Another '60s Anniversary: The Ur-Action Blockbuster Goldfinger
Shocking, positively shocking.
We have two iconic '60s anniversaries this week. Ironically, it's the least known by far of the two that continues to resonate most in the culture. On July 20th, 1969, a human being first walked on the Moon. On July 21st, 1964, Goldfinger wrapped principal photography.
We haven't gone to the Moon for 37 years, nor can we go to Mars, as the Apollo 11 astronauts are urging, anytime soon, but we sure go to blockbuster action movies. And Goldfinger is the ur-action blockbuster.
We're not going to the Moon anymore, but we are going to action blockbusters.
Some say that 1975's Jaws marked the start of blockbuster movies. But if you look at the big action blockbusters of today, such as the Transformers pictures, the real lineage traces back to Goldfinger.
What, say, Transformers director Michael Bay has done is take the essentials of action moviemaking -- fast pace, violent action, fascination with tech, car chases, humor, elevated macho factor, elevated babe factor, wisecracks -- pare them down to bare essentials, pour it into a petri dish, and then inject the concoction with steroids. All those elements were put together in Goldfinger, with one difference.
The director of Goldfinger, Guy Hamilton, didn't have to inject his blockbuster with steroids, because he had Sean Connery as his star.
He and producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman added fast-paced action, violence, technology, gadgets, cars, babes, exotic locales, memorable one-liners, music, and merchandising.
Q presents Bond with a specially gadgetized version of the Aston Martin DB5, which became the most famous car in cinematic history.
Though Goldfinger looks almost sedate compared to today's jittery, mashed-up action pictures, editor Peter Hunt's work 45 years ago, emphasizing fast hard cuts, was an innovation. And you can actually grasp what's happening in the film, which is not always the case with today's action pictures.
The violence, especially for the time, mostly courtesy of Connery, was hard-edged and decisive. The opening vignette in Goldfinger, unrelated to the main plot, is a classic, given an homage in the opening of Arnold Schwarzenegger's True Lies.
The Goldfinger soundtrack, composed by John Barry, was a massive hit, outselling the Beatles during their '60s heyday. This is the title track sung by Shirley Bassey.
Bond infiltrates a Latin American town with his scuba gear disguised by a fake seagull. After he comes out of the water, he takes off his wet suit only to reveal a white tuxedo beneath. After planting his bomb to blow up a heroin plant funding terrorists, he saunters over to the cantina to see his treacherous playmate of the month. Catching an attacker coming up behind in her eye's reflection, he ruthlessly turns her into the blow, engages in a brutal fight which he is about to lose until he tosses an electric fan into the bathtub into which he's knocked his assailant. After the man is electrocuted to death, Bond sardonically quips: "Shocking, positively shocking."
The first two Bonds had had gadgets and tech (the island of Dr. No), but this was the first Bond film which emphasized technology and gadgets to such a memorable degree.
In addition to the Aston Martin, Goldfinger introduced another soon-to-be iconic car to movie audiences in 1964 -- the Ford Mustang -- seen here in this chase scene with the Aston in the Swiss Alps.
Much of it centered around perhaps the most iconic car in movie history, the gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5. In addition to being a fast and stylish sports car, it ha an array of tech tricks, including the famous ejector seat.
Along with the Aston Martin, Goldfinger also introduced another iconic car to the movies, the then brand-new Ford Mustang, which looks much the same today as it did 45 years ago. Engaged in a car chase in the Swiss Alps, it ultimately fared badly when Bond's Aston, using a retracting side rotor, slashed its tires.
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." Goldfinger menaces Bond's privates, and the rest of him, with his industrial laser.
There was also Goldfinger's private jet, new then to the movies, and the action aboard it, not to mention the nuclear bomb inside Fort Knox, barely stopped with 007 seconds remaining. And, of course, that menacing industrial laser, never seen before by the public, slicing slowly through steel toward Bond's groin, with the famous exchange: "Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger? No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."
Bond films were already famous for the babe factor, with Ursula Andress's oft-copied arising from the sea like Aphrodite in Dr. No, not to mention Miss Italy playing a Russian cipher clerk in From Russia With Love, but in Goldfinger it was even more heightened.
There was the famous Golden Girl, Goldfinger's girlfriend punished for her assignation with Bond, murdered by being painted all over, nude, in gold. Her ill-fated sister, tracking Goldfinger's majestic Rolls Royce (itself a massive gadget, secretly lined with gold, the better for smuggling it) through Switzerland, trying to kill him only to be dispatched by Goldfinger's most memorable henchman, the Korean manservant "Oddjob" and his lethal metal-brimmed bowler hat.
And there was Pussy Galore, the most extravagantly named of all the Bond girls. Played by the formidable Honor Blackman, already a star in for her high-kicking secret agent turn in the classic British TV series The Avengers, she was a strong match for Bond.
There was music, too, with John Barry's jazzy, vibrant score and Shirley Easton's soaring title song. Soundtracks are big today, but Goldfinger led the way. In fact, the Goldfinger soundtrack album even outsold the Beatles in 1965. Barry's score, which he considers his best Bond, and there were many memorable ones, is swanky, swaggering spy jazz, capturing the vibrant materialism and emerging sensuality of the era.
And then there was the merchandising, beyond the soundtrack. We take it for granted now, but Goldfinger pioneered it with a raft of movie-related products, from toy cars (the Aston is still the best-seller) to action figures, toy guns and radios, clothes and toiletries and luggage and drinks and tie-in books and watches, both knock-offs and luxury watches.
Goldfinger's famous villain "Oddjob" wrecks the set of The Tonight Show.
Goldfinger, incidentally, really triggered the phenomenon of "the Bond watch," with Bond iconically posed early in the film lighting a cigarette in a cantina waiting for his bomb to go off. There are actually two Bond watches in Goldfinger, as there were two in the beginning of the series in Dr. No. The constantly identified Rolex Submariner dive watch, and a seldom mentioned, unidentified ultra-thin gold watch with a white face on a black leather strap, which looks like an Omega or Rolex dress watch of the period. The Rolex Submariner was the one that was emphasized, and so the one that caught on as the rugged action man's watch, though it was finally supplanted in the '90s in Bond films by the equally promoted Omega Seamaster.
One thing that is very different today from 1964 is the release pattern of a film. Today, it's almost all front-loaded, geared for a gigantic opening weekend in the US and, increasingly, around the world.
Then the release pattern was more sedate. It was a world in which Bonnie and Clyde, which was to become a defining classic of "the New Hollywood," could open and disappear, promoted by the studio as nothing more than a B-movie. And then open again when producer/star Warren Beatty insisted, be reviewed and in some cases re-reviewed, and become a big hit.
Goldfinger opened in the UK in September 1964, where it was an immediate smash hit, and didn't arrive in America until Christmas. Its release in other countries was similarly staggered. But wherever it opened, it broke box office records. By 1965, it was a global sensation.
2006's Casino Royale, ironically a faithful adaptation of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, comes closest to the '60s Bond films, though it's more sober than Goldfinger.
In today's terms, around the world, Goldfinger was bigger than The Dark Knight. And as a result of the breakthrough, the next Bond film, Thunderball, made more money. Not unlike Transformers and Transformers 2, without comparing the lasting appeal of the movies.
Bond was already big prior to Goldfinger, with Dr. No a surprise hit and From Russia With Love a bigger hit. None other than President John F. Kennedy had given the series a big boost in America when he named Ian Fleming's "From Russia With Love" one of his favorite books. But Goldfinger took the series into the stratosphere.
Ironically, Goldfinger is based on one of Ian Fleming's worst novels. Fleming, a former journalist and intelligence officer, was an excellent writer, and his novels are an intriguing window on the period, as is the collection of his travel journalism, "Thrilling Cities." Famously described by then left-wing critic Paul Johnson -- who ironically became an arch-conservative booster of George W. Bush (who gave him the Medal of Freedom), Oliver North, and Margaret Thatcher, and apologist for the Watergate scandal -- as founded upon "sex, sadism, and snobbery," the Bond novels come with their own generally un-PC bent. Although Fleming's Bond was an admirer of the Cuban Revolution and notably under-impressed by the rich themselves.
In Alfred Hitchcok's Marnie, his first major non-Bond role, which conflicted with the start of principal photography on Goldfinger, Sean Connery shows off his detecting prowess. Not that he has actually figured out the mystery.
In writing "Goldfinger," Fleming seems to have been going through a depression of some sort which dulled his powers of thought. He actually writes that society is in sharp decline because women had won the right to vote, one of his most dully reactionary bits of commentary. And much of the action takes place away from the page, described only later, such as Goldfinger's murder of his mistress by swathing her in gold paint. As for the central action set-piece of the novel, the big heist at Fort Knox, it's simply daft.
In the novel, the master criminal Auric Goldfinger, England's richest man, enlists the leaders of the American mafia to help him steal the gold from the depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. As Fleming was no stranger to research, this is surprising, as it would days to actually move the gold.
But in the novel, with the gold swiftly removed, which is mind you utterly impossible, the mobsters would split off with their share while Goldfinger took the lion's share to make his getaway. On a cruiser of the Soviet Navy, making a courtesy call at an American port! Not that anyone would notice that, of course. Because Goldfinger actually works for the KGB. Which neglects to inform him that Bond is a British agent when Bond goes to work for him helping plan the caper!
Needless to say, the novel is a complete mess, down to Pussy Galore being the head of a New York crime gang of fellow lesbians, yet falling in love with Bond based on nothing more than a few searching looks on her part, barely returned by him.
At least in the movie her sexuality is more indeterminate, her motivation to shift to Bond's side arguably more clear -- in a male fantasy sense, of course -- after she loses more falls of judo with Bond than she wins and ends up in a famous roll in the hay.
And the film's plot against America's depository of gold at Fort Knox -- to irradiate it with a nuclear weapon, thus pleasing Goldfinger's Communist Chinese patrons by impoverishing America and further enriching Goldfinger -- is a far better solution. Especially with Goldfinger so memorably portrayed by German actor Gert Frobe, who it turned out could barely speak a word of English, ending up dubbed throughout by English actor Michael Collins.
Austin Powers finds a rather different world.
Fleming, ironically, died in August 1964, after the film was in the can but before it was released. So he never saw his creation become the sensation of the '60s and one of the biggest and most enduring movie franchises.
What came after was the whole of the Bond film series, which now numbers 23 feature films, and a raft of spy TV series.
All of which inspired, not only the action blockbuster phenomenon, but also a number of more direct homages in a variety of feature films.
James Cameron and Bond aficionado Arnold Schwarzenegger did their own version of a Bond film with 1994's True Lies, complete with the homage opening and a nuke that does go off.
Steven Spielberg made it plain he wanted to direct a Bond film after he did Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But George Lucas told him he had something better, something American. Something called Indiana Jones in a little movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark. When it came to cast Indy's father, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, they both wanted James Bond, in the form of Sean Connery.
Tom Cruise hankered after a Bond turn, but, being American, wasn't quite right. So he revived the Mission Impossible TV series as a feature film series, this time focused on one particular super-agent.
None of the films coming after Goldfinger matched its impact.
Another Bond fanatic not quite right for the literal role, comedy star Mike Myers, created the Austin Powers series. The spoof was so big and well-done it nearly overshadowed the original for a time. And many felt he'd gotten the right iconic '60s sports car in the Jaguar E-Type, the "Shaguar" in Austin-ese, rather than the less gorgeous Aston.
And before Michael Bay condensed the action blockbuster formula in his Transformers pictures, he did his own version of a Bond film, 1996's The Rock. With Sean Connery himself playing Bond. A Bond, that is, with a slightly different name, who absconds with some of America's darkest secrets and is clandestinely imprisoned for 30 years after breaking out of Alcatraz, the famed old prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay known as "The Rock." Only to be brought out of supermax confinement to engage in various bouts of derring do.
But nothing quite matches the original. Which, ironically, is probably not even the best of the Bond films, even the '60s films starring Connery.
I think From Russia With Love is a better story than Goldfinger, with Bond a better secret agent. Some people like Thunderball, which followed Goldfinger and, using its new blockbuster template, made a little more money but puts me to sleep with its too long underwater sequences. On Her Majesty's Secret Service may be a better movie, though many can't accept George Lazenby in his only turn as Bond.
More recently, GoldenEye, with Pierce Brosnan, is a tighter take on the blockbuster template. Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig, the first actor to really challenge Connery for the best Bond crown, is a grittier take.
Goldfinger's "Into Miami" track heralded the advent of the swinging '60s in all their swanky materialist and sensualist glory, which the great TV series Mad Men, set just beforehand, more than hints at.
But nothing quite matches the moment of Goldfinger. Or its size and confidence. It came along as the social trends explored in the great Mad Men TV series, which is set just before the film, were coming to a head.
America and much of the world had finally emerged from the post-World War II period. With a burgeoning middle class and a strong material base to the culture, rebellion against social conformity and sexual strictures was in the air. So too was fear of a deadlier war. People wanted to spend money and people wanted to have fun.
Goldfinger reflected all that, and exploded in the midst of it. Movies changed after that.
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Bond is cool
While the opening vignette may have nothing to do with the main plot, the method by which Bond disposes of his attacker -- electrocution with an improvised source of electricity -- neatly foreshadows how Bond eliminates Oddjob inside Fort Knox.
Fantastic idea for an article. Thanks for reminding us all why that movie was so great.
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You're welcome. It's actually a fascinating topic.
Goldfinger is superior to Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace, because it's not afraid to be a 007 movie.
While stripping the 007 franchise of absurd SFX and CGI was a good thing, EON have taken too MUCH away from these last two 007 movies to the point where they are simply generic action movies.
No gunbarrel, no title mentioned in the name of the theme song, no gadgets, no humour, no supervillains, no Q, no Moneypenny
If you strip away all the things that make James Bond unique, then why bother tagging the movie with the James Bond label at all?
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Casino Royale worked very well as a needed franchise reboot. Quantum of Solace is a good movie, was too anonymously Bourne-like. Though the Quantum organization is a good opponent.
I think the franchise needs some of the old stuff, but not too much.
Things had gotten quite campy.
I'm not sure about a new Q, as the attempted replacement of Desmond Lewellyn really didn't work (John Cleese). Moneypenny, much as I like Samantha Bond as Lois Maxwell's replacement, has to be recast if retained because of the younger Bond.
I thought the titles sequence in Casino Royale worked very well, as did the song --- "You Know My Name." Things slid backwards in the second movie.
But these are accoutrements, not the things that make Bond unique. I think Daniel Craig has a very strong bead on the character.
Honor Blackman preceded Diana Rigg in The Avengers? Was Patrick MacNee in that version? I never heard of it.
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Honor Blackman was Cathy Gale on THE AVENGERS with MacNee's John Steed. Diana Rigg replaced her when she left. Her episodes are available on DVD.
There's a Christmas episode of THE AVENGERS where Steed and Mrs. Peel are opening Christmas cards, and Steed gets one from "Cathy Gale," and glancing at the enclosed photo says, "Whatever can she be doing at Fort Knox?"
MacNee was in all iterations of THE AVENGERS, but he had a variety of sidekicks, along with Blackman and Rigg, there was Linda Thorson, and later in the revival, Joanna Lumley, who had ALREADY been a Bond girl.
Thank you, Ms. M! Always a pleasure.
Good script, fine acting, and good directing.
Any memorable movie must have these elements.
Also Sean Connery, who for many is the only Bond that mattered.
Goldfinger would be less without the classic theme song sung by Dame Shirley Bassey.
http://www
Great blog!
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Thanks. And that is a justifiably classic performance by Shirley Bassey, perhaps the most famed movie theme song ever.
in spite of shirley's warbleing voice i was totally effected by goldfinger. it used science more than any pop movie before. if you researched my distant cousin john fleming, you would find that england turned to poor scots to fight in the boer wars. and that learning to spy as a strategy was developed at that early time.
I saw Goldfinger when it first came out. I loved it...but I was just eleven at the time. The Bond series and the Beatles were my first encounters with mass-merchandising. There were bubblegum card sets for both (I had complete collections of both, sigh); and I badgered my mother into getting me a Bond "spy briefcase" toy for Christmas. If only I'd been prescient enough to stash them away!
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Ironically, the one really bum joke in GOLDFINGER is Bond's "That's as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs." That gag didn't age well.
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Well, since the Beatles have sharply diminished in the global culture and Bond remains a dominant force, some would say the quip has aged extremely well.
Since I appreciate both the Beatles and Bond, I would says that it shows the cheek of Sean Connery that he was able to say that in the Beatles' heyday of the '60s and not end up singed.
I am totally out of my element here - never been much of a Bond fan...my loss, obviously - but this excellent retrospective has compelled a visit to the local video store, I must say.
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Thanks.
A subject of the Crown who's not familiar with Bond films?!
It is remarkable
And this is why I loved the opening chase sequence Martin Campbell's "CASINO ROYALE" so much. It harkened back to 60s Bond with it's wide-open, long panning tracking shots. That 60s feel permeated the film.
On the other hand "QUANTUM OF SOLACE" suffered from being a "BOURNE" clone with its use of jittery camera work, quick edits and extrmely close-up shots.
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I think they missed a chance after CASINO ROYALE to go on and remake LIVE AND LET DIE, and commence remaking all the novels, in the proper order, using Fleming's stories, as they did in CR. Too bad, but it will be interesting to see what they do with it next.
I don't want to see remakes of old stories.
"Casino Royale" was good because it hadn't been made.
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There another layer to GOLDFINGER's release pattern. It opened in the USA in December, 1964, but ONLY in major cities, in exclusive, reserved-seat, "road show" engagements. If you lived in the suburbs, or no where near a big city, you had to wait for the big general release, which came 6 months later, on Memorial Day weekend, 1965. And it was still in theaters come December, 1965, a year after it's initial American release. Quite a step up from DR NO two years earlier, which was released in America as the lower half of a double bill with DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS.
But for instance, the Q scene is a bungle. Q shows us what the car can do, and then later, Bond has it do all its stuff in pretty much the same order. Cut the Q scene, and the scene where Bond uses the car gadgets would have had much more surprise and fun as we see what it can do. We can assume he was briefed.
There's no suspense, as you know Bond will triumph going in. Hitchcock, when he saw it, liked the old lady with the machine gun, but not much else. And It's really P. Galore who saves the day, not Bond. Bond is pretty passive in the climax except for the fight with Oodjob (In that silly Ft. Knox interior. Do you know what those stacks of gold would have weighed?) Bond doesn't even disarm the bomb.
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Well, of course the actual climax of the film is when Bond defeats Goldfinger, who is then sucked out the window as the plane crashes. Which is after Bond defeats Oddjob in the gold depository.
There are two schools of thought on the Q scene. One is yours, that showing what the car can do in advance kills the suspense.
The other is that showing what it can do builds suspense regarding when the gadget capabilities will be employed.
This is probably why there is a Q scene showing the gadget capabilities in all Bonds films that occur off-hand.
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The most-important action of the story is preventing the the mass-murder at Fort Knox. This are done by P. Galore. It can be argued that Bond sets her in motion by seducing her over to the side of Goodness.
The fight in the plane at the end, great as it is, is more of a coda to the main climax, and was an already-established practice from the ending of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, and used again in the abysmal DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.
I feel that after the first two films, there was a tendency more and more to take the climactic actions away from Bond: in GOLDFINGER Galore saves the day. In THUNDERBALL, and in almost all subsequent ones, it's an army of extras, though Bond always gets to confront the villain at some point.
The Q scene doesn't kill any suspense, it kills what could have been fun surprises. (Who ever thinks "I wonder hwo he'll use those?" as they watch?) And you'll notice that the Daniel Craig Bonds have done away with the Q scenes for exactly that reason. (Pauline Kael was also of my mind about the Q scenes.) Mind you, I enjoyed the Bond-Q banter in those scenes, and the background gadget jokes in them, as much as anyone, but I think the films are stronger without them.
And we couldn't have much of a fun discussion if we agreed on every point, now could we?
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"This are done by..."
Aargh! I meant "This IS done by..." I must proof-read my comments.
Also, my comment "There's no suspense, as you know Bond will triumph going in" referred to the film as a whole, not to the car scene. I apologize for not being clear.
Its a problem with all the Bond films, Indiana Jones films, any action-hero series. Unlike with, say, Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill in NORTH BY NORTHWEST (the template for all Bond films, and vastly superior to all of them), where he isn't going to be back next year in SOUTH BY SOUTHEAST, so maybe he COULD fail. Plus, Thornehill's adventures also creates personal growth for him. Bond never grows. He's the same guy film after film. One of the reasons ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRE SERVICE and CASINO ROYALE are so superior to most of the other Bonds, is that he actually has a genuine love affair, and develops as a character.
I don't mean it makes the Bonds bad films. I love the better Bond films (Flush all Roger Moore Bond films away please), but they don't compare well with the best of Hitchcock.
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Come to think of it, the 50th anniversary of the release of NORTH BY NORTHWEST is in 2 months. I love GOLDFINGER, by NBN is the motherlode, and truly worth celebrating.
You keep on confusing suspense movies with action movies.
Of course, James Bond isn't going to die. Neither is any other action hero.
Hitchcock has nothing to do with this, since he didn't direct action movies and the action scenes he did direct were lousy. And because this is about Bond movies and Hitchcock is a far cry from Bond.
>>>> There's no suspense, as you know Bond will triumph going in.
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"Of course, James Bond isn't going to die. Neither is any other action hero."
I believe I covered that point when I wrote: "It's a problem with all the Bond films, Indiana Jones films, any action-hero series." which then led to my introducing NBN as a counter-example.
Well, Captain Jack Harkenss dies, repeatedly; he just can't stay dead.
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(pt 1 1/2)
Bond's seduction of the lesbian P. Galore was a prime example of Fleming's hilarious male fantasy that all a lesbian needs to turn straight is a good man.
Bond: "They told me you didn't like men."
Galore: "I never met a real man before."
Dialogue from the book, not used in the movie.
I guess that's why they changed the movie so much from the book.
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The turning-th
Galore: "Save the charm. I'm immune." 60s code for "I'm a lesbian."
I think the big change from the book, nuking the gold rather than stealing it, was made for the reasons Mr. Bradley suggests: that stealing the the gold in the small amount of time available, was impossible.
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I've actually used that P. Galore line with a few women. I can assure you it does not mean that I'm gay.
Incidentally, Galore does NOT have an affair with Tilly in the novel. Though she is clearly identified as lesbian in the novel.
It never occurred to me the first few times I saw Goldfinger that Ms. Galore was gay. Perhaps she is bisexual. She's portrayed as an independent woman of the era who sees Bond's act coming a mile away and is irritated by it. As many beautiful women are by that stuff ...
>Galore: "Save the charm. I'm immune." 60s code for "I'm a lesbian."
Right. She's a strong woman doing her job. Her sexuality is never a raised issue in the film.
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Just because YOU didn't intend the line that way when using it doesn't mean it wasn't what was left of Galore's lesbianism in the movie.
"It never occurred to me the first few times I saw Goldfinger that Ms. Galore was gay. "
When I first saw the film, in May 1965, I had just finished reading the book a few days before, and I got at once what the line meant. That it eluded you doesn't change what's there. It was intended to hide it from the easily-shocked.
And I just reread the book last year. Tilly is sexually infatuated with Galore, who returns the attention in the book. See separate comment:
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GOLDFINGER Chapter 19. SECRET APPENDIX. Bond found himself seated between Miss P Galore and Tilly Masterson. He offered them champagne. Miss Galore looked at him coldly and said, "Move over handsome. We girls want to talk secrets, don't we, yummy?" Miss Masterson blushed and then turned very pale. She whispered adoringly, "Oh yes please, Miss Galore."
Jed Midnight had witnessed the snub. He got close to Bond and said earnestly, "Mister, if that's your doll, you better watch her. P- gets what she wants. She consumes them in bunches, like grapes, if you follow me." Mr. Midnight sighed wearily, ""Cheesus, how they bore me, the lizzies. You'll see, she'll soon have that frail parting her hair three ways in front of the mirror."
***
Later on, that same chapter: [Tilly] thought Miss Galore was 'divine'
***
Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out, or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. ... Bond smiled sourly to himself as he remembered his fantasies about this girl as they sped along the valley of the Loire.
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GOLDFINGER Chapter 21. THE RICHEST MAN IN HISTORY. [Tilly] whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "I'm going to get neat P-. She'll look after me."
***
[Tilly] screamed angrily, "No. Stop! I want to stay close to P-. I'll be safe with her."
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(pt 2)
Ironically, it is now the laser in my DVD player that allows me to rewatch GOLDFINGER whenever I choose.
But I have never before thought much about Bond's wrist-watches, except for Red Grant's watch which nearly kills Bond in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. The cars? Yes. The watches? No.
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The Bond watches are for men. Since few men wear much in the way of jewelry other than a watch, watches are talismans for many men.
The cars are something everybody can get into. To the extent they're into cars, naturally ...
The leading magazine on this subject, "WatchTime," quotes wristwatch maker Omega as saying it tracked sales of its Omega model 2541.80 Seamaster which was featured on the wrist of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in the movie "GoldenEye
Yes!!! Thanks for this. i am so geeked out I can't even tell you! In early '65 ,the Aston Martin DB5 made an appearance at a local car dealer in the S.F. Bay Area. It was roped off with the bullet-proof shield up in back, the ejector seat at full height and every other device and gadget plainly seen. There were signs that said not to touch but I went in front, reached down and spun the license plate and instead of someone yelling, the car guy smiled and the other kids - who either obeyed signs or just had no urge to do the same - ran to me, saying "HE TOUCHED IT! HE TOUCHED IT! and they all pawed my hand!!!...
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