Gawain Takes His Swing
Given the fact that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is Fleming's sequel to Thunderball, if the pair of books truly form a clever retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, shouldn’t Thunderball also be set at Yuletide?
Although I doubt that Ian Fleming had his next book firmly in mind while he went about adapting an old screenplay about hijacked atom bombs into his ninth Bond thriller, he does plant the germ of an idea that seems to spring out of nowhere.
While describing the motley group of “investors” who drift into Nassau when Largo prepares to launch his search for pirate treasure, a cover story for deploying stolen bombs, Leiter notes:
Never seen such a bunch of thugs in my life—dressed up in tuxedos and smoking cigars and drinking champagne and all that—just a glass or two to show the Christmas spirit. Orders, I suppose.
Leiter is only making a joke. It isn’t really Christmas. The investors were supposed to arrive at the end of the winter tourist season, with a treasure hunt to follow soon after. Although the calendar must be headed towards spring, Fleming’s imagery is unmistakably festive. SPECTRE operatives turn up “bearing just those gifts that Petacchi lusted for.” Largo asks his physicist, “Are you pleased with your toys? The toyshop has sent you everything you want?" Bond plays high-stakes chemin de fer with a Mr. Snow, and everyone involved in the scheme anticipates a great big present from NATO countries eager to get their bombs back. If SPECTRE has to detonate one of the bombs to make their point, so be it. Nuclear winter comes to the Bahamas.
Oddly enough, the movie version of Thunderball also has a reference to winter holidays. The noisy street celebration Bond uses to cover his escape from Fiona Volpe’s crew is apparently the Nassau Junkanoo Parade, traditionally held on December 26 and New Year’s Day. There is no parade in Fleming’s book, only a mention of music coming from a Junkanoo nightclub.
Bond’s escape from his captors amid Christmas festivities in the film may have been lifted from the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which was supposed to follow Thunderball directly in the film production queue. There’s even a similar surprise-scare in both films, when Bond and the audience think he’s been nabbed, though he’s only been spooked by an innocent reveler.
By the way, the screenwriters for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service underline the fact that Tracy’s death is payback for Largo's. In Fleming’s book we’re not told who pulls the trigger. In the film it’s Irma Bundt who fires the shot while Blofeld drives the car. It’s a return stroke meant to match Largo’s death at the hands of Domino Petacchi.
As Brian Stone’s translation of the Middle-English classic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, explains the matter:
Such a stroke as you have struck, strictly you deserve. That due redemption on the day of New Year.
So, on New Year’s Day, Tracy Bond pays the price for what James Bond had coming. That’s only fair, in Blofeld’s eyes, and possibly Fleming's. However, the screenwriters have tweaked the story in significant ways to diminish Bond’s culpability for his wife’s death.
But we’ll get to that another time.*
*See “The Makeover"