Bond's Felicitous Friend
Ian Fleming recognized a useful name when he heard it, and also understood just how to employ it to good effect. Besides knowing, or knowing of, an ornithologist called James Bond and a banker named Erno Goldfinger, he happened to run into a boat tour guide known as “Red” Grant. Fleming’s pal Ivar Bryce’s middle name was “Felix," and Ivar Felix Bryce was acquainted with a family of Leiters. While James Bond’s fictional American colleague would be named after real people, it is surely no accident that his Latin Christian name and German family name combine to turn the CIA operative and erstwhile detective into James Bond’s “Lucky Ladder,” who helps the British spy climb out of more than one jam.
I got to thinking about Felix after dreaming a few nights ago about meeting actor David Hedison in a clothing store. When I meet celebrities in my dreams I can never help showering them with compliments, although in the case of Mr. Hedison, I took him to task for looking so impossibly youthful, reminding him that he had played a version of Robin Hood in a movie I saw in a theater in Belleville, Kansas, in 1958. At least I had the good manners not to inform him that he looked remarkably robust for a man who passed away in 2019.
Hedison was the first Felix Leiter to reprise the role in the Bond series, appearing alongside both Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton. The first Felix on the silver screen was, of course, Jack Lord, who showed up in Dr. No, the filmed version of a book in which the good Mr. Leiter does not appear. Once he pops up in the film he introduces himself, quickly discovers that he has no role to play in this adventure, and promptly drops out of sight for the bulk of the film. Thus Jack Lord also became the first Felix Leiter to discover that the part was not always worth the trouble, leading to a scarcity of repeat contenders.
Canadian Cec Linder had more to do when he played Felix in Goldfinger, although the casting choice remains questionable. When I was young I remembered the part as having been played by Ed Platt from Get Smart, who did rather resemble Cec Linder. Neither would have struck Ian Fleming as a likely candidate to impersonate his Felix Leiter.
For my money the best Leiter from the early films was Rick Van Nutter in Thunderball, who really did seem to be playing the likable, lanky Texan of the books. After a single viewing in 1965 I mistakenly believed that the part had been played by Clint Eastwood, and was surprised upon seeing the film a second time to realize that the actor I knew from TV Westerns wasn’t actually in it. In my defense, Van Nutter was exactly as tall as Eastwood, apparently used the same barber frequented by Rowdy Yates of Rawhide, and spoke his lines in a husky California whisper. It’s a speech pattern we’ve grown to associate with screen cowboys, even some space cowboys on Tatooine.
If Fleming had been allowed to follow through on his original plan, there would have been no need for multiple Leiters in the movies. In his first draft the author killed off the CIA agent in Live and Let Die instead of having him merely nibbled on by sharks. Happily, Fleming followed the advice of an American literary agent to keep Leiter alive and dangled as bait for American readers. Apparently she was on to something.
