Casting More Than Runes
Did Ian Fleming really poach bits of a recent British horror film for his novel Goldfinger? He might have. It wouldn't have been his first offense, nor would it be his last. Aside from borrowing bits of business and broad themes from Night of the Demon, he also may have had the actor who played the villain in that horror film in mind, to play the heavy in a movie he was trying to imagine.
Fleming was an inveterate collector of disparate bits and bobs which he would carefully weave into the procession of characters, settings and plot-twists that kept readers turning the pages of his books. After all, Fleming’s books were set in real locales which the author knew intimately, or at the very least cities which he had spent a hectic weekend learning to navigate. Only on rare occasions did he invent names for his characters. Red Grant, Blofeld, Goldfinger and Pussy Galore, were all real people whom Fleming had met, had gone to school with, or heard stories about. Even "James Bond" was an author whose magnum opus, Birds of the West Indies, occupied a place of honor on his desk.
Now that Fleming was actively involved in churning out books with a hope of one day turning them into money-making films, it only made sense to collect personalities and narrative strands which had already been proven to be dramatically effective.
When he sat down to write the story of Tatiana Romanova for From Russia, With Love in 1956, he must have remembered the audience’s immediate sympathy for another lovely orphan girl living under the thumb of a diabolical tyrant, even if five years had passed since Disney’s Cinderella had exited theaters.
He may have recalled the cheers of delight that rang out when the poor girl's faithful hound Bruno finally bared his teeth and stood up to the devious Lucifer, just as he no doubt remembered his own reaction while watching a pair of jealous stepsisters shred Cinderella’s makeshift gown, leaving the tattered remnants clinging to the poor girl's body by a single strap. Giving serious thought to the latter scene, he made a mental note to set at least one chapter in a camp where jealous, hot-tempered Romani girls battle each other to the death, to win the man they love.
A year later he would write Dr. No based on his own outline for a proposed TV series called Commander Jamaica, though it was mostly based on Disney’s 1954 feature 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In fact, in an early draft of the series pilot, Dr. No was to command a futuristic rogue submarine that wreaked havoc in the Caribbean. While substituting a subterranean lair for the submarine made the concept of a film adaptation less daunting, Fleming still clung to the basic plot of the Disney adventure, making his sixth Bond book culminate in a jailbreak and a fight with a giant squid.
Having already plundered Disney’s Sleeping Beauty for From Russia, With Love, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Dr. No, Fleming may have decided to select a relatively inconspicuous source for his inspiration. If so, he could hardly have done better than Night of the Demon. The taut, unpretentious thriller about the supernatural opened late in 1957, a few months before Ian Fleming made his annual pilgrimage to Jamaica to write his next book.
After a violent introductory scene, the story of Night of the Demon gets underway with a coincidence involving transatlantic air travel. Something similar happens at the start of Fleming’s Goldfinger when Bond reminisces about his recent deadly assignment in Mexico, moments before being recognized by an old acquaintance at the Miami airport where his flight to London has been delayed. The result of this chance encounter is a preliminary run-in with Mr. Goldfinger.
Much like Auric Goldfinger, the villain of Night of the Demon, Dr. Karswell (played by versatile character-actor Niall MasGinnis), is a smug know-it-all who, with grand condescension, lectures the hero of the film about his mistaken notions concerning “coincidence.” The hero (played by Dana Andrews) later conducts a clandestine search of Karswell’s opulent manor, only to be interrupted by a cat. In Night of the Demon the cat shape-shifts into a panther. In Goldfinger the cat which follows Bond as he prowls through the millionaire's mansion, is transformed into Odd Job's dinner.
With movies on his mind as he wrote Goldfinger, Fleming had also begun to venture into casting. Late in the book he drops hints suggesting Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor as James Bond and Pussy Galore, or at least he plants the notion in the reader's mind that they would make an ideal pairing. The Auric Goldfinger of Fleming's novel has the voice and bearing of a well-bred but supercillious Englishman, very much like the cult leader, Dr. Karswell, as played by Niall MacGinnis in Night of the Demon. Although eventually portrayed in the film Goldfinger by German actor Gert Frobe, the celluloid Auric Goldfinger ended up bearing a strong physical resemblance to MacGinnes, who is best remembered today for playing Zeus in Jason and the Argonauts.
If Fleming did see the classic horror flick, the early innings of Goldfinger surely owe at least a modest debt to Charles Bennett’s script for Jacque Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, based on the short story Casting the Runes by M. R. James. Beyond its opening chapters, Fleming’s book turns into a freewheeling adaptation of the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” with a side-order of Sigmund Freud, seasoned with a generous dash of Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge.
It may be Fleming's ultimate goulash.
