Authors: Roger Moore
Bond On Bond (8 page)
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The most iconic of all Bond girl poses – Shirley Eaton was painted gold, head to toe, as the tragic Jill Masterson.
H
ow does one describe a ‘Bond girl’? Bond girls are considered to be ‘ubiquitous symbols of glamour and sophistication’, according to Robert A. Caplen in his book
Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond
, that is. Bond girls are certainly bewitching, beguiling and memorable but they are not always necessarily
just
the victims of Bond’s charm: many villainesses, allies and co-workers are given the moniker too, as is my wife Kristina – my favourite Bond girl of all.
Ursula Andress was voted ‘Best Bond Girl of All Time’ by readers of one national newspaper in 2008. She also received a Golden Globe as ‘New Star of the Year’ for her role in
Dr. No
.
In Fleming’s books, Bond girls always seemed to be in their mid-twenties, a decade or so younger than Jim, though in
Goldfinger
Fleming wrote that Bond suspected Pussy Galore was in her early thirties. An older woman? Perish that thought!
Needless to say, all Bond girls are very beautiful, more often than not sporting a light sun tan, and with their eyes and mouths widely spaced – or so wrote Ian Fleming. Their eyes, by the way, are usually blue, but in
Diamonds Are Forever
Tiffany Case’s are chatoyant – ‘varying with the light from grey to grey-blue’ – while in
Goldfinger
Pussy Galore has deep-violet eyes, the only truly violet eyes Bond had ever seen.
Eunice Gayson was the very first Bond girl. Her famous red dress was in fact a last-minute change, and as it wasn’t made to measure, she had to use a few strategically placed clothes pegs to hold it together!
Yes, they all usually have exotic-sounding names too. In addition to the aforementioned, we have Suki, Vesper, Honey, Tatiana, Solitaire, Chew Me, Bibi, Octopussy, Mayday, Kara, Lupe, Paris and Elektra. Suggestive, sexy and very, very Bondian.
Fleming indicated that most of the Bond girls were sexually experienced by the time they met 007, which is probably just as well. However, not all of their experiences had been positive, with histories of sexual violence often a contributory factor in alienating them from men – until Jim arrived on the scene. Jim, meanwhile, I should add, lost his virginity on his first visit to Paris when he was sweet sixteen.
Though this darker backcloth to the characters is largely absent from the films, many Bond girls do face some abuse on screen – Domino (Claudine Auger) at the hands of Largo’s cigarette and ice in
Thunderball
; Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) in
The Man With The Golden Gun
is hurt by the dastardly Francisco Scaramanga; Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto) in
Licence To Kill
is whipped by Franz Sanchez … perhaps these events were behind their determination to resist Bond at first?
But Jimmy’s charms win through … even in the case of lesbian Pussy Galore when, in bed, Bond says, ‘They told me you only liked women,’ and she tellingly replies it was because ‘I never met a man before.’
You have to laugh. To think Bond could turn a gay woman is quite comical. But then again, Judi Dench’s M did describe Jim as being ‘a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War…’ in
GoldenEye
, so he’d probably like to think he could.
Margaret Nolan played Dink in
Goldfinger
. A well-rounded role!
Put ’em up! Honor Blackman (centre) with Shirley Eaton (left) and Tania Mallett inside the Fort Knox set on
Goldfinger
.
Cubby Broccoli admitted that Honor Blackman had been cast on the back of her success in
The Avengers
, despite the fact that the American audience had never even seen the programme. He said, ‘The Brits would love her because they knew her as Mrs Gale, the Yanks would like her because she was so good, it was a perfect combination.’
One time I was doing an interview with Jimmy Tarbuck on
Sunday Night at the London Palladium
and Tarbuck said:
‘You’re the Saint, Sean Connery is Bond, Patrick McGoohan is Danger Man and Patrick MacNee is in
The Avengers
… do you ever meet up?’
I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Do you go out together?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Pussy Galore?’
‘Well, we don’t go looking for it …’ I replied.
I’m still not sure how we got away with it!
Bond rarely limits himself to just one conquest per film. The pattern established by Cubby and Harry – and still honoured to this day – usually sees anyone sleeping with Bond in the first reel bumped off before the end of the second. So beware young actresses.
Sean and Martine Beswicke in
Thunderball
. Martine also appeared in the gypsy fight sequence in
From Russia With Love.
Roald Dahl summed it up best when he spoke about being contracted to write the screenplay for
You Only Live Twice
(1967): ‘“You put in three girls,” the producers said, “girl number one is pro-Bond. She stays around roughly for the first reel of the picture, then she is bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond’s arms.
‘ “Girl number two is anti-Bond and usually captures him, and he has to save himself by knocking her out with his sexual charm and power. She gets killed in an original (usually grisly) fashion mid-way through the film. The third girl will manage to survive to the end of the film.” ’
Mollie Peters played Patricia in
Thunderball
, and helped soothe Jim’s stress.
To date, only two Bond girls have actually turned the formula around and captured Bond’s heart – though neither lived very long, proving you can’t tamper with the recipe too much. In
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
, Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) married Bond
,
though she was shot dead soon after the ceremony by Irma Bunt and Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The second to wed was Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in
Casino Royale
. Bond professes his love for her and resigns from MI6 in order that they can have a normal life together. Later, he learns she was actually a double agent working for his enemies at Quantum (in the film) – the enemy organization ostensibly kidnapped her former lover and was blackmailing her to secure her cooperation. She died by drowning in a lift in a building under renovation. Realizing his betrayal and loss in equal measure, Bond confirmed, ‘The bitch is dead’ – one of the most intense lines of all Fleming’s novels, which was also used in the film.
