The Fleming Fatherly Friend Figure
Barbel
ScotlandPosts: 37,866Chief of Staff
Before I start, I’d like to acknowledge Kingsley Amis and his “The James Bond Dossier” for laying the groundwork for the following thoughts.
The usually cited figure for being James Bond’s friend is, of course, Felix Leiter. He appears in many of the books and films and there is no denying that the two are close buddies, helping each other when needed and hanging out when the opportunity arises. To a lesser extent, Rene Mathis fits that bill also.
I’d argue, however, that, the archetypal Bond friend figure is neither of these two. It’s an older man, verging on father figure, that Bond comes across in his adventures. This man is often (though not always) bordering on the shady side of the law though he can be trusted. His appetites are large and he’s frequently described as a big man (though not always). Most of all, he provides a warmth in his relationship with Bond which 007 reciprocates.
Book order-
Quarrel- LALD
Ernie Cuneo- DAF
Kerim- FRWL
Quarrel again- DN
Colombo- Risico
Fidele Barbey- The Hildebrand Rarity
Marc-Ange Draco- OHMSS (the father figure angle is hard to miss here- he's Bond's father-in-law)
Dikko Henderson- YOLT
Tiger Tanaka- YOLT
plus
Litsas- Colonel Sun, by Amis himself
(I'm not going into Gardner, Benson etc but please feel free to add to the list)
Most of these are in the films, and I’d add Raoul in DAD to the list once we go into the films, which use Mathis in this category.
Please note that this character is different from the “sacrificial lamb” character, though they do sometimes overlap. Thus Chuck Lee in AVTAK fits the second category, but not the first.
I’d be grateful for any thoughts, especially from Higgins who inspired this post.
The usually cited figure for being James Bond’s friend is, of course, Felix Leiter. He appears in many of the books and films and there is no denying that the two are close buddies, helping each other when needed and hanging out when the opportunity arises. To a lesser extent, Rene Mathis fits that bill also.
I’d argue, however, that, the archetypal Bond friend figure is neither of these two. It’s an older man, verging on father figure, that Bond comes across in his adventures. This man is often (though not always) bordering on the shady side of the law though he can be trusted. His appetites are large and he’s frequently described as a big man (though not always). Most of all, he provides a warmth in his relationship with Bond which 007 reciprocates.
Book order-
Quarrel- LALD
Ernie Cuneo- DAF
Kerim- FRWL
Quarrel again- DN
Colombo- Risico
Fidele Barbey- The Hildebrand Rarity
Marc-Ange Draco- OHMSS (the father figure angle is hard to miss here- he's Bond's father-in-law)
Dikko Henderson- YOLT
Tiger Tanaka- YOLT
plus
Litsas- Colonel Sun, by Amis himself
(I'm not going into Gardner, Benson etc but please feel free to add to the list)
Most of these are in the films, and I’d add Raoul in DAD to the list once we go into the films, which use Mathis in this category.
Please note that this character is different from the “sacrificial lamb” character, though they do sometimes overlap. Thus Chuck Lee in AVTAK fits the second category, but not the first.
I’d be grateful for any thoughts, especially from Higgins who inspired this post.
Comments
Having read all novels (in German),but not being the bookworm that you are, let‘s decline the movies *under this aspect cronologically and I strictly rely to the ‚older, friendly and often on the shady side of the law‘ definition.
Dr. No: - we see Felix though
FRWL: Kerim
GF: - we see Leiter though
TB: - we see Leiter
Yolt : - I see Tanaka more like a japanese Felix, Dikko Henderson would be that but he dies too soon as one and not the only sacrificial lamb
OHMSS: Marc Ange Draco for sure!
DAF: Felix in this mess
LALD: Felix
TMWTGG: none, but someone could argue Scaramanga in parts. Lt. yip does not fill the criteria imo
TSWLM: none?
MR: none?
FYEO: That would be Columbo
OP: probably the first female figure -Octopussy herself
AVTAK: Tibbett, but his character is very different to the mould
GE: ?
TND: ?
TWiNE: ?
DAD: ?
CR: Mathis in parts
QoS: Mathis in parts
SF: ?
SP: ?
* of course it could be speculated that Ian sneaked himself into the play with those fatherfigures
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Tibbett is a good thought, though as you say he's very different. If they'd merged his character with M. Aubergine and Bond had been played by an actor 20 years younger then he'd fit right in.
The banter between him and Bond is supposed to bring some lightness and to distract from the visual reality, that Moore was too old.
And it only works so well because MacNee and Moore went so well with each other - otherwise it would have been very un-pc in many regards
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Kerim in FRWL is always the example of this that comes to mind for me. His likeable roguish nature and the warmth of his relationshop with Bond come across well in Armendariz's performance in the film. Certainly Kerim was firmly established in my mind as one of my favourite characters in the Bond series some time before I ever read the novel. Since then I've read the novel 3 or 4 times, and even on subesquent readings I've always been taken aback at just how 'colourful' Fleming made him in the book, with his consumption of large quantities of woman, alcohol and tobacco. and his stories, especially how he won a "Bessarabian hell-cat" in a fight with some gypsies who he keeps chained naked under his table in order to tame her. If Bond himself has something of a roguish nature, he is nothing compared to Darko Kerim.
I should have mentioned above that the character is usually a native of whatever country Bond is currently in, and will introduce him to the culture there (Kerim), show him around (Tiger), and so on.
I think Sharkey and Felix might just about both qualify for LTK, but they're not quite in the Kerim mould. Actually Q might even qualify for that one!
Imo it‘s important to mention Fatherly Friend Figure
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Yes that's why I said Q.
emtiem, I've always thought of Sharkey as simply a fake Quarrel. Quarrel by another name, for some reason (can't have been copyright).
Hosein is very close, it would have been nice if his role in the plot had been larger.
He absolutely is, but if you listed Quarrel yourself then the Quarrel stand-in has to count!
Yeah I'd never really thought about it before but he's really good in his one scene and would have made a good ally in a larger role. Bond and him instantly work well together onscreen.
Raoul is the attempt to do another Kerim in DAD but it's all a bit half-hearted.
Well Goodnight I suppose, although even she gets the benefit by the last book.
There's his aunt I suppose who although we never meet her is the closest to an actual father figure!
Trivia quiz: which film does Bond mention her in?
If Tibbett'd been played by anyone other than John Steed, I don't think his character would have gone into the field and traded witticisms for the first act of the movie.
The first time I watched the film I did not recognise the actor and wondered why he was getting so much screen time.
Also, if you consider those scenes to be a version of the Saratoga chapters from Fleming's DaF, Tibbet is taking the place of Leiter, who was independently investigating the Spang Brothers' race track cheating.
(the Spangs replaced a dud horse with a Ringer, Zorin injects the dud horse with super-soldier steroids during the race)
More like Watson
TMWTGG
That's a good point, cp. I've always thought of those scenes as inspired by the Ascot scenes in Gardner's then recent "Licence Renewed" though, rather than Fleming's DAF.
Yay!
They're actually rather good in that, if obviously not exactly as Doyle imagined
Some body else here once claimed the stable scenes were adapted from DaF, and I doubted it, til one time I actually reread those chapters just before rewatching the film, and I did indeed see the parallels.
(its a boring part of a boring book, I confess I never remembered those chapters clearly before)
I expect the filmmakers can incorporate more than one source at the same time, finding similar scenes and picking what they like best and putting them in a blender to generate a "new" plot.
Yes I'm the same, I can't even fully remember if I've read DAF or not!
It's funny though, a bit like how someone recently pointed out to me that LTK appears to be based loosely on TMWTGG; I hadn't actually noticed how that was a little Fleming nod before. Well spotted!
In LTK? Sure I think now you say that it sounds familiar, although in a way the TMWTGG book probably gives you enough to hang it on. I guess those films explore the idea of a man getting hired by his unsuspecting enemy more than Fleming does though.
Fleming's Bond is a character who, we're told, has few personal friends. But he counts Bill Tanner, the Service's Chief of Staff, as one of them. Whenever Bond is in London between missions, the two men routinely lunch together. Of course, this is more of a peer friendship, despite the different roles in the Service which the two men occupy. In the films, the latest iteration of Tanner (Rory Kinnear) is enough of a friend with Bond that they feel able, in SF, to take each other into their confidence about what they make of Mallory. The Michael Kitchen iteration of Tanner is similarly easy in his relationship with Bond - enough so to share with him, in GE, his view that the new M is an "evil queen of numbers". His main function, though, is expository. (James Villiers' one-stop Tanner of FYEO is an altogether different proposition: he's an irascible supervisor of Bond; school-masterly, not a friend.)
When considering the fatherly ally's tendency to operate on the wrong side of the law, it's interesting to look at how the novels and films distinguish alike between what, by their lights, is acceptable criminality - on the part of the ally - and the sort of criminality which puts others beyond the pale. In the movie FYEO, for example, Topol's Columbo admits to smuggling contraband - but the heroin he leaves to Kristatos (the villain of the piece). I seem to recall that Fleming somewhere in the novels classifies trafficking women among the pursuits of an acceptable rogue/ally - which obviously, if so, makes the novel's relational moral alignment a lot more problematic than the author probably intended (certainly for readers today. In the world of the most recent Bond, trafficking women is an offence committed by *principal* criminals, not allies: witness SPECTRE's board meeting in SP.).**
** It's Marc Ange Draco that I was thinking of. Bond "knew that [the Union Corse, which Draco leads] controlled most organized crime in metropolitan France and her colonies - protection rackets, smuggling, prostitution and the suppression of rival gangs" - as well as legitimate business interests. ('On Her Majesty's Secret Service', Ch. 5: 'The Capu'.) Yet in the worlds of James Bond, Fleming's Draco is probably second only to Kerim Bey as the typical figure of fatherly friend to Bond.
** I'm afraid that Fleming's Colombo is in the same boat. From 'Risico': "'My friend, I am a smuggler. [...] And there have been many other things - even beautiful girls from Syria and Persia for the houses of Naples. I have also smuggled out escaped convicts. But,' Colombo's fist crashed on the table, 'drugs, heroin, opium, hemp - no! Never! I will have nothing to do with these things. These things are evil. There is no sin in the others.'"
The sarcasm of Gregg Beam's line in QOS comes to mind: "Yeah, you're right. We should just deal with nice people."