The Man with the Golden Typewriter (13 page)

Diamonds are Forever
drew Bond into the spectacular world of international diamond smuggling. The plot ranged from Sierra Leone, via Amsterdam to New York, Saratoga and Las Vegas and saw 007 working undercover to infiltrate a powerful criminal network – The Spangled Mob, run by brothers Jack and Seraffimo Spang whose employees included a pair of homosexual hitmen, Wint and Kidd. It involved horse racing, fast cars, mud baths, gambling and the freewheeling American go-between, Tiffany Case, with whom Bond fell in love. The climax
came at Seraffimo Spang's ranch, Spectreville,
¹
where Bond sent him to his death by diverting his private steam train into an abandoned mine. Returning to Britain with Tiffany on the
Queen Elizabeth
liner, Bond overcame an assassination attempt by Wint and Kidd and later went to Africa where he not only plugged the diamond pipeline but dealt fatally with Jack Spang. The book ended with Tiffany and Bond living together in his London flat and the prospect of marriage hanging in the air.

Fleming worked harder on this novel than he had for the previous three. He took advice from De Beers, who allowed him to watch the sorting and cutting of diamonds, and consulted Sir Percy Sillitoe, ex-head of MI5, who ran the International Diamond Security Organisation.
²
What inspired him most, however, were his own experiences.

In August 1954 he flew to America where he visited Ivar Bryce at his home in Black Hole Hollow, Vermont, and joined up with his old friend Ernie Cuneo to tour the nearby mud baths and race tracks of Saratoga. Ostensibly, his reason for meeting Bryce and Cuneo was to discuss the possible sale of NANA. But it also provided a rich source of material. Apart from Saratoga's famous attractions, he was fascinated by one of Bryce's friends, William ‘Billy' Woodward Jnr, a millionaire who had inherited his father's banking fortune and feared that his showgirl wife was of the wrong social category. Fleming advised Woodward to divorce her – which she pre-empted shortly thereafter by shooting him. He noted him down as a character for his next book, under the pseudonym Willard White. But what really got Fleming going was Woodward's car, a Studillac, a hybrid that combined the power of a Studebaker with the luxury of a Cadillac. He enjoyed not only its energy but the imagination that underpinned its design. It was a specialist vehicle crafted precisely to its user's needs. The concept fitted Bond like a glove.

Fleming flew back to America in November, where he teamed up with Ernie Cuneo for a trans-continental train journey from New York
via Chicago to Los Angeles and then back to Las Vegas. Apart from the rich novelistic pickings which the journey provided, he had good reason to visit Los Angeles. Earlier that year he had sold the TV rights for
Casino Royale
to CBS
³
 – it came out in October 1954 starring Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre – and now, through his agent ‘Swanee' Swanson, he did a lucrative deal for an option on
Moonraker
.

Then, in January 1955, he was off to Jamaica for the usual stint, returning in March to see the April publication of
Moonraker
and resume duties at the
Sunday Times
. By now his schedule was so busy that for his Atticus column he relied occasionally on his assistants – among them his future biographer John Pearson – to supply copy. But his hand was still in evidence. He always liked to end the column with a joke, and on 24 April he offered a wry take on what would become a Bond catchphrase, ‘shaken, not stirred'.

“‘A new recruit to the “Mounties” was being despatched to the wilds of the North-West on a lone and perilous mission.

Before he left, his commanding officer handed him a miniature cocktail shaker and two small bottles containing gin and vermouth.

“What am I to do with those sir? I don't drink.”

“They're in case you get lost.”

“I don't get you sir.”

“If you think you're lost, empty those two bottles into the shaker, put in some hunks of ice and shake vigorously. Before you've shaken very long somebody's bound to appear out of the blue and say ‘That's not the way to make a Martini'.”

FLEMING TO ANN

After Ann had left Goldeneye for New York, Fleming described, along with gossip about his neighbours, an occasion that appealed to his sense of the
romantic.
The Killer's Net
could have been taken from – and used as a title for – one of his novels. Daniel George, Cape's reader, would later criticise Fleming for his constant use of ‘and', which he presumed was meant to give a sense of ‘panting continuity'. He told him to stop it – but too late in this instance.

From Goldeneye, March 1955, Monday

My darling precious,

When I saw that the big bird had got you in its claws I went back to sunset and sat on the far groyne and swam and loved you for an hour and hated the idea of Edward [Molyneux] and Montego and Jamaica without you. Then I sat with Carmen [Pringle] for an hour and told her how wonderful you are and then I went to Edward's. At the bottom of his drive it was very exciting and all made for you, which made things worse. The night before a shoal of goggle-eyes (must look them up) had been seen and about fifty of the fishermen sewed their nets together and for the whole previous twenty-four hours they had been making a great sweep of the bay. And now the twenty canoes were in a circle and it was getting smaller all the time. So I found Edward and T.P. [Tony Pawson] and we stayed there until it was quite dark and the fishermen left men in two canoes with acetylene torches to keep the fish down and they all went home and I expect they all dreamed all night of the great circle of boiling fish. And the churchbells were ringing in Montego and it was madly romantic and like some great traditional fish festival in Italy. And they were due to come back to their boats at six in the morning and I told Edward that he had got to get up at five and be there and paint the whole thing. Then we had to leave it and go up to his airless and pretentious house and talk about you and Edward's servants and how much he was ‘tiefed' and how Noël thought he was God. Then frozen New Zealand mutton for dinner and tomato soup and ice cream and after dinner Edward said What will you drink and I said Brandy and there was no brandy and T.P. played the
House of Flowers
record and I wanted to scoop you by hearing it first but Edward talked about Billy Rose wanting to buy his house at any price. Then bed, with the empty twin beside me and no air and no darling sniffs. As a result I woke up earlier than usual and cursed you for not being there and went down to the sea and they were all there
and the ring of net was getting smaller, but still as big as a house, and the fish were boiling and jumping and they were all about a foot long and very silver with black eyes and the fishermen didn't want to hurry it, because the market knew all about the catch and all the hotels were waiting and the longer they had to wait the more they would have to pay because of lunch and not having bought any other fish. So I went back and it was cold and I bathed in the dull pool and thought of you being woken up in NY by the hot air crackling in the central heating, and had breakfast with bad scrambled eggs but lots of matching china and the toast wrapped up in a napkin. Then I went down again to the sea and Edward was there painting away and finally the circle was as big as a stage and they started hauling up parts of the nets and the fish waterfalled into the canoes and as soon as one canoe was full they started to fill another. I left after a bit and they had filled four canoes solid with fish. Nothing else but goggle-eyes. Then I finished correcting my book which seems terribly silly today and Edward's picture isn't bad, in fact I think the best he has done this year, and he was pleased I had made him (which shows there's something in the way I go on!) and agreed to call it ‘The Killer's Net', which is what the blackamores call it when the circle gets small. And now I am getting tired and will shortcut the rest.

I love you

Ian

TO MISS CLAUDETTE COLBERT,
⁴
615 North Faring Road, Los Angeles 24, Calif.

While in LA the previous year Fleming had met the actress Claudette Colbert and invited her to stay at Goldeneye.

28th April, 1955

I am very sad that you will not be in Goldeneye next winter, but you may change your mind and it is always there if you want it.

I hear there were great dramas after I left, with David Niven catching chickenpox and so on, and I fancy the general atmosphere was considerably disturbed. I shall hear all about it this week-end as Noël is coming over to have dinner with us before going back to America.

I have little hope of getting out to Los Angeles this year. I was there last November and I have absolutely no excuse for another holiday unless Hollywood suddenly decides to film one of my books. You would be the perfect heroine for any of them so if you see my Literary Agent on the Coast, Swanee Swanson, get him to tell you what you are missing.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

1st September, 1955

Dear Michael,

Mark Bonham Carter [of the publishers William Collins] came to dinner last night and I quizzed him about his thriller authors.

I suppose everything he said has to be taken with a considerable grain of salt as he has been trying to prise me loose from you for the last three years, but even so his comments are interesting.

Of Hammond Innes he sells between 40–60,000 copies in hard backs and regularly prints a first edition of 40,000.

He said that if my fourth book was as good as the others he would guarantee to print a first edition of 20,000.

He says that around between 8–10,000 is the sound barrier in these sort of books and the only way to get through it is to make a large print run and simply shovel it down the retailers' mouths.

I told him that I thought that my readership was confined to the A-Class of reader and he said that that was completely disproved by the Pan Book sales of CASINO.
⁵

He mentioned incidentally that he is doing a print of 125,000 of H.M.S. Ulysses,
⁶
the largest print that they have ever done of a first novel, but that Picture Post will be serialising it and that this will help.

He said that a pictorial jacket would certainly help my books, but that unless we made a great push to get through the sound barrier of 10,000 copies I would be permanently stuck there.

He said there were moments when a publisher had to beat the big drum about an author but that if all the stars were right when he did so it was the only way to get mass sales.

I am sure all this is not news to you but I wonder if we really shouldn't have a go with DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and do a real operation on it.

If you would like me to come into financial partnership in any way on such a venture I should be happy to do so, but the main thing, I am sure, is the effort and drive put into the operation.

Mark mentioned incidentally that they have sold 15,000 copies of that Wedgwood book “The King's Peace”, I think it was called, which I think he stole from you.

Of course Mark was shouting the odds a good deal but he knows that I have heard it all before from him and am wedded to you, but there is no doubt about it that Collins do go out on a limb from time to time and they appear to get away with it.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

25th November, 1955

Dear Michael,

Various things.

First of all I'd be delighted to talk to your travellers on December 8th. Please let me know what time.

I have no idea how one “peps up” travellers. I should have thought the best thing for them to do would be to read the splendid puff in Smith's Trade News!

“John Bull” don't want to serialize. They say: “It's a bit too strong and spicy a dish for our readership”.

I have had a letter from Curtis Brown which confirms that the nine months' option on the film rights of MOONRAKER has been sold in Hollywood for $1,000 with option to purchase for $10,000.

The purchaser is the actor John Payne about whom I know very little.
⁷

I am asking Curtis Brown to forward the draft contract to you for approval before I sign it.

I shall almost certainly be in Jamaica by the time the contract appears and if you agree I would like to leave all arguments about it in the hands of you and your excellent solicitors.

Then when you are happy the contract will come back to me in Jamaica for signature and I will forward it back to Curtis Brown from there without giving it any thought whatsoever.

Now, as to the Hallman cover: I do most reluctantly feel that it won't particularly help the book. Some of the background faces are quite splendid but Bond in his white dinner jacket behind this pasty-faced doll, doesn't really come off, I think.
⁸

What are we to do? Would you like to play around with the roughs from Ken Lewis I sent over? I am inclined to think this title is such a good one (forgive me!) that all it needs is first class typographical treatment on the lines of LIVE AND LET DIE.

The only trouble about Lewis is that he lacks a touch of imagination and I wonder if you would like to get one of your own artists to play about with the roughs, and see if he can get a bit more sparkle and some more exciting colours into them. Please let me know what you think. [. . .]

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

There were difficulties finding the correct jacket design. They were eventually resolved when Howard's wife, Pat Marriott, took on the job.

10th January, 1956

Dear Michael,

I am terribly sorry to hear you are having such pangs about the jacket.

An idea might be to stylize Harling's idea – retaining the golden or yellow visiting card but spacing the diamonds evenly across a very dark blue or dark red background, and making the diamonds larger and more sparkling but each of the same, stylized, symmetrical design.