An interview with Henry Hemming

The latest issue of MI6 Confidential, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of You Only Live Twice, has just been published. In this special issue, the film's dubbing editor, Norman Wanstall, talks to Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury, there is an article on a never-produced film treatment inspired by the novel of You Only Live Twice, and, poignantly, the magazine contains the final interview with the late Karin Dor, who played Bond girl Helga Brandt.

I'm honoured also to have contributed to the issue. Away from You Only Live Twice, the magazine includes my interview with historian Henry Hemming about his book, M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster. In the interview, we talked about Maxwell Knight's life, his motivations, his extraordinary success running agents, and, of course, the extent to which Fleming's M was based on the spymaster.

 
It's a fascinating issue, and anyone interested in James Bond and the world of espionage, fictional or otherwise, should buy a copy. For details of how to purchase a copy, or subscribe to the magazine, click here to visit the MI6 Confidential website.

Some Bond memes in Archer

Better late than never, I’ve finally got round to watching Archer, the animated spoof espionage series featuring the suave, irresponsible, and misogynistic secret agent, Stirling Archer. Naturally, the whole series draws very heavily on the James Bond films for inspiration, and H Jon Benjamin, who voices Archer, reveals in an interview with MI6 Confidential that his performance is based to some extent on Sean Connery’s Bond. Apart from referencing Bond in a general sense, the series alludes more specifically to the films, and I noted a few of these references while watching season one.
 
The ninth episode, ‘Job Offer’, in which Archer takes a job with a rival agency, Archer and Lana, his colleague and former lover, are tied on a metal table and threatened by a laser beam, à la Goldfinger. ‘Skytanic’ (episode 7) has an airship that brought to my mind A View to a Kill. The sixth episode, ‘Skorpio’, in which Archer rescues Lana from an arms dealer, features Archer in frogman mode and involved in an underwater battle that could have been taken from the storyboards of Thunderball.
 

A scene from 'Skorpio', Archer, season 1

James Bond is name-checked a couple of times in the series, and the cover of the season one DVD clearly derives from the poster of Live and Let Die.

Fictional spies of earlier vintage are not forgotten either. In ‘Dial M for Mother’ (episode 10), Malory Archer, agency chief and Archer’s mother, has a copy of Greenmantle by John Buchan beside her on her bed. The episode title is especially interesting. It references a Hitchcock film, of course, but it takes on extra significance in the context of James Bond: M was Ian Fleming’s nickname for his mother, Eve, and according to Fleming’s biographer, John Pearson, Eve provided some of the inspiration for James Bond’s chief.
 

A scene from 'Dial M for Mother', Archer, season 1

Issue 25 of MI6 Confidential has an excellent article on Archer, which includes interviews with the cast and the creative team, and is well-worth reading. Meanwhile, I’ll get on with catching up on the remaining seven series.

Jamaica's other Goldeneye

As GoldenEye, the film that introduced Pierce Brosnan as Bond and relaunched the series to great acclaim (and relief) after a six-year enforced hiatus, turns twenty years old, the latest edition of MI6 Confidential celebrates the film's anniversary with an interview with director Martin Campbell, an examination of the essential ingredients of the film, a look at the film's most memorable stunts, and much more.

I'm proud to have contributed to the issue myself: a small article examining the legacy of Goldeneye, Ian Fleming's winter home in Jamaica, where he wrote all the Bond books. While I was researching the article, I made some interesting discoveries about some of Jamaica's other, lesser known Goldeneyes. The article wasn't quite the place to say much about them, so by way of an addendum, here they are.

If one were to ask Jamaicans in the late 1940s, when Ian Fleming built his house, what 'Goldeneye' meant to them, many would have replied that it was something to treat minor ailments of the eyes. The Daily Gleaner was full of adverts for 'Golden Eye' treatments. Sinclair's Drug Department on King Street in Kingston sold the lotion for two shillings per bottle. The lotion was a little more expensive at Williams Drug Store on West Queen Street, selling for 2/6, but it was cheaper that Optrex (3/6), and was alternatively available in ointment form, which was cheaper at one shilling per tube. Meanwhile, Dunker & Company on Harbour Street were offering 'huge savings', selling a dozen tubes of the ointment for eight shillings.
 

An advert in the Gleaner for medicines, including Golden Eye

This was good news for farmers. In an article published in April 1958 in the Farmers Weekly section of the Gleaner, 'Surgeon' recommended the application of Golden Eye lotion for the treatment of 'pink eye', a type of eye infection in cattle.

There was yet another Goldeneye known in Jamaica. In 1950, cinema-goers flocked to the Gaiety cinema, among other venues, and 'country theatres' around Jamaica to see Roland Winters star as Charlie Chan investigating the mystery of why an unprofitable gold mine is suddenly making lots of money. The film, released in 1948, was called The Golden Eye. 

The Golden Eye (1948) on the bill of the Gaiety Cinema

As a footnote, there is a curious link of sorts between the house and the eye treatment. Fleming's house was well known for its stark design and paucity of mod-cons. Friend and neighbour Noël Coward famously referred to the house as 'Goldeneye, nose and throat'. This is a play, of course, on ear, nose and throat departments in British hospitals, but it's possible that Coward had Golden Eye lotion, a product that would have been familiar to Jamaican residents at the time, in his mind too. 

The Poppy Is Also A Flower - further James Bond connections

In the latest edition of MI6 Confidential (excellent as always), there's a fascinating article about the production of The Poppy Is Also A Flower, a UN-sponsored film broadcast in 1966 on US television and given wider release in the cinema in 1967. The film follows UN agents Benson and Sam Lincoln (played by Stephen Boyd and Trevor Howard respectively) on the trail of a shipment of opium from its source in Iran to the point of distribution in Europe, and features a host of Hollywood stars, including Grace Kelly, Yul Brynner, Rita Hayworth and Omar Sharif.

As explored in the piece in MI6 Confidential, the main interest for Ian Fleming aficionados is that the screenplay was based on a story by Ian Fleming (he is duly credited on the titles of the film), and was directed by Terence Young, who directed Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965). I was sufficiently intrigued by the article to watch the film (available via You Tube), and as I did so, spotted a number of other connections between the film and the Bond series.

Trevor Howard, who was touted as a potential Bond for Dr No, though never seriously considered for the role by Broccoli and Saltzman, was given his chance to play Bond in the film. His character, Lincoln, has some obvious Bondian traits. He is charming, irresistible to women, and an action man, and for part of the film wears a dinner-suit. Lincoln is killed off towards the end of the film, after inveigling himself under a false identity into the villain's circle and surreptitiously searching the villain's yacht (reminiscent of Largo's boat in Thunderball). 'Bond duties' are subsequently taken up by his partner, Benson, who till then has a far quieter role.

The thrilling denouement is set on Le Train Bleu, a luxury express train which ran between Calais and the French Riviera. As if to accentuate the obvious parallel with From Russia With Love (which used the Orient Express), the train sequence includes a bruising fist-fight in a carriage between Benson and an enemy agent, Captain Vanderbilt, played by Anthony Quayle. Here, Terence Young cannot have failed to draw on his experience filming the seminal fight scene between Bond and Grant in From Russia With Love. Curiously, earlier in the film, Poppy features a wrestling scene between two near-naked women, which echoes the gypsy fight also in From Russia With Love.

Among the star-studded cast of Poppy is a familiar face from the Bond films. Harold Sakata, most famous for playing Oddjob in Goldfinger, appears as Martin, an intermediary in the opium trade. And if most of the Italian and French cast members sound familiar (and identical), it is because they seem to have been dubbed by Robert Rietty, who provided the voices for, among others in the Bond series, Largo in Thunderball and Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice.

The Poppy Is Also A Flower isn't a great film – its plot and cast are perhaps overly burdened by the the film's august sponsor and worthiness of the anti-drugs campaign that the film was designed to promote – but it is entertaining enough, and worth watching for the Bond connections. The James Bond films appear to have provided inspiration for many aspects of the plot and characterisation, which was no doubt influenced by Ian Fleming's small, but critical involvement in the project's early stages, and Terence Young's experience directing three of the four Bond films that had been filmed up till then.