The Hour of the Gun
Before 2006, the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service seemed the closest moviegoers might ever come to seeing a faithful cinematic adaptation of one of Fleming’s James Bond thrillers.
From Russia With Love seldom veered too far off-course, despite the unnecessary complication of having Rosa Klebb report to Ernst Stavro Blofeld instead of her former bosses at the Kremlin. The film also ends on a sprightly note, unlike the book which concludes with Bond collapsing to the floor as his vital signs fade.
At least the movie version permits Bond to be imperiled by Rosa Klebb’s poisoned shoe-blade, only to be saved at the last second by a timely shot fired by Tatiana. It was an ending which the filmmakers surely borrowed from Fleming’s Thunderball, and would reuse when it came time to film that book.
Fleming’s Bond was not invincible and occasionally did need rescuing. Alas, some of his confederates seemed to pay the toll for Bond’s unlikely escapes. Felix Leiter loses parts of himself in Live and Let Die, Kerim Bey dies on the Orient Express in From Russia, With Love, Quarrel is immolated by dragon-fire in Dr. No, while neither of the Masterton girls lives long enough to witness the final chapter of Goldfinger.
Goldfinger, the breakout hit of the series, quickly became the glittering gold-standard of Bond films. The producers came to believe, somewhat superstitiously, that at minimum one young lady needed to be offered up as a sacrifice during the story, though dispatching two would be ideal.
Thus in the film version of Thunderball two women are marked for death, Bond’s ally Paula, and SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe. When it came time to write the screenplay for You Only Live Twice, Roald Dahl dutifully penned a touching death scene for Aki (who ingests a dose of poison meant for Bond), and then arranged for a school of piranha to feast on the devious Helga Brandt.
Like the plot itself, these characters had to be invented for You Only Live Twice, since a strict translation of Fleming’s book would have made no sense, the work having been conceived by Fleming as a sequel to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
With the cooperation of the Alpine snow season in 1969, O.H.M.S.S. was adapted rather faithfully for the screen that year, although a few significant events had to be restructured, and Bond was permitted to be naughtier in the film than he was allowed to be in the book.
In the film, Bond treats Tracy rather roughly at the start of their relationship (even if she did pull a gun on him first), and he seems determined to sleep with any number of the young ladies cooped up in Blofeld’s dormitory. Amusingly, the surname of his first conquest has been changed from “Windsor" to “Bartlett," perhaps to avoid offending the British Royal Family.
In the book, details of Blofeld’s scheme must be pieced together from clues Bond provides when he makes his way back to London. In the film, Blofeld has confidently spilled the beans out loud before Bond escapes. The timing of that escape has also been shifted slightly during its transfer to the screen. In the book our hero hightails it while an associate is being tortured to extract information which would surely put Bond in peril. In the film, however, Bond’s cover has already been blown when he begins his breakneck descent from Piz Gloria on a pair of stolen skis, and his only confedeerate on the mountain has already been exterminated.
Although Tracy helps Bond elude Blofeld’s henchmen in the book, she is not captured during their pursuit. Therefore the later assault on Piz Gloria is not a rescue mission, as it is in the film, but merely another round in the high-stakes match between Bond and Blofeld.
The wedding of James Bond and Teresa di Vicenzo, a suitably lavish affair staged at the Draco estate in Portugal in the film, is a simple ceremony performed at a the Munich consulate in Fleming’s novel. But potentially the most significant detail from the book omitted from the film is the tidbit Bond receives about a phone call placed to the consulate by a German woman claiming to be a reporter, who inquires about the timing of the happy event.
The book sometimes casts an unflattering light on James Bond in its depiction of him as a latter-day Gawain, a knight who fails to live up to a code of honor. Besides risking a roll in the hay with one of the young ladies under his host’s supervision, Bond skedaddles, leaving a comrade to be tortured to death. He asks Tracy to marry him just before setting off for another inning of the dangerous game with his enemy, and immediately after the wedding ignores a suspicious call which should set off alarm bells.
For those aware of the book’s debt to Middle-English literature, Fleming provides a ticking clock as the newlyweds ride away after their thrifty nuptials. Glancing at his watch Bond notes the time as 11:45. Readers are informed that more than ten minutes have elapsed when the Maserati, which had appeared behind them as a distant red dot, suddenly begins to make its move.
It may have been the exact timing of the Green Knight’s return-blow on New Year’s Day in the Middle-English poem, that gave Fleming the idea of merging Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with an episode of a TV Western, one featuring a famous lawman who decides to hang up his guns for good and settle down with a beautiful but troubled young lady named Teresa. She was doomed, of course, as was almost any frontier lass who agreed to tie the knot with the leading man in a Western series.
It must have struck Fleming as more appropriate to end his modern take on the story of a failed Arthurian knight, not with the swing of a blade, but a flash of gunsmoke at high noon.
Pat Garrett holds his slain Teresa in “Bitter Ashes,” an episode of The Tall Man which aired months before Fleming wrote a similar scene for OHMSS