Now pay attention, 007. During the 1970s and 1980s, United Artists and EON became highly skilled at mounting extensive publicity campaigns for each new James Bond film, and targeting newspapers and magazines with movie tie-in material became a key part of this strategy. Quite often, tie-in screen treatments were released for serialisation in newspapers and popular magazines, especially in the UK and USA.
These were not the texts of the original Ian Fleming novels, but new fictional treatments that read just like a Fleming novel but followed the plot of the EON film very closely. In other words, they were original treatments written like a book, but which were based on the structural version of the storyline followed by the EON film, which often deviated significantly from the original Fleming novel or short story.
Notable examples were special screen serialisations released for The Man With The Golden Gun and, later, The Living Daylights, to name just two. When taken up by newspapers in the UK (often at local level) these specially written stories would often appear over a 5-day or 7-day period, with plenty of tie-in Bond-related publicity material supplied to editors to also help promote the latest 007 adventure in the local cinema or, indeed, in the run-up to the national premiere and nationwide release of the new movie.
Of course, many of us are familiar with the special novels penned by Christopher Wood for the EON movie versions of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, published as James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker.
However, the material produced for serialisation purposes for some other Bond films did not appear in book form, but in special parts for publication in other printed media. Interestingly, what many fans don’t realise is that this publicity strategy started much earlier, with the Connery films in the 1960s. A fascinating example of this has recently re-emerged in the form of a serialisation of Goldfinger, adapted by George Scullin from the EON Productions movie, and re-found by the JBIFC.
It is a nice find. The year 2026 marks an astonishing 62 years since the third smash-hit James Bond movie, Goldfinger, was premiered in 1964. Still regarded by many critics as one of the best entries in the 007 series, the film embodied a hugely successful combination of action, humour, glamour, and glossy locations, and confirmed Sean Connery’s hold on the public’s imagination as Ian Fleming’s heroic spy. Moreover, the movie regularly appears in lists of the top-rated Bond movies as voted for by both fans and the general public. Moreover, it is worth remembering that the film was, in many ways, truly groundbreaking.
The film historian Jeremy Black, for example, has pointed out that the movie – aside from from its glamorous settings and women – had some stunning new technology: ‘The villain deployed an industrial laser beam, the first display of a laser on film’, and Bond had a nimble, fast Aston Martin complete with a whole arsenal of gadgets and armaments. In Jeremy Black’s estimation, spectacle was also provided by the fantastic sets of the production designer Ken Adam, while John Barry offered a ‘superb film score, a powerful theme song brilliantly sung by Shirley Bassey’, and Goldfinger kicked off with ‘a dramatic, engaging, and witty pre-credits teaser that underlined Bond’s style’.
Golden High
One of the key reasons for the film’s huge global box-office success was the adept and imaginative publicity campaign. Adapted from Ian Fleming’s novel, EON’s screenplay for the movie was penned by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn and, while based on Fleming’s original book, the story was changed and ‘adapted’: Operation Grand Slam, instead of being a plan to rob the gold supply of Fort Knox, became – instead – a more devious and arguably realistic plot to irradiate the Fort Knox gold bullion supply using a small atomic device or ‘dirty bomb’, thus ensuring the Auric Goldfinger’s personal supply of gold would dramatically increase in value on the world’s gold markets.
The serialisation of the film’s screenplay by George Scullin in turn follows the plot of the movie very closely, almost word-for-word when it came to the dialogue spoken by the main characters in the film. But it also added in further detail to particular scenes from the movie’s storyline.
Here’s a flavour of the George Scullin treatment, based on the pre-credits sequence: ‘A high stone wall rose from the waterfront, where the dampness prohibited the use of bare wires. Searchlights on the dock jutted into the harbour, and trip wires, listening devices, and radar added to the barrier, until it seemed that hardly a sea gull could get through. Still, the sea gulls did get through, gathering under the lights at night to feast on garbage and rotting bananas. The one that floated with the tide past the end of the dock was a particularly disconsolate and disreputable looking bird that pecked without hope at a grapefruit rind. It drifted on, beyond reach of the lights. Now Bond could stop pulling the string that worked its neck as well as pumping air to him through an underwater tube. Carefully he lifted the white plumage from the black, rubber gear that saddled his head, and the puppet gull was carried to the bottom by dead weights. A moment later, Bond slithered up on the breakwater at the foot of the high wall, a balck shadow entirely sheathed in a black rubber diving suit’.
Here’s another good example from later in the Scullin treatment: ‘”Goodby, Mr. Bond”, said Goldfinger, from outside the elevator. “What do you think of Operation Grand Slam now?” “Very impressive”, said Bond. “Very”. Outside the cage, Goldfinger pushed a button and the elevator began to descend deep into the vault. The open shaft revealed floor after floor stacked ceiling-high with bars of gold. But Bond’s mind was on the bomb to which he was shackled. With his free hand, he struggled to grasp the primer, but it was out of his reach’.
Overall, it’s a great read. Looking back, one can imagine that many members of the public – reading this on public transport or over their breakfast as part of their daily consumption of a newspaper or via purchase of their regular magazine – probably assumed that they were reading parts of the original Fleming novel. And, in parts, it is certainly a good-quality story, which undoubtedly served to wet the appetite of people who had already enjoyed seeing Dr. No and From Russia, With Love on the big screen. The serialisation was also supplied with a generous number of stills from the Sean Connery film, reinforcing the sense of anticipation that people now felt about the latest 007 adventure and about Connery’s Bond more generally. Bond was back, in more ways than one, in 24-carat entertainment!
Did You Know?
John Barry observed that Goldfinger ‘was the weirdest song ever’. Antony Newley was the first artist to sing a version of the Goldfinger title song, but John Barry felt the Newley version was flat and uninspiring. Barry’s decision to select Shirley Bassey instead was the key to making the song one of the most memorable theme songs in movie history. Barry said: ‘Shirley Bassey didn’t know what the song was about but she sang it with such extraordinary conviction that she convinced the rest of the world that it meant something’.
