A Letter From Ian Fleming
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The October 26, 1962 issue of The Spectator contains a charming letter to the editor from Ian Fleming:
Some notes:
* Besides giving another reason why Fleming's letters deserve to be collected and published, this letter also shows Fleming's eagerness to promote the Bond films and his concern for their reputation. The anecdote makes me wonder which producer was part of "the crab faction." I think the giant squid was a bigger loss than the crabs, but the special effects of 1962 would have likely resulted in a hokey-looking sea monster.
*Magnetogorsk (actually spelled Magnitogorsk) is a city in Southwest Russia. Was Fleming already thinking forward to Bond's amnesiac Russian holiday in You Only Live Twice?
* True to his word, Fleming did indeed have Bond get back to fighting the Soviets. Post-TMWTGG Bond novels might have had him matching wits with more KGB operatives.
* One has to commend Fleming for his disarming way of responding to critics--"a fastidious stamp of his grey suede winkle-pickers" suggests the film reviewer is a petulant dolt with bad taste (in shoes and, by extension, films).
* Fleming would repeat that Bond's politics were slightly left of center in his later Counterpoint interview. I don't know if there's much evidence for this, mostly because Bond doesn't have many political opinions (Fleming himself was a Tory). Bond likes Kennedy and has sympathy for Castro--that's about all I can think of. Some modern readers would probably place Bond more on the right, given his imperialist leanings.
* On second thought, perhaps I shouldn't wish for a book of Fleming's letters, since it would probably be published by Queen Anne's Press and retail for three hundred dollars.
BONDAGE (The Spectator, October 26, 1962)
Sir, — Since James Bond has had the honour of being mentioned in three separate departments of your issue of October 12, and since Bond is at present away in Magnetogorsk, I hope you will allow me to comment on his behalf.
‘Spectator's Notebook’: Queequeg asks what happened to the crabs in the film Dr. No. Alas, they went the way of the giant squid, despite urgent representations from me and from one of the producers. The black crabs had not started ‘running’ in Jamaica last February when the Jamaican scenes were being shot, but on my return to London in March I received an excited invitation to visit Pinewood and inspect a consignment of spider crabs obtained from Guernsey. A large tank was unveiled. All the crabs were dead. I asked if they had been preserved in sea water and was told that, since none was available, they had been put in fresh water with plenty of salt added! After that the crab faction gave up.
Letters: Mr. Snell suggests that my serial biography of James Bond is ‘a barrier to international understanding.’ He seems not to have noticed that since Thunderball the international organisation ‘SPECTRE’ has taken over as enemy Number One from SMERSH, the murder apparat of the then MWD, dissolved, as I wrote in Thunderball, by Khrushchev. As the recently concluded spy trial in Karlsruhe, involving the liquidation of two Ukrainians by a Soviet assassin with a cyanide gas pistol, shows, the machinery of cold-blooded murder by the, now, KGB is again in business and I cannot promise that Bond may not be called upon in the line of duty to involve himself with these new ambassadors for ‘international understanding’ sent out into the world by Moscow.
Cinema: Mr. Ian Cameron, with a fastidious stamp of his grey suede winkle-pickers, scrunches the Dr. No film, while describing James Bond as ‘every intellectual's favourite fascist.’ James Bond's politics are, in fact, slightly left of centre.
IAN FLEMING
c /o Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Some notes:
* Besides giving another reason why Fleming's letters deserve to be collected and published, this letter also shows Fleming's eagerness to promote the Bond films and his concern for their reputation. The anecdote makes me wonder which producer was part of "the crab faction." I think the giant squid was a bigger loss than the crabs, but the special effects of 1962 would have likely resulted in a hokey-looking sea monster.
*Magnetogorsk (actually spelled Magnitogorsk) is a city in Southwest Russia. Was Fleming already thinking forward to Bond's amnesiac Russian holiday in You Only Live Twice?
* True to his word, Fleming did indeed have Bond get back to fighting the Soviets. Post-TMWTGG Bond novels might have had him matching wits with more KGB operatives.
* One has to commend Fleming for his disarming way of responding to critics--"a fastidious stamp of his grey suede winkle-pickers" suggests the film reviewer is a petulant dolt with bad taste (in shoes and, by extension, films).
* Fleming would repeat that Bond's politics were slightly left of center in his later Counterpoint interview. I don't know if there's much evidence for this, mostly because Bond doesn't have many political opinions (Fleming himself was a Tory). Bond likes Kennedy and has sympathy for Castro--that's about all I can think of. Some modern readers would probably place Bond more on the right, given his imperialist leanings.
* On second thought, perhaps I shouldn't wish for a book of Fleming's letters, since it would probably be published by Queen Anne's Press and retail for three hundred dollars.
Comments
(And I'd buy the "Collected Fleming Letters" any day)
Fleming said the same thing in a Playboy interview. I think both his and Bond's politics were more complicated than the typical Left/Right dichotomy.
These two links quote Fleming's "If I Were Prime Minister":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7657265.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3021649/James-Bond-author-Ian-Fleming-was-electric-transport-advocate-manuscript-reveals.html
And thanks for posting the letter!
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Bond's politics are mentioned briefly in "Moonraker" when he reflects on his time with Captain Troop.
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
Brilliant letter too - what a dry old stick Fleming was. "The crab faction gave up" - priceless.
Thanks very much. I do indeed have some more, though the two Fleming articles I'm going to post are not Bond related. After that I'll be posting the many reviews Simon Raven wrote on Fleming and his critics.
As for the letter under discussion, what I find interesting is that it somewhat challenges the standard line on Fleming's involvement with the films, which is that after the Thunderball debacle he was happy to hand over the moviemaking duties and not be involved. It's probably true that he had little control over the films, but I think he was more concerned about them than we tend to presume. The fact that he was invited to Pinewood for a matter as minor as the crabs suggests that he kept tabs on the production. That is also suggested by his accompanying the FRWL film crew on location. We also know that he looked over the script of Goldfinger and visited the set. I also remember reading somewhere that Fleming said the film of Dr. No would be a terrible disappointment to those who knew the book, but a wonderful film for anyone who hadn't. This suggests that he had some concern over the fidelity of the films to their sources. But the entire area is definitely one ithat screams for further research.