she's a better character with a realistic and healthy view of who Bond is and what she and he mean to each other. That makes what happens to her even more tragic.

The movie version spends much less time with Bond, so her death is only memorable for the spectacle of how it happens. It doesn't affect anything except to show that Goldfinger is deadly and also weird.



Jill's sister Tilly (Tania Mallet) is a better character in the movie than in the novel, but she's still a silly girl who's obviously out of her depth and ought to be leaving the Man's Work of killing Goldfinger to Bond. The movie does a nicer job with her than with Jill though and we get to know Tilly better. She loves her sister, is the kind of woman who'll take the law into her own hands, and even shows a sense of humor about some of the Aston Martin's tricks. Her death is pitiful, but at least I felt something about it.



Pussy Galore is a terrible character at first look. Honor Blackman is awesome and tough, but it's difficult to get around her apparently changing sides when Bond forces himself on her. I think there's another way of reading her transformation that's not quite as hideous, but it's still difficult.

The problem is that Bond's forcing himself on Pussy is horrible and inexcusable and makes him a really bad person. Beyond that, it's also repulsive and dangerous for the movie to depict Pussy as rejecting Bond at first, but eventually getting into it. What's even sadder about that scene though is that it isn't necessary to the plot at all. The movie doesn't need it to explain why Pussy betrays Goldfinger.

Before Bond and Pussy go into the barn and fight, they have a brief conversation outside. Bond realizes that Pussy's only helping Goldfinger for the money and he warns her against the villain. "He really is mad, you know." And there's a look that crosses Pussy's face that says that she does know, but has been ignoring it.

One of the things I'm looking at with each movie is where the main female character goes stupid. It inevitably happens that strong, independent women in Bond movies turn to butter around him. Conventional wisdom is that this happens for Pussy when Bond forces her to kiss him, but I think it actually happens a few minutes earlier when Bond appeals to her reason.

Because of that, I don't think Bond's as ineffective in Goldfinger as he's made out to be. Yes, he spends half the movie in Goldfinger's custody and doesn't do much "spying." But the literary Bond never does a lot of spying, either. It's that whole Blunt Instrument approach and he's playing it by the numbers. He may not get captured on purpose, but once he does he makes a conscious decision to stay there - making himself too dangerous to kill - and to do as much damage as he can from inside. Converting Pussy is a major part of that and as awful as he treats her in the barn, I argue that that's not the reason she switches sides. She doesn't "go stupid" at Bond's embrace, but because she's actually more human than she lets on and Bond appeals to that.

My Favorite Bond Women 

1. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
2. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
3. Sylvia Trench (Dr. No and From Russia With Love)
4. Pussy Galore (Goldfinger)
5. Tilly Masterson (Goldfinger)
6. Jill Masterson (Goldfinger)
7. The Photographer (Dr No)
8. Bonita (Goldfinger)
9. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
10. Dink (Goldfinger)

Goldfinger (1964) | Bond

Actors and Allies



I don't have much to say about Sean Connery as Bond here. He's still at the top of his game and seems to be enjoying himself. The success of Goldfinger will change that when he's not allowed to profit from it the way the producers do, but for now he's still turning in a great performance with plenty of charm, humor, and - when needed - gravitas.

Bernard Lee is also still excellent as M, even though the script makes him the butt of Bond's snobbery at one point. I love his impatience with that though and M never loses authority, even if he doesn't know what region the brandy's cognac came from.

Speaking of power shifts, it feels like something's changed in Bond's relationship with Moneypenny. For the most part, they're flirting like they always do and it seems harmless, but there's something in her eyes that suggests she'd be willing to pursue something with him if only he'd give her hope. It's subtle and it's nothing she couldn't back away from, but I don't like it.

I also don't care for the turn that Bond's relationship with Q has taken. In From Russia With Love, we saw that they have very different attitudes towards technology. Q is professional and even a little reverent about it, while Bond is amused and playful. In Goldfinger, Q is openly resentful of Bond's flippancy. That by itself is fun and I like watching them together. The problem is with the gadgets that Q's so serious about. They're ridiculous, which makes him ridiculous too. As the Bond series becomes farcical, Q is an early casualty.

Which brings us to Felix. Goldfinger's Felix is the worst of them all, partly because Cec Linder plays him as such a square, but also because of how he's written. In Dr. No, Jack Lord criticized Bond for his focus on women, but Linder's entire approach is to smile enviously and shake his head. While tailing someone he thinks is Bond, Felix speculates about where Bond might be going. "Ten'll get you one, it's a drink or a dame." He doesn't take Bond seriously at all, so it's tough for me too, either.

(I will say this in Bond's defense, though: He's not as ineffectual as people accuse him of being in this movie. I'll have more to say about that tomorrow, but for all the problems I have with Goldfinger, that's not one of them.)

Best Quip



If I limit "quip" to little lines that Bond says after he kills someone, the best in Goldfinger has to be, "Shocking." But a lot of times, Bond's funniest lines pop up in other places. My favorite in Goldfinger is when the villain appears in Bond's plane dressed as a general. Bond nonchalantly compliments him on his promotion and asks, "Are you having lunch at the White House, too?" It's perfect.

Worst Quip



Shortly after the above, once Goldfinger has been sucked out of the decompressed cabin. Pussy asks where he is and Bond replies, "Playing his golden harp." Ugh.

Gadgets



My main problem with Goldfinger is how it sets the table for so many excesses in later films. I mentioned above how some of Bond's relationships are getting cartoony and how the gadgets play a direct role in how seriously I'm able to take Q. In addition to the parking meter/smoke bomb in Q's lab, there's the seagull hat that Bond wears in the pre-credits teaser.

I'm totally okay with the Aston Martin, though. It's the craziest gadget in the film, but the car itself has such style that I can't hate it and seriously... who wouldn't want to drive that? It's easy for me to dismiss the seagull hat as ridiculous and out of place, but the car is awesome. It's only when later films try to top it that I get cranky.

Now that we're starting to see gadgets in Q's workshop, I need to make a rule about what's eligible for my Top Ten Gadgets list. I'm only going to rank things that Bond actually takes and uses in the field, but I'll be sure to honorably mention other favorites as we go.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger)
2. Attaché case (From Russia With Love)
3. SPECTRE shoe-knife (From Russia With Love)
4. Camera-tape recorder; mostly because it reminds me of a camera my dad used to use (From Russia With Love)
5. Grant's garrote-watch (From Russia With Love)
6. Seagull SCUBA hat (Goldfinger)
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Bond's Best Outfit



I'm a sucker for gray suits and sharp vests. Vests are out right now, but I totally dig them. Love this suit that Bond wears for the whole middle part of the movie.

Bond's Worst Outfit



A blue terry-cloth onesie. And that's how he meets Jill Masterson. Good thing you're James Bond, buddy.

Goldfinger (1964) | Story

Influences

Ian Fleming's Goldfinger

As far as I can tell, Saltzman and Broccoli picked Goldfinger for purely mercenary reasons. The first two Bond films did extremely well in England, but United Artists still wasn't committing to heavy promotion in the US. The producers could tell from sales of Fleming's novels that Bond was catching on in the States though, so they chose Goldfinger for their third film because of the Fort Knox angle. They figured that US audiences would want to see that and they were exactly right. UA realized that too and gave the film some major marketing. The movie was a huge hit and turned Bond into a phenomenon.

Plot Summary

Bond investigates an eccentric gold smuggler and uncovers a larger, more deadly scheme involving Fort Knox.

How Is the Book Different?

Hardly at all. They're even alike in the way they shift the tone of their individual series, though the specific ways they do that are different. The novel Goldfinger introduces humor in a new way to the books, while the movie Goldfinger takes the films to a whole new level in terms of spectacle.

Both versions open with Bond in Miami after an assignment in Mexico, but in the novel Bond is introduced to Auric Goldfinger by a character he met in Casino Royale. The movie can't reference that, so Bond's steered towards his nemesis by Felix Leiter. In the novel, Bond and Goldfinger's first meeting is complete coincidence, so the movie actually improves on that by making it all part of the plan.

The movie also introduces an ulterior motive for the Fort Knox job that makes a lot more sense. And the final fates of Goldfinger and Oddjob are tweaked a bit. In addition, the movie lets us see the gold-covered Jill (she's only described by her sister in the book) and of course Tilly and Pussy's sexual orientations are either ignored or only implied.

Other changes are superficial. The book's Aston Martin DB III becomes a DB V, for example, and it's more tricked out. Literary Goldfinger is also more blustery in his arrogance than the self-assured movie version.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



This is kind of cheating, because it's a moment that's present in the novel, but conveyed in a different way. It's when Bond's tailing Goldfinger and Tilly Masterson speeds by him. He steps on the gas to give chase, then quickly eases off. "Discipline, 007," he says. "Discipline."

In the novel, he has an internal struggle over chasing her, but the movie's "discipline" line is excellent shorthand for that. It's also something I repeat to myself a lot when I want to do something I probably shouldn't.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



The literary Bond certainly cares about food and drink, but he isn't the obnoxious know-it-all that the film version becomes, starting with Goldfinger. He snidely quotes to Jill the correct temperature for serving Dom Perignon '53 and later shows up M by criticizing the indifferent blend and overdose of bon-bois in the brandy they're drinking. Even forgetting the showing off, the literary Bond never would have disrespected M that way.

Cold Open



Points for tying it in with the novel by showing us some of Bond's Mexico mission. And points for making it exciting and introducing the craziness of the gadgets that the films are going to become known for. It's also got one of Bond's better quips ("Shocking!"), though not my favorite. It's got a cool setting and a pretty good fight, too. Much better than the quiet, subdued opening of From Russia With Love.

1. Goldfinger
2. From Russia With Love
3. TBD
4. TBD
5. TBD
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Movie Series Continuity



When Bond and Felix meet, Bond refers to his friend's getting in trouble in Jamaica. That's an inaccurate reference to Dr. No, since Bond got in all the trouble and Felix was only there to observe and bail Bond out. The script is just trying to let us know that Cec Linder's playing the same character that Jack Lord was, but it's sloppy.

M threatens to take Bond off the mission at one point, suggesting that "008 can replace you." I think that's the first mention of another Double-O agent in the series. He comes up again when Goldfinger is about to cut Bond in half with a laser. Bond says that if he's killed, 008 will just step in. This is probably a fool's game, but I'm going to try to keep track of the other Double-Os in the movies. There are only a couple of others in the books, so I'm curious to see how expansive that department is in the films.

The trick of throwing Bond's hat onto the hatrack is repeated, but this time it's Moneypenny who does it. We don't see Bond enter the office in Goldfinger, so his hat is there when he finishes talking to M. He picks it up and flirts with Moneypenny some and at one point she takes it from him and tosses it back on the rack to indicate that he should stay.

When Bond visits Q-Branch he asks Q where his Bentley is, referring to the car we saw when he was on his date with Sylvia Trench in From Russia With Love. Q's response is that it's "seen its day," which raises a question about who owns it. In the books, the Bentley is totally Bond's baby. He only requisitions the Aston Martin as part of his cover. But in the film, it sounds like both cars belong to the government and can be switched out as easily as Bond's gun was in Dr. No.

Speaking of Sylvia Trench, she's not back. Terence Young had a pay dispute with Saltzman and Broccoli, so he decided not to come back to direct the third film. The producers brought in Guy Hamilton, who had no attachment with Sylvia or the actor who played her. There's no mention of why she's not around, nor - as much as I liked that character in From Russia With Love - should there be. It wasn't that kind of relationship.

Also not back is SPECTRE. Goldfinger has SMERSH connections in the novel, but the film version is completely autonomous. He may be working with the Chinese government, but he's not working for them.

The last bit of continuity I want to mention is that Bond orders a "shaken, not stirred" martini when he wakes up on Goldfinger's plane. That's the first time he actually uses that line in the series. He received a couple of them in Dr. No, but those were both brought to him already made without our hearing him order them. The people bringing him the drinks repeated the instruction, though.

Quote of the Day | Kelly Sedinger on Goldfinger

I'm of the view that you can't really talk about Bond today without coming to some kind of grips with the sexism of the series – particularly that of the first bunch of films, and maybe even all of them – but it was still frustrating to hear Goldfinger discussed pretty much only in those terms, because, well, there's an awful lot wrong with Goldfinger apart from the sexism.

--Writer and online pal Kelly Sedinger responds to the James Bonding podcast and describes my exact feelings about the movie Goldfinger.

I'll go into more detail when we get there, which also goes for the other Bond films Kelly mentions, but I did share a couple of my thoughts about the James Bonding show in the comments. Kelly's written an awesome, thorough post and you should go read it. If you like Bond, there's plenty to respond to even if you haven't listened to James Bonding.

"Goldfinger": The Comic Strip

Henry Gammidge is back writing the James Bond strip with the "Goldfinger" adaptation, but he's in superior form. Like Peter O'Donnell in "Dr No," Gammidge has dropped the first person narration and it helps the strip a lot. He also takes his time with the story and it never feels rushed. Some scenes are shortened (the golf game, for example), but the cuts are usually good ones. In fact, there are some scenes (like Goldfinger's explaining the Fort Knox job to the gangsters) that could have been shortened even more, but I'd rather have them longer and be able to skim than to have the strip zoom through them too quickly.

There are some interesting cuts made for content, some of which I understand, but not all. I get why there's no mention of Tilly or Pussy's sexual orientation; that might be a conversation that parents in the '50s didn't want to have with their kids over the morning paper. I also understand why Goldfinger simply tells Oddjob to "remove" an offensive cat instead of offering it to the henchman as a meal. But I'm not clear why there's no mention at all of how Jill Masterton died.

Maybe it's because it would be difficult to suggest gold paint in a black-and-white strip, but a simple caption of text could have made that clear. I know the moment is iconic in part because of the film that didn't exist yet, so I want to cut the strip some slack. But it's difficult to read the adaptation and not feel that the loss of gold-covered Jill has left a huge hole in the story.

Those are all minor complaints next to most of Gammidge's other adaptations though. And though Gammidge isn't able to give the same amount of humor to Bond and Goldfinger's verbal war that Fleming does, that seems like an unreasonable expectation in the first place. All considered, "Goldfinger" is one of the best adaptations in the series so far.

Thunderball by Ian Fleming

The creation of Thunderball is notoriously complicated. If most of For Your Eyes Only was the result of Fleming’s trying to bring Bond back to television, Thunderball was the result of his trying to get a film made. In late 1958, he teamed up with a few people including Irish writer/director Kevin McClory, hoping to create a Bond movie. Fleming and McClory weren’t the only people involved, but they were the two who ended up in court, so I’ll focus on them. Not that I’m going to spend much time on that drama, but it’s important to see how the book developed.

According to Wikipedia, Fleming’s confidence in the potential movie fluctuated throughout its development, in part because one of McClory’s other movies bombed at the box office around that same time. So Fleming was more involved at some times and less at others, but between him and the other writers, close to a dozen different treatments, outlines, and scripts were created with lots of different titles. It’s impossible to verify who created what exactly, especially when it comes to the story’s most famous contributions to Bond lore: Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE. Though the courts gave those elements to McClory for years, there’s a strong case to be made for Fleming’s contributing to them, especially since Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia with Love clearly show that he had a fondness for the word “spectre.”

Regardless of who contributed how much and which parts, Fleming was certainly on ethically shaky ground when he turned the collaboration into a novel with just his name on it. Once McClory got wind of that, he petitioned the courts to stop publication. That was denied, but the courts left the door open for McClory to pursue later action, starting a long, bitter feud between him and Fleming (as well as future caretakers of Bond’s adventures).

For Your Eyes Only | "Risico"

As we move into some of Fleming's short stories about James Bond, I need to talk a bit about chronology. There are three ways I could integrate the short stories with Bond's longer adventures: I could write about them in the order in which they were originally published by magazines and newspapers, I could write about them in the order in which they were collected in book form, or I could write about them as they happened within the chronology of Bond's career.

So far, I've been tackling this project in publication order and there's been no conflict because Fleming wrote and published the novels in the same order that they occur in Bond's life. With the short stories though it gets more complicated, especially when we get into the stories collected in Octopussy and The Living Daylights, which were published after Fleming's death and clearly take place earlier in Bond's career rather than after the dramatic events that closed Fleming's series.

Because I'm interested in Bond as a fictional character and how Fleming developed him, I'm going to write about the short stories as they happened to Bond. But that's going to be an anomaly in this project. After Fleming's death, a consistent chronology of Bond's life becomes impossible. So while I'll include the non-Fleming books in the project, I'm not going to pretend that they're about the same character. That'll free me to just take them in publishing order and transition to thinking about James Bond as a phenomenon instead of a character.

There are a couple of major chronologies that put Fleming's stories in order of when they took place in Bond's life. The one I like best is John Griswold's from Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's James Bond Stories. Griswold uses the publication order of the novels and then fits the short stories into that. It's nice and simple as opposed to the other major chronology which rearranges some of the novels.

Both chronologies agree though that "Risico," the fourth out of the five stories collected in For Your Eyes Only, takes place earliest; soon after Goldfinger. That's because M mentions the Mexican assignment that Bond was musing about at the beginning of Goldfinger as happening "earlier this year."

It comes up again in "Risico" (named after the way a character mispronounces the word "risk") because the short story has Bond on another drug case. This time he's tasked with shutting down the flow of heroin into England from Italy. I don't want to say too much about the plot, because it's a twist-ending kind of short story, but if you've seen the movie For Your Eyes Only, you're familiar with the characters of Kristatos, Colombo, and Lisl Baum (renamed Lisl von Schlaf in the film) and their relationships with Bond and each other.

Fleming developed the story for a Bond TV show that never made it to the air. CBS had been happy with the results of the "Casino Royale" episode of Climax! and wanted more, so Fleming wrote some plot outlines. After CBS dropped the idea, he worked the outlines into four of the short stories collected in For Your Eyes Only. The fifth is the one we'll talk about tomorrow, but "Risico" was the last of them published, debuting in the Daily Express newspaper simultaneously with the publication of the whole For Your Eyes Only collection.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

I'll save my full commentary about the movie Goldfinger until we get there, but Fleming's novel is a lot like it in more than just plot and characters. Both versions mark a significant shift in tone for their series. I'd forgotten that was true for the novel as well as the film.

Fleming introduces the idea right away. The book opens with Bond in Miami, waiting on a connecting flight after a particularly hairy and violent mission in Mexico. Most of the first chapter is Bond's sitting in an airport lounge, brooding about the assignment over his double bourbon. That's not at all unusual for the Bond we've come to know over the series so far, but Fleming throws in a twist at the end of the chapter and has Bond thinking to himself, "Cut it out. Stop being so damned morbid. All this is just a reaction from a dirty assignment. You're stale, tired of having to be tough. You want a change." And that's exactly what Bond - and his readers - get.

As if on cue, an American millionaire named Du Pont approaches Bond and recognizes him from their time together in Casino Royale. He and his wife sat next to Bond at the baccarat game against Le Chiffre and Du Pont wonders if Bond might be available to help him out with another situation involving cards. Du Pont is being swindled at Canasta by a man named Goldfinger and wants Bond to help him get back at the cheater. Bond's already facing an overnight layover anyway, so he accepts.