Ed. Note: We got wind of this script being added to this web site somewhat late. We assume it is positioned as a third leg to the other two scripts specifically on the James Bond Phonomena and the life of Ian Fleming. While we would have preferred our consultant working on the schedulers that are in sore need of repair on this web site, this is a major achievement per his research. We were priviledged to visit him and somewhat study the material from which this is drawn. You can see a small part of this material at the bottom of www.offyougo.info where several of these magazines are read by various participants at some type of event. Apparently, almost 50 years ago he bundled up newspaper and magazine references to what you have here (James Bond and Ian Fleming), Kennedy's assassination, The Moon Landings and Nixon's resignation. Who knows, but it is possible that this rather low level Israeli dance web site may become a beacon for those studying the history of those times. Our perusal of the unused material that was unwrapped after all these years leads us to believe that a fourth and final installment of this 'history' will appear December '12. For those of you getting into this script from goggle and/or other search engines, let's give you some links to help you navigate this web site. The full website, www.thediskcoordinator.com is a combined production by several people to relate the events in the Philadelphia area pertaining to the Israeli dance community. Several people have added non Israeli dance scripts to this site (obviously this is an example of one) and you can find these scripts by clicking here. The script pertaining to Dec 21, 1964 - which involves the release of the movie Goldfinger - can be accessed by clicking here. Finally, the prequel script to this which centers on Fleming and the Philadelphian James Bond and Jamaica can be accessed by clicking here. Happy reading!

This script deals with the world of James Bond and Ian Fleming from Fleming's death on August 12th, 1964 through the year into August' 65, a time that the author calls 'Bond Mania'. Below, we give you some information and a timeline on the Fleming books that were published during this period and a timeline to the three Bond movies released up to August'65.

Another help with reading the following is a chronology of important events involving the life of Ian Fleming. click here for such a list

On May 28th, 2008, the world celebrated Ian Fleming's centennial in one of several ways. For many in England, a visit to the Imperial War Museum was a necessity where part of Fleming's estate, Goldeneye, in Jamaica, was duplicated and where his office, Room 39, during World War II in the Admiralty building was recreated. The picture to the right is a famous one of Fleming beside his desk during WorldWar II and the source of this is the official Ian Fleming site that represents his heirs and the legacy of his literary works at www.ianfleming.com. Anybody serious about studying this unique individual should look at this site keeping in mind that the ultimate editorial authority of the site is in the hands of Fleming's relatives which include the nieces and nephews of his brothers.

It's quite unusual for a writer to be celebrated per his centenary. Shakespeare and Dickens are so celebrated. Joyce's Bloom day, June 16, 2004, would have been so celebrated as is the anniversary of that day every year. But Fleming is not a writer whose books are masterpieces or studied in English classes. We doubt if you will find Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Goldfinger or Thrilling Cities as part of the top 100 great works in English although Fleming himself has been selected as the 14th most prominent post world war II English author.

As far as journalism goes, Fleming is not considered a great journalist although he fulfilled many roles in the Newspaper world before and after the war. So, there is this question as to why Fleming remains popular even though it has been almost 50 years since his passing.

We assume that there are better and more skilled authorities than yours truely to discuss why Fleming has this ability to hold our attention even some fifty years or so since his death. If you are looking for a learned discussion of such, this may not be the article for you as this article will give you a very unlearned discussion of this and other points. However, even better, what this article can offer you is something that probably even the best experts can't: copies of newspapers and publications that centered on Flemings death on August 12th, 1964 though the period of August 1965 when popularity of Fleming and his creation, james Bond, verged on what can only be called Bondmania. This author, very much taken by Fleming as a teenager, decided in 1963 to keep a record of how print media handled President Kennedy's death and this was extended to collecting news and print media's coverage of Fleming's death, the release of Goldfinger as a movie and the release in hardback of Fleming's last full length Bond novel, "The Man With The Golden Gun". In essence we are looking at newspaper and news journal clippings from August' 64 through August'65 with some editorial comment thrown in.

Now, why did the author of this script collect these journals and papers? Perhaps he was influenced by Fleming's own collections and love of print. Who Knows? Recently, this collection of 60's articles was unearthed in the condominium unit where this author of this script has lived for many years and it was decided to concentrate on a year's worth of articles pertaining to Fleming and Bond from the date that Fleming died.

Returning to our subject, what makes Fleming's longevity even more remarkable is that he began his first book at the age of 44 in January (possibly February) 1952, relatively old for writers this famous and just had 12 years to produce all his literary work given his death that day in August of 1964. And, even the time spent on his books: January and February of each of these years between '52 and '64 –definitely part time – makes his fame all the more pronounced if not exceptional.

This month, as this is written at the end of May'12, marks the 104th anniversary of his birth. He did have the advantage of a deep, both politically and financially, family structure but it wasn't a complete bed of roses, either. For the majority of his life he was known as Peter Fleming's younger bother and Peter Fleming was a known personality and writer long before the second World war. If you read the biographies on Fleming, expecially by John Pearson, the family fortune was out of his reach because of his somewhat poor relationship with his Mother who controlled the finances of any monetary largess. But, there can be no doubt that being part of the Fleming family was important per contacts in elite English society.

Besides the publicity that occurred per the author of James Bond's death that August 12th, a few months hence would see the third of the Bond Movies released and in May, 1965, You Only Live Twice, the last full fledged novel solely written by Fleming would be published. For more information about the Goldfinger movie release and the mania this caused around the world, the internet is full of information although in a pinch you can see this web site's analysis of this by clicking the Dec21, 1964 script. For information about Fleming and the Philadelphian James Bond, the ornithologist, and both of their ties to the island of Jamaica, this web site offers flemingandbond.htm which fakes a powerpoint presentation and will be modified for easier reading in due time.

So, again we ask: What makes Ian Fleming so rememberable, if there is such a word? Certainly remarkable. This writer thinks that it was an aspect of his personality and this was his genius: Having competed for his Mother's affection with Peter when he was younger, Fleming was best when tangentially attacking a problem. His book collection, started in the Thirties, could be considered a way to compete with Peter who was at that time a best selling author. We should indicate in this script that Peter Fleming was known for treking around the world. A serious student of the Flemings should read Peter Fleming's "Brazilian Adventure" in addition to "The Sixth Column," indicated to the right, dedicated to Ian and written in 1951 a year or so before Ian took to his typewriter to start what would be the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. It is possible that we have to thank "The Sixth Column" and this sibling rivalry for the creation of 007.

Pertaining to the above cited book collection - now known as the world famous Fleming Collection - in another twist and tangential thrust, Fleming also abetted his book collection when he created (with several others) a small publication called the "The Book Collector" (still published) which keeps track of the values of hardcover books. This led to his lifelong interest in book binding which is apparent today in that many of his James Bond novels remain intact given his attention to the binding process of each of his books at the time of publication.

The Bond books themselves take a tangential approach. It is acknowledged that Fleming borrowed heavily from his experiences in World War II as assistant to the chief of British Naval Intelligence during the period 1939-1945. The Bond novels skirt the British law at that time, the Offical Secrets Act, which prohibited disclosure of actual events but allowed fictional presentations of events, even if only slightly altered somewhat from the actual events that occurred during the war.

Anyway, let's let the experts argue about Fleming's genius. The rest of this report pertains to the obituaries and posthumously published interviews that flooded the media at the time of his death at age 56 in 1964. Keep in mind that much of this is copyrighted material. The coordinator who controls this web site is apparently indifferent if pictures and text are copied from this site. But, Fleming was giving interviews to large media companies. Most of these concerns (or the inheritor of the rights) have their own web sites which may or may not be fee based to see content. In this script, we will generally show you a part of the document and describe it as best we can although we will violate this where the material is not available through the internet and/or we don't feel that its publication will bring legal woes to the operators of this web site.

So, let's start with the day of his death, August 12th, 1964. Anticipation was already building for the release of Goldfinger, the third James Bond movie. Publicity already was hyper by this time given that the movie would be released in September in Britain. You may already be aware that Fleming's books had already spawned a set of very popular comic strips in Britain during the late 1950's (and extending through the 60's). Casino Royale, published in the United States as "You asked For it" was adapted for American Television in 1954 reverting back to its original name in this production for CBS. For those who lament the changes inflicted by the films onto the book plots of the same name, it won't be a surprise that in this television production, Bond is American (going by the name, Jimmy Bond) and Leiter is British.

After several attempts to sell the movie rights for his books (Casino Royale was the only one sold by this time), Fleming makes a deal with Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman either in late 1960 or early 61 to cede the Bond film rights. This leads to the filming of Dr No, the first of the movies but the sixth of the books, and this movie is released in late 1962. The movie would have probably been a minor hit on its own accord. But the appeal of the movie was abetted by Fleming's fifth book of the Bond series, "From Russia With Love", appearing as number 7 in a list of President John F. Kennedy's favorite books in a Life magazine article by Hugh Sidey in 1961. Apparently, at a news conference, Kennedy reinforced this by again mentioning James Bond in some capacity.

From Russia with Love was filmed in early to mid 1963 and released in late October or early November that year in England. It was a wild success. On October 23rd it was screened at the White House for President Kennedy, his family and selected friends and dignitaries. Reporters that were present at the White House that day report that Kennedy sat through the whole movie, a feat that was rare for him. It was the same for the general public. In those countries where it opened it was extremely popular as the Bond bandwagon was on its way. Originally this author thought that its proposed date of release in the US coincided with Kennedy's assassination and that it was decided to delay the American opening to April'64 given the interconnection between Bond and Kennedy. However, recent research indicates that there was an intentional six months or so of delay built into its release in the United States from that of England so that early April 1964 saw its premiere in New York. And therefore, at least to American audiences, it was only a few months prior to Fleming's death that this movie was made public.

Probably with the lingering effects of the assassination 6 months prior, the public hungered for good diversions and this author can think of none better than this movie. Probably it is the Bond movie that most closely follows the plot of its respective book. And, in addition, "From Russia With Love" ,sports one of the great fight scenes in movie history, the start of which is displayed to the left. This fight scene, somewhat copying a similar fight in the book, took some three weeks to film with the actors, Sean Connery as Bond and Robert Shaw as Red Grant, basically doing their own stunt work. Generally, today, when the movie is aired, the fight scene is usually cut to decrease the length of the movie. If you have never fully seen the fight in the train compartment, try to watch or find a copy that includes this.

From Russis with Love comes out in the US about the same time that production is preceding on the next James Bond movie, Goldfinger. Pre-production of this movie had started in late 1963 and most of the filming was done at Pinewoods studio outside of London. It was a madhouse as far as publicity was concerned as everyone had an interest in how James Bond would handle his next challenge.

With the publicity of the filming of Goldfinger, the news of Fleming's death was broadcast around the world. If you were looking at any of the nightly American telecasts of the news (by NBC, CBS and ABC) this was highlighted. One assumes that British broadcasting would have been even more liberal in the coverage of his death. Given that a BBC crew only six months before in Jamaica had filmed the only meeting between Fleming and James Bond, the Philadelphia ornithologist whose name Fleming claimed to have used for his hero, one can assume this video receiving multiple plays on this network during that day.

So that brings us to the morning of August 13th, 1964. If we call the previous interest in James Bond, Bondmania, perhaps we should claim that the western societies were about to experience a Fleming/Bond Tsunami. In a space of a year starting with the publicity of his death, then the release (and prior publicity) of Goldfinger, through the production and filming of Thunderball in the Bahamas during Spring'65 and the May'65 paperback release of the 12th of the books "You Only Live Twice", not to mention the release of the supposed last book Fleming wrote, "The Man With The Gold Gun" in August '65 (although as you will see this book was previewed by Playboy in Apr/May '65 coincident with its release in England), there was a tremendous sequence of events pertaining to Fleming and Bond that was impossible to escape, ignore or resist.

Let's look at the obituaries first. The New York Times, as it always does, had been prepared. Starting on page 1 and moving into its obituary page, is an extensive writeup on Fleming's death as seen (again this only a partial display - above the fold as journalists would say) to the right. Keep in mind, the Times and what it prioritizes per its content is somewhat different today than 50 years ago. Very hard news oriented in that time period, (and many feel that its overall hard news coverage has dissipated over the ensuing years) the fact that they would interrupt foreign and national news coverage to report on Fleming's death should tell you the extent of his popularity and how the Bond movies were starting to be looked at in that era. Because the death occurred before the movie Goldfinger was released, the emphasis in this obituary is on the books and how they came to be written.

As promised, we have only shown you part of this obituary. You can subscribe to the Historical New York Times archive, as this author does, and see the full publication of this. If you were to see the entire article you would note that this obituary discusses what both Fleming and his wife always indicated as the reason to start writing these books in 1952: his pending marriage. In addition, the article covers the way that he wrote the James Bond thrillers while in Jamaica for the two months of the year while situated there on his annual vacation. Further, there is an example of the coming Bond phoenomena that we in the states would experience that had already hit England almost half a decade before: Fleming's need to issue faked medical bulletins to quell the anxiety of readers in 1958 after the publication of "From Russia With Love" where the fate of Bond is left hanging in the balance at the end of the book.

Another interesting aspect that the Times obituary omits is Bond's popularity in other media including comics and radio. The BBC had been broadcasting the books in one of its literary radio series and many of the British newspapers were running comic strips based on the books since 1958.

Below, we will give you a local view of Fleming's passing as we dredge up what was in the Philadelphia Inquirer the morning of Aug. 13, 1964. But, the hard impact of the obituaries would continue with a series of Fleming obituaries and retospectives in all the news magazines of the time. Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report were the three best known examples of this type of weekly magazine in the United States of which there were many. Time magazine was created in 1923 by Henry Luce who foresaw a need (and demand) for a published weekly news journal and the others followed. The obituary at the top of this article at the left, we believe, is from Newsweek and certainly not Time as we show part of Time's obituary of Fleming's death, "The Man With The Golden Bond", immediately at left although the photocopy does not give attribution to determine exactly which of the many weekly magazines this is copied from.

And this photocopy is not a mistake of manipulating colors or the lack of colors. Technology did not move as fast in the early 60's as it does today. Even in 1964, questions could arise as per the copying process. Although xerography as we know it today was mastered in 1960, xerox type copiers still had not become that widely distributed. A whole set of copiers were photo based and produced what today we would call negatives and you see the result in this copy of Time magazine's Fleming obituary and the obituary cited above which is thought to be from Newsweek. Ignoring the color, this article, like many, tried to explain the Bond Phonomena. Many consistent factors were described in all these articles, some did delve into very narrow reasons, but like most manias (and that's what the Bond explosion would be for the next year or so) there is something undescribable as to why this was happening. And, this mania for a British agent and his author was not the only British mania in effect that year. Keep in mind that Beatlemania (generally female based intense interest in this British rock group) was also at its height at the time of Fleming's death.

Other magazines, those with monthly publications, would join this bandwagon of Fleming obituaries that morphed into the rising anticipation for Goldfinger the movie. First up, we will deal with a publication that hardly dealt with hard news, being more 'soft' news oriented. This publication was, in itself, a social phonomena and made possible by a great liberalization of first amendment rights. Hugh Hefner had started Playboy in the 1950's with both a rather old human idea wrapped up with some new refinements. Would men, who have no problem in looking at beautiful naked women, pay larger sums for this pleasure and priviledge if high literary content was bundled into this. Most of the publishing industry felt the answer to be no as Hefner prepared volume 1, issue 1 of his magazine in December 1953 . The public, especially younger successful men, voted with their money an astounding yes.

In 1960 or so, when visiting Chicago either on the way to or from Las Vegas as he was writing the Thrilling Cities journalistic series, Fleming visited the headquarters of Playboy which was in that city at the time. An agreement was struck where condensed versions of his novels and short stories would appear in the magazine.

The first of Fleming's literature to be in Playboy was the Hildebrand Rarity, one of five short stories that make up "For Your Eyes Only." This was an interesting choice and tells you much about Playboy's philosophy.

Although the movies have altered the image, Bond really doesn't bed the number of women that his reputation would assume. In Moonraker, for instance, while he would have liked to know the heroine a little better, there is no hanky panky between the two in the book. There is some day dreaming of extra marital affairs with other unnamed women at the beginning of the book, but that's about it.

In "For Your Eyes Only," two of the stories do not involve Bond having any relationships at all. One story, "Quantum Of Solace," (which was made into a movie with nothing but the name carried over) deals with the strange relationship of a couple as told to Bond. Another story, the aforementioned "Hildebrand Rarity" involved the captain of a yacht and his relationship to his wife. Bond is a guest on a quest to find the fish of the title name, and while he does a little flirting with the wife, no sexual contact is ever made. There are other stories in the book with sexual results, yet, in this men's magazine the story chosen to lead James Bond into the world of Playboy is this very limited sexually, but highly involved psychological story. We should add, if you have not read Fleming's literature, that in this story there is sadism, revenge, murder and German Hubris (as Fleming would describe it), so it is by no means a children's story.

Every book thereafter written by Fleming would be condensed and appear in Playboy year after year as it was published. The next book to appear after Fleming death would be a condensed version of "The Man With The Golden Gun" appearing in two parts in the April and May '65 editions of Playboy.

Fleming visited the Playboy offices a second time as he was travelling around the world for his 1962 upgrade to "Thrilling Cities" which was made into the book "Thrilling Cities." (Ed. Note: The Thrilling Cities series began as a set of journalistic articles for the Sunday Times Of London and were so published. Later, an addition to this was the Thrilling cities of Europe. Eventually, these journalistic pieces were combined into the book, "Thrilling Cities"). Besides the contacts Fleming made while visiting locations - including with Playboy as indicated here - they did provide the material and background needed for the 12th James Bond book, "You Only Live Twice". By this point of time each edition of Playboy had an in depth interview with a world player and a request was made of Fleming to sit and be similarly interviewed. The interview occurred early in 1964 and was just getting ready for publication when Fleming died. Above left is the first page of the interview appearing in the December 1964 edition of the magazine

This is a very good interview although it is clear that the interviewer, never identified, seems not to have read the books in detail. There is a quote by Fleming that you may find interesting that is not shown above. Asked about the name James Bond, he replies that he appropriated the name from James Bond, the ornithologist, who wrote the "Birds of the West Indies." Many of us doubt that this was Fleming's first exposure to this name. But he does go on giving some insight as to the simplicitiy of the name. "I wanted my hero to be an anonymous instrument and to let the action of the book carry him along. I didn't believe in the heroic Bulldog Drummond types. I mean, rather, I didn't believe they could any longer exist in literature."

Note: In this Fleming's views was consistent with what was developing as the norm in comic books and the early adventure shows on TV where the names of Clark Kent (Superman), Bruce Wayne (Batman) and John Reid (The Lone Ranger) would prevail.

When Fleming died, in addition to Playboy's coverage as indicated above, almost every other magazine and media outlet ran some type of obituary, some of which we have included here throughout this script. It would be natural, given this overdose, to have some satiric feedback on Fleming, James Bond and his designation, 007. An example of this, as this writer remembers, is George Jessel introducing himself as James Bond, 007 on Hollywood Squares. Mad magazine would ready a parody shortly thereafter. Below is the first page of a satiric look at James Bomb, 007. This parody utilizes the western musical, Oklahoma.

Intertwined with Fleming's death is the anticipation of the release of the Third James Bond movie, Goldfinger. As you are now aware, Fleming dies mid August and in September the film is released in England. This web site has a writeup describing the release of this film in New York which you can access by clicking here, but the demand proved perhaps even greater in England when shown there than here. It's a natural that Fleming's death gets wrapped up in this. All sorts of publicity was being prepared for this great event - Goldfinger the movie - and Life magazine had prepared a spread on the coming Goldfinger release in early November, 1964 from which the pictures below have been taken. To the left is Shirley Eaton who appears as the golden girl. Her part is as one of the Masterton sisters who both meet premature deaths at the hand of Oddjob. In the case of Shirley, she played the sister who was suffocated to death by being painted in gold. The pictures to the right are from the inside article and we have highlighted the one change that would have been necessary had this publication come out in mid August. One other note before you move to the picture. The fight between Pussy Galore and James Bond in this movie supposedly occurs in a barn in Kentucky. It should be clear that this fight is being staged on a bare movie stage with straw having been placed on the floor. This confirms what everyone knows, most sequences of this movie were filmed in Pinewood studios outside of London. The other thing is to look at the back of the man playing James Bond. Is this really Sean Connery? His style of movement seems different from the Connery seen in the fight scenes of From Russia With Love. We think this is Connery's stunt double, John Stearns, and the caption gives no clue as it attributes the body shown to James Bond

Fleming's relationship with the movies and how they deal with his books and the characters he created in itself is quite interesting. Of all the productions that he was alive to see ("Dr No","From Russia With Love" and Goldfinger) Goldfinger was the least visited by Fleming. In Dr No, much of the filming occurred outside of his estate on the north shore of that island. Fleming and his neighbors, and this would include Noel Coward, the great British novelist and man of letters, would pull up chairs and watch the action on the beach that in the movie would be interpreted as Bond's battle with the forces of "Dr No" on Crab Key.

For the next movie, Fleming did travel to Turkey while the production of "From Russia With Love" was filming. Some feel that, in fact, he possibly became a bit member of the film as you can readily study at various locations on the internet. For Goldfinger, there was a very limited location shoot in Switzerland, but the vast majority of this film was created inside Pinewoods studio. For all three of the movies, Fleming did make an appearance at Pinewoods (or its predecessor) while the filming there was underway. Obviously, when Fleming would observe the acting, he would be hearing parts of dialogue and the sound editors, once the shooting was done, would coalesce this into the dialogue between the actors. He probably didn't recognize much that was said between the actors as the screenwriters took great liberty with the dialogue that was in the book.

Fleming did go to the premiere of "Dr No" in London and, from what can be analysed by those who knew him and/or viewed the movie with him, apparently hated the whole concept. This would not be surprising. Except for one possible humorous line by Bond in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" there is no humor in the Bond books even though Fleming himself had a trememdous sense of humor it is said. The British word "ghastly" is supposedly how he described watching the film adaptations of his novels. Fleming was not part of the "Dr No" writing staff and the only credits he received were for the book and this would only have been for extremely detailed summaries of the film. What was included, and has become the norm, was the statement "Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli present Ian Fleming's Dr NO." In addition, Bond to Fleming was a blunt instrument, possibly the dumbest and least sophsiticated person in any scene he would write. But, even in the film, Dr No, the Bond personality is changing.

Perhaps the knowledge of Fleming's discomfort with the character on screen made the producers limit Fleming's credit even more in "From Russia With Love." Again. Fleming's name leads into "From Russia With Love" as it did in Dr NO, but one would be hard pressed to find reference to the novel he wrote in the credits. Of all the Bond movies, "From Russia With Love" is the closest to Fleming's concept but Bond's stature had by then grown over what it was in "Dr No" which was already greatly above what was in the books. In addition, humor is a larger portion of Bond's lines in this movie. It has been reported, and it probably is accurate, that Fleming needed a few stiff (hard liguor) drinks after watching "From Russia With Love" for the first time.

This should answer your question, if such was posed, whether Fleming would have enjoyed Goldfinger. Hardly! The movie is almost a negative of the book in many regards. Things such as the killing of Jill Masterton by paint, as imaged above in the movie, are told to Bond long after the event in the novel, whereas in the film this is a main scene. By this third movie, the elevation of Bond to a pedestal has been accomplished. No longer is he but a blunt instrument in the hands of his intelligence agency: he is shown to be the expert in almost anything that he encounters. Fleming would have needed more than a few stiff drinks to recover from watching this enactment. And Fleming was about to skip even lower per the credits of the movie as Goldfinger was introduced as "Sean Connery as Agent 007 in Ian Fleming's Goldfinger." Below you see this in one of the publicity releases at the time. The one instance of Fleming's name is highlighted.

As November moves into December, the ad campaign for Goldfinger heats up. Below, we show the ads in the newspapers in Philadelphia announcing the release. On another script on this web site, the focus is on the 24/7 screening of Goldfinger in New York during the holiday week at the end of December. 64. Here in this script you can literally read between the lines about the demand for this movie in staid Philadelphia. No doubt at the time, similar to today, movie theaters made commitments to films in terms of length(duration) of showing. The Goldman apparently was committed to a certain length of time in terms of the film, "Youngblood Hawke." But Philly is not that far away from New York and, no doubt, the theater faced the dilemma of running this movie to an empty theater while moviegoers flocked to New York to take in Goldfinger while enjoying other aspects of a visit to that city. You can see the result: the Goldman theater started to show Goldfinger during the already set down time between the scheduled screenings of "Youngblood Hawke." And, we should add, that "Youngblood Hawke" was no lightweight movie as it starred John Franciscus whom you would recognize as a supporting actor in various TV shows, and Suzanne Pleshette, the screen wife of Bob Newhart in his comedy series where he portrays a psychiatrist. Its lead writer, Herman Wouk, is now best known as the writer of Winds of War and War and Remembrance. But, any movie production at that point would have been outclassed by the Bond-Fleming Tsunami.

And, it is not just in film or in newspaper and magazine print that one could get caught up in the Bond-Fleming onslaught. The hardback edition of "You Only Live Twice" was published in England in March, 1964. The date of publishing this book in the US, although not found directly in our research, could be approximated as sometime late in July'64 or in early August'64 - about the time of Fleming's death - by its appearance on the New York Times best seller list. Besides the New York Times, at that time, many different news operations compiled top tens and Time magazine was no exception. Below, for the Dec 18th edition of the magazine (and where in later pages Goldfinger is reviewed) the bottom right shows the hard cover edition of "You Only Live Twice" sitting at #7 on the best seller list as compiled by Time and at least 4 months into publication. An attempt to head into a book store as opposed to a movie house was no diversion from the Bond-Fleming onslaught.

It is easy to belittle Fleming's writing and concentrate on the manipulation of the movies per Bond's popularity. But, "You Only Live Twice" stayed at least 6 months on best seller lists and its predessessor "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was the leading papeback book of 1964. As far as book publishing was concerned, the next major event would be the issuance of "You Only Live Twice" in paperbook in August 1965. That same month would see the last of the full length Bond books by Ian Fleming, "The Man With The Golden Gun." The New York Times would record "You Only Live Twice" to be on its best selling paperback list until till the end of that year. We now know that Fleming's last book, the aforementioned "The Man With The Golden Gun" was only half finished at the time of his death (we'll discuss this more fully below) and surreptitiously had been considerably rewritten by Kingsley Amis on the behest of Fleming's heirs. The condensed version of this work was set to appear as two installments in the April 1965 and May 1965 editions of Playboy (and we'll show the first page of this book as it appeared in the May'65 edition of Playboy below.)

We mentioned above Fleming's preoccupation with hardcover binding given his own world famous book collection, not to mention that he owned and published "The Book Collector", a magazine dedicated to these types of things. In hindsight, his attention to detail has proved valuable for those who collect copies of his hard cover books. Looking at sites dedicated to book collecting, one continually reads about the excellent condition of the Fleming books on the market. No doubt the attention to binding is what has allowed these volumes to keep up their appearance.

On Madison avenue, this James Bond wave had not escaped notice. For a while it was tough to escape ads centered around this character's image, name, code and aura. There certainly was a line of raincoats bearing the 007 label as you can see for yourself to the right. Certainly with intent, male models that looked like Sean Connery suddenly became in demand for advertising gigs. Late 1965 would see a series of 007 toiletries, after shaves and the like marketed by Colgate Palmolive. This toiletry line, it should be noted here, had its own music takeoff of the James Bond theme and was also the subject of a lawsuit in Germany based on the fact that the label "007" was composed of numbers.

So, there is no doubt that the year dating from Fleming's death on August 12th, 1964 to August 11th, 1965 was "All Bond, All the Time" if you'll excuse the pun on KYW's logo of "All News, All the Time" (KYW is a famous radio station in Philadelphia). At year's end as we move into 1965, Goldfinger is playing to record crowds. This movie would remain in movie theaters for the Winter into the spring. Thunderball was to be the next movie, targeted for Christmas, 1965 and no doubt pre-production work was underway with filming to be set for the Spring. Added to this, the movie producers decided to reissue a double header of "Dr No" and "From Russia with love". An ad for this double feature is at left, probably above dependent on your terminal, and, if memory serves, appeared in movie theaters sometime near the end of April or early May, 1965.

Of course, as indicated to the left, not all the publicity about the movies was positive. At the beginning of 1964, the papers reported that a type of pay dispute had shelved the cooperation of the producers with the director of the first two Bond movies, Terence Young. It was Young's contention that it was through him that the popularity of the character had been established. To some degree, he may have been right. It was through him that the signature line of the movies was established, "Bond, James Bond" and Young is said to have personally taken Sean Connery around to various clothiers and tailor shops in London to have Connery dress the part. All the interplay within M's office was through the suggestions of Young including the flirting/interplay between Bond and Moneypenny and the toss of the hat. While pre-production of Goldfinger was underway, Young makes a demand for more compensation from the producers and, before you know it, a new director, Guy Hamilton, is in place to direct the production of Goldfinger. Hamilton is told that the villian will be played by a German actor, Gert Frobe, but the fact that Forobe does not understand or speak English is not evident until Frobe arrives at Pinewood studios to perform.

Frobe was very well known at that time in the German film industry, which had made a comeback from the ruins of World War II. In his teens he had joined the Nazi party. During the war while in the German military he had apparently worked in some type of medical capacity. An interview with an Israeli newspaper reporter had Frobe claiming that during the war he had hid several Jews in Vienna from German persecution. Nevertheless, the fact that he was a member of the Nazi party produced a bit of negative publicity as indicated to the left. For a time, Goldfinger was banned from the Israeli market although prior to its removal from that country's screens it had been doing a tremendous business like in most countries.

Anyway. we have talked about the Bond influence per books, films and advertising (even if negative as indicated above) during this period. Tough to get away from if you were media oriented in any way at this time period. Think you could hide by listening to music? Probably not! The Bond (and in this case the Goldfinger movie's) soundtracks also pervaded popular music. Going back to "Dr No", the James Bond theme was a very catchy number. Vic Flick's guitar work on the first part of the James Bond theme became a kind of musical symbol to the aura of the character and movies. Around this time one would hear different takeoffs, perhaps one could call them riffs, of this part of this music in advertising and in many of the Bond clones that pervaded the movie theaters during the mid to late 60's.

For many, "From Russia with Love" was a great book and movie but, in addition, several tracks of the soundtrack were used for multiple purposes outside of the theater. John Barry had created a kind of secondary adventure theme, the 007 theme, and if you were a viewer of KYW eyewitness news at this time (KYW is mentioned above and is a TV/radio outlet in Philadlephia), the 007 theme introduced the news for that evening. Think about this and how pervasive this is: secondary music from a movie becomes the lead-in theme to the evening news in a major city in this country.

Major recording artists began to record what has become known as Bond music. This would include, if memory serves, artists as diverse as Chuck Berry, legendary rock and roll great, who in 1964 recorded the version of the James Bond theme as heard on the "From Russia With Love" soundtrack. (This is designated as James Bond with bongos on the movie sound track). It should be apparent that no matter what media you were in, it was difficult to escape the James Bond influence. The release of Goldfinger only accelerated this. 1965 would see the Goldfinger album climb to the point where some say it was the No. 1 album in this country.

But, below, we show that this influence didn't stop with music per the films as you see the album cover of "Music to Read James Bond By". Does the naked golden girl remind you of any advertising? United Artists released this album to cash in on Bondmania. There are 12 tracks on this album, 8 of which do come from the first three Bond films. This would not be surprising given that United Artists distributed the films (and it is said somewhat helped finance the first produced). But, UA added four more tracks by LeRoy Holmes who was not associated with these movies in any way. Holmes had been producing a set of albums for United Artists during this period including at least one by Shirley Bassey and Bassey is the singer of Goldfinger. To cash in on demand and given that there only was about a half album of music available from the three Bond movies at the time, these added tracks, said to be in the James Bond mood, allowed UA to crank out this album. And, UA was not alone in doing things like this to meet demand. Note: There is a more extensive discussion of the Bond music of the sixties on this web site that you can access by clicking here.

Anyway, as you can see it was "All Bond, All the Time." For the author of this script it was somewhat sad given that Bond is the creation of an author and the author's name is getting somewhat slighted in this massive explosion of Bondmania. However, every now and then during this period, Fleming and his name would come to the fore. On the heels of the Life magazine article indicated above featuring the movie, Goldfinger, came news of the probate (or whatever the equivalent is in England) of Fleming's will. It is not unusual for those that are deceased to send friends packets of money and Fleming was no exception. Where there was an exception is the coverage of such details in a will. But there was a public clamor for all things pertaining to Fleming and Bond and below you can see an article pertaining to this.

This brings us to a discussion of the last full length James Bond novel attributed to Ian Fleming, "The Man With The Golden Gun." As you may be aware Fleming would use his two months of vacation in jamaica at the beginninbg of the year to write the next installment of the James Bond thrillers. As he returned home to England, any loose ends or added research per the new manuscript that he brought back from Jamaica would be resolved and then the manuscript was sent off to his publisher. The publisher, Jonathon Cape, would set a production schedule for early the next year for this book. But, this all depended on the 2000 or so words that Fleming would write most days while vacationing. If anything upset this writing schedule, he really didn't have a book.

The heart attack of 1962 set the stage for increased debilitation of Fleming with the result of a loosening, possibly a suspension, of his writing schedule while in Jamaica in early 1964. It is said that he leaves Jamaica that year with a proposed novel that is at most only 50% written (and not more than that at the time of his death several months in the future). The Fleming heirs have to decide what to do with this half written manuscript after his death. At this point, Fleming's reputation meant that anything written with even a tangential relationship to him as an author was literally literary gold and the heirs decide to employ the famous British novelist (and fan of the James Bond novels) Kingsley Amis to complete the script. Who knows how much leeway Amis is given as he goes about completing this task.

This information is hidden from the public and has emerged over the years thanks to the Amis family and the differences in style between the writings of Fleming and Amis. But there were clues: The article to the left is such an example. Miss Moneypenny, in real life Lois Maxwell, discusses the possibility of M's clerical staff having a larger role in the book that Fleming had not completed. You can see that she is indicating that the book remained half written upon Fleming's death and that Kingsley Amis was in the process of finishing it. This has to be "The Man With The Golden Gun."

Of course, it's very probable that Maxwell had never read one of the novels and there was really no need for her to do so. As indicated above, Terence Young had much of the credit for making these movies very engaging to watch and this included condensing and consolidating the fictional staff of the books. In the books Moneypenny was on a high pedestal being M's secretary. Bond would no more date Moneypenny than he would one of the princesses of the royal family. Any possible relationship with office staff in the books would be with his personal secretary who would handle the affairs of all those involved in the 00 section. In Fleming writings over the years there is a suggestion that these affairs might be looked at in several ways. In most of the books the secretary of the 00 section is Loelia Ponsonby who is a more minor staff member than Moneypenny and usually seems to be involved in some relationship or the other that you read tangentially about as Bond muses about the office small talk. Bond in other instances muses about a possible relationship with Ponsonby and they, in many cases, flirt with each other. By "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," Ponsonby is gone, having finally gotten married and her replacement is Mary Goodnight. Goodnight is mentioned and generally has a significant part in all the books from On Her Majesty's Secret Service through"The Man With The Golden Gun"although her position within the Secret Service changes with the last book. In the movies, however, all this revolves around Moneypenny including the flirting and double entendres. Because Amis was involved in the books (what this author calls the literary Bond), Goodnight would have the role envisioned by Lois Maxwell in the book being ghost written by him. And so, one could see how Maxwell could expect that if this movie adaptation of the ghost written book was filmed, and especially if Terence Young was the director, Moneypenny would inherit the added importance of the part that was ascribed to Goodnight in the book. Of course, reality intervenes in this as Terence Young would no longer be the director of any Bond movies beyond Thunderball and Mary Goodnight's role would be played by Britt England in the movie adaptation of "The Man With The Golden Gun". Since there never was a reference to the 00 section secretary in the movies, the role of Mary Goodnight (not to mention Loelia Ponsonby) would not appear in any of the other movies.

And, to some degree, this misunderstanding by Maxwell as to the relationships and duties of the players in the books versus what is now popularized by the movies creates a type of stereographic problem for the fans of the books, who by Fleming's death are now a distinct minority per Bondmania. The book fans are aware to some degree of what Fleming was trying to do: create a hero who was relatively blunt. In the novel, "Dr No", it becomes clear that Bond, through a great shooter, is not an expert in armament. Also in that book, it is through the villian that Bond is introduced to the word 'topling'. In the novel, Moonraker, he is given a lecture per missile trajectories by a mathematician/physicist. In the novel, Goldfinger he learns the lessons of finance through the bank of England. Except for sex, gambling, foods, wines and cars, we are not dealing with any type of super-sophisticated knowledge. But, because of the movies, the vast amount of his fans, many of whom had never read any of the books, think that Bond's knowledge of, let's say, the length of radioactivie contamination of gold as indicated in the movie Goldfinger is the norm. So, it was a double edged sword to watch the movies' fans join in their fascination with this character (and to the literary fan of Bond, possibly for all the wrong reasons) for the year that succeeded Fleming's death. In some way you could call this the silly season of the Bondmania craze. A case in point, something that is a non issue in the books, is fantasies as to Bond's political bent as seen in the article to the left.

To Fleming, Bond had little pedigree enhanced by the fact that he was orphaned at a young age. He has no known relatives living as indicated in the obituary that Fleming has M write for him in "You Only Live Twice" as reproduced to the right. He is a civil servant although not the usual run of the mill. He has little money and few assets. He is Christian but very limited per his observance of such. He has limited friends although he is extremely loyal to those that are. He generally has affairs so certainly not a family man. Does this sound conservative? Fleming purposely gave Bond few characteristics of any political brand. This was in keeping the character as two dimentional as possible except for his interests, especially in women, as indicated above. But, it was not unusual during this time period to read articles tieing the Bond character to many causes, liberal as much as conservative.

We assume this to be typical of manias although this web site certainly is not the authority on this as its emphasis is generally on the activities of Israeli dancers in the Philadelphia area. But social manias are a fact. There have been several since the end of World War II. This Bond mania - and we feel we are correct is designating it as such - was in conjunction with the Beatles mania of about the same time. In the 50's there was the Elvis Presley mania which had succeeded the Sinatra and Martin and Lewis mania. The Bond and Beatles mania would be superceded in the late 70's by the BeeGees and disco mania. Eventually we would see the Harry Potter mania and perhaps we are in the midst of the Hunger Games mania or perhaps you would prefer to call our time, the Facebook mania. And, we certainly have not been totally inclusive per these situations as we could have included Hula Hoops in all of this. We mention this only to remind you that these things exist. But like all things, they start (and perhaps you don't know why), they grow, they peak and then its down hill. Part of the down hill process is when the character or social phonomena starts to be ridiculed. The most famous example of the ridiculing of a mania was when a national day of not playing BeeGees records was instituted by prominent DJs at the height of discomania. It's natural for this to occur and when it does en masse, you are getting a signal that the wave has peaked. Below, we show two of many articles that appeared in the press by the middle of 1965. Russell Baker was at one time a serious correspondent for the New York Times, but when promoted to the op ed pages, spent the rest of his career writing pieces with his tongue firmly in his cheek. The article by Cassandra is appropriate in several ways for this script on Fleming and Bond. British journalism has a tradition of featuring pieces by aliased writers and Fleming himself had such a position in the 1950's. Cassandra was, in effect, William Neil Connor, who died some two years after this article was written.

And so, this brings us to the Spring of 1965. In May. 1965, the last book of James Bond supposedly written by Ian Fleming - although mostly written and reedited by Kingsley Amis without credit - appeared in Playboy. Below is the first two pages. One thing that this author can say, as a reader of Playboy during that time period, was that the artwork was fantastic (and, of course, the girls weren't bad either in their poses). Look how the artist captures the moment and caricatures Sean Connery, at that point the actor who was playing James Bond on the big screen. We show it below but we are not doing justice to the artist. This scene never shows up in the movies: By the time this book is adapted to the movies, Sean Connery has long since left and his place is taken over by Roger Moore, and the meeting in the book where Bond meets Scaramanga is not part of the story line in the movie when it is released in 1974.

The picture above, from the serialization of"The Man With The Golden Gun"in the April/May 1965 Playboy as mentioned above, gives an example of the mental complexity at the time (and even now) of being familiar with Fleming's writing, yet watching the Bond movies where the movie script is written by others and in reading a book ghost written by another famous novelist. The waitress in the picture above (to the right of the Sean Connery image), is named Tiffy in the book. Fleming was excellent is thinking up names for his heroines. For many of them, this was the deepest you got in his personification of women in the novels. Tiffy is present at the meeting in the book between Bond and Scaramanga. She also happens to hold a conversation with Bond before Scaramanga arrives. Bond muses on the name 'Tiffy" and asks her what her real name is and the answer "artificial" is a surprise. Her mother had about a dozen girls all named after flowers and Tiffy was the last. Since her Mother couldn't come up with another flower name, Artificial it was. Most of Fleming's heroines may have had similar stories and his female names range from the suggestive Pussy Galore to the executive sounding Vesper Lynd. But, we mention it here while reminding you that much of this book was rewritten by Kingsley Amis. When we first read this in 1965, even being in our teens, it seemed like a forced attempt to go one better than Fleming's deriviative written a decade before in "Diamonds Are Forever" - as told by the heroine - of Tiffany Case's name.

Before this author receives complaints, we should add that Kingsley Amis was not chopped liver, if we can use that old expression. In his own right, he was as famous as Fleming and you may know him as the father of the author, Martin Amis. His novels of post war England created the "Angry Young Man" genre and you can get a feel for this by reading "Lucky Jim" which was Amis' first novel. But the Amis and Fleming styles of writing differ in many ways. One way was immediately noticeable. Amis had a light and airy touch and his novels, at least Lucky Jim, are humorous both in a situational way if not through dialogue. Fleming, as everyone reports, was very genial if not amusing in real life, but his books were devoid of humor per dialogue and only in maybe two to three instances are somewhat humorous situationally.

In addition, Fleming's books had great panorana so the action moved pretty fast except for the few times Fleming slowed the action to discuss some small point in great detail. Amis' books dealt with young men and women who can at best be described as neurotic in their pursuit of careers and each other in an almost serpentine manner. Fleming's take on Bond is pretty straight forward and it is the villians that steal the show in his books. Not surprisingly, one could tell that a different hand was at the wheel in sections of "The Man With The Golden Gun."

The critics were not kind to what was claimed at the time as Fleming's last full length novel about Bond. In hindsight, we know why there were differences in style but the critics at the time were not aware of the pedigree. Many considered it very tame without the action one expected from Fleming's writings. To the left is the review of "The Man With The Golden Gun" in the New Yorker but the sentiments you read in this were similar to most critic's reviews.

At the time of his death, three of Fleming's novels -"One her Majesty's Secret Service","You Only Live Twice" and "The Man With The Golden Gun" - are in the news per their print status (although several other of his novels, like Goldfinger, are receiving publicity per their transformation into film). One other piece of Fleming's writing would receive publicity somewhat shortly after the time of his death as reported in a Philadelphia Bulletin news service report as seen to the left. In some connection, possibly with a discussion with the creators of "The Man From Uncle", Fleming agreed to provide some ideas for a TV movie pertaining to the opium trade. We think this article overstates Fleming's contributions to this given the state of his health. Nevertheless, sometime prior to his death, he provided the necessary authorities with a synopsis that would make up this drama. This would become the TV movie, "The Poppy Is Also A Flower" with several Bond movie alums participating in the project although James Bond is not a character in this production. The TV movie credits when it finally appeared on ABC in late '65 or early '66 (we recollect) indicated that the project was based on the ideas of Ian Fleming and at this point one cannot hazard a guess as to how much or how little of Fleming ideas or writing were used.

Let's return to the day that Fleming died. Above, we have shown you the NY Times obituary. In Philadelphia at the time, there were two newpapers, the Inquirer published in the morning and the Bulletin published in the afternoon. Both had obituaries of Fleming although the Bulletin would be in the afternoon of August 12th while the Inquirer's was in the morning of August 13. The Bulletin is mentioned in the Hitchcock movie "To Catch A Thief" when its slogan "Nearly Everybody in Philadelphia reads the Bulletin" was used. Unfortunately, as events would unfold, not enough people in Philadelphia were readers and the Bulletin folded in the early part of 1981 but it left a lasting legacy through another channel of media. In Philadelphia, the NBC owned affiliate is WCAU TV. Prior to 1995, this station was owned by CBS. CBS bought this station in 1956 from the Bulletin company. WCAU TV is one of the older broadcasting stations in the Philadelphia area.

As for the Inquirer, this paper was part of Triangle publications owned exclusively by Walter Annenberg. Triangle was a very interesting company as was its owner. A sister publication to the Inquirer under the Triangle banner was TV Guide and the first publication owned by Annenberg (and, really his father, Moses Annenberg, who started this company and was believed to be involved in organized crime during the 1930s) was the National Racing Wire. Triangle also owned several radio/TV stations in the Philadelphia area including WFIL. In 1964 the Inquirer was still owned by Annenberg although within ten years much of Triangle would be sold and be under new management.

Each newspaper subscribed to a different news service. The Bulletin generally used UPI, the Inquirer generally used AP. UPI itself was a merger between UP and INS. INS (for International News Service) was rather famous given its bent prior to World War II. Among its correspondents in pre-war Germany was the famous war correspondent, Quentin Reynolds, who gave Americans one of the first real descriptions of life in the Third Reich. You are probably familiar with UPI today given its new owner, the Rev Sun Moon, and prior to its purchase by Sun, by its one-time White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, before she was booted from the presidential entourage for anti-semetic statements.

The Inquirer used AP, UPI's rival. We show the AP's Fleming obituary below as published in the Inquirer on August 13th, 1964. You really can't find this through the Inquirer's web site as their electronic subscription and retrieval service starts in 1981. Sometime soon we will reproduce this verbatim, spelling errors and all.

However, you can clearly read this obituary. It should be clear that it was not edited properly given the many spelling errors. It also claims that with Fleming's death, there goes James Bond, but the Bond myth had been moving from the book's ideas to the film's ideas - in essence from Fleming to Broccoli. But even for the literary Bond, this death has been declared somewhat prematurely. The Fleming heirs have attempted to keep Bond going from book to book. The latest book attrbuted to Fleming, indicated in this obituary as half written, would be finished by Kingsley Amis who would also write another Bond story, "Colonel Sun" late in the 1960's. Writers John Gardner and Raymond Benson followed suit through the 80's into the early part of the new century. Recently, Sebastian Faulks wrote a James Bond novel to celebrate Fleming's centennial. In 2011, "Carte Blanche" was written by Jeffrey Deaver and this attempts to restart the Bond legend by giving Bond's enlistment into the British Secret Service an up to date story telling. So, while not as prominent as Fleming's annual new book each year when he was alive, Bond continues to be a character of fiction.

The obituary lists fans as the late president Kennedy and Allen Dulles. It was mentioned before in this script that the inclusion of "From Russia With Love" on Kennedy's favorite book list started the Bond band wagon in the United States. There is some question as to whether this really was supposed to be included per Kennedy's instructions or whether one of Kennedy's staffers added the entry on the list to include a book of fiction and make the President look a little more down to earth since the other nine books on the list were either historical or biographical. Whichever, it is known the Kennedy had met Fleming on the social circuit in Washington and both enjoyed each other's company.

Allen Dulles was the brother of John Foster Dulles who had served as Secretary of State in the 1950's in the Eisenhauer administration (and for whom Dulles airport is named). Allen Dulles had been with the State Department prior to World War II and during the war was a part of OSS and first met Fleming in that capacity. He is well known for his work during the later part of the war in Switzerland mounting intelligence operations against Germany. He was the director of CIA during Eisenhauer's administration.

After the war, as indicated above, official secret acts on both sides of the Atlantic - and informal agreements between intelligence services and journalists - precluded real discussions of intelligence operations during and post war. Fleming circumvented this by fictionalizing these operations in his books and this probably made the books extremely appealing to Dulles given his knowledge of the real happenings.

From what we have read on the subject of Fleming's health during the year preceding his death, it seems as if most of the people that knew him personally were not surprised at his death. Generally always on the move and continually running between appointments, there had been a noticeable slowdown in his activities over that last year. No doubt this was the reason for the lateness per the new book. From all the information available, one suspects that he was ailing during his annual winter vacation in Jamaica. However, at least on that island, in February 1964, we can report that he did meet the man whose name he claimed to have used for his hero, the ornithologist James Bond of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Fleming had made claim of using the name based on the book, "Birds of the West Indies" by Doctor Bond. Bond came from a very prominent family in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia suburbs and had followed his father, Francis Bond (although some sources say Thomas Bond) into the study of ornithology. It was through numerous trips to Jamaica that Bond realized that the birds of the two continents of the Americas nestled during the respective winters in the Jamaica environment - hence the book detailing all the ornithology available to bird watchers, such as Fleming, on that island and its vicinity.

Unfortunately, Fleming's claim of how his character was named made the Philadelphia James Bond, and his wife Mary Bond, a focus of unwanted interest and attention wherever they were and Mary Bond had started a correspondence with Fleming at first to complain. However, this correspondence eventually led to an invitation to visit Fleming when all three were on the island. The Bond's took Fleming up on this invitation in February 1964 on a day when coincidently a film crew from the BBC was at Fleming's estate doing their own assignment on the author. This one and only meeting between Fleming and the real Bond was caught on tape by the BBC crew and pictures of Fleming and Bond standing together show a beaming Fleming. Fleming kept a guest book at the estate and next to Bond's name that day was the remark "Great Day" written by Fleming. One can conclude, given the on-going medical problems he was suffering, that this may have been his high point until his death.

We've already stated that plans were already in place to release "You Only Live Twice" as a paperback in 1965 - about a year after its release as a hardback. The publisher decided to print 2,000,007 paperback copies. By this point you already know what the last digits of this number signified, but you probably are not aware that at that point in time, this was largest number of copies ever distributed for a single edition in paperback. With Fleming's death, the book was reviewed as part of a vista of all of Fleming's works. Reviewers attempted to explain this phonomena, what we have called Bond mania in this script, in all sorts of ways bearing in mind that they were affecting the memory of a man who, in essence, was primarily a journalist but who had strayed in multiple tangential paths. From the abovementioned Inquirer we provide the review of "You Only live Twice" as it appeared in that paper sometime in May/June of 1965 as indicated on the right.

Returning to the obituaries on Fleming's death indicated above, you are already aware that Fleming was able to provide a highly stylized version of himself by manipulating facts that these obituaries cited. None mentioned that he had flunked the Foreign Office exam (He was always telling everyone that he had been 7th but only the first 5 were selected). It's not for a few years until John Pearson writes his autobiography of Fleming that most of the true facts about Fleming's life are explained.

So, anyway, you have an idea of what this author designates as "Bondmania" for the duration of the year from Fleming's death. It's a year of Bond, and more Bond and Fleming. But, what about his creation, James Bond, the secret agent? Where was Bond's standing as far as the Fleming left it in his books before the forces of cinema took over?

Thanks to an obituary written by Fleming himself about Bond in "You Only Live Twice", and observations on our hero by the hero himself in Moonraker and the dossier kept on him by the Russian intelligence services that we are privy to in "From Russia With Love", we get to the question of one of Fleming's legacies: a definitive history of the secret agent the world knows as James Bond. For many authors of popular series, the question of age, if not history, really doesn't matter. Robert Parker, the author of the Spenser series (a Boston private detective) could get away with as little as indicating that Spenser was getting older (and possibly better with age). His specific age and when he worked a specific case really never comes up in the Spenser books except that it was in the past. Other authors tend to be forced to devise ways to handle a character's age. Fleming forced the issue of this in at least two unique ways. One was his contention, voiced through Bond, that women were somewhat free (the male paid for the meal and drinks before a night of sex) until a male hit the threshold age of 45. After that, in one way or the other, additional costs of acquiring female companionship accrued. The second way is whenever Bond faced gunfire, the rat-a-tat would always remind him of experiences in World War II. Below, let's use this to derive some information about James Bond.

In looking at the first case, given that Bond does get the attention of women in the books (what he does with them is a lot more pronounced in the films than what one reads), a maximum age bracket is set by default. In addition, Bond's good looks are specific aspects to at least two books, written 7 years apart. In "From Russia With Love" Bond is described as a lone wolf, but a good looking one. The bait, Titiana Romanova, is impressed by Bond's good looks. He cannot be someone in the midst of middle age. In "You Only Live Twice", Kissy Suzuki apparently is swayed by the looks and demeanor of the stranger she is assisting. Again, one has to assume the Kissy is looking at Bond as a suitable mate and given that she is a woman not yet thirty, you should be able to draw a similar conclusion to Bond's age as the author of this script.

In "Live and Let Die" the gunfight in the aquarium reminds Bond of a similar experience in hearing the reports of the shots as in World War II. Similarly, eight years later Bond is reminded of gunfire in World War II during the assault on Blofeld's hideout clinic, Piz Gloria.

In addition, Bond is described as a senior civil servant in Moonraker so an age is set on the other side per the maturity needed to attain this civil service status. For Moonraker, written in 1954 and published in 1955, it would be natural to allude to Bond's service in the armed forces during World War II which started 15 years prior to the Moonraker story and would be consistent with the Russian dossier's assertion (in "From Russia With Love") that Bond had started work with the British secret service prior to WWII. It would have been natural for Fleming to assign the age of 37 to his hero per that book as he would have been 22 when WWII started in 1939.

As far as a complete professional resume and personality for Bond, including the question of age and World War II as discussed above, you really have to consult Moonraker, "You Only Live Twice" and "From Russia With Love". Moonraker and "You Only Live Twice" were written eight years apart. "From Russia With Love", written two years after Moonraker, looks at Bond's resume through a Russian perspective. Let's deal with the Russians' impressions first. Bond is indicated to have been an agent of whatever agency he belongs to in the British government since the end of WWII. In addition, the Russian dossier indicates his first involvement with British intelligence to be in 1938. He couldn't have done this without some exposure to the war and this automatically indicates someone of at least majority age during the World War II period. Further, assuming the Russian intelligence to be correct, in 1938 Bond would have had to be at least in his late teenaged years to become a member of the British pre-war intelligence service when the lack of a hot war would allow these services to be somewhat selective. In this, Fleming has his Bond history coincide with the obituary in "You Only Live Twice" as we are told that it is through a friend of his deceased father (both of Bond's parents are reported to have been killed in an avalanch while skiing) that his introduction to the British Secret Service is effected.

Per Moonraker and You Only Live Twice, you get a little bit more of a perspective from the British/Bond side. The history of Bond per Moonraker occurs at the beginning of the book. Some of the darker aspects of Bond's thinking and musing, which again only a genius like Fleming could pull off, is the question of how long can Bond keep going before he is killed in action. The reader is told that the rules of Bond's agency is that a forced retirement from field operations must occur at age 45. Bond muses over the next 8 years leaving one to conclude that Bond is 37. Probably on average, per Bond's analysis, he is assigned 3 cases a year and the resulting mathematics, 24 cases till retirement, seem much too long to survive. Here we get a bit of the Bond philosophy. When he is inevitably killed, he would like to have as little in the bank as possible. This figures into the plot of this book because in the end there is an extra 25,000 pounds for him to spend and spend it he will do. But the philosophy seeps into most of the books as Bond spends little time worrying about retirement accounts and bank balances. We should also add that Fleming, in almost every interview, pegged 37 as his image of Bond's age and Moonraker really brings this age together.

From a Fleming perspective, Moonraker was written, as indicated, in early 1954. The assumed number of years till retirement that Bond is musing about, 8, would take you to 1962 and that is the year of Fleming's very serious heart attack. This heart attack does not kill him at that point but leads to the deteriorating health he experienced till his death in 1964, two years hence. It wasn't like he didn't know it was coming when he had Bond musing about his future as written in the middle '50s. The iron crab, as Fleming called it, was somewhat preordained given his life style and even in "From Russia With Love" he has Darko Kerim musing about it. Even at that time, the 60 or so cigarettes that he smoked each day were known to have obvious consequences to the heart. When you reread Moonraker, knowing the future from the point that Fleming created the book, you may get the feel (as this author does) that the character is speaking for his creator.

In "You Only Live Twice", Bond is reported missing. The obituary (part of which - the first page of it in the paperback - is duplicated somewhere above on this script), posted as a chapter at the end of the book, is written by M as the head of his department and attempts to give the reader Bond's history. Anyone with half an interest in the character should read the whole obituary as written by Fleming. You are given a history of Bond as a child and it becomes clear that Bond grew up pretty much alone. With no known relatives to worry about, you can understand the somewhat stoic and solitary nature of the character.

While we are discussing Bond and his bio, we should refute what one reads on the internet - that there is a specific birthdate for 007. Any character who is 37 in 1954 while still 37 in 1962 as claimed by his creator cannot really have a unique date of birth. Further anyone who is claimed to have entered the British intelligence service in 1938 in one book only to have another book, written 8 years hence, claim this entrance in 1941, poses difficulty in determining accuracy in any dates. Whatever the date was and however varied it might have been, we should give thanks to Fleming for having created Bond and his persona for the world to enjoy.

Finally, one last thing to ponder. Fleming dies in 1964. What would he have thought of Journalism as practiced today if he had lived to a ripe old age? Ten years before his death he is a well known British journalist and editorial writer. At the time of his death, he is more famous as the creator of the James Bond series of novels but nevertheless is still acting somewhat as an editorial writer and journalist. He came to journalism and writing by way of many factors. Prior to World War II, he worked for Reuters and covered several show trials in Russia for this British news service. At the end of his life, he is employed by the Sunday Times Of London although in a diminished capacity, somewhat more like a consultant.

At the time of his death, the Sunday Times was part of the Kemsley group of Newspapers and independent both editorially and from ownership of the daily Times of London. Within a few years, the paper is sold to the Thomson group and with that group's ownership of the daily Times, it is integrated editorially into the other newspaper giving Londoners a Times for all days. In 1981, Rupert Murdoch acquires both papers. Less than twenty years after Fleming's death, the newspaper he worked for had been sold twice, merged into another publication editorially and the most recent owner is not even a British citizen as Murdoch was born in Australia and is now a citizen of the United States. One really doubts that Fleming would have considered any of this a plus.

At the time of his death, there are multiple roads to follow as a journalist. In this script we have dealt with several papers, several news journals, several news agencies, several monthly news and photo journals and several monthly male magazines. All are doing at that point somewhat independent and serious journalism and most had been specifically created to do such reporting from their origin.

Today, it is easy to conclude that this is not the case. Certainly Playboy and Esquire do not have the journalistic approach of earlier years. In the case of Playboy, just the number of pages per issue today versus 50 years ago tells the tale. The three main newmagazines, Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report, are not what they were and, in the case of Newsweek, there is the question of its viability (And since this was written, Newsweek has announced that it will no longer be published and will exist as an Internet journal but who knows for how long). None of the monthly news and photo journals are around today. Even the question of the viability of the Philadelphia Inquirer is one for concern. To some degree this has been offset by Internet sources, but one can conclude that the Journalism world has been quite reduced since Fleming's death and this probably would have appalled him. And, to add injury to insult even further, his interest in books, either in writing, reading, binding or collection would not be popular today. One doubts that his lifestyle, 10 months of working and 2 months of vacation, could have been supported financially or with manpower in today's newsrooms. The author of this script thinks that Fleming would not have approved of the state of journalism today.