Now pay close attention, 007. Look up, look down, look out! Sixty years ago, shortly before the latest EON James Bond movie Thunderball was released starring Sean Connery again as Ian Fleming’s secret agent, there was already a huge thirst for news and information about anything connected to the glamorous and exciting world of 007, and Panther Books in the UK became keen to tap into this wave of interest in all things ‘Bond’.
The result was For Bond Lovers Only, compiled and edited by Sheldon Lane (London: Panther Books, 1965). The eye-catching front-cover carried a now iconic B/W publicity still of Thunderball star Claudine Auger in an unzipped diving suit. The U.S. edition, published by Dell the following year, had Ursula Andress, from Dr. No, on its front-cover, and in full colour.
In fact, the book was so successful that Panther decided to reprint it in June, 1966, with a different but equally sensuous picture of Claudine Auger on the front-cover, but this time in full colour.
Given we are celebrating sixty years of the fourth smash-hit James Bond film Thunderball this year, the JBIFC takes the opportunity to look back on a publication that served to wet the eager appetites of Bond lovers across the globe. It was the kind of book that was easily found at the time in all good retailers, at airport news-stands, and in the luggage bags of holidaymakers who were jetting off to hotter lands and needed something perfect to read for the beach or hotel balcony, a book that offered sunbathers their own taste of Bond’s exotic world.
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
This small but very enjoyable paperback collection of edited essays was published at the height of Bond-mania in the mid-1960s. While it was designed to tap into the fascination with the big-screen Bond, especially Sean Connery’s fourth 007 film Thunderball, at the same time it contained some illuminating chapters on Ian Fleming, especially his early naval career and his conception of the character of James Bond. There had also been more and more media interest in the life and career of Connery, especially after the huge success of the first three 007 films, and also in Bond’s creator, the man who had tragically died just the previous year, only weeks before the release of Goldfinger.
The first chapter in the book (‘007 and Me, by Ian Fleming’), was written by Jack Fishman, who was a senior editorial executive on the Sunday Times for twenty years and knew Fleming well.
The result was a short but entertaining profile of Fleming and Bond, put together almost entirely using Fleming’s own words. Fishman said that, when Fleming was Foreign Manager for the Sunday Times newspaper, and controlled a world-wide network of foreign correspondents, the Bond author ‘always seemed to me, in a way, rather like Bond’s chief M’, and, at their meetings, when they had dealt with immediate newspaper matters, Fleming would question Fishman closely about some story or feature they had just published: ‘He loved to learn all the background details; all the behind-the-scenes intrigue. He lapped it up’.
Fishman also revealed that he, in turn, sometimes talked to Fleming about James Bond, and there followed in the book a brief pen-portrait of the Bond character, based on Fleming’s own descriptions and comments. Fishman was very good at identifying what Fleming had in common with his fictional creation, but he also noted where the two differed. Both Fleming and Bond were Scots, loved golf and swimming, and hated office-work. Like Bond, Fleming was also partial to alcohol, cigarettes and lovely, unattached women. And, like Bond, Fleming was a bit of a loner and was not too fond of socializing much. Fishman noted that Fleming saw Bond as his ‘personal avenue of escape’ from Belgravia and his wife’s dinner parties and literary friends. But Fleming pointed out that Bond had ‘more guts than I have’, and Fishman himself perceived Fleming as a much more genteel figure than his fictional hero. Overall, Fleming admitted that Bond fulfilled his ‘Walter Mitty’ syndrome: in Fleming’s view Bond was ‘the feverish dream of the author of what might have been – bang, bang, kiss, kiss, that sort of stuff’.
Double-0 Origins
Fishman also recorded some of Fleming’s comments about the origins of James Bond. Fleming said: ‘He just came out of thin air. There he was – a compound of secret agent and commando types I had met’. According to Fleming, he simply wanted to create an interesting character ‘to whom extraordinary things happen’, and he wanted 007 to be ‘an entirely anonymous instrument and let the action of the book carry him along’. Fishman’s chapter in For Bond Lovers Only also contained some very useful information about Fleming’s wartime inspirations and where he gained the idea for the ‘double-0’ prefix. Fleming revealed: ‘To make Bond’s job more interesting, I hit upon the 00 prefix. I lifted the idea from the Admiralty. At the beginning of the war, all top-secret signals had the double-o prefix’. Fleming said this stuck in his mind and he later borrowed it for Bond.
Another chapter in the Panther book of great value to those interested in Fleming’s early career was entitled ‘Room 39’, and was written by Donald McLachlan, who was a wartime colleague of Fleming in Naval Intelligence.
McLachlan provided background details on the nature and functions of Room 39 at the Admiralty, where Fleming worked for a department known as ‘N.I.D.17’, and signed himself in as ‘17F’. McLachlan claimed that James Bond was strongly reminiscent of a Royal Navy commander called Bill Dunderdale, who spoke fluent Russian, was entirely at home in Paris, and was very self-assured, while the other half of the Bond character came from Fleming himself.
According to McLachlan, there was also more than a little of Admiral Godfrey, the N.I.D. Director, in 007’s boss ‘M’. On the other hand, in McLachlan’s estimation, while the young Commander Fleming of those days had very much the tastes the Bond author showed later, Fleming ‘was never a gourmet, but liked other people to enjoy the best food’.
Another chapter in the Panther book was called ‘Rendezvous with the Man from the Ipcress File’, written by Peter Evans, which was a fascinating description of the only time Fleming met fellow spy author Len Deighton for lunch, just before Fleming wrote You Only Live Twice. While it is difficult to know how accurate the account was, some interesting points emerged, such as the possibility that Fleming’s initial title for his new book was You Only Die Twice.
There was also some astute analysis of the differences between Fleming’s Bond and Deighton’s (un-named) spy. Fleming also suggested (perhaps with tongue in cheek) that the two authors could start a running joke in their books, where Bond would ‘knock’ Deighton’s spy and Deighton’s spy would ‘tear the hell out of Bond’.
Author Len Deighton, of course, has always been of interest to Bond aficionados, as he was involved in writing an early draft of EON’s screen treatment for From Russia, With Love. Deighton also became closely involved much later on with Kevin McClory (co-producer of Thunderball) and Sean Connery in the mid-1970s, collaborating on McClory’s attempt to make Warhead, an alternative James Bond movie (which eventually evolved into Never Say Never Again, a remake of Thunderball).
Live and Let Spy
A further chapter in the Panther compilation, entitled ‘The 007 Armoury’, was contributed by Jack Thomas, who was yet another colleague of Fleming at the Sunday Times. This contained some detailed information on how Fleming drew on the expertise of various people for descriptions of the weapons 007 employed in his adventures. The key relationship here was the now-famous one between Fleming and Geoffrey Boothroyd, who became ‘The Armourer’ of the later Bond books. In two other chapters in relation to Fleming in this little gem of a book, readers could find Fleming’s thoughts on the world of espionage as told to Czech exile Bernard Hutton, and some personal memories of the Bond author by Allen Dulles, a former Director of the C.I.A. Dulles ended his particular contribution by expressing his sadness at Fleming’s early death and, interestingly, commented that: ‘No one, I feel, would have the audacity to try to bring Bond back’. Little did he know…!
Finally, For Bond Lovers Only gave readers some tantalising glimpses into the life of Sean Connery and the on-screen world of the James Bond movies, which was probably what made the book so popular with the wider public. In a section entitled ‘Sean Connery takes apart The Blood Guts and Girls Man’, the then James Bond actor offered a series of observations on Fleming, Bond and his own approach to the role. Sean commented at one stage: ‘When I first met Fleming, there was certainly no dissension between us on how to see Bond. I saw him as a complete sensualist – senses highly tuned, awake to everything, quite amoral. I particularly like him because he thrives on conflict’. He added: ‘Bond lives for the moment, doing a tough job. He may not be around tomorrow, remember’.
In a longer section later in the book, entitled ‘The Man Who’s Got 007’s Number’, readers were given some insights into Sean Connery’s private life, penned by Henry Gris, a showbiz journalist in Hollywood who had got to know Sean personally. The stories included how EON’s Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman signed Sean for the Bond role. As far as they were concerned, Sean – as Saltzman observed – ‘had the masculinity the part needed’.
As the Panther edition of For Bond Lovers Only put it in its marketing blurb, Bond was ‘the best-loved spy in the world. There are many imitations, but Bond stands alone’.
Front-cover of the U.S. Dell paperback edition.