David Arnold introduces You Only Live Twice

Last Thursday I was at the British Film Institute (BFI) at London's Southbank to see film composer David Arnold introduce You Only Live Twice. The event was one in a series of 'Screen Epiphanies', in which notable individuals discuss a film that has influenced or otherwise inspired them.

I must confess that You Only Live Twice isn't my favourite Bond film. The script, which is built almost entirely around a volcano that the film makers happened to see when scouting for castles by the coast, is a shameful waste of Fleming's novel (although ironically elements of it have appeared in subsequent films). The three-Bond-girl formula, as revealed to screenwriter Roald Dahl, the 'stirred, not shaken' vodka martini, and the mysterious cameras relaying images of the helicopter picking up the car with the magnet and the capture of a space capsule back to Aki's car and Blofeld's control room respectively, suggest a careless and somewhat cynical approach to the plotting. Then there's the Japanese bath scene, which has dated badly, even without the help of Austin Powers.

So when I sat down in the auditorium, I was rather glad I'd had a fortifying cocktail (a 'gipsy martini', which contained Kina Lillet, an ingredient of Bond's Vesper martini). By way of an introduction to David Arnold's involvement with the Bond series, the audience was shown the titles sequence to Casino Royale. Brilliant stuff, and I was rather hoping the projectionist would let the film run on. Still, this set the mood perfectly, and as the interviewer brought him on to the stage, David Arnold was deservedly greeted by warm applause.

The interviewer naturally asked David Arnold about why You Only Live Twice was an epiphany. Arnold revealed that the film was the first (?Bond) film he saw. He was 8 years old or so, and was at a birthday party at community hall when a projector was brought out and You Only Live Twice was played. The screen was small and the sound poor, but the young David was entranced by the film and its music. Moments such as the Kobe dock scene and the Little Nellie sequence, and musical themes, particularly John Barry's 'Space March', helped create a life-long Bond fan and inspired his future work.

Surprisingly, David Arnold wasn't entirely sure about how he came to be involved with the Bond series. By 1996, when he began having conversations with Barbara Broccoli about scoring a Bond film, he had written the score to Stargate, and was producing Shaken and Stirred, an album of reinterpreted James Bond music and title songs. In one version, David Arnold was recommended to Barbara Broccoli by John Barry, to whom David Arnold was introduced by George Martin. At that meeting, Arnold took the opportunity to play Barry a few tracks from his album. Barry liked what he heard, and went to Barbara Broccoli. In another version, Barbara Broccoli heard some of the tracks independently and had decided to hire Arnold without John Barry's intervention.

David Arnold spoke a little about his work scoring the open ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2012, and his recent work on Sherlock and the forthcoming musical, Made in Dagenham. While open to the prospect of working again with Eon Productions, he gave no hint about his future involvement, if any, with the Bond series. As for Skyfall (scored by Thomas Newman), Arnold thought very highly of the film and the score, and was happy to have watched the film as a Bond fan on the other side of the screen.

On that note, the interview finished, and it was time to watch You Only Live Twice. Did watching the film on the big screen change my opinion of it? Possibly, a little. I admit the film is hugely spectacular. The opening space-set sequence in which the SPECTRE capsule captures the American spacecraft is creaky, but it still manages to look awesome and pack some emotional punch as one of the astronauts is cut off and drifts into the vastness of space. The sumo wrestling scene is nicely shot and integrated into the film, and reminded me that one thing the Bond films do very well is present local colour, events and customs to help ground the films and give them a sense of place (think of, for example, the bull-fighting in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, or the Palio di Siena in Quantum of Solace). The ninja drop from the roof of the volcano is epic, and with the help of Freddie Young's photography and Ken Adam's sets, audiences have no doubt that every penny spent on the film can be seen on the screen.

But for all these pluses, there still remain, for me, a large number of significant irritations – the inability of Blofeld to shoot Bond (there must be better ways of extracting Bond from moments of peril other than relying on Blofeld's procrastination), the comical effect produced by one of Mr Osato's employees ('Spectre 4', played by Michael Chow) saying everything twice, and the faults already mentioned – which all contribute to the feeling that plotting and coherence were the least of the film-makers' concerns. But then again, the Bond producers recognised as much, as they returned to Fleming with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a fantastic film and a favourite with the fans, me included.

Ian Fleming's Tale of the Unexpected

A recent visit to the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, reminded me of the varied connections between Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming. There was the obvious, of course: a small panel presented a few facts about Dahl's experience writing the screenplay of You Only Live Twice, and a press of a button on an interactive display brought up an image of a page from Dahl's handwritten script for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Then there was some information about Dahl's role in the Second World War as Assistant Air Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, where he was drawn into intelligence work and was introduced to Fleming; the two would become firm friends.

A plastic model of a leg of lamb inside a drawer revealed another connection. The model represented one of Dahl's earliest short stories, 'Lamb to the Slaughter', which was first published by Alfred A Knopf in 1953 in the short story collection, Someone Like You. In the story, a woman, Mary Maloney, kills her husband, who is about to leave her, with a frozen leg of lamb. She cooks the lamb and serves it to the investigating police officers, who are searching in vain for the murder weapon. “Get the weapon, and you've got the man,” Sergeant Noonan tells Mary. The story was filmed twice, first for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1958, then in 1979 for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected for ITV in Britain.


 
In his introduction to the Tales of the Unexpected adaptation, Roald Dahl tells the audience that the Ian Fleming was responsible for the story, which had come about during dinner they had together one weekend in Vermont. The roast lamb they had been eating had been very dry and tough, and Fleming remarked that the meat must have been in the deep freeze for 10 years. He suggested that whoever was responsible (the cook, maybe – the recording is a little unclear) should be shot, but Dahl suggested that there must be a more interesting punishment. The story was generated in the subsequent discussion.

Dahl doesn't tell us when this conversation took place, but sometime in the early 1950s is most likely, possibly the summer of 1951. Dahl had moved to New York in that year, and since 1950, Fleming spent almost every summer in Vermont, staying at Black Hole Hollow Farm, a property owned by Marie-Josephene Hartford, the wife of Ivar Bryce, Ivar Bryce being a close friend of both Fleming and Dahl. According to Andrew Lycett, however, Fleming had the idea of the deadly frozen leg of lamb for a while before he dined with Dahl, and indeed had literary ambitions of his own with regard to its use; Fleming revealed (in ?1948/9) to Peter Quennell that he was planning to write a thriller based on it.

Whatever the sequence of events, the story 'Lamb to the Slaughter' contains some essential memes that originated with Ian Fleming, and is therefore of interest to students of Fleming's writing. The story also reveals Fleming's fascination with crime and crime fiction, which would resurface periodically with, for example, his interest in American mobster Lucky Luciano, and the more crime-orientated plots of The Spy Who Loved Me and Diamonds Are Forever.

Incidentally, the title story in Fleming's first short story collection, For Your Eyes Only, is set in Vermont and features an estate called Echo Lake, which was based on Black Hole Hollow Farm. Other stories in the collection vary in style, notably 'Quantum of Solace', which is Fleming's homage to Somerset Maugham. In the same vein, 'The Hildebrand Rarity' offers some memetic connections with Dahl's writing – the ironic manner of the murder committed and the twist in the tale – and could also be considered a homage. That said, given the origin of 'Lamb to the Slaughter', those qualities might just as appropriately be considered Fleming-esque.

Read an update of this story and further information about the origin of 'Lamb to the Slaughter' in my article on the connections between Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming in MI6 Confidential issue 30.

References:

Lycett, A, 1995 Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner
Treglown, J, 1994 Roald Dahl: A Biography, Faber and Faber

Enton Hall - the real Shrublands

In 1956, Ian Fleming entered Enton Hall, a health farm near Godalming in Surrey, for a course of naturopathic treatment; his wife Ann had visited the clinic earlier in January of that year, and would be a regular guest. Andrew Lycett tells us that Ian Fleming did not take his treatment seriously, and often escaped the hall with another patient, Guy Welby, whom he had befriended, for drives in Welby's Rolls Royce. Nevertheless, Fleming's stay at Enton Hall had sufficient impact on him to provide the inspiration for Shrublands, a health farm which James Bond visits in Thunderball (chapters 2-4). Despite the different name and location (Sussex), Shrublands is a thinly-disguised Enton Hall, as a comparison of Fleming's text with a contemporary brochure issued by the health farm reveals.

The brochure sent out to prospective guests at the time of Fleming's visit is Enton Hall: A Residential Clinic and Health Farm Devoted to the Renewal and Preservation of Health by Natural Biological Methods. It is undated, but a copy I managed to acquire includes a price list dated October 1963. It was almost certainly unchanged from the brochure issued in 1956. Ann Fleming mentions the brochure in a letter to Evelyn Waugh dated 13 January 1956, noting that while the dining room looked melancholy, she was encouraged by the plates, which were heaped with food. The plates were still there in the brochure issued in 1963.

In Thunderball, James Bond arrives at Shrublands in a taxi. As stated in the brochure, Enton Hall similarly sent taxis to collect guests from the local station, and no doubt Fleming used this service. We know from Bond's earlier conversation with Miss Moneypenny that he's staying in the Myrtle room in the Annexe. Enton Hall also had rooms in an annexe (the Oak House), and the charge for these was 22 guineas a week (about £23), a figure very close to the 'twenty quid' for a week's stay that Bond's taxi driver mentions. As Bond enters the grounds of Shrublands, he passes an “imposing, mock-battlemented entrance”, a description that applies equally well to the gateway of Enton Hall.

Enton Hall gateway

Bond's taxi continues round the gravel drive to the front of the main house, a “red-brick Victorian monstrosity”, where the sun-parlour and terraced lawn are situated. Again the description matches Enton Hall, a red-brick Victorian building with a sun-lounge and south-facing lawn at the front.

Enton Hall: front of building

After being shown to his room, Bond flicks through a copy of Alan Moyle's Nature Cure Explained, which had been left beside the bed. Enton Hall's brochure does not mention the book, but the health farm's methods were utterly in keeping with its principles. As stated in the brochure, treatment “is based on the biological approach as incorporated in Osteopathic and Naturopathic Philosophy.” It is possible that Fleming was introduced to Alan Moyle's book during his visit to Enton Hall in 1956.

Walking around Enton Hall, he notices that his fellow guests wear “unattractive quilted dressing-gowns.” This no doubt reflects the rules of the clinic; at Enton Hall, the brochure instructed patients to bring a warm dressing gown, as patients were not to dress fully until after consultation and treatment. Alas the brochure does not show 'the rack', the motorized traction table to which Bond is grievously subjected, but we do see a photograph of the 'Gentlemen's treatment room' (and staff wearing short-sleeved 'smock-like' coats), which, just like the gentlemen's treatment room at Shrublands, was divided into compartments by plastic curtains.

Enton Hall: Gentlemen's treatment rooms

Before Bond faces 'the rack', though, he enjoys 'dinner' (hot vegetable soup in a mug) in the sun-parlour at a “little café table near the windows overlooking the dark lawn.” If an illustrated version of Thunderball were ever produced, then the illustrator could do no better than reproduce the image in the brochure captioned 'View from sun lounge'. The photograph, showing two men at a little café table at the window overlooking the lawn, precisely illustrates Fleming's description, which was almost certainly written with Enton Hall in mind.

Enton Hall: The sun lounge

The brochure produced by Enton Hall confirms that Shrublands was closely modelled on the health farm that Fleming visited in 1956. The scenes Fleming describes are there in the brochure, and one also wonders whether the treatment Bond receives (with the exception of 'the rack') is identical to that given to Fleming. As with much of his fiction, the Shrublands passages are detailed and convincing, not only because of Fleming's desire for accuracy, but also because they describe his own experiences.

References
Amory, M (ed.), 1985, The Letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill
Lycett, A, 1995, Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner

Photographs by Enton Hall Ltd

The Bond memes in Cars 2

Apart from eating turkey, drinking eggnog, opening presents and paying family games (Scrabble included), my Christmas was spent as usual catching up on the numerous films on TV. Looking through the listings, I was pleased to see Pixar's Cars 2, which I was curious about when it was released in 2011, as one of the characters in the film, Finn McMissile (voiced by Michael Caine), is a spy car obviously based on James Bond and his Aston Martin DB5. Sitting down to watch the film, I noticed that the Bond references didn't stop with the car.

Finn McMissile

The film opens with action – accompanied by Bondian music – that recalls the pre-titles sequences of the Bond films. British spy Finn McMissile infiltrates a secret meeting on an oil rig somewhere at sea using his front bumpers that shoot out as grappling hooks, recording equipment hidden in his front lights, and wires that extend from the underside of the car to allow him to be suspended above the meeting without being detected. There he learns that a fellow agent already on the platform has been discovered and been crushed into a cube, a nod, perhaps, to the crushing of a car - and Mr Solo inside it - in Goldfinger.

Soon McMissile is himself discovered, and a car chase ensues. He deploys all his tricks to escape, including an oil slick released from the rear of the car (oil is ejected from the rear panel of lights on the Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger), mines that are fired out from the hubcaps (a device not seen on Bond's cars, although the McMissile's hubcaps also include tyre slashers, which are present on the DB5), and machine guns fixed to the side of the car (a standard feature on most of Bond's vehicles, though the positioning on the guns in this case is closest to the location of the machine guns on the Aston Martin Vanquish in Die Another Day).

Forced off the oil platform into the sea, McMissile jet skis on the water in the manner of Roger Moore's Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me, although the appearance of the skis under the car is more reminiscent of the outriggers on Bond's Aston Martin Vantage in The Living Daylights. McMissile is not yet safe, however, as the villains torpedo McMissile and he sinks into the sea. Fortunately, he converts himself into a submarine in the style of Bond's Lotus Esprit in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Finn McMissile's number plate provides another reference to Goldfinger; while 314 FMCM doesn't match the plate of the DB5 (BMT 216A), both comprise silver lettering and digits on black arranged in a group of three and a group of four.

In another nod to Bond, McMissile's colleague, who also works for British intelligence, is called Holley Shiftwell, a name clearly inspired by the suggestively named Bond girls, Mary Goodnight, Holly Goodhead, Penelope Smallbone, and Molly Warmflash. If I recall it correctly, when McMissile tells Miss Shiftwell that “You never feel more alive than when you are nearly dead”, I was reminded of The World Is Not Enough and Elekra King's phrase, “There is no point in living, of you can't feel alive,” and indeed Tracy's words uttered in On Her Majesty's Secret Service: “People who want to stay alive play it safe.”

I expect my list of Bond references in Cars 2 is far from complete, but even so it is a reminder of the depth to which the Bond films are embedded in popular culture. It is especially remarkable that aspects or memes from the film of Goldfinger retain sufficient cultural currency to be referenced in a major plot device in a children's film nearly fifty years after the film was released.

Does James Bond play Scrabble?

In a post published in December 2010, I wondered how James Bond celebrates Christmas. Based on information presented in the novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I suggested that Bond celebrates a fairly traditional Christmas – tucking into turkey and plum pudding, attending carol services, and so on – though doesn't get too involved with the organisation of the day or the preparation of the food.

If James Bond celebrated Christmas with the same sort of festivities enjoyed by Ian Fleming (not an unreasonable assumption, given that Fleming gave many of his own idiosyncrasies to his creation), then based on the letters of Ann and Ian Fleming, Bond might either take to the slopes in St Moritz, or escape to some cosy, romantic spot – a secluded hotel or country-house estate, perhaps – and eat tangerines, Stilton, and smoked salmon, drink vodka, and play Scrabble, bridge and table tennis.

I admit I was struggling to picture James Bond play Scrabble (and indeed table tennis), but I recently discovered some evidence that suggested that he played Scrabble, or was present when it was being played, at least one Christmas.

I acquired a set of reproduction lobby cards for film of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. As I was looking through them, and wondering why the poster campaign would include images of production crew (in one Telly Savalas is having his coat brushed as he sits at his desk presumably waiting for the cameras to start rolling), I noticed an interesting detail one of the photographs.

The image shows James Bond (a kilted George Lazenby) enjoying a drink with one of the 'Angels of Death' ('the Jamaican Girl', played by Sylvana Henriques). The set had been dressed to convey notions of homely seasonal conviviality, and in the background on a wooden cabinet to the left there's a pile of what appears to be reading matter and games. The object at the top of the pile is especially interesting. The image is fuzzy here, but it is just possible to make out a box marked Scrabble in the familiar colours and style.

James Bond with 'the Jamaican Girl', and a set of Scrabble in the background

This doesn't prove conclusively that Bond plays Scrabble, or that he played it while on mission in Switzerland, but it is possible. (There's of course another Scrabble connection in Skyfall – Q's coffee mug – so I'm sure Bond is familiar with the game.) In any case, the image reveals that the set designers, like Fleming and many others, associated the game with Christmas. So, when I dust off my Scrabble set in a few days' time, I will be doing something at least a little bit Bondian. Happy Christmas!

After Bond: On the trail of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Just as some actors never like to see themselves on screen, I don't like to read anything I've written after it's been published, at least not for a while, just in case I spot a typo or factual error. Occasionally, such mistakes slip through, and unfortunately one appeared in my article, 'On the Trail of 007', recently published in MI6 Confidential on James Bond's journey through Kent in Moonraker. In the article, I stated that the M20 motorway, which connects the M25 London Orbital motorway with Folkestone, was constructed between 1975 and 1986. In fact, the first section was opened in 1960, and the final sections were completed in 1993. Well, I'm in good company: even Ian Fleming made mistakes.

I was alerted to my chronological mistake when I was flicking through the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang adventures. As the story takes the Potts family to some of the same parts of Kent visited by James Bond, I was keen to compare Fleming's descriptions. One obvious difference was that in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (published in 1964), the M20 motorway makes an appearance. Commander Pott lives beside a lake somewhere in Kent in sight of the motorway and about 20 miles away from Dover (near Ashford, perhaps). Naturally when he takes the newly-restored Chitty out for a spin, he chooses to take her onto the motorway. The car reaches 100 miles per hour, passing all the other cars “as if they were standing still.” 

The Farningham bypass in Kent. Bond speeds along this road in Moonraker. The M20, not built in Bond's time, is on the other side of the hill.

Later, when the Potts decide to have a picnic on the coast, they take the motorway again towards Dover, get stuck in traffic, take a detour through smaller roads and into Canterbury, then fly the rest of the way to Dover and out over the sea.

The descriptions of Kent in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang are interesting because they reveal how dramatically the landscape in Kent changed in the nine years since the publication of Moonraker in 1955. The experiences of Caractacus Pott hint at the effect that the construction of the motorway must have had on the residents of Kent and beyond, for example popularising coastal trips and giving greater access to continental Europe, especially France. The descriptions also reveal how changes in the cultural environment were constantly influencing and shaping Fleming's writing. His books may be 'of their time', but this gives them value as historical documents that usefully reflect contemporaneous developments and events.

In my MI6 Confidential article, I speculated that had the M20 been available to Fleming when he wrote Moonraker, he would have taken James Bond onto it and described Bond's appreciation of its almost racetrack-like conditions. That Fleming took Commander Pott onto it just three or four years after the motorway opened supports this view. For Fleming, it seems it wasn't so much the journey that was important, but how one reached the destination.

More on the James Bond breakfast at the Dorchester

In my previous post, I reviewed the 'Solo Breakfast' served at the Dorchester Hotel in celebration of the publication of William Boyd's Solo. As part of the experience, guests were given a copy of the hotel's breakfast menu dated to 1969, the year in which Solo is set. I was fascinated by the document. It offers a snapshot of life in 1969, and it's interesting to compare the menu with today's breakfast habits. I was also curious about the prices given. As I enjoy playing with numbers, I had the idea of costing up the various breakfasts Bond enjoys during the course of his adventures. If he were to eat more regularly at the Dorchester in 1969, what would he be expected to pay?

The Dorchester's breakfast menu is divided into 'Plain Breakfast' and 'A La Carte'. The plain breakfast options – tea, coffee, cereals, toast, marmalade, muffins, croissants and so on – seem reasonably standard even to modern eyes. That said, muffins might confuse today's consumers, who would now be expecting the small cake rather than the bread-like English muffin. The simplicity of the coffee is also notable; there were no Americanos, lattes, or mocaccinos in 1969.

There was plenty to choose from in the a la carte menu. Much of it, though, has disappeared from the modern menu. The fried egg, grilled sausages, and bacon offered as separate items in the Dorchester menu is now in Britain more usually offered together as the 'Full English Breakfast'. A time-traveller returning to 1969 might struggle to properly reconstruct the full English at the Dorchester. The 1969 menu has no baked beans, hash browns, or black pudding (actually, this isn't  always available today), and while tomatoes and mushrooms are on the menu, they are provided with other dishes. Still, I'm sure the staff at the Dorchester in 1969 would be obliging enough to put a fair approximation to the full English together.

The Dorchester menu is relatively heavy on the fish. Apart from kippers, which I haven't seen on any hotel or restaurant breakfast menu for many years, there is also herring, plaice, haddock, whiting and fillet of sole (given a chance, I'd go for this last mentioned just for its loose Bondian connections). None of these is part of the modern breakfast. Similarly, grilled kidneys, liver, chops and cutlets, listed on the 1969 menu, are now absent today. And I'd be very surprised to see stewed prunes or pears and a baked apple in a modern menu.

One of the few items which is just as popular today as it was in 1969 is Bond's favourite, scrambled eggs (a fact which in some small way may have helped to keep Bond relevant today; if he ate little else other than kedgeree, he might seem more old-fashioned). But it's not as if the items long gone from the breakfast menu have disappeared altogether from modern diets; they're still available, but are now only eaten during the evening meal (no doubt rarely in the case of liver and stewed fruit).

So, looking at the prices given in the Dorchester menu, we can see that the breakfast William Boyd gives Bond cost 3 shillings and 6 pence (not including the coffee). If Bond had ordered the breakfast he ate in New York in Live and Let Die – comprising scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, marmalade, coffee and orange juice – he'd pay 6 shillings and 6 pence. Another of his breakfasts described in Live and Let Die (pineapple juice, cornflakes, shirred eggs, bacon, Café Espresso, toast and marmalade) is slightly cheaper at 5 shillings and 6 pence. Shirred or baked eggs aren't on the menu, but I've assumed that the Dorchester staff would have cooked them for Bond and charged him the cost of a fried or poached egg.

The breakfast Bond consumes at his London home (From Russia, with Love), comprising a boiled egg, coffee, toast, jam and marmalade, is relatively cheap at 4 shillings, as is his café complet eaten in France (3 shillings) in Goldfinger. In contrast, his breakfast prepared by Dr No's staff (scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, a grilled kidney, and an English pork sausage) is comparatively extravagant at 7 shillings.

Unfortunately I can't give a reliable cost for green figs and yoghurt, which Bond orders in Istanbul (From Russia, with Love), and one of Bond's Jamaican breakfasts – paw-paw, red bananas, purple star-apples, and tangerines (Live and Let Die), although individual pieces of fruit at the Dorchester vary from 6 pence (for a banana) to 1 shilling and 6 pence for a pear or half a grapefruit.

The breakfast menu for 1969 offers insights in how breakfasts have changed over time. For modern readers of the Bond books, it is also strangely familiar. With a few exceptions, the Dorchester would have had little difficulty fulfilling Bond's breakfast demands. An obvious point to make, from a memetic angle, is that Bond's breakfasts are naturally a product of prevailing cultural environments. There was very little chance that Fleming would describe breakfasts of more modern form, simply because they were not yet popular or indeed did not exist.