by Andrew Cook
With the Edens quietly relaxing at Goldeneye, behind the scenes Lahoud was not reconciled to Blanche. And then he made a naïve error; one morning he told the press that the prime minister wasn’t feeling very well. This of course had massive repercussions everywhere from London’s political party machines to stock exchanges in London and New York. Lady Eden was absolutely furious and got rid of him, but it was too late; in London Macmillan and Butler were already jockeying for position as the man who would take over from Eden. Macmillan did, about six weeks later.
There was another, personal outcome when they got home. Clarissa mentioned to Anne, a friend of theirs, how wonderfully helpful Blanche Blackwell had been in getting Goldeneye ready for their visit.
This was devastating. As far as Anne knew, Blanche Blackwell had never set foot in Goldeneye. Ian must have been seeing her. The following year, when she got there with her older son Raymond O’Neill and saw the comforts, still in place, that had been provided in preparation for the Edens, she was deeply wounded. Ian had never allowed her to improve Goldeneye. Blanche Blackwell was part of his life and he didn’t deny it; she could perhaps have borne that, had Blanche not visibly exercised more power over her husband than she had. Power was important to Anne.
Blanche understood Ian’s need for solitude. Anne, above all a social being, was impatient and annoyingly intrusive when he was writing. In 1958, Anne didn’t go to Goldeneye at all. This was a huge relief. Had she done so, she would have demanded attention.
Instead Blanche was there, but only if required. She kept away during Ian’s working hours, and when Hugh Pitman and his family came for a couple of weeks she took them off his hands.
• ESTRANGEMENT •
Now that Anne was aware of Blanche, there would be no reconciliation. She was humiliated but not necessarily sad. Even before Caspar was born, she had said that with Ian, ‘the deserts of pomposity between the acres of wit are too vast’. She called him Thunderbird when she wrote to Evelyn Waugh, and could never be bothered to read the books. As to Ian, he found her Caesarian scars sexually off-putting and her overwhelming presence sometimes an embarrassment.
They stayed in the marriage for Caspar’s sake. Holidays were increasingly taken separately. Ian spent several summers with the Bryces at Black Hole Hollow Farm, on the Vermont border, which he loved. Anne couldn’t stand Ivar Bryce; she thought he was a crook. Ian, for his part, disliked Lady Diana Cooper, who was a great friend of Anne’s. By the end of 1957, Ian and Anne were destroying one another and forever sniping, even in public. He accused her of constantly nagging and complaining. They decided to split up for the winter and she resorted to rehab again.
In May 1958 he would be 50. They took a second honeymoon in Venice. She walked around the galleries. He never willingly contemplated art or objects unless the subject might be of use to him. He read instead, always with a drink to hand. He drove very fast without stopping. They really had nothing in common. After Venice, Nice; he was seeing people there about filming the Bond books and had to go on to New York City afterwards for discussions. Anne was left behind.
Later on that year the Flemings were in Austria when the Gaitskells turned up. They were Hugh Gaitskell, then leader of the Labour Party, and his wife. Anne was already, unfathomably, having an affair with Hugh Gaitskell.
Ian had designed James Bond with film-making always at the back of his mind and now the books were attracting interest. Film and TV producers were nibbling. Anne went on the attack. Ian was employing lawyers here there and everywhere to deal with these things, and others, while Arnold Goodman could do it all. Ian was selfish and whatever he wanted, he got; she never got the chance to choose where they were going on holiday. And why did he have to eat so much when it was making him fat? He usually said something spiteful in return.
Beneath it all, he felt desperately tired of James Bond. He felt he had used all the situations and characters he had absorbed as material during the war. All that remained now was to find exotic locations for improbable plots. His heart wasn’t in it anymore; yet there was nothing else; he had become the Writer, Ian Fleming. When Bryce talked about writing a book he wrote to him:
You will be constantly depressed by the progress of the opus and feel it is all nonsense and that nobody will be interested. These are the moments when you must all the more obstinately stick to your schedule and do your daily stint ...
It would be worth it, he thought, if he could find somebody to produce Bond as a film. Hollywood was a writer’s only chance of making enough to retire on.
• 11 •
THE BIG MISTAKE
• NOT THE SAME THING •
The second, third and subsequent Bond books hit the stores in the spring of every year. Ian felt he was on a treadmill, but one he could not afford to fall off. It was true that with every new book his readership increased; still, the revenue from books alone was not even in the same league as the revenue from movie distribution and TV series. The trouble was that a one hour TV show had already been made, with his blessing, in America and it hadn’t worked at all. The director had swept the British settings and characters under the carpet because a British agent would never work in Middle America.
A James Bond film would be better, but it must have a British star. As soon as you started talking that way to US producers they pulled their offer off the table.
So this went on, this hoping, and blundering, for several years. Ian did not know any dedicated script agents or big directors. He would try to work on a film proposal sometimes then put it down again. He didn’t altogether know how to do this or whom to send it to; he had no inside knowledge of the film industry. Would-be developers came to him and they faded away, usually, or optioned a book and then did nothing with it.
This went on intermittently until, in 1959, Ivar Bryce came to the rescue.
The year before, Bryce had set up a film production company with an Irishman in his early 30s called Kevin McClory. McClory, after a personally devastating war, had worked his way up the film industry from runner through boom operator to assistant director and finally, second unit director. Both John Huston and Mike Todd found him reliable and passionate about the work. They liked him and kept in touch. And he was creative. Wide-screen films were the new big thing in the 1950s, and McClory had an idea for a story featuring scenes shot underwater in Todd-AO. He interested John Steinbeck in contributing a treatment for it, but it fizzled out. By that time McClory had another idea, derived from a short story about a boy who runs away from home to live in the Golden Gate Bridge.
Kevin McClory, the man who claimed to have created the ‘big screen’ James Bond. Philadelphia Enquirer
For this one, he raised seed money and production funding to shoot a film set in London and Tower Bridge. McClory contributed his expertise in the film industry – he would be producer/director – and Bryce supplied the money. Together they formed Xanadu Productions in London. Bryce benefited from Ernie Cuneo’s legal advice. McClory went over budget, but he made The Boy and the Bridge, and it was chosen as the British entry for the 1959 Venice Biennale.
Fleming saw the film, was impressed and started talking to both of them about investing in a Bond movie, which he would write and Kevin would direct and produce. ‘There’s no-one who I would prefer to produce James Bond for the screen’, he wrote to Kevin after seeing his work. He probably, at the time, didn’t know the difference between a producer and a director and was using the verb loosely.
Anyhow while Kevin was busy promoting The Boy and the Bridge all over Europe and Hollywood, backed by Bryce’s investment, Ian began work on a treatment for a Bond film. Kevin had told him that the Bond stories, as they stood, were not suitable. They would need a fresh approach for a medium that relied on vision and sound alone, and the sadism would have to go. The neatest solution was an entirely new story, specially written for the screen, using underwater locations in the Bahamas. Bryce, Kevin McCory and Cuneo talked about possible plotlines early in 1959; C
uneo hurriedly put the essentials into a memo and sent it off to Fleming.
Fleming expressed satisfaction. The first Bond film would be a fast-moving caper involving an atom bomb, an enemy agent infiltrating a troupe of wartime entertainers – Noël Coward and Laurence Olivier in cameo roles – a female CIA spy for love interest, and an underwater battle with scuba divers.
Ian loved it, especially the underwater idea. There was some urgency about getting this right, though. Fleming was a loyal friend to Bryce, and he and Bryce agreed that Xanadu should always have first option on making James Bond films, but at least four other offers were on the table and Fleming’s agent at MCA was pushing him to make a decision. Fleming and Bryce were communicating by letter. Fleming needed to be part of Xanadu. Bryce stuffed his mouth with gold: a cheque for $50,000 dollars at once, to spend on buying shares in the new, Nassau-based version of Xanadu. Fleming then wrote to him including what he called ‘the legal bit’:
… in exchange for $50,000 dollars’ worth of shares in the new company, I give you the right to make the first full length James Bond feature film. I will write a full suggested treatment which you can alter as you wish and I will provide editorial and advisory services whenever they can be helpful.
Almost as soon as he’d written to Bryce, he started having second thoughts. He told his MCA agent in London what he’d done; then he wrote again to say he was with Xanadu now so he wouldn’t need MCA again. His agent mildly replied pointing out that he was now potentially tied into an agreement with Xanadu which – if their ‘first full length James Bond feature film’ never got made – would stymie other offers for good, and since he had been paid by shares in something that depended for its success on his own labour, it didn’t look like such a great deal.
Ian stayed with MCA and got on with the treatment. There was some to-and-fro over exactly who the antagonists were – Communists had been the original idea, then SPECTRE was invented, but should it be Mafia? Discussions went on, and problems were resolved, long-distance. But whatever solutions were found, and however hard Ian tried, constructing the thing was agony. He discovered that a novel and a film are not the same thing. He didn’t know how a script worked. In his books, key points were explained in imaginary internal monologues by Bond. There would be a slow build. Readers would see the action, and learn the backstory, from Bond’s point of view. Ian tried to carry that into film, with plenty of spectacular scenes, but the result was clunky. McClory must have groaned when he saw it. A dull start was followed by static scenes of dialogue between static people, gimmicky effects, sadistic torture, cardboard characters and holes in the plot which, to pass unnoticed, would require impossible elisions between scenes.
They needed a screenwriter.
• FINDING A WRITER •
Kevin McClory was firmly in favour of finding a specialist writer. Ian willingly agreed but was anxious that it must be a British one; he did not want a repeat of the American gumshoe clichés that had ruined the TV show in 1954. They all favoured a British cast and crew as well for economic reasons. If the locations were in the Bahamas (where Kevin had found just the right place to build a couple of sound stages), and the actors, writer, producer, director and most of the crew were Brits as well, the James Bond film would qualify for the Eady Levy, a financial advantage designed to promote British film.
Paul Dehn was approached to write the script and declined. He had seen the treatment. There wasn’t sufficient scope for character development, and in any case, he had already worked on a similar, successful film that involved the theft of an atom bomb; helpfully, he suggested a change in its construction. But he wouldn’t be writing it.
They were halfway to hiring someone called Fairchild before they recognised that he would be out of his depth – probably literally. They learned that Fairchild had avoided engaging with underwater scenes in a similar project. They kept looking.
McClory’s dismayed reaction to Ian’s script may have hurt. He was less charmed by what he called McClory’s ‘blarney’ than Bryce was, and as his communications with Bryce grew chummier, he fell to implicit criticism of McClory. Bryce himself was annoyed with McClory by then. Kevin was still spending Xanadu money on the festival circuit while The Boy on the Bridge had not yet found a distributor. Kevin seemed as confident as ever, although privately he must have been disappointed. Before he met Bryce, he had discussed both his underwater film project and the Bridge one with Mike Todd, who had advised him to go with the undersea film. The Boy on the Bridge, he said, would win a lot of awards but ‘you can’t eat awards’. He had been right.
Nonetheless McClory remained fully engaged with the Bond project, promising jobs to good people – pending a good script.
In letters to Bryce, Fleming questioned Kevin’s saleability as director. He had been told, rightly, that distributors liked big name stars and big name directors. Maybe, he suggested, they should ask Hitchcock. Hitchcock, they were warned, would take the whole thing over: he would bring in his own team, writers, everybody.
While these discussions were going on, they still hadn’t fully set up Xanadu in Nassau (as opposed to Xanadu, London, which was a partnership between Bryce and McClory). They lined up a couple of moneyed investors, but they needed to work out what part everyone was playing. As Fleming saw it, Kevin should have no particular role. He was rather too small-time for such a big project; he hadn’t got the track record as director that was required and as to money, he was not a professional producer. Could he in fact account for what he was spending already?
Kevin knew nothing of this Nassau company. Bryce asked him for a breakdown of the money he was spending. At this point, Kevin thought he was equal partner with Bryce in Xanadu, that it had first option on the Bond film, and that his input into that was considerable. He had been drawing up a production team, looking for a writer, even getting storyboards done by John Huston’s artist. Under the original agreement, he would work on it for a salary and expenses and have an equal share of the profits. Nothing had been said to him to indicate that another director, far less another producer, would be sought. There was ill feeling. Bryce was difficult about the salary Kevin felt was due to him. He wanted to know where the money was going. Kevin told him the accounts had been filed with the accountant and were there to be seen.
Ian and his various agents and lawyers were still fielding other offers for James Bond from film and television. Harry Saltzman, who would later meet Cubby Broccoli and make seriously profitable movies out of Bond, had an option on two of the books. In the meantime Bryce and Xanadu were in the doldrums, largely caused by Ian quietly undermining Kevin McClory and Ian and Bryce believing that ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ were an adequate substitute for legal documents.
At this point, in the autumn of 1959, McClory found Jack Whittingham.
Whittingham was perfect: he had been a journalist and a screenwriter since the war, had excellent credits and, best of all, Ian liked him a lot. He immediately suggested improvements to the treatment. His agent negotiated a deal, and McClory, Whittingham and Fleming got together to work on developing a script. Notes would be made at script conferences and Whittingham would go away and make at couple of drafts, at least, before the final shooting script. The general idea – atomic bomb theft, blackmail of world powers, underwater scenes – was pretty much what it had always been but thanks to professional input it would move faster and be more credible.
Fleming attended about four of these meetings, and he registered the title Thunderball, before disappearing to Jamaica to write his new book. Bryce was anxious about money and progress and demanded from McClory ‘my script in my hand’ by February 1960, about six weeks away. This seemed odd to McClory, who had understood that they were partners but now increasingly felt he was being pushed out; even more so when it was Cuneo, the lawyer, who started to ring on the subject of money – and was getting nasty.
• 12 •
THE KILLER
• GOLDENEYE •
; The tenor of conversations between Bryce and McClory had become impossible. Once the script was delivered, McClory knew he was out. Bryce intimated that there was going to be a new company and although he would be happy to offer McClory a position such as associate producer, Kevin himself did not necessarily hold any rights in the script. McClory hadn’t managed to find any backers (McClory showed that he had). McClory had spent money like water (McClory protested that every penny was accounted for). McClory was also furious because he knew Bryce, or Cuneo or both, were making possibly slanderous remarks about his use of Xanadu’s funds.
Also because – despite having asked for some input from Fleming – he hadn’t heard a word.
McClory decided to visit Fleming in Jamaica. He made sure that the script, which had been much refined and improved from the preliminary screen treatment that Fleming had seen, with lots of new twists, was in Fleming’s hands in advance of his own arrival in Jamaica and that Fleming would know where to find him.
When he was, after several days of silence, invited to Goldeneye, Fleming told him that he hadn’t read the script. In any case, he asked, what qualifications did McClory have to produce the film? McClory was astonished. What did that mean?