Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica (37 page)

This new novel, written at Goldeneye in January and February 1962, was a return to the classic Bond formula, and a reprise of Blofeld, whom Bond is hunting at the beginning of the story. He is so frustrated by his lack of success that he even drafts a letter of resignation to give to M, but before he delivers it, he meets Contessa ‘Tracy’ di Vicenzo, suicidal daughter of a crime boss, Marc-Ange Draco. Draco, another of Fleming’s likeable pirates, gives Bond information on Blofeld’s whereabouts. Impersonating an officer from the College of Arms, Bond meets Blofeld at his mountaintop lair, where Blofeld is infecting impressionable young women with diseases to carry back to Britain. The plot is foiled, but Blofeld escapes again, having killed Tracy just hours after her marriage to Bond.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
was considered by Bond film scriptwriter Richard Maibaum to be ‘by the far the best novel [Fleming] ever wrote’. Its great strengths are the set-piece ski chase (which would become a stock ingredient of the films), the attack on the alpine redoubt, and also the real tenderness with which Fleming writes about Bond’s feelings for Tracy. It would become the most successful Bond novel to date, selling over 70,000 hardback copies in the UK in the first year, and topping the US best-seller chart for over six months. The
Observer
newspaper also considered it the best Bond for a while: ‘It is better plotted and retains its insane grip until the end.’ An American reviewer in the
Los Angeles Times
saw the book’s success as a reaction against ‘the 20th century vogue of realism and naturalism’, exactly what Fleming had so unsuccessfully attempted with his previous book. ‘With Fleming,’ the reviewer went on, ‘we do not merely accept the willing suspension of disbelief, we yearn for it, we hunger for it.’

In
Thunderball,
Bond had come once more to the rescue of the United States; in
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,
the threat is to Britain
alone. But it is a country in palpable retreat. We hear about ‘the miracle of the latest German export figures’; at the College of Arms, they are busy working on flags, stamps and medals for ‘the new African States’. Bond spends Christmas Day with his beloved M, who regales him with naval stories, ‘all true and it was all about a great Navy that was no more and a great breed of officers and seamen that would never be seen again’.

As had become customary, the 1962 trip to Goldeneye saw Ann leave Jamaica well ahead of Ian. Soon after she got home, she received a jaunty letter from him saying he was cheerful and well. She replied at length, expressing her upset at his evident preference for Blanche over her. He had phoned Blanche the moment he arrived, and now she was ‘an adjunct of life in Jamaica’. ‘I fear that since the rise of James Bond you do not care for a personality that in any way can compete with yours,’ Ann suggested. ‘No doubt there is more adulation to be had at [Bolt], and you refuse to see that it is an impossible situation for me. However, you have now two weeks for adulation … no doubt that is why you wanted me to go … Your personality has greatly changed with success, Bond and bad health – this is a
general
opinion … If you were well and we were both younger our marriage would be over,’ she ended. ‘But I love you and want to look after you, and grind my teeth when you smoke . . .’

Part of Ann’s fury was at what she called Ian’s ‘patronage’ of Blanche’s family. He had helped get her son Chris Blackwell a job on a new film being shot in Jamaica. Fleming had long seen his hero, James Bond, as a movie property. Now, at last, it was happening. The filming of
Dr No,
starring Sean Connery, was under way.

In December 1960, Harry Saltzman, a Canadian film producer based in London who had worked on a number of critically acclaimed ‘kitchen-sink’ dramas, had taken a six-month option on all the Bond books. But he had failed to raise money, and with time running
out went into partnership with Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, formerly a Hollywood agent, but more recently a London-based film producer. Broccoli had tried unsuccessfully for the same option in 1958. The idea to film Bond had been in the back of his mind for some time. ‘James Bond appealed to me on several levels,’ he later wrote. ‘Fleming’s fictional character offered exciting scope for all the basics in screen entertainment: a virile and resourceful hero, exotic locations, the ingenious apparatus of espionage, and sex on a fairly sophisticated level.’ Broccoli had worked with director Terence Young, designer Ken Adam and scriptwriter Richard Maibaum, all of whom would be vital to the Bond films’ success.

Saltzman and Broccoli set up Eon Productions, and started to look for backers. They originally planned
Thunderball
as the first film, but the McClory injunction stopped that and they opted for
Dr No,
partly on account of its exotic Jamaican location. Work started on the script, with one early version having Dr No as a monkey (the scriptwriters thought Fleming’s Dr No ‘a ludicrous character, Fu Manchu with hooks’). At another time, the plan was for the villain to be an arms dealer planning to blow up the Panama Canal. Fleming himself demanded no input on the script, but Broccoli insisted: ‘It’s got to be the way the book is.’

‘Ian attended several of our meetings well before the picture started,’ Broccoli later wrote. ‘It was good having him around. His whole persona, the way he held his cigarette, his laid-back style, that certain arrogance, was pure James Bond.’

In the end, the scripwriters made Dr No a member of SPECTRE, various new characters were invented, and the more over-the-top elements at the end of the novel – including the fight with the giant squid – were discarded. As in the book, Bond is helping out the Americans, but US influence is much stronger in the film. Having been issued with an American gun, he flies via New York on Pan Am to. find Felix Leiter, who does not appear in the book, already in Jamaica and on the case. Nonetheless, Leiter knows this is British territory,
commenting, ‘Limeys can be pretty touchy about trespassing.’ For his part, Bond tells the American: ‘It’s my beat.’

Eon Productions had several rejections from distributors, but in June 1961, they secured the backing of United Artists. The budget for the film was set at $1 million. Fleming was to get $50,000 on signature, then $100,000 per film plus 5 per cent of the ‘producers’ profits’. He arranged for this money to go directly into a trust fund for Caspar.

As soon as the deal was done, director Terence Young, designer Ken Adam and the two producers headed to Jamaica to look for locations. This ‘beautiful island’, said Broccoli, ‘had everything we were looking for’. On Fleming’s recommendation, Chris Blackwell was taken on as location manager and general local fixer. He had given up the ADC job at King’s House on Foot’s departure in 1957 and then spent a short time in London studying to be an accountant, but he had hated it and soon returned to Jamaica. There he had worked in various jobs and was currently running the Ferry Inn, halfway between Kingston and Spanish Town. His great love, though, was Jamaican music, and he had set up Island Records in July 1959. Fleming hoped that Blackwell would bring some of this expertise to the film.

The casting of James Bond was, of course, crucial. Fleming had always thought of David Niven in the role. The producers sounded out Cary Grant, but he was too expensive and refused to commit to a series of films; James Mason would only do two, and thought the books ‘all rather a load of nonsense’; Roger Moore was busy doing television; both Patrick McGoohan and James Fox refused the role because of religious scruples.

Almost making a virtue out of a necessity, an unknown Scottish actor, Sean Connery, was selected, mainly on the strength of his sex appeal, and the fact that he looked a lot like the
Express
cartoon-script Bond. When casting had been discussed for a stillborn US TV project a few years before, Fleming had suggested that there should be no ‘stage Englishness … no monocles, moustaches, bowler hats
or bobbies, or other “Limey” gimmicks. There should be no blatant English slang, a minimum of public school ties and accents.’ Even so, he was worried that the working-class Scot Connery might not have the panache for his hero. Connery later commented: ‘I never got introduced to Fleming until I was into the movie – but I know he was not that happy with me as a choice. He called me, or told somebody, that I was an over-developed stuntman … But when I did eventually meet him he was very interesting, erudite and a snob – a real snob. But his company was very good for a limited time.’

Connery’s Bond would be different to that of the books, in which he only reads
The Times
newspaper and complains about ‘the cheap self-assertiveness of young labour since the war’. Connery, at thirty-one, was younger, tougher and somehow more modern and classless. Interestingly, Fleming would later comment that he was ‘not quite the idea I had of Bond, but he would be if I wrote the books over again’. In an interview with
Playboy
magazine conducted after two Connery
films had been released, Fleming even reinvented Bond to the extent of suggesting that his politics were ‘a little bit left of centre’.

An idea was floated to ask Noël Coward to play Dr No. ‘The character required brains, sophistication and a kind of Machiavellian wit,’ wrote Broccoli later. ‘Ian thought it was a brilliant idea. I did, too. Since I didn’t know Coward and Ian did, I asked him to cable our offer to Noël in Jamaica. He did so, and received a swift response by telegram: “Dear Ian, The answer to your suggestion is No … No … No … No! Thank you. Love, Noël.’”

The bulk of the cast and crew flew out on a chartered Britannia 312, arriving in Jamaica on Sunday 14 January. Connery and a handful of others had come out the previous week and set up camp at New Kingston’s Courtleigh Manor Hotel on Trafalgar Road. Originally a private house lived in by, amongst others, the Swedish consul, it had become a hotel by 1948. As well as providing accommodation, it would also be used for a handful of scenes in the film.

Filming began two days later at Kingston’s Palisadoes airport, witnessed by a reporter from the
Gleaner:
‘If the first day’s shooting was any indication of the quality of the finished product,’ he wrote, ‘DR NO promises to be a slapdash and rather regrettable picture.’ Apparently there were continuity problems: an extra carrying a large suitcase and coat over his arm ‘soon got much too tired of toting them around. And it was as hot as blazes.’ So in a scene filmed later but shown immediately after, he is holding only a hat. ‘What I have heard of the dialogue is appalling,’ the
Gleaner
writer added.

After the first day of filming, the film’s top brass retreated to Chris Blackwell’s Ferry Inn. There the
Gleaner
man spoke to two of the extras, who were having dinner. ‘“Never again,” said one extra – one of Jamaica’s most highly-paid models. “We’ve been at it since eight o’clock this morning, and do you know what they paid us? Thirty shillings!’” The
Gleaner
called this ‘a pittance’. ‘£5 a day and
a free luncheon would be modest enough.’ The two extras ‘certainly wouldn’t be reporting on the set tomorrow’.

By later Bond standards, the budget for
Dr No
was modest, and every effort was made to save money. This included using as many locals as possible, even if they were not experienced actors. On director Terence Young’s first visit to Jamaica the summer before, he had been very taken by the young woman who worked at the BWIA check-in desk. This was twenty-three-year-old Marguerite Le Wars, who earlier in the year had won the Miss Jamaica pageant, securing herself the prize of a Ford Anglia car. She did not take him seriously, but when Young returned to Jamaica for the filming, he asked again, and as she had done some stage acting and television commercial work, she agreed to go along for an audition that afternoon at the Courtleigh Manor Hotel.