Meet Jim Wright, author of The Real James Bond, the biography of the ornithologist whose name was appropriated by Ian Fleming for his 007. Jim gives us an insight into the story of the Fleming Doctor Bird.
Wonder why the colophon for Ian Fleming Publications features a bird, and what kind of bird it is? For the answer, look no farther than For Your Eyes Only, arguably the best short story in the 1960 compilation of the same name. Fleming begins the tale in a most atypical fashion. He spends the first 105 words waxing poetic about the bird that would become integral to the colophon and Ian Fleming Publications’ logo:
‘The most beautiful bird in Jamaica, and some say the most beautiful bird in the world, is the streamertail or doctor hummingbird. The cock bird is about nine inches long, but seven inches of it are tail – two long black feathers that curve and cross each other and whose inner edges are in a form of scalloped design. The head and crest are black, the wings dark green, the long bill is scarlet, and the eyes, bright and confiding, are black. The body is emerald green, so dazzling that when the sun is on the breast you see the brightest green thing in nature.’
Appropriately, the Red-billed Streamertail also takes centre stage on the front cover of Ian Fleming Publications’ new reissue of For Your Eyes Only. Webb & Webb Design Ltd. surely must have taken Fleming’s description to heart when they created the cover. If you look closely, you can see one of those long tailfeathers arching behind the first “0” in 007.
The hummingbirds of Jamaica were a big Fleming favourite. After he built GoldenEye on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean in the late 1940s, he planted hibiscus and bougainvillea flowers to attract these dynamic little fliers – especially the Red-billed Streamertails that grace the property to this day. Fleming’s stepson Raymond O’Neill once commented about GoldenEye: ‘Hummingbirds buzzing all around you – it was absolute paradise.’
The plantings and a local tree known as a Poor Man’s Orchid also likely attracted the two other hummers known only to this island nation: The muscular Jamaican Mango, with its iridescent green and purple feathers, and the Vervain, just a wisp or two larger than neighbouring Cuba’s Bee Hummingbird, the smallest in the world.
The Jamaican Mango (by Ricardo Miller)The Vervain Hummingbird (by Jim Wright)
The Streamertail is also called the Doctor Bird, most likely as a result of its stiff black crest and elongated tail feathers, which were said to resemble the old-fashioned top hat and long tailcoats that Jamaican doctors once wore. Another theory maintains that the name originates from the way these birds pierce the flowers with their bills to extract nectar like a doctor with a syringe. Not only are these scissor-tailed hummers beautiful to watch, but they make distinct sounds with both their wings and their bills. Even with their oversized tail feathers, they weigh just 6 grams, but you can hear them coming 50 yards away.
When Fleming and Ann Charteris Harmsworth married in March 1952, he described ‘a marvellous honeymoon among hummingbirds and barracudas.’ Later that same year, back in Britain and increasingly homesick for Jamaica, he told his friend and literary critic Cyril Connolly that ‘the Doctor Birds are waiting in the Crown of Thorns bushes and the butterfly fish on the reef.’ Another literary friend of the family, Peter Quennell, talked of visiting GoldenEye and seeing Doctor Birds appear “in a spark of celestial brilliance.”
Unlike most of the wild birds that make cameo appearances in the 007 thrillers, the Streamertails at the beginning of For Your Eyes Only are not gunned down by a villain. Perhaps it’s because they are never within shooting range. Perhaps the birds are too small for a villain to shoot. Or perhaps Fleming could never bring himself to kill such a beautiful bird, even on paper.
Jon Gilbert, internationally renowned dealer in rare Fleming-related material and author of Ian Fleming: The Bibliography, explores the provenance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
By the 1960s, novelist Ian Fleming had created a literary and cinematic phenomenon in the shape of British Secret Agent James Bond. Occasionally writing that he was tiring of his ‘cardboard hero’, Fleming would soon conjure up another unforgettable gadget-laden champion of literature and the big screen, though sadly he would not live to see the runaway success of his next great invention.
His only book for children, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was the written version of the fantastic bedtime stories he concocted for his son Caspar. It tells the adventures of a magical, flying car restored by Caractacus Pott, a retired Naval Commander and now family-man inventor, who bought the vehicle using proceeds from his ingenious ‘whistling’ sweets which he had sold to the aristocratic owner of a large local confectionery factory. The car, whose original registration was GEN 11, was soon christened Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ after the ritual noises produced when her powerful engine burst into life. Fleming’s Chitty seemingly has a mind of her own and reveals her unusual abilities to the spell-bound Pott family, whisking them off on a crime-busting caper across the English Channel.
The author took his inspiration for the motor from a series of aero-engined racing cars built and raced by Count Louis Zborowski in the early 1920s at Higham Park near Canterbury. Zborowski was the son of a racing driver who died in a crash and an American heiress to the Astor family, and at the age of sixteen became spectacularly wealthy upon his mother’s death, inheriting a sizeable portion of Manhattan. He invested in designing, building and racing his own cars, each called Chitty Bang Bang, before he too was involved in a fatal accident, during the 1924 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Fleming, who had experienced heart trouble from his late thirties, suffered a heart attack in April 1961 and was confined to bed at the London Clinic, subsequently convalescing on the south coast of England and Dieppe in Northern France. Doctors advised his coronary thrombosis was due to heavy smoking and recommended he reduce his cigarette consumption from sixty to twenty per day and cease golf and exercise for one year. Whilst recovering, Fleming committed these Chitty tales to paper, under the working title The Magical Car, informing his friend and publisher Michael Howard of Jonathan Cape – in typically playful style.
‘I can assure you that I will be firing on all cylinders again before long … [and] I am writing a children’s book, so you will see that there is never a moment, even on the edge of the tomb, when I am not slaving for you’
Fleming was known to borrow names from people he knew for his fictional characters and had plundered the roll of fellow students from Eton College when considering names for his James Bond novels (Strangways, Scaramanga, Hilary Bray, etc). A glance at the school list also reveals two pupils called Chitty and Chitty (Major and Minor), sons of Eton schoolmaster the Reverend George Jameson Chitty; these may also have inspired the Chitty Chitty of the final title.
At the end of April 1961 Fleming advised Howard that his children’s story was nearly finished, and on 27th June he took Caspar to see the latest Walt Disney film The Absent-Minded Professor. He was horrified to find it featured a flying motor car, built by a crackpot inventor in his own backyard, which was shown circling a church spire. Fleming, whose own tale included Chitty soaring over the spire of Canterbury Cathedral, was rightly frustrated, commenting to Howard:
‘This really is the limit. Would you ask one of your intelligence spies to have a look at this film and suggest what amendments we ought to make? Personally I think we could get away with cutting out the spire of Canterbury Cathedral, but it really is pretty maddening’.
Fearing repercussions, Fleming did make this suggested change to the church-roof section of the story.
Written as three instalments, a proper manuscript was typed up in August 1961, corrected by the author and dispatched to Cape’s offices that October. From this, various typescripts were produced, one of which Fleming sent in May 1962 to his great friend the automotive and aeronautical designer Amherst Villiers. Villiers was famous for his pioneering work in superchargers which were fitted with great success to the ‘Blower’ Bentley race cars of the 1930s and which Fleming had chosen for James Bond to drive in his early adventures.
A covering letter requested Villiers read the enclosed stories with a view to providing illustrations for the motor car. The author’s instructions as to how the car should look were rather specific, but he trusted Villiers to give the car the right appearance mechanically, with vents and pipes and entrails all spilling out, as well as a snazzy dashboard displaying various knobs and buttons. He suggested visually stimulating drawings intended for children aged ‘about seven to ten’, and signed off the letter requesting that Villiers return the stories whatever the outcome, as they were the only copies to hand at that time. Although Villiers produced a few sketches, he could not commit to the project as he was busy developing Grand Prix cars for Graham Hill, but preliminary drawings were provided by artist Haro Hodson before the award-winning children’s author and illustrator John Burningham was commissioned in late 1963.
Fleming had originally suggested his friend Trog as the illustrator, Trog being the pseudonym of Wally Fawkes, cartoonist for the Daily Mail, who had created a spoof James Bond in his ‘Flook’ strip. A further script was typed in July 1962, and copy-editing was carried out in February 1963. The galley proofs were read for errors and the text was set for all three volumes in January 1964, before the bound proofs were issued in August. The first impressions of the three separate adventures of the magical car were printed, bound and delivered to Cape simultaneously, but their publication was staggered to maximise sales over Christmas 1964. Adventure Number 1 was published on 22nd October 1964, followed by Adventure Number 2 on 26th November and Adventure Number 3 on 14th January 1965. The first American printing, published by Random House as a single volume in autumn 1964, is an important edition marking the earliest published appearance of the entire text.
The book was an instant children’s classic, has remained in print ever since and inspired three official sequels by Frank Cottrell Boyce. The story was adapted into a screenplay by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes in 1967, and released as a film by the James Bond producer Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli in 1968 to great critical and commercial acclaim. Dahl, a wartime intelligence colleague of Ian Fleming, was by that date a successful writer of children’s stories himself, and introduced some of the darker elements in the movie such as the evil child-catcher. The story also became the basis of an Olivier and Tony-nominated stage musical, which premiered at the London Palladium in 2002 and at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway in 2005. The show has since toured around the UK and there have been Australian and German national productions.
The creator of Chitty would not experience any of this success, however. After his heart scare in 1961 Fleming had returned to a busy life of journalism, leisure pursuits and globetrotting – over the next two years he would travel to America, Japan, Venice, Zurich, Lake Geneva, Istanbul and Jamaica (three times). Tellingly, he continued to enjoy cigarettes. Over Easter 1964, Fleming was golfing when the heavens opened. Playing through the storm, he caught a severe cold and developed pleurisy from which he never really recovered. Following the death of his mother in July that year, a frail Fleming collapsed just two weeks later at his beloved Royal St George’s Golf Club in Kent. He died in the early hours of August 12th, on the twelfth birthday of his son Caspar, for whom the magical stories were first imagined.
Writer Tom Cull talks about The Man with the Golden Gun, the last of Ian Fleming’s 007 novels.
Eight months after Ian Fleming’s death, The Man with the Golden Gun was published. The birth of the final James Bond novel was difficult and its merits within the canon are still debated among aficionados.
Although Fleming had on many occasions claimed that he was finished with writing Bond books, he had completed the first draft of The Man with the Golden Gun by March 1964. After once again undertaking a Bond novel despite his rapidly deteriorating health, a word to his editor William Plomer at Jonathan Cape, rings with an eerie finality:
‘This is, alas, the last Bond and, again alas, I mean it, for I really have run out of both puff and zest.’
Along with Fleming’s reservations, the artwork for The Man with the Golden Gun also initially proved difficult. Once again Richard Chopping collaborated with Fleming on the dust jacket. Finding Scaramanga’s golden Colt .45 pistol too long to confine to a single panel, his artwork extended to the back of the jacket. Apparently, booksellers were not enamored with the experiment because it required them to open the book in order to display it properly. Now of course, it is regarded as a masterpiece of book jacket design and one of the few still affordable as a first edition.
Fleming’s Gambit
Despite this lack of “puff and zest”, the opening to The Man with the Golden Gun is as good as anything Fleming ever wrote. In summary, the opening is: fantastical, surprising, implausible, and tense. Classic Fleming.
The Service learns that a year after destroying Blofeld’s castle in Japan, Bond suffered a head injury and developed amnesia. Having lived as a Japanese fisherman for several months, Bond traveled to the Soviet Union to learn his true identity. While there, he was brainwashed and assigned to kill M upon returning to England, and during his debriefing interview with M, Bond tries to kill him with a cyanide pistol. Thankfully, the attempt fails.
The psychological tension between Bond and M is palpable in Fleming’s final Bond novel. We know that something’s not right, but we’re not entirely sure what it is until the meeting takes place and we see Bond attempt to assassinate his superior, whom he had previously “loved, honoured and obeyed.” Without question, this unspoken, taut hostility between the two men is only successful because The Man with the Golden Gun explores Bond’s psychology more than any other Bond book.
Spy-thriller writer Charles Cumming, who wrote the introduction to the 2006 Penguin edition of The Man with the Golden Gun, reflected on this opening sequence:
“Given the author’s fragile condition, The Man with the Golden Gun is a remarkable success. The opening sequence is as good as anything Fleming ever received; I particularly love Moneypenny’s ‘quick, emphatic shake of the head’ as she desperately tries to warn Bill Tanner that something is amiss with Bond.”
After recovering from the episode, Bond is dispatched to Jamaica to assassinate Francisco Scaramanga, a.k.a., The Man with the Golden Gun:
“‘Bond was a good agent once,’ said M. ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be a good agent again.’”
The Golden Misfire?
Fleming died before the manuscript could go through the usual process of a second draft and revisions. If Fleming had had his druthers, he might have delayed the publishing of The Man with the Golden Gun, as Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett stated:
“He hoped he might be able to rework it when he was in Jamaica the following spring. But Plomer disabused him of that idea, telling him that the novel was well up to standard.”
Kingsley Amis, a confirmed Fleming fan, was asked for his opinion of the manuscript, but it’s debatable how many of his suggestions, if any, were used. “No decent villain, no decent conspiracy, no branded goods…and even no sex, sadism or snobbery” were just some of Amis’s objections. His main criticisms concerned Scaramanga, whom he labeled a “dandy with a special (and ineffective) gun”. To the celebrated novelist this seemed a bit thin considering Fleming’s usual prowess for creating well-drawn and memorable villains. Amis was also concerned with the lack of what he called ‘The Fleming Sweep,’ Fleming’s signature use of rich detail.
With more hindsight, Amis tempered his earlier criticisms of The Man with the Golden Gun in a later collection of essays entitled What Became of Jane Austen. According to Amis, there is no doubt that the lack of follow-up on plot points, such as why Scaramanga hires Bond as his trigger-man, is due to an uncharacteristically unconfident Fleming. Amis suggests that the Bond-as-trigger-man idea might be the responsibility of “an earlier draft perhaps never committed to paper, wherein Scaramanga’s hiring of Bond is sexually motivated”. Amis goes on to muse that Fleming could have been in critical retreat after too many bashings, and chose not to pursue this idea. However, according to William Plomer in Andrew Lycett’s biography of Fleming, he “can’t think that Ian had any qualms about ‘prudence.’”
Part of Amis’ ire was the result of holding Fleming to such a high standard, and Amis maintained that beneath all the dash and flair (and plot inconsistencies), there was “formidable ingenuity and sheer brainwork” in Fleming. I tend to agree, and if The Man with the Golden Gun were to come out today by a new thriller writer, it would likely receive an overwhelmingly positive reaction. However, in the context of Fleming’s oeuvre and his standing with the critics of his day, The Man with the Golden Gun never stood a chance.
Yet despite all the negative criticism at the time, history has been a little kinder. Of late, The Man with the Golden Gun has undergone critical reappraisal, with acclaimed novelist and Bond continuation author William Boyd arguing for the book as one of Fleming’s “realistic” novels (rather than “fantastical”) in the introduction to the 2012 UK edition published by Vintage.
“Fleming’s Bond novels are full of implausibility and coincidences and convenient plot-twists – narrative coherence, complexity, nuance, surprise and originality were not aspects of the spy novel that Fleming was particularly interested in, and The Man with the Golden Gun is no exception. And indeed Scaramanga’s eventual drawn-out demise is almost low-key, by Fleming’s standards, and as well written – in a brutal, deadpan sense – as anything Fleming achieved.”
Charles Cumming has even better things to say about Scaramanga:
“When 007 and Scaramanga are sizing one another up at the hotel, we are treated to dialogue worthy of Raymond Chandler.”
The Final Curtain
It is apparent that Fleming’s work rate and ingenuity were failing as we witness the end of him and his creation in The Man with the Golden Gun; a novel filled with unintended verisimilitude. After creating and defining a genre, it was mission accomplished for Fleming and Bond well before this novel and Fleming’s old enemy – boredom – was lurking in the wings years before the first sentence of The Man with the Golden Gun had been written.
‘[Bond] decided that he was either too old or too young for the worst torture of all, boredom, and got up and went to the head of the table. He said to Mr. Scaramanga, 2I’ve got a headache. I’m going to bed.”‘
The Man with the Golden Gun is also fittingly about Fleming’s relationship with his beloved Jamaica and the disintegration of British colonialism. Bond and Felix Leiter are awarded the Jamaican Police Medal for “Services to the Independent State of Jamaica”, which is a blunt nod to the end of British imperialism in Jamaica in 1962. In a final effort to hang on to the old vestiges of the British Empire, Fleming takes potshots at the new world power, the United States, and the perceived “Americanization” of the Cold War West. In his recent book Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born, author Matthew Parker underscores these jabs at America by highlighting how the American-accented Scaramanga is depicted as a keen promoter of tacky Americanized resort hotels with “tropical jungle” dining rooms.
As if he were well aware that he had one figurative bullet left in the chamber, Fleming seized the chance to set the record straight about his creation in The Man with the Golden Gun. Namely, Fleming set out to dispel the notion of Bond as a snob by offering him the ultimate in status symbols – a Knighthood from the Queen. Bond declines, explaining to M: “I am a Scottish peasant and will always feel at home being a Scottish peasant.” One could read this as Fleming’s grand send-off to his critics, or one could see it as Bond’s defiance alone. Either way it presents the literary end for Fleming’s Bond and the very real finale for Fleming himself.
Tom Cull runs Artistic Licence Renewed. He knew iconic Bond cover artist Richard Chopping well as a child and Tom’s great grandfather hired a young Ian Fleming to work at the family bank Cull & Co. between 1933 and 1935.
Writer Tom Cull explores the real heroes behind some of Ian Fleming’s most admired characters.
Like many authors before him, Fleming took ideas for his James Bond novels from the world around him and the people he knew. The plots were often heightened re-imaginings of his wartime experiences or altered versions of real-world intrigues he’d reported on as a journalist. He often drew upon the names of his real-life acquaintances when christening his characters: from Felix Leiter whose name is inspired by combining the middle name of Fleming’s school friend Ivar Felix Bryce with the surname of their good friends Tommy and Oatsie Leiter, to Mary Trueblood whose name is a nod to Ian Fleming’s secretary at the Sunday Times, Una Trueblood. Many of the female characters in Fleming’s stories have intriguing links to people Fleming knew and many could claim to have been immortalised under the stroke of Fleming’s typewriter keys.
Miss Moneypenny
‘Moneypenny screwed up her nose. ‘But, James, do you really drink and smoke as much as that? It can’t be good for you, you know.’ She looked up at him with motherly eyes.’
Thunderball
As part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War, Vera Atkins is a strong candidate as an inspiration for Miss Moneypenny. Atkins would visit Room 055a in the Old Admiralty Building down the corridor from Fleming’s office and he would have known of her. She joined Section F (France) in April 1941 and oversaw the secret preparation of more than 400 agents, seeing off most of them in person. Vera was most intimately associated with the female agents whom she called her ‘girls’, among whom were Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo.
Many who worked with Atkins could find her intimidating and protective of her operatives but she commanded the respect of her superiors. The atmosphere at Orchard Court, one of the SOE headquarters, was akin to a private members’ club, with women smoking at their desks and handsome men passing through and breaking into French. They were only known by their aliases.
Another inspiration for Moneypenny is hinted at in an early draft of Casino Royale, where M’s assistant is named Miss ‘Petty’ Pettaval, no doubt borrowed from Kathleen Pettigrew, the Personal Assistant to the Chief of MI6, Stewart Menzies.
Fleming had many loyal secretaries throughout his career and greatly admired their skill and dedication. At The Times, it was Joan Howe who typed the manuscript of Casino Royale. Others who played their part included Beryl Griffie-Williams and Una Trueblood, but perhaps Jean Frampton was the most significant. Letters between Fleming and Frampton appeared in 2008 at Duke’s auctioneers in Dorset. Amy Brenan of Duke’s comments
“You can look on Mrs. Frampton as Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny because he really does seem to rely on her. She was the first person to read the books and the collection is interesting because it details how the James Bond books were put together in the early 1960s.”
Mary Ann Russell
‘Taking these people on all by yourself! – It’s showing off.’
From a View to a Kill
In the short story From a View to a Kill, the character Mary Ann Russell is an agent for Section F who saves Bond’s bacon against the Russian military intelligence agency. Her name is likely to have been inspired by a woman who played a significant role in Fleming’s life, Maud Russell. Her granddaughter Emily Russell has recently edited a revelatory collection of Maud’s war-time diaries, and explains:
‘Maud and Ian met in late 1931 or early 1932 and they quickly became close friends. Through Maud and her husband Gilbert Russell, Ian met a number of influential political figures during the 1930s and also obtained contacts in Military Intelligence. After Gilbert died in May 1942, Ian got Maud a job at the Admiralty. From 1943, she worked in the Admiralty’s Naval Intelligence Division (NID) 17Z, a section led by Donald McLachlan that was dedicated to generating white, grey and black propaganda from naval intelligence to undermine enemy morale.’
Maud shared the same zeal for her work at the NID as Fleming did, as she notes in her diary:
‘London, Thursday 10 December 1943 — On Monday the Scharnhorst sinking kept us very busy. Only Mc., C.B. & I. [Ian Fleming] in the room. Then came the news of the sinking of the blockade runner and more excitement. Only Mc. reacts as I do, froths and fizzes over with inward excitement. I. of course is the same as Mc. and I – tension, excitement, hammering energy.GR’
Vesper Lynd
‘”People are islands”’ she said. “They don’t really touch. However close they are, they’re really quite separate.”’
Casino Royale
A popular suggestion for the inspiration behind Vesper Lynd was the SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek, also known as Christine Granville. Polish by birth, she was recruited by the SOE, won a George Medal and was reputedly Churchill’s favourite spy.
Granville was remarkably beautiful and she stole, and broke, many hearts. She was certainly known to Fleming who briefly mentions her in his non-fiction book The Diamond Smugglers. The rumour that Ian Fleming had an affair with Christine Granville is unfounded as her biographer Clare Mulley and writer Jeremy Duns have explored. Christine Granville survived the War but was tragically stabbed by a love-crazed stalker in 1952, aged 44.
There were other members of the SOE who Fleming would have encountered during his time working with Section 17 in Naval Intelligence, where he was responsible for coordinating intelligence between divisions. Violette Szabo was recruited by the SOE at 23, as a war widow with a one year old child. She was dropped into France in 1943 and bravely served the war effort, in one instance fending off an SS Panzer division with a Sten gun before collapsing exhausted. After being captured, Szabo, was shot along with fellow agents Denise Bloch and Lillian Rolfe at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northern Germany. Szabo’s defiance was greatly admired by her fellow prisoners and she was one of only four women to receive a posthumous George Cross Medal.
Whatever the truth behind the fiction, the women Fleming encountered during his time in Naval Intelligence were truly courageous. They faced daily dangers and risked everything to help secure the freedom of Europe. Fleming was inspired to write about many interesting characters from his real life, from naming Bond’s mother Monique after a former fiancée, to calling Bond’s Secretary Loelia Ponsonby after the Duchess of Westminster. We may never know the full extent of the real people who lend parts of themselves to the James Bond story, but it’s certainly inspiring to learn more about these real-life heroes.
Tom Cull runs Artistic Licence Renewed. He knew iconic Bond cover artist Richard Chopping well as a child and Tom’s great grandfather hired a young Ian Fleming to work at the family bank Cull & Co. between 1933 and 1935.
Author, screenwriter, filmmaker and Bond aficionado, John Cork investigates how From Russia, with Love came to be on President John F. Kennedy’s bedside table and went on to appear on his top-ten book list.
From The President’s Voracious Reading Habits,LIFE magazine, 17th March 1961:
‘Kennedy has confined himself mostly to nonfiction, but like many of the world’s leaders he has a weakness for detective stories, especially those of British author Ian Fleming and his fictitious undercover man, James Bond.’
The story has been told far and wide. In the late 1950s, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels sold well in the UK, but in the massive US market, sales barely made a ripple. Not one single Bond title generated a second printing in either hardback or paperback in the United States. All that started to change in March 1961 when LIFE magazine published a list of the president’s ten favourite books, naming From Russia, with Love as one of them. It was, by far, the highest profile endorsement for which an author could hope.
How did From Russia, with Love get on the president’s list? Like so many things associated with 007, it happened with the help of a remarkable and strong woman.
She was born Marion Oates in Montgomery, Alabama, the Cradle of the Confederacy. Marion came from obstinate and ambitious stock. Her grandfather, William Oates, once fractured a man’s skull in a fight. He went on to be deemed a Confederate Civil War hero, having led a charge up Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg and then losing an arm at Fussel’s Mill. He returned to Alabama, was elected to Congress and served as a combative one-term Governor.
Raised to be a society hostess, Oatsie (as she was known) married Thomas Leiter in 1942. Tommy was the grandson of one of Chicago’s great real estate barons and two of Tommy’s aunts married British nobility. Tommy’s father once attempted to corner the U.S. wheat market, which is a fine gamble as long as one has family that can pay off the $10,000,000 of debt when it all goes pear-shaped. The night before Oatsie’s wedding, legendary Alabama-born actress Tallulah Bankhead explained the finer points of intimate marital relations to her. That was Oatsie’s world, and it was quite a place.
Oatsie and Tommy Leiter took up residence in ‘a most glorious apartment’ built inside the converted stables of the famed Leiter family mansion near Dupont Circle in Washington.
‘I knew both Ian (vaguely) and Ivar [Bryce – a close friend of Ian’s] in Washington during the Second World War,’ she recalled in 2000. After the war, Oatsie and Tommy started vacationing in Jamaica for what was known then as ‘the season.’ ‘We’d be there three months a year. Which was lovely. Really lovely.’ During her stay in 1949, she was dramatically re-introduced to Ian Fleming.
‘I’d gone to a party, and a great friend of mine was very much in love with Ian, or thought she was. And he was treating her in the most atrocious way. And with the arrogance of youth, I walked up to Mr. Fleming when I was introduced to him, and said, “Mr. Fleming, I consider you’re a cad.” And he looked at me and said, “Mrs. Leiter, you’re indeed right. Shall we have a drink on it?”’
They did and became fast friends. ‘Ian really had enormous charm…he was irresistible as a companion, as a guest, as a friend. And he was an extremely good friend.’
In the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, Fleming borrowed Tommy Leiter’s last name for Bond’s CIA accomplice, Felix. Naturally Fleming sent Oatsie and Tommy a copy and Oatsie, never one to mince words, quite enjoyed the book.
Oatsie and Tommy maintained homes not just in Washington D.C., but in Aiken, South Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island. Newport also happened to be where Jacqueline Bouvier grew up at Hammersmith Farm. After marrying John F. Kennedy, a newly elected young senator from Massachusetts, Jackie and JFK spent summer vacations there. Oatsie knew JFK and Jackie socially. In 1954, JFK called up Oatsie. ‘Oates, I’m sick,’ she recalled Kennedy telling her. ‘“Have you got anything to read? I can’t find anything in this house that I think is possible to read.” And I said, “Yes, do you like spy stories?”’
She sent over her copy of Casino Royale. ‘He was crazy about it. And he said, “If you get another one at any point, let me know.”’
Jackie Kennedy, on her husband’s recommendation, also took to reading the Bond novels, and she made another important connection for Ian. ‘I was introduced to Fleming’s books,’ noted CIA Director Allen Dulles, ‘by Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy herself. “Here is a book you should have, Mr. Director” she said.’ Dulles went on to praise From Russia, with Love as ‘one of the best of Fleming’s thrillers.’
In March, 1960, Ian Fleming arrived in Washington D.C. He was staying as the guest of one of the Sunday Times’ most renowned correspondents, Henry Brandon. On Sunday, 13th March, Ian went to see Oatsie who was now divorced from Tommy Leiter. ‘Ian and I were going somewhere, probably the National Gallery or something, and we were driving down one of the streets in Georgetown. And I saw Jack and Jackie walking down the street. As they started to cross one street, I stopped. And we yelled,’ Oatsie recalled. ‘I said, “Jack, this is Ian Fleming.” And Jack poked his head in the window and said, “Not the Ian Fleming.” And I said, “Yes.” “Well,” he said, “bring him for dinner.”’
Castro, not yet officially claiming to be communist, was nonetheless quickly nationalizing U.S. industries in Cuba and signing lucrative trade deals with the Soviets. Joseph Alsop wanted to know how James Bond would handle Castro. Fleming said ridicule was the proper response. ‘And Ian had us all absolutely hysterical saying that he had some plots that he thought would be wonderful if the CIA would play on Castro,’ Oatsie said.
Indeed, Fleming opined that there were only three things for which the Cubans cared: money, religion and sex. Thus, the first plot involved counterfeiting Cuban money and dropping it by the bushel from planes along with notes that read, ‘compliments of the United States.’ To take care of religion, Fleming proposed a massive Bat-signal of sorts that would put a cross in the night sky above the nation. The Cubans would stay up all night praying to the mysterious sign rather than worshipping Castro.
The last idea was the one that caused the greatest laughter. Fleming noted that beards were essential to the Cuban revolution and had become a sign of male virility on the island. The CIA, he declared, could promote the idea that nuclear fallout was collecting in men’s beards:
‘The CIA could just fly over Cuba and drop these leaflets, telling the women of Cuba that all the men wearing beards were impotent,’ remembered Oatsie. All the men would shave their beards, and with no beards, there could be no revolution.
At the CIA’s Monday staff meeting, John Bross told the story of his Sunday evening, relating with gusto Fleming’s plot to get Cubans to shave their beards. CIA Director Allen Dulles, who was a fan of the Bond novels and had dined with Fleming in London, was more alarmed than amused and wanted to know how to reach Fleming, immediately.
‘The telephone rang, and it was Allen Dulles,’ according to Oatsie. ‘“Oatsie, where is Ian Fleming?” And I said, ”I don’t know, I suppose he’s in bed at Henry Brandon’s.” “Well, I have to get in touch with him.”’
Dulles called Brandon only to find that Fleming had already left for New York. There is no record of Dulles reaching Fleming on that trip, but Fleming’s story of the Cubans shaving their beards was not published in Alsop’s column nor propagated by Fleming in the many articles he penned during this era, and there may have been a good reason for that.
What Bross did not know was that the CIA was that very week preparing to present to the Eisenhower administration a plan entitled ‘Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime.’ This program would lead directly to the Bay of Pigs invasion, but it also contained plans, as President Eisenhower later stated, to ‘undermine Castro’s position and prestige.’ One of those plans involved dusting Castro’s boots with thallium salts. The idea was that the salts would get on Castro’s fingers, and when he touched his beard the poison would make the beard fall out in splotches, humiliating the revolutionary and making him look weak, impotent and sickly.
Six months later, according to some sources, CIA-backed operatives entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem (where Castro and his entourage were staying for the opening of the UN General Assembly) and dutifully dusted Castro’s boots with powdered thallium salts. Other, possibly more reliable, sources, claim the plot was never carried out. Regardless, Castro’s beard remained. In 1977, Castro railed against the CIA plots, telling interviewer Fred Ward, ‘I could write a book [about the CIA plots]! Exploding cigars, poisoned cigars, powder to make my beard fall out! Bazookas! Grenades! Incredible!’
That night Fleming joined Oatsie at the Kennedy’s home. Also in attendance were the columnist and part-time CIA operative Joseph Alsop, John Bross (soon to be a deputy director at the CIA) and the painter and Kennedy confidant William Walton. ‘And somehow the conversation got around to Castro, which was not all that unusual in those days,’ Oatsie recounted.
John F. Kennedy won the election in November 1960, and in March the following year, LIFE ran their article on Kennedy’s reading habits. The inclusion of From Russia, with Love stood out among the scholarly biographies and histories, most many decades old. Some have maintained that Kennedy was repaying Fleming for the entertaining evening by including From Russia, with Love on the list of favourite books, which could certainly be the case. Others say that he wanted a book on the list that showed he was not so much of an egghead that he couldn’t enjoy popular literature, and Fleming happened to be the one he chose.
Henry Brandon told a different story. He said that he knew for a fact that a White House staffer compiled the list by talking to others like Jackie and William Walton, and that Kennedy, far too busy with the nation’s business, never approved it. Regardless, the public proclamation that Kennedy was a fan gave Fleming’s American publishers an important tool to promote the James Bond novels. Dulles himself acknowledged this in an essay he penned after Fleming’s death:
‘The Kennedy interest in James Bond gave Fleming’s books a great lift, and Ian well knew it. But,’ Dulles added, ‘there is something more than that in his success.’
To a casual observer, it may seem like that ‘something more’ is luck. Without a well-placed friend like Oatsie Leiter, a chance dinner invitation, and a White House staffer’s audacity, From Russia, with Love would have never appeared on the list in LIFE. These things, though, did not happen by luck or chance. No, Fleming appeared on the list in LIFE because when called a cad, he was cool under pressure. When he sat down to write a novel, he created a thrilling and unique tale that engaged readers and was easily recommended. When he found himself at dinner with his most influential fan, he rose to the occasion. Fleming appeared on the president’s list in LIFE because of his talent and the sheer force of his personality. In that, Fleming embodied so many of the qualities we admire in 007.
As to the wonderful woman who brought Kennedy and Fleming together, she is known as one of the most charming and respected scions of Newport. She befriended many presidents, senators and diplomats over the decades with her irreverent humor, her lack of pretension and disarming grace. In her nineties, she said outliving so many of her friends like John F. Kennedy and Ian Fleming is a curse of sorts. Yet, looking back on her remarkable life, she expressed only a few regrets. A small one was her chance at immortality on the pages of a Bond novel.
‘I said to Ian once, not long before he died, “Ian, I’m really terribly hurt, you’ve got every friend you’ve ever known in those books,” because all the characters in his books are taken from his friends. And he said, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly use Oatsie. It’s far too distinctive. You know, it just wouldn’t do.” And I said, “Come on, Ian, anybody who can use Pussy Galore can use Oatsie.” …He said, “Alright, I’ll use you in the next book.” But that was…’
She trails off, her eyes filling with memories eventually punctuated by a shrug. ‘He died shortly after that.’
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