The Many Lives of James Bond

by Mark Edlitz

  Later on, Moore admitted to having a few trepidations in taking over the part that Connery seemed to define indelibly. “I did get nervous when I was on my way to London for the first screening of Live and Let Die. I felt like I was in a delivery room waiting to have a baby. The baby’s going to come out and that’s it! There’s nothing you could do about it.”

  Moore’s fear about following Connery, at least the one that he’d admit to, manifested itself in a most unlikely way—in Bond’s drink of choice. Fearing that he could not order a “martini, shaken not stirred” without a Scottish burr, Moore’s Bond never orders his preferred beverage. “I never ever said that in any of my Bond movies. But every waiter, every barman in the world knew that I wanted a martini shaken, not stirred.”

  When discussing how he prepared for the role, Moore singled out a concern that initially troubled him. “I asked myself, ‘What sort of spy is he? Everybody knows him!’” Moore’s point was the absurdity of Bond being a world-famous “secret” agent. If an operative is to be effective, his identity must remain concealed. Moore finally decided that Bond’s audience had long ago suspended its disbelief about matters of this kind.

  After some initial apprehension, the public embraced Roger Moore’s interpretation of the role. His Bond was so popular that he played the part in seven consecutive movies.

  Although Moore was modest about his popularity as Bond, he enjoyed the association. In an article for the London Times, Moore wrote, “I am an aficionado of James Bond—both the books and the films—and of course have a vested interest in the franchise. But more than that, I have a vested interest in the character. I feel protective towards him.”1

  Moore’s Bond is strikingly different from Connery’s. Connery was lethal, often unkind or cruel, and he introduced the world to Bond’s sadistic tendencies. During the 1960s, Connery seemed to be the only possible Bond, and for many of his successors, including Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, he will always be the gold standard.

  Moore radically redefined the part in the 1970s and 1980s. Moore told me that he believed Bond did not like killing and he added that his interpretation of Bond as a reluctant assassin was the insight that proved to be the linchpin of his approach to the part. On the surface, suggesting that the world’s most lethal spy could actually loathe killing is a little like proposing that the world’s best race car driver hates making left turns. In Bond’s world, killing is an essential part of the job description. Secretaries type, chefs cook, and Double-O agents kill—they even have a government-issued license to do so.

  Although the Double-O prefix is thought of as an exotic indicator of an extraordinary spy’s arsenal of skills and knowledge of spycraft, the actual meaning is decidedly less glamorous. In Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, the literary Bond confessed, “It’s not difficult to get a Double O number if you’re prepared to kill people…. That’s all the meaning it has.”2 These days, two kills hardly seem impressive. Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne can kill two thugs with a rolled up magazine before breakfast.

  Fleming added to the reader’s knowledge of the Double-O section in subsequent stories. In Live and Let Die, Casino’s follow-up, Fleming added that a 00 agent is empowered to “use assassination as a weapon”3 and in the fifth novel, From Russia, with Love, he wrote that the “numerals signify an agent who has killed and who is privileged to kill on active service.”4

  Whereas Moore’s Bond killed a foe while holding one hand on his Walther PPK and the other over his nose, it sometimes appeared as though Connery enjoyed killing. Moore, in his article for the London Times, expounded on their differences: “Being a coward, I hated guns and would far rather have tried to disarm an opponent with a flippant remark, whereas Sean would knock them out cold. That was the difference in our characters.”5

  For Moore, Bond’s killing was what he had to do so that he could travel to remote, romantic locales and meet and bed beautiful women. Moore’s Bond carried out his assignments for the audience’s vicarious enjoyment. Moore remarked, “I basically said [to the audience], ‘I’m having a good time doing this, and I hope you’re having a good time watching me have a good time.’” Moore’s Bond is having the best time when he’s seducing his nubile costars. Rather than fetishize the violence, Moore’s Bond plays to the audience’s sexual fantasies.

  I bristle when Moore detractors suggest that he transformed Bond into an amiable rogue. After all, if Moore didn’t make audiences believe that he was the world’s most able spy and not merely a wisecracking ladies’ man, the films wouldn’t be as effective as they are. The spy-as-playboy paradigm only works if it’s played for laughs—as it is in the Austin Powers movies. It’s not a concept that could have been sustained over Moore’s enduring seven-film reign as Bond. Moore’s Bond was every bit as formidable as Connery’s, but Moore chose to emphasize Bond’s more dashing, less dangerous qualities.

  Neither Connery’s nor Moore’s interpretations seemed to invite scrutiny of Bond’s motivation. Surprisingly, even after the first twenty films, audiences didn’t know much about James Bond’s personal life. We knew what he likes to drink and how he likes it prepared (shaken and not—you know—the other way). We knew the order in which he likes to say his name (last name, first name, last name again). More avid fans could recall that he was briefly married to Tracy di Vicenzo but became a widower when Ernst Stavro Blofeld arranged her execution. It wasn’t until Daniel Craig’s conflicted Bond that the general public wondered about the man behind the number. Fleming’s novels provide plenty of answers.

  We know from the books that Bond became an orphan at eleven when his parents (Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix) died in a mountain climbing accident. An aunt (Charmian Bond) became his guardian and he studied at Eton (the prestigious boarding school) before he was expelled due to an incident involving a maid (even then Bond was a lothario). After college, Bond joined the navy, rose to the rank of commander, and was recruited by Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where he became its best agent.

  In each book, Fleming gives us tantalizing morsels about 007’s private life. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (OHMSS), Bond fondly recalls the “spade-and-bucket days” of his childhood when he would swim in the “dancing waves” and collect seashells, which, over the gentle objections of a parent, he intended to display on his bedroom windowsill.6 In the short story “Octopussy,” Bond says that the Austrian climber Hannes Oberhauser “was something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one.”7 In the short story “From a View to a Kill,” we learn that Bond lost his virginity in Paris at the age of sixteen during “one of the most memorable evenings of his life.”8 We discover that seeing his friend Quarrel survive the shark attack in Live and Let Die triggers Bond’s “first tears since his childhood.”9 In Casino Royale, we find out that “Bond’s car was his only personal hobby”10 and that he considers boredom to be “the worst torture of all.”11 Elsewhere in OHMSS, Fleming confirms what readers have long suspected—that women and “gun-play” were the only things “that set James Bond really moving in life.”12 In Moonraker, Fleming reveals that Bond suffers from depression and that his goal is to “have as little possible in his banking account when he was killed,” as “he knew he would be.”13

  Although the cinematic Bond is usually depicted as a carefree bachelor, the literary Bond is frequently heartbroken. In Moonraker, Bond develops feelings for police-woman Gala Brand. When Brand rejects him, a forlorn Bond tries to inure himself from “the pain of failure that is so much greater than the pleasure of success,” and he resolves that from now on there “must be no regrets” or “false sentiment.”14 For Bond to successfully disguise his pain, he “must play the role which she expected of him. The tough man of the world…. The man who was only a silhouette.”15 In OHMSS, Fleming humanizes 007 again by revealing that Bond takes yearly trips to France so that he can visit his slain wife’s grave. Yet in The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), we learn that Bond “knew, deep down, that
love… from any woman was not enough for him. It would be taking ‘a room with a view.’ For James Bond, the same view would always pall.”16 In Diamonds Are Forever, Bond explains his aversion to matrimony: “Most marriages don’t add two people together. They subtract one from the other.”17 But six novels later, in OHMSS, Bond has a change of heart. He comes to realize that he’s looking for a woman who “above all… needs” him and, moreover, that he “wouldn’t mind having children.”18 In Diamonds, Bond reflects on the kind of advice he might give to a son, should he ever have one: “Spend your money how you like, but don’t buy yourself anything that eats.”19 In You Only Live Twice, the last novel that was published before Fleming’s death, Bond might have finally gotten his wish. In it, Japanese diver Kissy Suzuki becomes pregnant with Bond’s child.20

  Fleming informs us that the professional life of a secret agent isn’t always exciting. In fact, it’s sometimes dull. We learn in Moonraker that Bond considers Mondays “hell” because it means “two days of dockets and files to plough through.”21 The literary Bond has two secretaries: first Loelia Ponsonby, then Mary Goodnight. He goes out on assignments only two or three times a year and during the remaining months he “had the duties of any easy-going civil servant.”22 Bond doesn’t take vacations; he works from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., has lunch in the “canteen,” and lives in a “small but comfortable flat,” which is looked after by May, an “elderly Scottish housekeeper.”23 The mandatory retirement age for Double-O agents is forty-five. Although the films seem to suggest that there are numerous Double-O agents, we are told that at this point in the literary Bond’s time line, there are only “two other members” of the 00 section.24

  In The Man with the Golden Gun, we learn more about Bond’s working methods: “The first law for a secret agent is to get his geography right, his means of access and exits, and assure his communications with the outside world.”25 And in Thunderball, while deliberating on how much unsubstantiated information to share with M, his superior, 007 reminds himself, “Wishful intelligence, the desire to pleasure or reassure the recipient, was the most dangerous commodity in the whole realm of secret information.”26

  Elsewhere, Bond speaks about his need for self-reliance. “What’s the good of other people’s opinions? Animals don’t consult each other about other animals. They look and sniff and feel. In love and hate, and everything in between, those are the only tests that matter. But people are unsure of their own instincts. They want reassurance.”27 In From Russia, with Love, Bond philosophizes: “Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time. Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it.”28 In OHMSS, Bond soothes his troubled mind with the comforting notion that “worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it’s due.”29 Taken together these details form a somewhat revealing portrait (or dossier, if you will).

  But movie audiences didn’t seem to have much interest in the private life of a character they so loved. It seems that, to his fans, what Bond did before his first onscreen adventure was irrelevant and, comparatively speaking, mundane. Through the first twenty films Eon (Dr. No through Die Another Day) and the first five actors (Connery through Brosnan), revelations about Bond’s psychological makeup and particulars about his past were usually limited to information about previous missions or his preferences in relatively inconsequential matters, such as food (Beluga caviar), drink (Bollinger Champagne), and music (“That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without ear muffs.”).30 But these scant details were meant to establish Bond’s sophistication, build his legend, and add to the mystique of the already enthralling spy.

  However, notable moments in the pre-Craig era hint at the depths of Bond’s character. In The Spy Who Loved Me, we see Moore’s Bond shed his unflappable exterior at the mention of his late wife’s memory, and in For Your Eyes Only, he touchingly leaves flowers on her grave. In The Living Daylights, we learn that Dalton’s Bond has become disenchanted with the spy game. When threatened with censure for not following orders, Dalton’s Bond fires back, “Tell M what you want. If he fires me, I’ll thank him for it.” Bond’s friend-turned-enemy Alec Trevelyan seems to have 007’s number when, in GoldenEye, he wonders, “If all the vodka martinis ever silence the screams of the men you’ve killed. Or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women. For all the dead ones you failed to protect.” Elsewhere in Golden-Eye, we are told that Bond’s inability to form long-term relationships with women is a self-defense mechanism. Brosnan’s Bond confesses that he must remain “cold” because, “It’s what keeps me so alive.” In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond reveals that he left Paris Carver, a woman that he cared for, because she got “too close.”

  An assortment of throwaway remarks hint at Bond’s self-image. Before skeet shooting with the austere Emile Largo in Thunderball, Bond confesses, “I’m not what you’d call a passionate man.” In a deleted scene from Diamonds Are Forever, Bond tells Plenty O’Toole that, notwithstanding his polished appearance, he considers himself to be a “mere commoner.” After Bond has been released by the enemy agents who had imprisoned and tortured him for fourteen months in Die Another Day, M rebukes 007 for not swallowing his cyanide capsule and thereby risking breaking under duress and revealing top-secret information. In response to M’s reprimand, Bond sneers that he “threw [the cyanide] away years ago.” The agent’s confidence that he could endure sustained torture indefinitely and not be broken suggests a darkly hopeful outlook. Here Bond’s well-earned world-weary veneer belies an underlying optimism.

  These exceptions aside, insights into Bond’s character and past were replaced with allusions to previous Bond films. In OHMSS, George Lazenby’s Bond opens his desk drawer to find memorabilia from Sean Connery’s Bond’s previous adventures, including the knife that Honey Ryder wore in Dr. No and the garrote that Red Grant used in From Russia with Love.31 In turn, when Connery returned to the role in Diamonds Are Forever, his Bond seeks revenge on the man who killed Lazenby’s Bond’s wife. Her memory survives through three other Bond actors—Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan—in the previously mentioned Roger Moore movies, as well as in Licence to Kill, GoldenEye, and The World Is Not Enough. In Die Another Day, Brosnan’s Bond visits Q’s disused equipment supply room, which is filled with gadgets from previous Bond films, including the jetpack from Thunderball and the fake alligator from Octopussy.32

  These allusions link the Bonds of the different eras and reinforce the notion that Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan were all playing the same character at different periods during his lengthy career.

  Daniel Craig’s Bond films make numerous references to prior adventures, but it can be argued that Craig’s Bond is not the same character that the previous actors played, that he isn’t the same man. But this radical departure from the series’ formula wasn’t immediately apparent at the dawn of Craig’s era. His first movie, Casino Royale, can be viewed as an origin story and as a prequel to Dr. No, the first Bond movie. Quantum of Solace and Skyfall seemed to fit into the same narrative. However, the perception of Craig’s Bond changed when, in Spectre, archvillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld revealed that his father, Hannes Oberhauser, looked after the orphaned Bond for two years and had asked a young Blofeld to treat Bond as a brother. If Craig’s Bond had a personal relationship with Blofeld, then Blofeld’s previous encounters with Connery, Lazenby, and Moore’s Bonds wouldn’t make sense. The plot point, while controversial among Bond fans, suggests that Craig’s Bond films need to be reassessed and viewed as part of a separate narrative, which is related to but independent of the previous movies’ continuity.

  For nearly sixty years, Bond movies have been escapist entertainment of the highest order. They are meant to transport us from the drudgery of our ordinary lives and to distract us from our more commonplace concerns about, say, our finances or our family’s well-being. Sean Connery remarked, “Along comes this character who cuts right through all that like a very hot knife through butter, with his clothing
and his cars and his wine and his women. Bond, you see, is a kind of present-day survival kit.”33

  Noted Bond expert John Cork argues in Some Kind of Hero that “Bond was a man who saw the big picture, whose arrogance and disregard for the rules and conventions was because he was on a larger mission, a mission that went beyond any single assignment.”34 James Bond seems to agree with Cork’s assessment. When M questions 007 about his motives in Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig’s Bond defensively snaps, “I’m motivated by my duty.”

  For many years, audiences thought that there was one true Bond. In the 1960s, movie posters promised and audiences believed that “SEAN CONNERY IS JAMES BOND.” But several actors have played the spy since then, and each actor has become the definitive Bond for his generation. There were subtle differences among their characterizations. Bondologist Mark O’Connell writes about the “masculinity of Connery, the vulnerability of Lazenby, the diplomacy of Moore, the instinct of Dalton,” “the professionalism of Brosnan,” and now about “the conscience of Craig.”35

  Bond’s appeal is undeniable. And men, perhaps especially young men, live vicariously through the novels and the movies about this dashing, fearless, super-capable figure who is also irresistible to women. Raymond Chandler put it simply: “Bond is what every man would like to be.”36

  Even Ian Fleming wished he could be like Bond. Before Fleming was a novelist, he worked in naval intelligence during World War II. When the war ended, he returned to civilian life and wrote twelve novels and nine short stories about the spy he never was. Fleming said that the plot of Casino Royale was based on an incident from his own life. When on leave in Portugal, he tried to bankrupt a few German agents (and eventually, he hoped, the entire German government) at a casino. As Fleming told Playboy magazine in 1964, “I thought it would be a brilliant coup to play with them, break them, take their money. Instead, of course, they took mine. Most embarrassing. This incident appears in Casino Royale, my first book, but, of course, Bond does not lose. In fact, he totally and coldly vanquishes his opponent.”37