Ian Fleming
Arthur Conan Doyle,
and the
Ian Fleming
Learning the Patois
Sir Arthur
Leaving No Word Out
In times gone past Sherlock Holmes has been named as the "most popular" or "most enduring" character in English literature. Certainly stories about Holmes have gone well beyond the four novels and fifty-six short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle1. Movies and television shows abound albeit sometimes adapted to the contemporary settings of the scriptwriters2.
Footnote
There have been stories written about Holmes by other authors. The most famous of the non-Conanonical novels (that's a joke by the way) were three books by Nicholas Meyer, The Seven Percent Solution (and made into a movie starring Nichol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin, and Sir Laurence Olivier), The West End Horror, and The Canary Trainer. There were also The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Richard Boyer (1976 and other versions have appeared in later years) and The Case of the Philosopher's Ring (1978) by Randall Collins, now Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
On the other hand, there were a number of Holmes novels published in Spanish. These have not been translated into English.
Footnote
In the famous motion pictures where Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock and Nigel Bruce played Dr. Watson, all but two were set in the 1940's which was when the movies were actually filmed. This latter-day setting let Sherlock battle the Nazis.
The plots of most of the films took place in England but in one Sherlock and Dr. Watson did their sleuthing in America. At the end of the movie, Sherlock quotes Winston Churchill about how great America is.
Of course in the television series, Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock. Martin Freeman - known to many as Bilbo in the lamentable Hobbit movies - plays Dr. Watson. These episodes are set it modern London.
But a leading competitor for the most popular (or at least most depicted) spot - in English media if not literature - is James Bond. James Bond appears in fourteen books by Ian Fleming and at this writing in 26 others by later authors who were given the Good Housekeeping Stamp of Bondian Approval3.
Footnote
One of the most popular of the Bond novels, Thunderball, is based on a movie script written by Ian, Kevin McClory, and Jack Whittingham. But due to various delays, Ian ended up publishing the novel before a final script could be written.
What is amazing - at least to vintage Bond fans - is how many Bond aficionados have never read the books4. And - we must admit - how many of the fans of the original books have seen only a small sampling of the movies, whether with the first of the six5 James Bonds or the later incarnations.
Footnote
There is a similar phenomenon that shocks! shocks! old-time fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. After all and the 1978 animated feature by Ralph Bakshi notwithstanding, before the Millenium if you were a Hobbit enthusiast you had to read the books.
But today not only have many of Tolkien's fans never cracked the novels but when they give them a try, they find them boring, trite, and dull. You'll even find that both books (The Lord of the Rings was first published in three volumes) have found their way to the "most-overrated-books" or "books-that-everybody-buys-but-no-one-reads" lists.
Footnote
Some lists have seven Bonds in the cinematic representations. However, the film starring David Niven - where David played (Sir) James Bond called out of retirement - was in the 1967 piece of ... well, it was in the "spoof" movie and in the minds of some true fans doesn't really count.
The First (Movie) James
The Holmes stories, of course, have long held the status of "period" pieces from the Victorian era. But because today's readers weren't around to amuse the Dear Old Queen, they rarely notice any errors or anachronisms in Sir Arthur's narratives. Technology and lifestyles differed considerably more back then than today and so ironically the original stories have an immediacy which enhances their believability.
On the other hand the modus vivendi depicted in the Bond novels have not changed all that much. After all, Bond drove around in cars, flew in jet airliners, and had modern conveniences like refrigerators and electric heating. So today's readers will find the trappings of the literary Bond familiar and the general settings believable.
But the Bond stories were products of the 1950's and early 1960's and the technology - including Bond's electronic gadgetry - is far more limited than today or even in the early motion pictures. For instance in the movie Goldfinger Bond is almost sliced in half by a laser beam. In the novel it's a mundane ordinary buzzsaw. So the fans of the cinematic Bond often find the original books rather slow and dated.
But there is one area that both Sir Arthur and Ian noticeably fall short. And that's their difficulties with the English language.
Ha? (To quote Shakespeare.) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming had difficulties with English?
Indeed they did.
Well, we'd really like to know how you came to that conclusion.
I thought you would as Captain Mephisto said to Sydney Brand. It's very simple really.
Of course, when we mean English we mean True English in the Original Sense. Not the poor rendering of the magnificent language which has now deteriorated to what can only be described as a base mumbling of the lowing herd.
Instead the English we refer to is the venerable language of the time when all speakers were united into one happy international family. Yes, we mean the English of the Georgian era.
You see, in England following the Four Georges the language underwent some major changes particularly in pronunciation that resulted in the "English accent" of today. Americans - and this is acknowledged even by British linguists - speak a more traditional English than their Monarchical cousins.
And so when we mean Sir Arthur and Ian had problems with English, we mean problems with venerable, proper, and correct English - in other words, the true English:
But what, you ask, is the beef? Is this worse than Dick Van Dyke's horrible attempt at "speaking British" in Mary Poppins?
Actually yes. The result of this linguistic struggle was that both Sir Arthur and Ian had trouble crafting convincing American characters6. The first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, has an American interlude which has been likened to Bret Harte writing at his worst7, and Sir Arthur's portrayal of the Mormons is not only politically incorrect but socially and historically inaccurate to the point of laughability8. Then in the last (and worst) Sherlock novel, The Valley of Fear, there is also a sub-story set in America and - hard to believe - it's worse than the one in Scarlet.
Footnote
By "American" we refer, of course, to citizens of the United States of America, being cognizant that the word "American" can refer to inhabitants of other countries in the Western Hemisphere. Although perhaps seen as usurping the identity of the inhabitants of a continent, "Americans" have adapted this term because there's no easy alternative. "United State-ers" or "US'ers" don't seem to work. And it must be pointed out that non-American Americans - including Canadians - will spontaneously refer to the inhabitants living in the US as "Americans".
Footnote
Bret Harte (1836 - 1902) was a contemporary of Mark Twain and in the late 19th century was a quite popular author. His stories are usually set in the Old West and are almost never read today unless assigned in literature classes where students will often struggle through "The Luck of Roaring Camp".
Footnote
The American interlude in A Study in Scarlet is actually a good example of the anti-Mormon literature that was common in the 19th century. From reading that you'd expect the Mormons to be religious fanatics that would coerce women into forced marriages for their "shameless harems", and would send out gangs to murder apostates or those who leave their community.
One of the episodes that enhanced anti-Mormon feelings was what was called the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857. A wagon train of emigrants to California passed through Utah and were stopped by a Mormon militia where one of the leaders was John Lee. Lee later said he had heard that some people in the wagon train had been involved in the murder of the Mormon's founder, Joseph Smith, in Carthage, Illinois over ten years before.
The militia besieged the train under the guise of them being Paiute warriors but later told the emigrants that if they would surrendered they would be protected and allowed to leave the area. Shortly after leading the emigrants from the wagons, the militants killed all the men and older boys - about 120 people in all. Brigham Young, the Mormon patriarch, maintained he had nothing to do with the Meadows Massacre and even had ordered the militia to let everyone go.
It wasn't until 1874 that John Lee was finally arrested for the crime. He was convicted and in 1877 was executed by firing squad after being taken to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Even in the stories set in England, Sir Arthur had trouble slipping in Americans, whom he thought sported nicknames like "Abe" and "Birdy" and had some psychological compulsion to speak nothing but slang. One of the least convincing passages in the Sherlockian stories is from "His Last Bow".
Set prior to World War I and with Holmes now in his sixties, the detective has gone undercover to rout out a German spy. Holmes is posing as an Irish-American double agent, and (as Vincent Starrett put it in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), he seems to have learned his American slang all at one sitting and was determined not to omit a single word.
"Well?" asked Von Bork eagerly, running forward to meet his visitor.
For answer the man waved a small brown-paper parcel triumphantly above his head.
"You can give me the glad hand tonight, mister," he cried. "I'm bringin' home the bacon at last."
The American held the small parcel in his hand, but made no motion to give it up.
"What about the dough?" he asked.
"The what?"
"The boodle. The reward. The five hundred pounds. The gunner turned durned nasty at the last, and I had to square him with an extra hundred dollars or it would have been nitsky for you and me. 'Nothin' doin'!' says he, and he meant it too, but the last hundred did it. It's cost me two hundred pounds from first to last, so it isn't likely I'd give it up without gettin' my wad."
World War I era British readers may have found nothing amiss with Holmes's undercover work. Most Americans, though, will smile at Sherlock's rather naive attempt at "talking American9".
Footnote
Among the Americanism that Sir Arthur didn't quite get are:
| Glad Hand: | Giving someone the "glad hand" means to greet them but with the connotation that the greeter is doing so for insincere or conniving reasons. It does not mean to greet someone to give congratulations for a job well done. | |
| Bringing Home the Bacon: | To furnish a group of people, usually a family, with money or means to provide for their maintenance. The phrase is not used simply to refer to a payment for a transaction. | |
| Nitsky: | "Nitsky" is actually a surname, but is not American slang. In fact, the first occurrence in English to indicate that something undesired happens to someone appears to be in this story and is an invention of Sir Arthur. | |
It's no coincidence that Sir Arthur and Ian included Americans in their stories. Both men had visited the United States and in general they liked the people they met. In their visits they naturally picked up a bit of the lingo. But a little knowledge, they say, is a dangerous thing. So slip-ups were inevitable.
Ian, though, had an advantage not open to Sir Arthur. When the books were published in the United States, the publishers - MacMillan, Viking, and the New American Library - gave the books goings over by American editors. Although you might find some British spellings ("kerb" for "curb" as in Goldfinger), there were welcome adaptations for the American readers where it was thought that the original British might hinder comprehension.
Naturally some differences are simply those between American and British patois. In The Man With the Golden Gun - the last "canonical" novel by Ian - Bond's boss, Admiral (ret.) Sir Miles Messervy (known, of course, as M.) sends Bond on a mission to "eliminate" an assassin named Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga. Scaramanga works mostly for Fidel Castro and also hires out as a hit man for whoever can afford his rather stiff fees.
Of course like many gangsters Scaramanga invests in legitimate businesses and currently is developing a resort, the Thunderbird Hotel, on the west coast of Jamaica. But he's having trouble wrangling funding to finish the project and so has arranged a conference to discuss the matter with the primary stockholders - all of whom are big time gangsters. One is even a capo Mafiosi and another a high level agent of the Soviet secret police, the KGB10.
Footnote
An irony of The Man With the Golden Gun - and why you should never think fiction can tell a "higher truth" - is that Bond learns there are two American CIA agents working undercover at the hotel. Their assignment is to break up this association of the Mafia and the KGB.
Of course in real life it was the CIA who tried to work with the Mafia. In the 1960's when they were trying to bump off Fidel, the CIA had actually contacted high level mobsters to do a "hit" on the troublesome Cuban leader.
The collaboration failed because, among a number of reasons, the CIA didn't understand that the "enforcement personnel" of the Mafia were for compelling compliance to its own internal decisions and dealing with transgressors within the mob. The Mafia was not a contract company where you could go to them and hire them as needed.
By intercepting a message intended for Scaramanga, Bond traces him to 3½ Love Lane, an address in the Jamaican township of Savanna la Mar. Ostensibly a local cafe, it really was - as Mary Goodnight11 told Bond - "a famous disorderly house". So Bond makes his way to 3½ and meets Scaramanga (who was a good customer).
Footnote
James Bond had two secretaries. The first was Loelia Ponsonby (who Bond calls "Lil" although she didn't like it). Loelia was the secretary for the entire 007 section when it had a total of three agents: 007, 008, and 0011. But usually you'd have two of them on assignment so she only had to deal with one boss at a time.
After Loelia leaves the Secret Intelligence Service, Bond's secretary is Mary Goodnight. But when Bond goes missing in action in You Only Live Twice, she transferred to the Jamaican office where she and Bond hook up when Bond goes looking for Scaramanga.
Bond represents himself as Mark Hazard, a free lance security worker for a company called Transworld Consortium12. Scaramanga, knowing that his business partners are not the most congenial of men, hires Bond - or rather Mark - as a personal assistant and bodyguard.
Footnote
In the earlier novels the cover organization for the Secret Service was called Universal Export, a name that would allow the agents to travel extensively. "Transworld Consortium" was even more "splendidly vague" (to quote Bond's musings) and would cover almost any activity in the world.
When Bond gets to the resort he finds that indeed much of the hotel is unfinished. Only the lobby, kitchen, and one wing are completed. But Scaramanga has temporary employees working to make the place presentable, and - offering the first opportunity for the American editors to intervene - Bond sees some of them were "hoovering" the carpets.
Now a "hoover" is the common British word for what Americans call a vacuum cleaner. "Hoovering" is what you do with the hoover. So in the American edition, the workers are "vacuuming" the rugs.
This, of course, is not really an error - just a difference in dialect. The word, though, is so foreign to Americans that the correction was definitely needed.
On the other hand when Bond and Scaramanga sat down to talk at 3½ Love Lane, we find that some of Ian's Americanisms may not be exactly in error, but he certainly seems to have his decades mixed up.
After Scaramanga offers Bond the job as personal assistant, they stand up to leave. Scaramanga then says to Bond.
But don't forget one thing, mister whoosis. I rile mighty easy. Get me?
Now no American calls anyone "mister whoosis". You might find the address in stories, magazine articles, and other writings in the early decades of the 20th century. But today you won't even find old timers who have heard the name used in real conversations.
Here we also find that Ian sometimes knew an American expression but didn't quite get what it meant. When Scaramanga and Bond sit down, Bond leans back, crosses his ankle over his knee, and grasping his ankle, assumes the "clubman's position".
But Scaramanga prefers a pose suitable for a "careful and professional" gunman. Before sitting down he picks up his chair and twirls it around so the back of the chair is front of him. He then sits - as Ian wrote - "bass-ackwards".
Now the word "bass-ackwards" is indeed an Americanism. But according to the dictionary - yes, the word's in the dictionary - it means "in a backward or inept way". It has nothing to do with posture and certainly doesn't mean sitting backwards in a chair with your heinie jutting out. So in deference to the Americans - who would wonder about Ian's unusual construction - the American editors changed the word to "ass-backwards13".
Footnote
Another indication of the American-made change is that a British editor would have rendered the expression "arse-backwards".
Another quasi-not-quite-American-expression is in a couple of places where Scaramanga gives Bond some information or instructions. After telling Bond what he wants done, Scaramanga rhetorically asks "Got the photo?"
Of course, no American says "Got the photo?" So the obliging editors again bowed to the common usage writing "Got the picture?"
One of the major scenes in the novel is the business meeting with Scaramanga and the hoods where among other things, Scaramanga shoots one of the stockholders who wouldn't agree with his plan for refinancing the hotel. In his capacity as Scaramanga's personal assistant, Bond stands guard outside the locked door. Naturally he eavesdrops on the session using a champagne glass held to his ear and placed against the door14.
Footnote
This gives us a good example of the difference between the Bond motion pictures and the original novels. If this scene was written into a movie, Bond would have used some kind of fancy, miniaturized electronic listening device.
It's always amazing how in the spy movies and television shows - whether it's a Bond picture or The Wild Wild West - the protagonist just happens to have a device on hand that lets him overcome the specific and unexpected difficulty just encountered. And of course when the good guy is captured, the bad guy always decides to dispatch him using some elaborate Rube Goldberg device that gives the hero ample time to escape.
As the meeting progresses, a point of contention arises where Mr. Gengerella - who's the capo Mafiosi - accuses Mr. Hendricks (from The Hague - Den Haag - in the Netherlands) of being a Soviet agent (which he is15). Mr. Gengerella angrily mentions how the Soviets had been shipping missiles16 to Cuba to "fire against my homeland".
Footnote
As to why a Dutchman would be the Soviet agent in charge of the Jamaican office of the Soviet intelligence service, Ian explains that Russians preferred "oblique control". That is, an agent in charge of a certain region would be stationed somewhere else. This, we must admit, is one of Ian's literary devices and doesn't appear to have any basis in how the Soviets really operated.
Footnote
The reference is to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The Soviet Union had been shipping long range nuclear ballistic missiles to Cuba. The reason was because in 1961 the United States had attempted to land an invading force in Cuba to overthrow Fidel and his Communist regime.
The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to within days of a nuclear war but was finally defused when Alexander Feklisov, a KGB agent posing as a reporter, met with John Scali, a American television correspondent. Alexander passed on a message that the missiles in Cuba would be removed if the United States agreed not to invade Cuba and would also remove the missiles from Turkey which were closer to Russia than Cuba was to America. The Americans ultimately agreed and the crisis came to an end.
"Homeland" - cabinet departments notwithstanding - was not and still is not a term used to any degree in the United States. So the American editors decided to have Mr. Gengerella say the missiles in Cuba were intended to "fire against my country."
We are also treated to another example of Ian slipping back to near archaic usage. During the meeting of Scaramanga and the gangsters, Scaramanga smirkingly reassures the guys he'll guarantee that his personal assistant won't talk about anything he may have learned. Far from collecting his promised $1000 fee, "Mark Hazard" will end up as a tidbit for the crocodiles in the swamp at the back of the hotel.
Bond was listening through the door and his American friend and CIA agent Felix Leiter was recording the meeting on tape. Afterwards Felix tells Bond to be careful and adds jokingly:
We don't want to have to read that obituary17 of yours in the Times again. All that !18 about what a splendid fellow you are nearly made me throw up when I saw it printed in the American blatz.
Footnote
The reference to Bond's obituary refers to the previous Bond adventure, You Only Live Twice. At the end of the novel Bond has amnesia and is living on a Japanese Ama island. M., believing that Bond has been killed on his mission, wrote an obituary that appeared in the London Times.
It's in the obituary - printed as the penultimate chapter of the book - that we gain gleanings about Bond's early life. He was born in 1924 (he was 17 in 1941) and his parents were Andrew Bond (Scottish) and Monique Delacroix (Swiss). Both parents were killed in a climbing accident and Bond went to live with an aunt before going to boarding schools.
So with this chronology - and it is not accepted by all Bond aficianods - in the Man with the Golden Gun, Bond is 39 years old and can only work in the 00 Section for another six years since in Moonraker we learn the mandatory retirement age is 45.
First of all you'll be hard pressed to find any American that says someone - no matter how admired - is "a splendid fellow".
But blatz? What the heck is that?
Again we're seeing that Felix - or Ian - seems stuck in the 1920's. "Blatz" was indeed an early 20th century American slang expression for "newspaper". But no one uses the word anymore and truth to tell very few ever did even then. So Felix's jeers were recast in the American edition as:
All that ! about what a great guy you are nearly made me throw up when I saw it picked up in our papers.
Yet another example of Ian being transported back to Auld Lang Syne is the references to "The Purple Gang". When Scaramanga mentions that Sam Binion - one of the Thunderbird stock holders - is from Detroit, Bond asks "The Purple Gang?"
Scaramanga stops in mid-stride and says "These are all respectable guys, mister whoosis." (There's that "mister whoosis" stuff again.)
Then in the Goldfinger chapter titled "Hoods Congress" one of the attendees is Helmut Springer from - yes - "The Purple Gang" of Detroit19. And in Diamonds Are Forever M. writes a memo to Bond that the (fictitious) Las Vegas Spangled Mob - which is smuggling the diamonds - has top ranking among American mobs along with the Purple Gang.
Footnote
In Goldfinger Helmut is the one mobster who does not agree to go along with Operation Grand Slam and so leaves the meeting. He is then quickly dealt with by Oddjob.
Goldfinger shares one attribute with Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in that the first half of the book is among the author's best work, but the second half becomes slow and plodding. The same is true for Moonraker except that the best part of the book is when Bond and M. have their bridge game at Blades where Bond outs Sir Hugo Drax as a card cheat. That takes less than the first third of the book.
The point is the Purple Gang didn't exist anymore. Sure, it was the name given to a group of Jewish mobsters that operated out of, yes, Detroit. But the gang arose around 1910 and finally fizzled out around 1930 although there were some still around in the 1940's.
But Diamonds Are Forever, the fourth Bond novel, is set around 1956. The action in Goldfinger is in 1959 - we learn that Goldfinger was born in 1917 and is 42 years old - and from references to the time of the year when Bond returns to London, comments about Hurricane Flora (late 1963), and subsequent plot details20, it's clear that The Man With the Golden Gun occurs in early 1964. So with his repeated references to the Purple Gang, Ian has the characters dealing with a gang that hadn't existed for years.
Footnote
The Man With the Golden Gun has a plot inconsistency which has no satisfactory resolution. Or at least you've really got to stretch it. [Warning: Spoiler Alert!]
The night after the hoods' meeting, Mary Goodnight sneaks into the hotel to tell Bond the KGB has learned of Bond's mission and Mr. Hendricks has been assigned to warn Scaramanga and kill Bond. But she also tells Bond that so far Mr. Hendricks has no idea what Bond looks like although he has asked Moscow to send him a description. Then with some difficulty - of which we won't detail - Mary gets away.
The next morning Mr. Hendricks gets a phone call, and later as Bond again stands guard (and eavesdrops) outside the conference room, he meets with Scaramanga. Mr. Hendricks tells Scaramanga that he has just learned from Moscow that "Mark Hazard", the security consultant, is actually James Bond, the British Secret Service agent.
After receiving some verbal chastisement from Mr. Hendricks for his carelessness, Scaramanga says the only thing that will change is Bond will die today rather than tomorrow. And dropping sotto voce where neither Bond nor the tape recording can hear the plan, Scaramanga tells Mr. Hendricks how it's going to happen.
After the meeting, Felix and Bond make plans. Felix says he'll have to head into Savanah La Mar to get some supplies. Bond also writes him a note to a former member of the Secret Service whose now running a sugar plantation who can give Felix some assistance. Then Felix heads off.
At noon the hoods, Mr. Hendricks, Scaramanga, and Bond leave the hotel in cars and head toward a small plantation train to head for the coast for a fishing excursion. But before they leave, Scaramanga asks his desk manager - who is actually the other CIA agent, Nick Nicholson - where his sidekick (i. e., Felix) is. He hadn't seen him that morning. Nick tells Scaramanga that Felix had a bad abscess and had to go to the dentist.
Now we learn about Scaramanga's plot to dispatch Bond which he detailed to Mr. Hendricks. After they've been on the train for a while they see a naked blonde girl tied to the tracks. As the train rolls forward, Scaramanga tells everyone that it's a girl named Mary Goodnight, the girlfriend of a man named James Bond. Yes, said Saracmanga, if Bond was on board the train he'd be calling for mercy.
With his cover blown and with Bond outnumbered seven to one (actually eight to one since the engineer is a Rastafari loyal to Scaramanga and armed with a cutlass) there's now a big gunfight during which Mr. Hendricks is killed and apparently so is Scaramanga. Bond would have been killed, too, but Felix had managed to come to his rescue by hitching a ride behind the last car.
But before the fight was over, it turns out that the "girl" tied to the tracks was just a plastic mannequin. So Mary had gotten away after all.
Once the fight is over Felix and Bond jump off the train because Felix (not telling anyone) had rigged explosives to blow the train up when it crosses an upcoming bridge. That would take care of everyone.
But lo! Just before the train reaches the bridge, Bond sees Scaramanga jump off and head to the swamp. Bond's mission is still unfinished!
Bond then discovers that in leaping from the train, Felix has broken his leg and so Bond will have to go it alone. Of course Bond tracks Scaramanga down and finally dispatches him. Bond, though, is seriously wounded when Scaramanga draws and fires a concealed golden derringer where the bullet had been dipped in snake venom. Of course, Bond does recover although he ends up in the hospital where he's rather grumpy when Mary comes to visit.
But before Bond headed off to chase down Scaramanga, Felix admitted he was the one to put the mannequin across the track. He did this on Scaramanga's orders and thought it was just to be a joke to amuse the hoods. He didn't know that Bond's "girlfriend" was a blonde. It was after he planted the dummy on the tracks that he "spiked" the bridge with the explosives.
Here we have the problem. For one thing, Scaramanga only learned that Bond and Mary were members of the British Secret Service when Mr. Henricks told him that morning. So his orders to Felix to place the mannequin must have been after the meeting with Mr. Henricks.
But the meeting with Mr. Henricks started at 10:00 in the morning and must have lasted at least an hour. And remember that everyone met in the lobby at noon to leave on their excursion.
And yet it took Bond an hour to drive to the Thunderbird Hotel from Savanna La Mar. And yet we're to believe that Felix would have the time to talk to Bond after the meeting, be told by Scaramanga to get a blonde-haired plastic mannequin, drive into Savanna La Mar, find the mannequin, meet with Bond's friend on the sugar plantation, get the explosives for the bridge, drive back from Savanna La Mar, put the mannequin on the track, plant the explosives at the bridge, and then get to the station to hide out on the train.
But here's the kicker. Just before the group left to catch the train, Scaramanga said he hadn't seen Felix all day!
Fortunately a little inconsistency never spoils a good James Bond story.
It wasn't just American solecisms or chronologies that would bedevil Ian's otherwise taut prose. Sometimes his ideas about American culture would produce naive and unintentionally humorous scenes.
For instance, Ian liked to say that Americans speak largely in monosyllables or at most two. As he elaborated in the short story "For Your Eyes Only" (reprinted in its namesake book):
You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. "Huh," "hun," and "hi!" in their various modulations, together with "sure," "guess so," "that so?" and "nuts!" will meet almost any contingency.
In the story, Bond tries to speak like an American - and like Sherlock doesn't really quite make it. Posing as a tourist in Vermont, a local man sees him with a rifle case.
"Going huntin', mister?" the man asks (Americans also alway drop final "g's").
Bond replies, "Hun."
The man adds, "Man got a fine beaver over by Highlgate Springs Saturday".
Bond replies "That so?"
It is true that an American might reply "That so?" in response to a comment as Bond did. But in the 4.5 billion year history of the Earth no one - American, Martian, or otherwise - has ever responded to a "yes-or-no" question by saying "Hun21." Also Ian didn't seem to realize that beavers 1) are not really trophy animals and 2) are almost always trapped, not hunted with rifles.
Footnote
One exception might be "Can you give the name by which Atilla was called?"
Ian also runs into trouble describing Americans' eating habits. No matter how haut the cuisine he feels they have to have a helping of hamburgers and French fries at some point in the meal. In the novel Live and Let Die22, Bond arrives at New York's St. Regis Hotel. Felix Leiter is waiting, having already ordered dinner - "American cooking at its rare best" - which includes "flat beef Hamburgers23, medium-rare, from the charcoal grill", and "French-fried potatoes".
Footnote
Ian and his depiction of African-Americans in Live and Let Die is a topic that merits a whole essay in itself - either that or it should be relegated to the cra... well, let's just say to elsewhere.
But for now we'll just mention that in Live and Let Die Ian seems determined to omit no negative stereotype. Not only does he picture African Americans as firm and credulous believers in voodoo, has them speak in dialect the likes of which scriptwriters of Amos and Andy would never dare, and fears they would immediately rise in race riots if a black mobster was arrested, but he also mentions that Mr. Big, the intellectually formidable criminal mastermind in the novel and the man with the brains, was half white.
The irony is that in the book it's clear that Ian was trying to be open-minded and show his toleration - but he can't even pull that off. In briefing Bond on the mission, M. makes the comment how the black race was "just beginning to throw up geniuses in all the professions - scientists, doctors, writers" and adds "They've got plenty of brains and ability and guts". But now he says they've now turned out a master criminal. Bond himself commented that the African Americans are "pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought" - and then Ian blows it all by having Bond add - "except when they've drunk too much."
Footnote
The phrase "flat beef" hamburgers appears to be limited to the James Bond novels. Also in America, "hamburger" is spelled in lowercase, not capitalized as Ian did.
That is, James and Felix eat hamburgers and French fries - in the same meal where they are also served soft-shell crabs and Liebfraumilch wine.
But the one novel that provides particularly fertile ground for finding Ian's oddball Americanisms and customs is Diamonds Are Forever. Here a small time smuggler named Peter Franks is arrested and Bond assumes his identity to infiltrate the gang of international diamond thieves.
Bond's contact for the gang is Tiffany Case, the novel's Bond girl (played by Jill St. John in the movie). They agree Bond will smuggle a shipment of diamonds to America hidden inside some golf balls. So she and Bond fly to New York - on the same plane but pretending they don't know each other - with one entire chapter devoted to Bond's flight from England to New York during which absolutely nothing happens24.
Footnote
Diamonds Are Forever was the first Bond film where the plot diverged considerably from the book. The previous movies, although embellished and updated with the increasingly complex gadgets, did follow the novels reasonably well.
But except for Bond smuggling diamonds and ending up in Las Vegas, there's not much similarity 'twixt the plots of the screenplay - set in 1970's Las Vegas - and the book - where Bond starts out in New York, moves on to Saratoga, and only then flying to Vegas. Of course, in the novel Bond is trying to identify criminals in a smuggling ring, not stop Ernest Stavro Blofeld from destroying the armies of the world with a giant satellite laser.
In Diamonds Are Forever, we are also treated to another strange American meal - and also Ian's idea of a typical American roadside restaurant. When Felix and Bond are on their way to Saratoga (riding in Felix's "Studillac" - a Studebaker with at Cadillac engine25), Bond and Felix stop for lunch at a
Footnote
Here we have a bit of a turn on the American readers. Despite what many of the Bond book fans might have thought, Studillacs were not an invention of Ian's imagination. They were in fact real automobiles manufactured in the early 1950's by Bill Frick Motors. Bill and his workers would put different motors in different cars not just Cadillac motors into Studebakers. So you could also have Bill make you, among other automobiles, a Fordillac.
Chicken in the Basket, a log-built Frontier-style road-house26 with standard equipment - a tall counter covered with the best-known proprietary brands of chocolates and candies, cigarettes, cigars, magazines and paperbacks, a juke box27 blazing with chromium and coloured lights that looked like something out of science fiction, a dozen or more polished pine tables in the centre of the raftered room and as many low booths along the walls, a menu featuring fried chicken and "fresh mountain trout", which had spent months in some distant deep-freeze, and a variety of short-order dishes, and a couple of waitresses who couldn't care less.
Footnote
A "road house" is a now archaic phrase which could mean any place to stop on the road.
Footnote
A juke box was a machine that played recordings in the days when records were plastic disks. Generally the juke box used what were called '45's - records about 6 inches across and which were rotated at 45 rpm. Typically you had one song per side but on juke boxes multiple songs could be queued up for playing.
The juke boxes were operated by inserting a coin and pushing a button next to a label with the name of the song. With a mechanical arm, the machine would automatically pick out the proper record that was kept in the machine, place it on a turntable and then the record would play. Naturally juke boxes were quite large and often had glitzy decorations, but they were expected to be present in lower cost restaurants, particularly if they catered to younger clientele. Juke boxes pretty much fell from view when portable players with earphones became available.
Although it's nearly noon, Felix and Bond order scrambled eggs and sausages and hot buttered rye toast - not necessarily a common lunch for Americans but not impossible. And Ian concedes that at least the food was good - as was their beverages. They finished up their meal with iced-coffee - not the most popular drink in America, but certainly not unusual - and which was preceded by "Millers Highlife [sic] beer28".
Footnote
In the era before specialty and craft beers, Millers High Life (three words) was considered the premium of America's brewed beverages - or as they called it the Champagne of Bottled Beer.
Ha? (Again Shakespeare.) Scrambled eggs, buttered toast, sausage, ....
..... and beer?
Bleah.
Knowing this repast wouldn't fly with American palates, the US editors dropped the "Millers Highlife beer" and kept the "iced coffee".
But it's in Diamonds that we encounter some of the stranger expressions attributed to Americans. These seem to come largely from Ian's word crafting rather than any actual conversations with his American friends.
Later in the novel Bond is captured by Seraffimo Spang - the Las Vegas gangster who likes dressing up in cowboy duds and spending weekends in an old ghost town.
Remember Bond has been posing as a smuggler named Peter Franks who is actually in jail in England (in the movie, Franks was killed). But then Bond is taken captive and brought to the ghost town by two thugs. He tried to break free and ends up beating them both in a detailed and prolonged fight. But although Bond won the battle he had not yet won the war as he finds himself in the presence of Seraffimo, Tiffany, and two sadistic killers, Wint and Kid.
Bond tries to talk his way out of his predicament, believing everyone still thinks he is the English smuggler. But Seraffimo sneers that Bond's a bit behind the times. He reads aloud a telegram sent by his brother who runs the smuggling ring from London:
"Reliably informed Peter Franks held by police on unspecified charge. Endeavour at all costs hold substitute carrier. Ascertain if operations endangered. Eliminate him and report."
Seraffimo then looks at Bond and says, "Well, Mister Whosis29, this looks like a good year for something horrible to happen to you."
Ian really did like to have bad guys call good guys "Mister Whosis" which regardless of its repetition in other Bond novels (it's also used by one of the gangsters in Goldfinger) always falls rather falsely on American ears. And by adding "This looks like a good year for something horrible to happen to you", he really leaves the American readers scratching their heads. Sure, it makes some sense but it's not an expression they've ever heard before, and no American would say it.
Fortunately again the Yankee editors come to the rescue. Instead of calling Bond "Mr. Whosis" and talking about what a good year it is, Seraffimo says:
Well, mister, this looks like you're down for a little elimination.
Far more believable
Finally it's also in Diamonds Are Forever that we have one of Ian's most perplexing Americanisms. In New York Bond has to turn the diamonds over to the crooks. From the airport he's driven to the office of a mob-middleman with severe kyphosis named "Shady" Tree (again Ian has to give us a typical "American Criminal" name).
After Bond comes in he watches Shady down a glass of milk. Shady then looks up as if inviting comment.
"Ulcers?" Bond asks sympathetically.
"Who spoke to you?" Shady snaps.
Now it's possible that an American would say this although "Who spoke to you?" would be more typical for someone who interrupted a conversation with unsolicited advice. The American editors, clearly thinking that Ian didn't quite get it right, changed Shady's retort to "What's it to you?" - a little more natural sounding to American ears.
But after getting his instructions to get his pay ($5000) by going to Saratoga and betting on a crooked horse race, Bond leaves Shady's office. Walking along the sidewalk, he senses he's being followed. So he pauses at a store window and sneaks a look around. He sees no one.
Suddenly he's grabbed by the arm - instead of a hand the man has a steel hook. Then Bond hears the terse words, "All right, Limey. Take it easy unless you want lead for lunch".
But when Bond responds to the would-be assailant by swiveling and "bending sideways and bringing his left fist round in a flailing blow, low down", his fist smacks into the hand of his would-be captor. Of course, it's his friend Felix Leiter30.
Footnote
In Diamonds Are Forever Felix has actually left the CIA due to serious injuries incurred in Live and Let Die. While in Florida, he was thrown into a shark tank and lost his right arm and left leg. He survived but could only be given a desk job if he wanted to stay in government service. So he joined the Pinkerton's Detective Agency although in Thunderball we learn he is still on "reserve" for the CIA.
Ian seems to have revised Felix's injuries in later novels. In Diamonds Bond mentally catalogs Felix's injuries as the right hand and the left leg are "gone". But in Thunderball, while he's scuba-diving Felix slips a diver's flipper over his hook, but evidently doesn't have any problem with his legs. And in the Man With the Golden Gun the leg that Felix broke leaping from the train was his left leg - the leg he supposedly lost in Live and Let Die.
"No good, James," Felix laughs, "The angels have got you."
The angels have got you?
What the ! does that mean?
Saying the "angels have got" someone is not unknown. But it means the individual so referenced has "made the final journey towards that Stygian shore31". The phrase is similar to what Secretary of State Edwin Stanton at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865.
Footnote
"Stygian" is a reference to the River Styx, the mythical river of the Greek and Roman underworld where the dead cross into Hades. To the Greeks and Romans, Hades did not have the connotation as a place of punishment for the sinners but was simply where everyone went. Ironically the Christian concept of the realm that those who wish to avoid traditional "bad words" call Hades actually has greater similarities to that of the underworld of the Ancient Egyptians - although the fate of the bad guys and gals is not exactly the same.
But as Felix uses the phrase it means absolutely nothing and it makes no sense. So finding yet another Flemingesque faux-Americanism, the blue-pencilers across the Atlantic changed Felix's words to:
Not so good, James. You must be getting old.
Which is what an American would say - at least if he was speaking
|
 |
... which as we said is:
|
|
It should not be believed that this essay - brief though it is - has been intended to detract from Ian's many accomplishments. Heaven forfend! In his time Ian Fleming was one of the most popular novelists of the English speaking world, and if you count to where his works led, he's one of the most successful authors of all time. So a few faux pas Americaniques are of small moment.
References
Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Andrew Lycett, Turner Publishing, 1996.
The Seven Percent Solution, Nicol Williamson (Actor), Alan Arkin (Actor), Robert Duvall (Actor), Vanessa Redgrave (Actor), Joel Grey (Actor), Nicholas Meyer (Writer, Novel and Screenplay), Herbert Ross (Producer and Director), 1976, Internet Movie Data Base.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Vincent Starrett, Macmillan Company, 1933, (Revised, Pinnacle, 1975).
The Giant Rat of Sumatra, Richard Boyer, Warner, 1976.
The Case of the Philosophers' Ring, Randall Collins, Crown Publications, 1978.
"How Americans Preserved British English", Christine Ro, BBC Culture, February 8, 2018.
"His Last Bow", Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow, John Murray, 1922.
Basil Rathbone, Internet Movie Data Base.
The Man With The Golden Gun, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1965.
The Man With The Golden Gun, Ian Fleming, New American Library, 1965.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
"The Purple Gang", Encyclopedia Of Detroit, Detroit Historical Society.
The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945, Paul Kavieff, Barricade Books, 2000.
"James Bond Timeline", All Time Lines.
Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1953.
Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, Macmillan, 1953.
Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1954.
Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming, New American Library, 1954.
Moonraker, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1955.
Moonraker, Ian Fleming, Macmillan, 1955.
Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1956.
Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming, Macmillan, 1956.
"Studillac", Fleming's Bond, May 5, 2014.
"Bill Frick Motors", Kustorama
For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1960.
For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming, Viking, 1960.
Goldfinger, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1959.
Goldfinger, Ian Fleming, Macmillan, 1956.
The Comedy of Terrors, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Joyce Jameson (Actor), Boris Karloff (Actor), Basil Rathbone (Actor), Joe E. Brown (Actor), Jacques Tourneur (Director), Richard Matheson (Writer), Samuel Arkoff (Producer), James Nicholson (Producer), 1963, Internet Movie Data Base.