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For those who were there, it is known, 15 years later, as The Night of the Living Van.
On the night of May 31, 2008, a group of Bond fans went in a rented van to a casino in Joliet, Illinois, a few nights after the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming.
For the purposes of this post, the names of the innocent will be excluded (similar to an episode of Dragnet).
After the outing, the people at the back of the van engaged in jokes and impressions (many which had nothing to do with Bond). The people at the front of the van pretended not to hear.
Ian Fleming, drawn by Mort Drucker, from the collection of the late John Griswold.
May 28, 1908 (or 28-May-1908) marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming.
Fleming, of course, was the creator of James Bond. He was also the co-creator (with Norman Felton) of the character of Napoleon Solo, the lead character of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The latter gets less attention because Fleming sold off his interest for 1 British pound in 1963.
Regardless, without Fleming, the 1960s spy craze would never would had happened.
One can debate whether there were better versions of the spy craze (in particular John Le Carre’s stories).
Yet Fleming (and Fleming-inspired properties) lifted all boats in the ’60s. Without Fleming, things would have been much different.
Ian Fleming, drawn by Mort Drucker, from the collection of the late John Griswold.
The spring and summer of 1963 was a decisive period for Ian Fleming’s involvement — and in the end non-involvement — in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Fleming and producer Norman Felton had met just months earlier, Oct. 29-31, 1962. The two had co-created Napoleon Solo. Felton turned over that material to writer-producer Sam Rolfe to do the heavy lifting. Rolfe revamped the previous ideas into a series proposal. It was titled Ian Fleming’s Solo. Rolfe was not happy about that. It was mostly (actually, almost entirely) his work.
On May 8, 1963, the Ashley-Steiner agency sent a letter to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which includes details about Fleming’s financial demands for being a participant in U.N.C.L.E.
“He definitely wants to be involved in the series itself if there is a sale and is asking for a mutual commitment for story lines on the basis of two out of each 13 programs at a fee of $2500.00 per story outline,” according to the letter.
Fleming also wanted a fee of $25,000 to be a consultant for the series per television season. In that role, the author wants two trips per “production year” to travel to Los Angeles for at least two weeks each trip and for as long as four weeks each trip. The author wants to fly to LA first class and also wants a per diem on the trips of $50 a day.
However, Fleming was under pressure from Bond film producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to exit U.N.C.L.E. Fleming would sell off his U.N.C.L.E. rights for 1 British pound.
In early July 1963, Felton sent Fleming a letter: “May I thank you for meeting with me when I was in England recently. It was deeply appreciated in view of all of the pressures on you at that time. I am hoping, incidentally, that your move to the country has worked out satisfactorily.
“Your new book, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, is delightful. I am hoping that things will calm down for you in the months to come so that in due time you will be able to develop another novel to give further pleasure to your many readers throughout the world.”
Fleming sent a reply to Felton on July 16, 1963: “Very many thanks for your letter and it was very pleasant to see you over here although briefly and so frustratingly for you.”
James Bond became BIG in the United States in the early 1960s.
Ian Fleming’s 007 novels had been published since the early 1950s. But Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner began serializing Bond short stories and novels in the early 1960s. And, of course, John F. Kennedy, elected as U.S. president in 1960, made it known he was a 007 fan.
Life magazine published a list of the new president’s favorite books. Most were heavy history and biographies. But one was a popular tale, Fleming’s From Russia, With Love novel.
Hefner and Kennedy provided the literary Bond a huge jolt in the U.S. All of this happened just as the literary Bond was to be adapted to the screen by Eon Productions and United Artists.
That era, perhaps, might be at an end.
These days, continuation novels featuring Fleming’s character don’t show up in the U.S. until months after they’ve been published in the U.K. The most recent example? Double Or Nothing by Kim Sherwood. The most interested U.S. Bond literary fans arranged to have the novel imported.
What’s more, the U.S. box office for the 007 films aren’t what they used they be.
With 2021’s No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film made by Eon, showed up in the pay-per-view market about a month after the U.S. debut. In the U.S. theatrical market, No Time to Die came in at 007 at $160.8 million, behind The Eternals at $164.6 million, a major disappointment for Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios.
What’s up with Bond 26, the next installment for the Eon series?
Nobody outside of Eon knows. As of this date, there’s no new Bond film actor. There’s no new Bond film director. There’s no new Bond script.
Eventually, you would guess, Bond 26 will take shape. But Bond doesn’t generate the excitement in the U.S. it once did. The U.K. is Bond’s homeland. Both the film and literary franchises care a lot about that.
The U.S.? It doesn’t seem so much.
JFK died 60 years ago this November. Hefner? He left the scene in September 2017.
We will see if Bond again generates the kind of excitement he once did in the U.S.
Cover to the Signet U.S. paperback edition of The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
Five years ago, the blog published a post that described The Man With the Golden Gun, Ian Fleming’s final novel, as “the runt of the litter” for Fleming’s original tales.
But, for many Fleming fans, The Spy Who Loved Me is really the runt of the litter.
It’s a very unusual novel. Fleming, in his 50s at the time, wrote a first-person story from the perspective of a woman in her 20s.
Context: Fleming had been writing Bond novels for roughly a decade when The Spy Who Loved Me was published
The author took a major detour from his previous Bond tales. The novel is told in the first person. Fleming’s previous novels and short stories were told in the third person.
What’s different: The novel is told from the perspective of Viv Michael, a Canadian, who has endured affairs that didn’t work out. She decided to emigrate to North America. She has planned out a long trip she intends to make by motor scooter.
The first two-thirds of the novel concerns Viv’s love affairs in Europe. Afterward, she opts to emigrate to North America. She ends up in northern New York State. Viv gets hired for a couple of weeks to mind the operations at a motel in the region. But all is not what it is what it seems to be.
Climax: Viv is about to get killed by Horror and Sluggsy, two hoods, just before Bond arrives. The agent is driving from Toronto to Washington, D.C., after a mission involving SPECTRE.
More context: Fleming practically disowned this story. Supposedly, when Fleming did his deal with Danjaq/Eon, the filmmakers could only use the title.
Still more context: One chapter consists of Bond telling Viv what he was up to in Canada. If (and Danjaq/Eon has said this will never happen) there were a Bond streaming TV series, that would make for a great episode.
Conclusion: Fleming was really in experimental mode. At one point, “All women love semi-rape,” Viv says in Chapter 14 (“Bimbo”). That was likely cringe-worthy in 1962, when the novel was published.
At the same time, Fleming deserves a tip of the cap for going so far out from his earlier efforts.
This was his last effort before On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, his biggest epic. Whatever you feel about Fleming, he wasn’t afraid to change directions.
Ian Fleming Publications unveiled a “new look” for Fleming’s Bond books and other works.
The announcement came shortly after IFP said it was scrubbing offensive bits from the author’s James Bond novels. That move stirred controversy about being “woke” and censorship.
Besides Fleming’s James Bond works, IFP unveiled new covers for The Diamond Smugglers and Thrilling Cities.
Footnote: Thrilling Cities caused Ian Fleming to (briefly) become involved with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Fleming would co-create the character of Napoleon Solo before abandoning the project under pressure from Bond producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.
IFP has mostly ignored Fleming’s involvement with the TV project. Fleming sold his interest in U.N.C.L.E. for 1 British pound. IFP gets no money from U.N.C.L.E. as a result.
Ian Fleming, drawn by Mort Drucker, from the collection of the late John Griswold.
Ian Fleming Publications, in a statement issued Feb. 27, said alterations in new editions of the author’s stories are “something Ian Fleming would have wanted.”
IFP specifically said changes to Live And Let Die, the second Bond novel, were in line with changes made in the original 1950s U.S. edition.
“We consulted with a number of external parties but ultimately decided that, rather than making changes in line with their advice, it was instead most appropriate to look for guidance from the author himself,” IFP said.
Live And Let Die, featuring a Black villain with part of the story taking place in New York City’s Harlem, has various racial issues. The title of chapter five in the original British edition contains the n-word. It was changed to “Seventh Avenue” in the U.S. edition.
“The original U.S. version of Live And Let Die, approved and apparently favored by Ian, had removed some racial terms which were problematic even in mid-1950s America, and would certainly be considered deeply offensive now by the vast majority of readers,” IFP said.
IFP said it would apply similar standards to other Fleming stories.
“We thus decided to apply the sensibilities of the original U.S. edition of Live And Let Die consistently across all the texts,” IFP said. Racial words “likely to cause great offense now, and detract from a reader’s enjoyment, have been altered, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and period.”
IFP said changes are “very small in number.” Some books, including Casino Royale, Fleming’s first novel, have not been changed.
IFP has taken over the publishing of Fleming novels and short stories. New e-books are out now and new paperbacks are to be issued in April for the 70th anniversary of the publication of Casino Royale.
Fleming’s “books deserve to be read and enjoyed as much now as when they were written,” IFP said. “We believe the new Bond editions will extend their pleasure to new audiences.”
UPDATE: Andrew Lycett, a biographer of Ian Fleming, weighed in via a commentary in The Independent.
“I feel strongly that what an author commits to paper is sacrosanct and shouldn’t be altered,” Lycett wrote. “It stands as evidence of that writer’s – and society’s – attitudes at a particular moment in time, whether it’s by Shakespeare, Dickens, or Ian Fleming.
“But there’s no way Bond’s character in the Fleming books can be modified to make him politically correct. Fleming created a sexist, often sadistic, killer, with anachronistic attitudes to homosexuals, and to a range of people of different nationalities. These stand as evidence of how Britons (or at least some of them) thought at a particular moment in time.”
Cover to a U.S. paperback edition of Live And Let Die
Some Ian Fleming novels and short stories are being edited and altered to address racial issues, The Telegraph reported.
According to The Telegraph, Ian Fleming Publications “commissioned a review by sensitivity readers of the classic texts under its control.”
Many of the examples cited by The Telegraph concern Live And Let Die, Fleming’s second novel, which has sequences set in New York City.
An excerpt from The Telegraph article:
In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die, Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” becomes – “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”
Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated.
The Telegraph said other changes are being made:
The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace, a butler’s race now also goes unmentioned.
This all comes after The Guardian reported, some of author Roald Dahl’s children’s books have been changed “to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher Puffin.” (Dahl was also a screenwriter on the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice.)
“Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work,” the Guardian said.
Various forms of entertainment have dealt with related issues for decades. In the 1990s, a cable TV version of a Bugs Bunny cartoon abruptly lopped off the end where Bugs, Elmer Fudd, and various Canadian mounties did a song in blackface.
Today, on TV and streaming services, there are disclaimers/warnings that appear ahead of a film.
New digital versions of Ian Fleming books and short stories have been released in the U.K., according to Ian Fleming Publications. The release includes the non-fiction titles, Thrilling Cities and The Diamond Smugglers.
The release occurred on the 71st anniversary of when Fleming, while in Jamaica, began working on Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel.
CLICK HERE to see an Amazon listing of the e-books.
Footnote: Thrilling Cities was actually the catalyst for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Television producer Norman Felton was approached about whether Thrilling Cities could be turned into a TV show. That led to an October 1962 meeting between Felton and Fleming about a possible TV show. Some Bond and U.N.C.L.E. fans do their best to forget that.
Iconic publicity still for Goldfinger with Sean Connery leaning against the Aston Martin DB5.
Almost 60 years after it debuted, 1964’s Goldfinger remains one of the landmarks of the James Bond film franchise. But why was it?
The series made by Eon Productions and released by United Artists had two solid financial successes with Dr. No and From Russia With Love. But Goldfinger took everything up a notch or two or three.
What was the “secret sauce”?
Maybe it was the choice of the source material by Ian Fleming.
Eon had multiple options for proceeding after From Russia With Love. The Fleming novels Live And Let Die and Diamonds Are Forever were available. Eon had the rights to other Fleming short stories.
But, at the end of 1963, the cinematic Bond was ready to break out. The film franchise was ready to take on a larger-than-life story. There were elements of that in the first two films. Eon had passed on the giant squid of Fleming’s Dr. No novel. Regardless, Fleming’s Goldfinger novel had even more.
A robbery of Fort Knox. One of Fleming’s best villains. A henchman who hadn’t been seen before?
The filmmakers expanded upon Fleming’s vision. The author’s buzz saw was replaced with a laser beam. Fleming’s Aston Martin DB3 was replaced with an even more elaborate DB5.
In 2014, the blog raised the question of whether Goldfinger was the first A-list comic book film.
Sometimes, it’s just timing. Almost 60 years later, there’s no way to be sure.
My guess, selecting Goldfinger to be the third film was a choice that attracted U.S. audiences.
The selection may have been a simple business choice. The story would have more U.S. scenes, a way to capture American audiences.
Regardless, it was one of the best choices Eon and UA ever made.
The Spy Command 