James Bond (Primer for GoldenEye)

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a decade-spanning franchise that is virtually synonymous with the spy film subgenre.

As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, and today we're going to talk about Bond, James Bond.

In advance of our coverage of GoldenEye, a film that catapulted Pierce Brosnan to international recognition and brought Bond back to the silver screen after a six-year hiatus, we thought we'd put together a little primer on the origins of this British super-secret agent and his complicated journey to the cinemas.

We hope this added context will only enhance your experience with GoldenEye and serve as a touchstone for all of our future 007 coverage.

So, without further ado, we present The Origins of James Bond, as researched by Jesse Winterbauer, with music and effects by David Bowman.

At the time of this recording, there's perhaps no name more associated with the Bond brand than Broccoli.

Barbara Broccoli, that is, who, along with her half-brother, Michael G.

Wilson, held creative control of the Bond franchise from from the mid-90s until earlier this year when it was ceded to Amazon MGM Studios for a king's ransom.

James Bond is, like so many things in Hollywood, a family business.

One Barbara inherited from her father, the Queens-born Albert Broccoli, nicknamed Cubby, who produced nearly every Bond film through 1989, the first nine alongside producer Harry Saltzman.

But Bond was born far before the Broccolis had any inkling of his existence.

From the mind of a 44-year-old dilettante debut writer, the result of a bet with his naysaying brother at a vacation home in Jamaica, affectionately named Goldeneye.

Born in London on May 28th, 1908, Ian Fleming had no grand designs to be a novelist.

Growing up, there was little indication he would go on to create one of the most famous characters in the world, though life-changing fortunes did seem to run in his family.

Fleming's grandfather, Robert, had changed the family's status in a single generation.

Compared to Succession's Logan Roy by one biographer, Robert avoided the diphtheria that killed his mother and five of his siblings, found work in a jute factory as a clerk, and began rubbing elbows with wealthy merchants.

A shrewd businessman, Robert saw there was more money in money than jute and flax, and was soon entrusted with managing investments in U.S.

railway stocks.

He went on to establish the Scottish American Investment Trust and then a merchant bank, Robert Fleming and Company, which still exists in some form today.

Ian's father, Major Valentine Fleming, was a well-liked conservative MP and a close friend of Winston Churchill, who was tragically killed in action in 1917, struck by German shellfire in France, just eight days before Ian's ninth birthday.

Ian and his three brothers were left in the stead of his eccentric and apparently quite harsh mother, Evelyn, or Eve, whose inheritance came with a hefty caveat.

Val's riches were hers so long as she didn't remarry.

Said money funded Ian's education.

He passed through prestigious boarding and military schools, and then he wandered.

He worked as a journalist, at one point stationed in pre-war Moscow, a banker, a stockbroker, though not a very good one, and a commander in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II.

Now, Ian had toyed with the idea of a novel for years.

He was an on-again, off-again journalist, had contacts in the literary world.

He'd even written short stories.

In his early 40s, he had a crisis of conscience.

He was about to marry his pregnant girlfriend Anne, and he was terrified of losing his freedom.

His worries may have been overblown.

He and Anne would go on to have many affairs.

In fact, they'd been entangled during both of her previous marriages.

It was a turbulent relationship, which apparently featured a mutual appreciation for whipping in the bedroom.

And Ian viewed marriage with about as much reverence as, well, you'd expect James Bond to.

As he once said, my mental hands were empty, and I was about to get married, which is a terrible step to take at the age of 43.

Looking for an escape, it was, according to one of Ian's nieces, sibling rivalry that tipped him into the world of femme fatales and shaken martinis, where the hero looked suspiciously like his older brother, only with a license to kill and a better tailor.

In fact, according to his literary agent, Naomi Burton, Ian was, until this point, known as Peter's little brother.

Fleming's only earnest exploration of fiction came by way of a collection of poems he wrote in his late teens or early 20s, The Black Daffodil.

He burned all copies out of embarrassment.

By Ian's estimation, his Irish twin, Peter, a soldier, adventurer, journalist, and travel writer, was the deadlier of the two with a pen.

But a gentle ribbing over Peter's self-seriousness led to Ian proclaiming that he could, in fact, write a bestseller.

They wagered a hundred pounds on the notion.

And so, around February of 1952, Ian finally started to write.

He holed up at his vacation home in Jamaica, dubbed GoldenEye, after an NID mission he'd been involved with, and typed 2,000 words per day until he was finished.

In two months.

He didn't reread it, he didn't edit it, he didn't even show it to his wife Anne, who apparently thought he was writing some sort of highbrow European novel.

Far from it.

Ian had just penned the first exploit of James Secretan.

Now, there are countless possible sources that may have inspired the pivot to the Pithier Bond.

It was the code name of Sir Eric Drummond, who worked above Ian at the League of Nations, and James Bond had been the name of a character in an Agatha Christie short story.

But Fleming's explanation was simpler.

He'd simply lifted the name from American ornithologist James Bond, the author of one of his favorite books, Birds of the West Indies.

Bond.

Licensed to Birdwatch.

Fleming wrote quickly, in part because he stuck to what he knew.

Sexual exploits, his time in the NID and stationed in Moscow, his love of diving, spearfishing, treasure hunting, and Jacques Cousteau.

It also helped that there wasn't that much to, well, James Bond.

Fleming wanted him to be unobtrusive, a blunt instrument wielded by the government, neutral, but surrounded by the exotic.

And this was, in a sense, true of Fleming.

He had a network of overqualified writers and literary folks who could read and provide feedback.

Casino Royale, his first James Bond novel, was published in April of 1953, just over a year after Fleming sat down at Goldeneye to write it.

It sold well, but was far from a runaway hit.

And Fleming wasn't above getting his hands under the hood.

He even hired a friend to give it a positive review under a pseudonym.

He then used this and other reviews to pressure his publisher into a bigger advertising budget and a three-book deal.

Fleming's motives were simple.

1.

Make as much money as possible.

2.

Have as much fun with the writing as possible.

And what could be more fun than Hollywood?

According to some sources, Fleming had feelers out in Tinseltown well before he had a book contract for Casino Royale.

So it's perhaps no surprise that before he made it to British cinema, James Bond was on American television.

In 1954, Fleming's New York literary agent, Curtis Brown, sold the TV rights for Casino Royale to CBS for $1,000.

On October 21st of that year, James Bond made his screen debut in a live episode of the CBS anthology series, Climax!

Casino Royale was the third episode of the first season, following TV adaptations of Raymond Chandler's novel The Long Goodbye and Bayard Vey's mystery play The 13th Chair.

Actor Barry Nelson played Bond, Peter Laurie was the chief, and Linda Christian was Valerie Mathis, a character who replaced Vesper Lind.

Fun fact, Nelson would go on to play Ullman in the Shining.

Now, were you to wander to YouTube and search for Climax, actually maybe search for Casino Royale Climax, you'd find something that only loosely resembles Fleming's novel.

Co-adapted by Charles Bennett, a Hitchcock collaborator on a few 1930s spy films, the story was simplified to fit a one-hour format with three sets and no costume changes.

Names were Americanized, Vesper became Valerie, Felix Leiter became British, and James Bond American.

He drank water and went by Jimmy.

Reviews were tepid.

But Fleming continued to publish at a prolific rate.

Live and Let Die arrived on UK bookshelves less than a year after Casino Royale.

Moonraker one year after that.

Diamonds are forever in 11 months.

From Russia with love just over 12.

From 1953 through 1966, Fleming published one Bond novel a year and even found time to branch out.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, His Stab at a Children's Story, was published in 1964.

Across the Pond, things were less productive.

There were talks in 1954 with Warner Brothers.

They died when Live and Let Die was left to die on American bookshelves.

Producer Gregory Radoff purchased the rights to Casino Royale later that year, and in the fall of 1955, actor John Payne of Miracle on 34th Street tried to negotiate an option of Moonraker.

British Entertainment Conglomerate, the Rank Organization, was similarly interested in that property, resulting in a messy period of competing bids and rights until Payne dropped out and Rank, after receiving a 156-page draft from Fleming, let its option lapse.

One of Fleming's biographers compared Rank's missed opportunity to snag Bond to the Beatles' infamous DECA audition.

Fleming tried to get back into American TV but struggled to find purchase.

A series about an American spy, James Gunn, didn't go anywhere.

He recycled the material into Dr.

No.

In 1958, there was a series of Bond TV movies for CBS, and then in 1959, a one-hour TV special version of From Russia With Love for a CBS affiliate, but both projects fell through.

And again, he recycled the material into From a View to Kill for Your Eyes Only and Resico.

And there was, of course, a 1962 series for NBC, Solo, built around a spy named Napoleon Solo, and this one was actually abandoned by Fleming.

Fun fact, a few years later, Solo would become The Man from Uncle.

The truth is, Fleming was slowing down.

His health was deteriorating, heart trouble, sciatica, and kidney stones.

In his late 30s, he regularly smoked 70 cigarettes a day along with a bottle of gin.

Now in his early 50s, he decided to cut back to 60 cigarettes a day, along with a bottle of gin.

He was also burnt out creatively, in part because he may have been outgrowing James Bond.

As he wrote to poet William Plomer in 1960, what was easy at 40 is very difficult at 50.

I used to believe, sufficiently, in bonds and blondes and bombs, how the keys creak as I type, and I fear the zest may have gone.

Part of the trouble is having a wife and child.

They knock the ruthlessness out of one.

I shall definitely kill Bondoff with my next book, Better a Poor Bang Than a Rich Whimper.

But as Fleming's interest waned, public interest gained, attracting a proper villain.

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In 1958, Ian met Irish producer Kevin McClory, who convinced him to write an original screenplay.

The project became known as Thunderball.

And in early treatments, the idea of Spectre, special executive for counterintelligence, terrorism, revenge, and extortion, was born.

Oh, how prescient these themes would prove to be.

In the summer of 1959, things were good, as Ian wrote to McClory.

There is no one who I would prefer to produce James Bond for the screen.

But it was destined to be strictly a summer love.

By fall of that year, Fleming was tired of McClory, as he wrote to a friend.

He was hoping we can get rid of him altogether and join up with a proper company.

A year or so later, Fleming agreed to allow screenwriter Jack Whittingham to take over the script.

Fleming would retain a story by credit, and this is where things get sticky.

Fleming claims that contemporaneous to the shift in duties, McClory asked him to write a novel based on the treatments for Thunderball, effectively a novelization of his own treatments to help promote the film.

The problem was, McClory seemed to be making little to no progress toward actually getting the movie made.

He burned through money with little to show for it, and Fleming lost faith.

He eventually signed a contract with his publisher claiming he was the sole author of the novel version of Thunderball.

He offered McClory £2,000 for his time.

McClory wanted £75,000.

That's roughly £2.2 million or $2.9 million

in today's money.

McClory then asserted that Fleming had used parts of Whittingham's script without acknowledging him or McClory.

McClory and Whittingham promptly sued Fleming for plagiarism of his own story.

Now, as any good storyteller knows, things come in threes, and so it would be in March of 1961, as tumultuous a month in the life of Ian Fleming as there ever was.

First, a judge ruled in Ian's favor.

McClory could not halt publication of his Thunderball novel.

Second, Fleming had a heart attack.

Third, Life magazine published a list of President Kennedy's favorite books, which included the exploits of one, James Bond.

Bond's popularity stateside exploded.

The market was primed, but Fleming needed a champion.

In late 1960, as tensions with McClory rose, Ian found an unexpected lifeline.

He sold an option to make Bond films to a London-based producer, Harry Saltzman.

A Canadian runaway turned European circus manager, Saltzman was now a gritty British film producer.

The films being gritty, not the producer.

He was in his late 40s and had fallen for Fleming's seventh novel, Goldfinger.

Some Bond historians theorize that Saltzman paid effectively nothing for the option.

He just acted as a safe deposit box for Fleming, who was nervous that McClory was going to try to sue him for the rights.

With a month left on his option and no film prospects to speak of, Saltzman was connected with another expat working out of London, Queens-born Albert Cubby Broccoli.

Broccoli was experienced, with a dozen films under his belt, including The Red Beret and Cockle Shell Heroes.

Like Saltzman, he'd taken a winding path to the movies, the vegetable business, selling coffins, and, even worse, working as a Hollywood agent.

Broccoli and Saltzman may have looked similar on paper, but they couldn't have been more different in person.

Saltzman was volatile, Broccoli diplomatic.

They quickly became known as Engine and Briggs.

Now, Broccoli had been interested in Bond several years earlier.

His then-business partner, Irving Allen, talked him out of it, deeming the books below television quality.

It seems that Saltzman more or less agreed, at one point calling the books a bit of nonsense, but nonsense sells.

In June of 1961, Fleming sold another six-month option to Broccoli and Saltzman under their new partnership, Eon, Everything or Nothing, designed to produce solely James Bond films.

With Thunderball and litigation, they opted to produce Dr.

No instead.

Eon went to United Artists, where Broccoli had connections, and sealed a six-picture deal.

According to some sources, Fleming would get $100,000 per film, plus 5% of the producer's profit.

One interesting wrinkle, given that at the time of this recording, the United States has initiated a trade war with much of the rest of the world by way of tariffs, the movie had to be, quote, capable of being duly registered as a British film and as an exhibitor's quota film, and of participating in the British Film Production Fund as an eligible film.

To qualify as a British film, at least 85% had to be shot in the UK or Commonwealth, with only three non-British salaries excluded, ensuring jobs for British cast and crew.

Otherwise, it would be subject to the EDI levy, a tax on box office receipts intended to support the British film industry.

Introduced in 1950 and made mandatory in 1957, the levy was intended to prevent the Americanization of British films.

The biggest box office hits in the UK at the time were American-backed war films, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Guns of Navarone, Lawrence of Arabia, and there was concern that the American film industry was going to entirely consume the British film industry.

Fleming may have known that Americans were the desired audience, but under Broccoli and Saltzman's agreement, Bond would remain a Brit.

And so, nearly a decade after his TV debut, James Bond was finally brought to the big screen.

Dr.

No premiered in London on October 5th of 1962.

It reached the United States six months later.

It was a British film based on a British book based on an unproduced American television series about an American spy based on a British book series about a British spy.

It was also a smash hit.

Made for roughly £400,000, it grossed 16 million worldwide.

Now, I won't spoil too much.

We will get to Dr.

No in due time, but it's important to note that the film established much of what would become synonymous with the franchise.

The gun barrel introduction of our hero, a highly stylized title sequence, and of course, Monty Norman's iconic theme music.

It also turned the relatively little-known Sean Connery into an international superstar.

Now, many names had been considered over the years, including, but not limited to, Richard Burton, Jimmy Stewart, James Mason, Peter Finch, Carrie Grant, Dirk Bogart, Trevor Howard, Rex Harrison, Michael Redgrave, Patrick McGoohan, Roger Moore, but none had Sean Connery's swagger.

And I mean that literally.

After his audition, Saltzman and Broccoli watched him cross the street to his car, and they loved the way he moved with confidence and arrogance.

Connery's acting teacher had apparently encouraged him to think about large jungle cats during the audition because, quote, they are very loose.

Now, it's often reported that Fleming didn't like Connery for Bond, and if true, this opinion was short-lived.

As he wrote in October of 1961, quote, the man they have chosen for Bond, Sean Connery, is a real charmer, fairly unknown, but a good actor with the right looks and a good physique.

I'd say he was spot on.

It also helped that Connery was a favorite amongst the ladies.

When Broccoli's wife saw a clip of Connery, she exclaimed, take that one.

He's gorgeous.

Over the next three decades, 18 Bond films were released, though two are considered unofficial.

Connery starred in in the first five films, then came back for Diamonds Are Forever, then realized Bond wasn't, and left again.

But you can never say never, so he came back for 1983's unofficial never say never again, after which he did indeed say, never again.

Each of the first three films was more successful than the last, and the mid-60s have been colloquially referred to as Bond Mania.

Dr.

No and From Russia With Love were hits, but it was Goldfinger that established the man with the PPK as one one that would stay.

Kevin McClory took Fleming back to court in November of 1963, and again, things came in threes.

JFK, whose endorsement of Bond had proven integral to his integration into American culture, was assassinated.

Fleming reached a settlement with McClory.

He had to acknowledge that Thunderball was based on a treatment that McClory and Whittingham had contributed to.

McClory was also awarded the film rights to that project and compensated £35,000.

And following the stress of the trial, Fleming suffered a fatal heart attack nine months later in August of 1964.

Saltzman and Brockley carried on and produced the first nine official Bond films together, concluding with The Man with the Golden Gun released in 1974, just about a year before their notoriously tumultuous collaboration came to an end.

In late 1975 or early 1976, Saltzman put up his share in Danjack, the holding company for Eon, as collateral against a loan from the Union Bank of Switzerland in an attempt to perform a hostile takeover of the Technicolor Corporation.

The move violated the terms of Danjak's operating agreement.

It became a legal issue, and eventually United Artists bought out Saltzman's stake in Eon.

And so, Bond became synonymous with the one remaining producer involved, Broccoli.

He stewarded the films out of the Cold War until his death in 1996.

He left Eon under the stead of his daughter, Barbara Brockley, and his stepson, Michael G.

Wilson, who began their partnership with 1995's Goldeneye.

Now, there's much, much more to explore in the world of bond.

1967's Casino Royale, a bond spoof rife with problems.

1983's double bond year with the unofficial never say never again premiering within six months of octopusy, again the result of fractured rights.

And now we wait for Amazon MGM's bond and wonder how they'll bring a character firmly rooted in the era in which he was written into a post-pandemic world.

It's important to note that the books are chock full of sexism, women are decorative objects, Bond turns a lesbian at one point, and there are many instances of racist tropes and characters, including a chapter in Live and Let Die titled N-Word Island.

In fact, in April of 2023, the Bond books were reissued with a disclaimer.

This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might have been considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace.

A number of updates have been made in this edition while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.

Our most recent iteration of Bond, played by Daniel Craig, was introduced as a relic of the Cold War, a blunt instrument seemingly no longer needed in an era of technical sophistication and multipolar diplomacy.

As we swing back to an isolationist world not dissimilar from the one Ian Fleming came of age in, it will be fascinating to see where Bond, now the intellectual property of one of the largest corporations in the world, will fit in.

That concludes our primer on James Bond and his origins.

Of course, we'll be getting to much, much more, not only in our coverage of GoldenEye, but eventually all of the Bond films.

Until then, thank you for tuning in to What Went Wrong.