Now pay attention, 007. The third EON James Bond movie Goldfinger received its world premiere on Thursday, 17th September, 1964, at the Odeon, Leicester Square in central London, and it is no exaggeration to say that it became one of the most successful films of the 1960s, and one of the most famous entries in the James Bond franchise.
It is often pointed to by both fans and critics alike as the quintessential 007 film. Numerous film historians have argued that, in many ways, it created the iconic ‘model’ for the subsequent 007 films.
To what extent is this true? The JBIFC takes the opportunity to offer a few reflections on this question, set out in (00)7 bullet points.
007 and Counting…
001: The influence of Goldfinger arguably endured for years afterwards. In terms of action, pace, humour and dialogue, the movie exerted a huge impact on the James Bond series over the decades and the hand of Auric Goldfinger can be detected in the franchise in a number of ways. Many of the movies arguably used the Goldfinger formula as a template – the gadgets, the cars, the music, the alluring women, the beguiling central villain, his memorable henchman, the exotic locations, and the fantastic sets.
002: The film not only created ‘Bond fever’ but also had a major cultural impact: as one British newspaper (The Guardian) put it in 2010 (when it included the movie in its survey of the Greatest Action Films of All Time), James Bond became: ‘Along with the Beatles, the most significant and most remunerative British cultural export of the 1960s’.
003: Significantly, after the so-called ‘failure’ of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the EON producers were under huge pressure to restore the old magic and recapture the glitz of earlier Bonds such as Goldfinger. But this nearly took a bizarre twist: when story concepts were being floated for Sean Connery’s return in Diamonds Are Forever, one early idea was to have the actual return of ‘Goldfinger’ himself: the original villain in an early draft of Richard Maibaum’s screenplay was to be Auric Goldfinger’s twin brother!
004: Richard Maibaum (1909-1991) felt the story in Fleming’s novel Diamonds Are Forever lacked a strong central villain, and had always been a fan of Gert Frobe’s screen portrayal of Auric Goldfinger. He decided that his concept of an evil ‘twin’ could allow the recasting of Gert Frobe. Just as Auric Goldfinger was obsessed with gold, his brother was to be obsessed with diamonds. Maibaum revealed later that he even had a line of dialogue in the original draft of DAF which involved Bond meeting the villain and being told: ‘You remember my brother Auric, Mr. Bond. Mother always said he was a bit retarded’. Goldfinger’s twin was described as a power-crazed shipping magnate who housed a laser cannon in the hull of one of his fleet’s supertankers.
005: When Maibaum pushed for Gert Frobe to return, the producers (Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli) apparently did briefly consider seeking out Frobe for the role of the ‘twin’. As Maibaum recalled in an interview in 1983, ‘We were going to approach Gert Frobe again, but it didn’t work out’. However, it is also evident that Cubby Broccoli became very uneasy about the idea, and when Tom Mankiewicz was engaged to rewrite the screenplay the main villain became Blofeld again.
006: However, despite the decision not to make DAF into a kind of Goldfinger II, it is also interesting to note that the influence of Goldfinger remained present in other ways: Guy Hamilton, who had successfully overseen Goldfinger in 1964, returned as director for Diamonds Are Forever, Ken Adam resumed his role as Production Designer, and Shirley Bassey returned to sing the (now classic) DAF theme song. It was all clearly an attempt to recapture the ‘magic’ of Goldfinger for (what was assumed at the time to be) Sean Connery’s very final movie as 007.
007: More recently, the Goldfinger touch arguably returned in the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig Bond movies. Brosnan’s debut movie as 007, Goldeneye, saw the hugely popular return of Bond’s Goldfinger Aston Martin. Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale gave some background on how Bond obtained his Aston Martin, while the 22nd Bond film Quantum of Solace included a direct homage to the famous Shirley Eaton gold-painted body death scene by having Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton) being found on a bed covered in crude oil. And, famously, in the 23rd 007 adventure Skyfall, the director Sam Mendes made the iconic Aston Martin DB5 a central feature of the final third of the movie, not only tapping into strong audience nostalgia but also making the car a key plot device in the story. Moreover, No Time To Die saw the Aston back in spectacular action in the Italian sequences.
There is no doubt that Mr. Goldfinger himself, looking down from above while playing his golden harp, would have strongly approved of all this.
Did You Know?
Actor Graham Crowden (1922-2010), who had a small role as the First Sea Lord in Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only (1981), once played Auric Goldfinger. An edition of the BBC TV arts programme Omnibus in 1973 was devoted to ‘The British Hero’ and included discussion of the literary James Bond. Some scenes from the Fleming novels Diamonds Are Forever and Goldfinger were recreated especially for the programme, with actor Christopher Cazenove (1943-2010) as James Bond. Remaining faithful to the novels, one scene involved Crowden’s Goldfinger standing in a medical theatre with 007 strapped to a table and being threatened by the lethal blade of a spinning saw, with Oddjob (played by Simon Walsh) standing nearby.
Sean Connery and Shirley Eaton on the ‘Goldfinger’ set at Pinewood.