More Moyle memes inherited by Ian Fleming

It is clear from the words given to M, and the description of James Bond reading the book, that, rather than simply referencing the title, Ian Fleming read in detail Alan Moyle’s 1950 guide on naturopathy, Nature Cure Explained (1950), before he wrote Thunderball (1961), the adventure in which Moyle is mentioned. However, there are hints in other novels that Fleming read the book earlier. What is more, his reading may have influenced an aspect of Bond’s character and, in one case, a plot detail that would result in one of the most iconic images in cinema.

Chapter 11 of Nature Cure Explained concerns hydrotherapy, the use of water in curative treatments. One of Moyle’s rules is that cold water should be applied after any treatment using hot water. For instance, there is the alternative hot and cold sitz bath, and if having a hot full bath, a cold shower must follow. The reason? According to Moyle, the aim of water treatment is to achieve action and reaction of the blood. Heat draws the blood to the surface, whereas the cold water returns the blood from the skin to the deeper blood-vessels. The result, it is claimed, is increased and better blood circulation (Moyle 1950, 124).

Does this remind you of anyone? In his first adventure, Casino Royale (1953, chapter 8), Bond ‘took a long hot bath followed by an ice-cold shower’. Bond does something similar in From Russia, with Love (1957, chapter 11): he ‘stood in the glass shower cabinet under very hot and then cold hissing water’. Incidentally, that was after he did twenty press-ups and touched his toes twenty times, among other exercises, all while naked. And we know from Moyle (1950, 157) that naked exercise is recommended in Nature Cure. Returning to water treatments, in Diamonds are Forever (1956, chapter 22), Bond takes ‘a “Hot Salt” bath followed by a “Cold Domestic” shower’ while sailing the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth. For all I know, the Queen Elizabeth was indeed fitted with such facilities, but it nevertheless recalls the ‘Epsom Salt Bath’ described by Moyle (1950, 130).

Let us turn to another aspect of Fleming’s earlier writing that recalls Moyle, in this case the idea or meme that being covered in gold paint causes death, which appears in Goldfinger (1959, chapter 14). Goldfinger kills his companion Jill Masterton in revenge for Bond taking her away from him by painting her from head to foot in gold. Without a portion of the skin unpainted, she dies by skin asphyxiation. The meme spread with the release in 1964 of the film of the book, helped not least by the enormous popularity of the film, the iconic image of Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson (sic) lying dead on a bed covered with gold, and Shirley Eaton’s reprise of the ‘golden girl’ role for the cover of Life magazine.

Like Bond’s ablutions, the plot detail may not have been original to Fleming, but may have come from the pages of Moyle. Discussing the need, in his view, for the skin to be exposed allowing it to breath and be invigorated by the elements, Alan Moyle (1950, 22) reminds us of ‘the story of the little boy who was painted with gold paint and died’. It is possible that Fleming read the book before he wrote Goldfinger and was taken with Moyle’s warning as a potential villainous means of murder.

If Fleming had read Nature Cure Explained even before Bond’s first appearance in Casino Royale, then does that make Bond a disciple of Nature Cure? Well, no. His 70-a day smoking habit suggests otherwise (though curiously Moyle does not mention smoking), and a philosophy that Bond’s secretary attributes to Bond in his ‘obituary’ (You Only Live Twice (1964), chapter 21: ‘ “I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time” ’) does not bring to mind the naturopathic lifestyle of joyless diets, regular fasts, herbal remedies, and general abstention from any activity that could induce illness.

James Bond and alternative medicine

Recently I acquired an addition to James Bond’s library: Nature Cure Explained (1950), by Alan Moyle. The book is waiting for Bond on the bedside table of his room at the Shrublands sanatorium. As described in Thunderball (1961), Bond is ordered there by M to undertake a two- to three-week abstemious regime to improve his physical fitness. Bond turns to the book shortly after his arrival (Thunderball, chapter 2) and manages to get through 12 of its 19 chapters, discovering in the process that Nature Cure, or naturopathy, is ‘the application of natural laws’ through fasting, balanced and special dieting, exercising, and hydrotherapy among other means to maintain good health and prevent disease. Evidently M has read the book too. His views on denatured food, the harm of conventional medicine, and his reference to pioneers (usually Austrian or German) of the naturopathy movement (chapter 1), are taken direct from the pages of Moyle.

To some extent, naturopathy sits on the milder end of the alternative medicine spectrum. Alan Moyle’s manifesto for a balanced diet includes the consumption of whole foods, abundant fruit and vegetables (preferably raw), fair quantities of dairy products, and little meat. Sixty years on, much of Moyle’s assertions would find little disagreement. We accept without question the health benefits of wholegrain products, and pass on the ‘wholegrain-is-good’ meme to the next generation as naturally as we transmit our genes. Society, too, has long rejected foods that contain additives and preservatives, something much despised by Moyle. Words like ‘natural’, ‘pure’, and ‘fresh’ are scrawled over food packaging like graffiti under a railway bridge, and while the food displaying such labels is not necessarily those things (as Which? noted), it is nevertheless a recognition that consumers seeking a healthy lifestyle form a significant population.

One also cannot argue with Moyle’s claim that exercise is very beneficial, although his insistence of exercising in the nude, as well as his view that the ‘uplift [in morale] arising from the freedom from clothes’ leads to ‘a healthier outlook on sex’ reminds us of naturopathy’s links with the naturism movement, and recalls the film of badminton-playing naturists eagerly watched by Sid James in Carry On Camping.

Moyle is likely to have fewer supporters, however, for his preference for sour milk (replacing pasteurised milk, which Moyle claims is robbed of nutrients), the recommendation to fast once a year for seven days (ideally in the ‘eminently suitable’ period of spring), and his special diets, like the potato diet (breakfast: potato and onion broth; mid-morning: potato and onion broth; lunch: baked or steamed potatoes; supper: baked or steamed potatoes and potato and onion broth). More worrying is Alan Moyle’s assertion that a cold is the body’s way of telling us that it is clogged with poisons from unhealthy living and needs to be brought back into balance; fried food, he maintains, is one cause of colds.

But Alan Moyle’s rejection of conventional medicine is dangerous. Drugs, he claims, suppress disease, not cure it. The only way to treat disease is to rectify the underlying cause – a result of a violation of the natural laws – by fasting, dieting, water treatments, and so on. Maintaining Nature Cure obviates the need for medicines, as one is less likely to become ill. To be fair, Moyle expressed his views a long time ago when research into viruses or the causes of cancer was at its infancy. However, today’s naturopathy movement retains this principle, though acknowledges that ‘short term measures which assist in the removal of symptoms for the comfort or safety of the individual’ are sometimes necessary.

Returning to Thunderball, how does James Bond cope with his nature cure? He is put on a course of strict dieting, massage, irrigation (presumably colonic), hot and cold sitz baths, osteopathy, and some traction. This final treatment, incidentally, is not mentioned by Alan Moyle, and may have been an plot device original to Fleming or derived from another source. We learn that Bond consumes vegetable soup and, later, orange slices. He has massage, including effleurage, which, ‘acts on the cutaneous nerves and superficial vessels’ (Moyle 1950, 155). The results? Reduced blood pressure, weight loss, osteopathic lesions gone, and clear eyes and tongue (chapter 4). On his release from the clinic, Bond initially maintains the diet, replacing his usual breakfast of boiled eggs, toast and coffee with yoghurt. But the regime is short-lived. SPECTRE has stolen two atomic missiles and Bond is ordered to the Bahamas to investigate. For this, Bond needs some proper food, and he breaks his diet with scrambled eggs, smoked bacon, hot-buttered toast (‘not wholemeal’, he tells May, his housekeeper), and double-strength coffee.

The journalist, the model, and the search for James Bond

The months before Daniel Craig was offered the role of James Bond saw intense media speculation about who would succeed Pierce Brosnan. Little had changed since 1961 when the producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli announced that they were about to film the first James Bond film, Dr No. Before Sean Connery had been cast, there was much anticipation in the press even at this early stage in the film series.

One of the journalists who joined the speculation, and indeed cultivated much of it, was Patricia Lewis, the show-business editor with the Daily Express. In June 1961, for example, Lewis reported that Saltzman was planning to screen-test Patrick Allen, but was ‘also thinking about Michael Craig and Patrick McGoohan’. In another article, she claimed that the producers were having trouble finding their man. This was enough for her to launch a competition to find the perfect actor, and of course gain massive publicity for the Daily Express. In an article entitled, ‘In search of a he-man’, she invited ‘every tough-talking type... a crack at landing this plum role.’ Lewis added that proof of acting ability was also required. Applicants were invited to submit their acting resumées and vital statistics to a film production company in Soho Square. Six finalists were to invited to a judging panel, which Lewis boasted would comprise Harry Saltzman, Cubby Broccoli, Ian Fleming, and Ken Hughes, as well as Lewis herself.

The winner was Peter Anthony, a professional model from London. Lewis quoted Broccoli as saying that Anthony had ‘a Greg Peck quality’ that was ‘instantly arresting’. This is not difficult to see from the image that Anthony had exploited during his earlier modelling career. His career had developed with Man About Town, a 1950s/60s lifestyle magazine for men, covering sport, drink, food, cars, and clothes, especially suits. One of its photographers was Terence Donovan, a pioneer of the ‘blow-up’ school of photography, who brought a sophisticated, masculine, film-style look to the magazine. His shots were about action and story. Set in real places far removed from the artificial creation of the studio, the photographs had a narrative drive that turned fashion shoots into stills from a film. And the movie was film-noir or spy thriller. Peter Anthony was one of Donovan’s stars.

In one image from 1960, ‘Starting Over’, Anthony is behind the wheel of a sports car. He is focused on the road ahead and drives with confidence. Another photograph, from 1961, shows Peter Anthony in the foreground. He wears a sharp suit and a shoulder holster for an automatic. The man is waiting for a contact, perhaps, but so too is the man in the shadows, hidden behind Le Figaro. And the title of this intriguing scene? ‘The secrets of an agent.’ The image could be lifted from Fleming; the hero could be Bond.

Anthony took these images to Broccoli and Saltzman. Pat Lewis reported that the producers were impressed and proclaimed that he was an ‘exciting find’. Anthony looked great in a suit; sophisticated with just the right hint of menace to have the edge over his enemies and the hold on the women. But image was not everything; the part demanded an acting ability that Anthony did not have. The producers agreed that he had potential, but was too risky to try out in their first film.

What of the other five finalists? According to Pat Lewis’ article in September 1961, the finalists were Gordon Cooper, a sales rep from Warrington, Anthony Clements, another salesman, this time from Bolton, Frank Ellement, a former teacher turned actor from London, Michael Ricketts, an aerial ropeways engineer from Hadleigh in Essex, and Bob Simmons, a stuntman.

Peter Anthony’s photographs certainly exist, but curiously, Bob Simmons makes no mention of this episode in his autobiography, while Cubby Broccoli excludes Peter Anthony from his. Reading Pat Lewis’ articles, I can’t help feeling that the competition results and the involvement of the Bond producers was to a large extent journalistic invention. If so, then that is another aspect of the media interest in the search for Bond that has seen little change in over 40 years.

Update: Click here for more further information on Peter Anthony's screentests.

James Bond memes escape

A few years ago, I was watching an old British comedy film starring Charlie Drake, a comedian and singer popular especially in the 1950s and ’60s. The film was called The Cracksman, and featured Drake as a locksmith tricked by a burglar into robbing a bank. In one scene, Drake’s character crawls through a ventilation shaft. I can’t remember the exact line, but he says something like, ‘Now I know how James Bond feels’, referring to the scene in Dr No (1962) in which Bond, imprisoned by Dr No, escapes through a shaft. Released in 1963, The Cracksman shows that it didn’t take long for aspects from the Bond film to seep into wider popular culture.

The ventilation shaft scene in Dr No has faded as an individual meme readily manifested in non-Bond films, televisions shows, books and so on, but as the Bond series progressed, others have emerged and become very successful in that they are replicated often and reasonably accurately, and have survived well over the decades.

A good example is the Q meme. This is expressed as a science boffin or inventor who distributes gadgets and weapons to the hero. A variant has a computer geek instead of an absent-minded professor type. The meme, which was best-defined in Goldfinger (1964) in the scene where Q (Desmond Llewelyn) explains the gadget-filled Aston Martin to Bond, has found its way into many action films, helped by repetition of the idea in subsequent Bond films and by the fact that it’s a convenient device for film makers to incorporate useful objects into their plots. Batman Begins (2005), in which Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox arms Bruce Wayne with weapons, is a recent example (and an interesting case of one superhero genre borrowing the conventions of another).

The James-Bond-uniform meme is just as successful. Any action hero (or indeed any leading male character) in a dinner suit brings to mind James Bond, and this is acknowledged by film makers. Executive Decision (1996), to give an example, starred Kurt Russell as a desk-bound government intelligence officer. He is called in the middle of a black-tie function to join a commando team on a passenger plane to defuse a bomb. When, still wearing his dinner suit, he is introduced to the team, a member of the team asks, ‘Who’s this, 007?’. The dinner suit is so strongly associated with James Bond that Clive Owen was touted in the press as a possible James Bond after appearing in Croupier (1998) wearing a dinner suit throughout.

Another successful meme is the shaken-not-stirred meme, repeated in the Bond series each time Bond orders a Martini. Its spread into wider popular culture has also been helped by its being applicable beyond Bond and spy-film culture, enabling it to enter the general lexicon as a phrase in its own right.

There are others, such as the use of ‘for your eyes only’ as saying, and the placement of a short action sequence (as if concluding an earlier adventure) before the main titles in a film. These have emerged or have been developed in the Bond series, but have become successful with wider repetition and adaptation by others.

How many James Bond book titles are there?

Or, to rephrase the question, how many types of titles did Ian Fleming use? To give an example, Live and Let Die is what I will call a phrase variant, deriving obviously from the well-known saying, ‘live and let live’. Other phrase variants are Diamonds are Forever, a mutation of the de Beers’ advertising slogan, ‘A diamond is forever’, From Russia, with Love, which is a play on oft-used sentimental expressions, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is taken from the standard phrase used on government communications, and You Only Live Twice, a derivation of the saying, ‘you only live once’.

Then there are film/book title variants. The Man with the Golden Gun appears to fall into this category, with its inspiration probably coming from The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1955 film starring Frank Sinatra. Another title type is personal name – Goldfinger and Dr No – with other names forming a fourth category. Moonraker, the name of Drax’s rocket, Thunderball, the name given to the mushroom cloud resulting from an atomic explosion, and Octopussy, the pet name of an octopus, belong to this group. (We should note, however, that Fleming didn’t actually choose the Octopussy short story title as the main title of the volume, as it was published posthumously.)

Of the remaining titles, For Your Eyes Only is presumably an original phrase, which Fleming came across and used during his wartime career in the Navel Intelligence Division, although I must confess I can’t put my finger on evidence to support this. It may in fact be a phrase variant, being similar, but not identical, to a form of words used in espionage. The origin of The Spy Who Loved Me is also uncertain, but is also provisionally placed in the original phrase category.

So we have a tentative list of five title types. Fleming’s titles in turn inspired the authors charged with writing continuation Bond novels, who tended to use the same basic title types. Phrase variants include John Gardner’s Win, Lose or Die, and Raymond Benson’s The Facts of Death. Personal names are evident in Colonel Sun by Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis) and Scorpius by John Gardner. Curiously, neither Raymond Benson, nor Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series, use personal names for titles. Of the film/book title variants employed by the continuation authors, all examples, such as Licence Renewed (John Gardner) and The Man with the Red Tattoo (Raymond Benson), have their origin in Fleming’s phrases or titles. The fifth type, original phrase, is interesting in that the continuation authors have turned to the category proportionately more than Fleming. There is, for example, Gardner’s Role of Honour, Benson’s Zero Minus Ten, and Higson’s By Royal Command. Recent authors have also used original phrases; Sebastian Faulks had Devil May Care, while Jeffery Deaver’s forthcoming novel will be called Carte Blanche.

Another aspect to consider is the association of certain words or concepts with the world of James Bond. The most frequently used are death (or variants of, such as die), forever, the man who or from, and negative words, such as never and nobody. Fleming used these sorts of words sparingly, but they increased their frequency among continuation authors to the point of over-use. Half of Raymond Benson’s Bond novels have the word death (or similar) in the title, while almost a quarter of John Gardner’s titles use a negative. In contrast, only 8% of Fleming’s titles use a form of death, and none uses negatives. Despite this, these words and concepts have become so strongly associated with Bond that continuation authors regularly turn to them. Their use has also spread to films – Licence to Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day – and no doubt anyone invited to generate a Bondian title is likely to consider words like these. Oddly enough, no title generator has used the word that Fleming used twice and is just as Bondian: love.

From Chitty to Camper – the magical car flies again

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ian Fleming’s only children’s book (although I started reading the Bond books from the age of 12), gets a sequel. Novelist and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce was invited by the Ian Fleming estate to continue the adventures of the magical car. The book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, will be published in November.

The original car was based on a racing car built in 1920 by Count Zborowski, who used a pre-1914 Mercedes chassis and a six-cylinder Maybach engine, a type normally fitted to Zeppelins. For the new book, Cottrell Boyce has retained the engine, but placed it instead into a VW camper van.

Why a camper van? It is possible, simply, that Cottrell Boyce likes the vehicle, perhaps having owned or otherwise experienced one himself. But the camper van does in any case seem an appropriate choice. I don’t know how the camper van has been depicted in literature, but in recent films the camper van has either been used to evoke period (Forest Gump), or identify ex-hippies (Field of Dreams). I suspect, however, that Cottrell Boyce has picked up the idea of the camper van representing adventure and freedom in the way shown in Little Miss Sunshine. The new owners of Chitty Mark II, the Tootings, may also echo the kooky, poor, and ultimately loving and accepting, family depicted in the film. If so, then the Tootings would not be very far removed from the original Potts, a poor family on the margins of society, whose lives are changed with the arrival of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The evolution of the James Bond poster

Imagine a British James Bond poster. You’ll probably bring to mind the central figure of James Bond, facing us or body turned to the side, with gun brought close to the face, as if preparing for a duel. No doubt a Bond girl is draped around him, and both figures are placed in front of a montage of action highlights. Bond’s rocket-firing car is in the background, and the head of a Bond villain looks menacingly on the proceedings. Throw in an explosion or two for good measure, and you have some of the more successful attributes or memes (or, rather, variations of the memes for the depiction of Bond, action montage, Bond girl and so on) that form the standard James Bond artwork. Successful, because they have been reused on several poster campaigns, and have also been replicated on posters of films other than Bond. There are other memes, and by identifying how they varied and which variants were favoured and reproduced, and which fell by the wayside and disappeared from view, we can trace the evolution of the Bond poster.

The UK poster of the first Bond film, Dr No (1962), showed Bond in casual repose with a cigarette in one hand and a gun in the other. Half the poster is taken up by Bond girls. Images of action and the villain are somewhat hidden from view by the title. The use of a central Bond figure, the Bond-girl emphasis, and discreetly-placed action/villain motifs survives in the posters for From Russia With Love (1963), Thunderball (1965) and You Only Live Twice (1967), although with the last mentioned, there are other versions of the poster than give much more emphasis on action, one for instance showing Little Nellie, Bond’s autogyro. The poster for Goldfinger (1963) is different, though, and could be a still from the title sequence (both were designed by Robert Brownjohn). This style was not continued.

The action montage was brought more to the fore with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), while the depiction of Bond girls was restricted to the leading Bond girl, in this case Diana Rigg. This may have been a response to the introduction of a new Bond actor, George Lazenby. The emphasis on action may have been designed to reassure film-goers that this was a Bond film despite the absence of Sean Connery. In any case, the artwork set the pattern for the next nine films, from Diamonds Are Forever (1971) to The Living Daylights (1987). All feature strong actions montages, and central Bond figure with the leading Bond girl by his side (although the poster for Live and Let Die (1973) was reminiscent of the 1960s’ posters in terms of the relatively high number of women it showed).

In a return almost to the early posters, the action montage depicted in the poster for Licence to Kill (1989) was reduced in size and shifted to one end. Much of the poster, however, was taken up by the 007 device (rarely depicted before) with James Bond, this time shown running, placed in front. This was possibly meant to convey the idea of a Bond on his own and impatient for revenge. The use of the 007 device survived the six-year gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye (1995), and was prominent on the GoldenEye poster. Indeed, it was replicated in the posters for every subsequent film. We now see only the head and shoulders of Bond, although the figure is large and dominates the poster. The main Bond girls are shown behind him. These variants were selected for the Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) poster, and to some extent for the Die Another Day (2002) poster, although there Jinx, the leading Bond girl, mirrors the pose given to Bond to indicate an equal status. The poster for The World is not Enough (1999) is closer in style to the Bond posters of the 1970s, with the expression of the variants of prominent action montage and smaller full-figure Bond, clad in Bond girls.

Taking over from Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig brought a brutal and darker style to the Bond films, and the poster accompanying his films reflected this. The Bond of the Casino Royale (2006) poster was depicted with gun in hand and purposeful movement, echoing the poster of Licence to Kill, but also the memes expressed in the posters for the first Bourne film (The Bourne Identity). The action montage was restricted to a single scene central to the film – the casino. Vespa Lynd, the Bond girl, was prominent too, although some posters showed her in front of Bond, while in others she was behind, looming large in silhouette. The poster for Quantum of Solace (2008) replicated the structure of Casino Royale, with the hotel in the Atacama Desert seen in the climax of the film replacing the casino.

Examination of the Bond posters shows that none was designed in isolation. Generally, each poster replicated the memes expressed in the poster of the previous film, and sometimes, if the selection pressure was sufficiently strong, the artwork for films other than Bond. Some variants of the standard memes (background montage, Bond figure and so on) were more successful than others, and these were expressed sufficiently frequently to fix in artists’ and film-goers’ minds the concept of the archetypal Bond poster. And with each subsequent film, they became more dominant in the cultural environment and increased their chances of being selected for the next poster campaign.