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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 25 general entries.
Special Topics
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Fleming, Ian
Donovan. We find this out in chapter one, before he recieves a telephone call for his next mission. He is later given the codename of 'Granitski', when he signs up for the Soviet Secret Service. Grant loves killing on the full moon, so his superiors used to let him murder some inmates at the local prison. He never had any friends at school, and according to Fleming, if he wanted anything, he just took it with or without a fight.
The Little Nugget. According to Fleming, it is the sort of novel one takes out into the garden, especially whilst visiting SPECTRE Island!
Greta Garbo. It is mentioned a couple of times throughout the novel. One of the times we discover this fact is when Tatiana is looking in the mirror in her bedsit.
No 13. The building is on the Stretenka Ulitsa and the most important room is situated on the second floor. Legend has it that people cross the street on the opposite side with their heads down to avoid being near the place.
Colonel Rosa Klebb. This is the woman who is given a more 'evil' personality than most of the men in the novel. She is blatantly described as a lesbian, holds the rank of Colonel and her favourite moments in life are when she tortures spies for their information by talking to them in a motherly voice, very psychopathic!
French and German. This is one of my favourite parts about the book, describing the hero. According to the file, he weighs 76 kilograms, he is 183 centimetres in height and he is an expert pistol shot and knife thrower. He also has had plastic surgery on the back of his right hand, after an agent of SMERSH burned their mark on it.
Kronsteen. We first encounter this very intelligent man playing chess against Makarov in the "Wizard of Ice" chapter. Obviously another psychotic agent of SMERSH when he says that he would not leave his game of chess if his wife was being murdered outside!
Darko. Kerim gained the name Darko after one of his many brothers to another mother was of a fairer colour, and so he was given the name Darko.
War and Peace. This is an excellent scene in which the cigaret case soaks up the bullet, stopping it from penetrating Bond's heart. He could feel the heat of the bullet but Bond collapsed on the cabin floor pretending to be dead, then killed Grant with the knife from his attache case.
Rosa Klebb. This scene was supposed to be Bond's last ever appearance, as Fleming was getting bored with the idea of his successful spy, so he had Klebb kick him with the poison-tipped boots. Oddly enough, after President Kennedy had named 'From Russia With Love' as one of his favourite novels, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman decided that would be the next movie, and Fleming revived Bond for 'Dr. No'.
| In "You Only Live Twice", Ernst Stavro Blofeld was the main villain, but what was so unusual about him in this novel? | A Quiz...BOND Quiz....
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He wore medieval armor and had his wife accompany him just about everywhere. For some odd reason, Fleming saw fit to have Blofeld wear medieval armor throughout this novel, as he traveled everywhere with his wife, while trying to corner the market in geothermal (geyser) power. The novel, "YOLT" bore VERY little resemblance to the movie, with only Tiger, Kissy Suzuki, Blofeld and the attempted poisoning of Bond that killed the _other_ Japanese girl instead, (as well as the heavy/light cargo ship quandary,) as shared plot points.
Bond was also made up to look Japanese in both the novel and movie. Volcanoes and missiles, prominent in the movie, did _not_ figure heavily in the novel.
In traditional Chinese robe, with long fingernails.. Dr. No was described as being in a Chinese robe that ended just above the floor, giving him the illusion of "floating" over the floor as he walked. The description was very reminiscent of the classic "Fu Manchu", Machiavellian oriental villain.
A Triumph TR-2. Yep...a garden variety, ugly as sin Triumph TR-2, which was essentially an earlier incarnation of the familiar TR-3 with an odd looking grille. Bond first notices the car in a traffic jam, and is struck when he sees it again later, with Tilly M., its foxy driver.
| What was the original plotline to "Octopussy", a short story whose title graced the confused Roger Moore travesty co-starring Maud Adams and Louis Jordan? | A Quiz...BOND Quiz....
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A man trying to retrieve WWII gold booty he stashed in the Alps years earlier. "Octopussy", a short story written shortly before Ian Fleming died, was about an English vet who had hidden some Nazi gold in the Alps, committing murder to keep others from getting it. "Octopussy" was the name of his pet octopus.
This story bore _zero_ resemblance to the Roger Moore film, something not unusual for Moore's run, where only "Live and Let Die" took any real cues from the book that the film sprang from. "For Your Eyes Only", for instance, was a very serious spy mission concerning UN couriers being ambushed on the central west coastal area of Europe. The _movie_ bears a strong resemblance to "From Russia With Love" mixed with "Lolita"!
The "Octopussy" film bore a strong resemblance to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Thunderball", what with villainess Octopussy's harem of young women (!), the Faberge Egg angle and the nuclear blackmail.
Roger Moore's run of Bond films, while the longest, time-period-wise, was easily the worst, in my opinion. Most of the movies, in fact, were jumbled versions of earlier Bond films. "View To A Kill", in fact, was essentially "Goldfinger" re-created almost verbatim.
Bond dumps cormorant guano on him with a steamshovel. Yep. Can you believe that? If they had filmed that ending for the movie, it would have borne a _very_ strong resemblance to one of the many Bond parodies that followed "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball".
| Which actor, who portrayed Ernst Stavro Blofeld, resembled Fleming's description of him the most? | A Quiz...BOND Quiz....
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Telly Savalas. Savalas, who played the character in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", had the right combination of features that Fleming describes in the novel "Thunderball". Blofeld's pupils were described as "Deep black pools surrounded...TOTALLY surrounded..." by the whites of the eyes, (Savalas had very prominent pupils.) This was a phrase used by Fleming to describe Bond's recurring arch-nemesis.
Pleasance was probably cast for his smarmimness, in "YOLT" and Gray for his pomposity, in "Diamonds Are Forever". Von Sydow probably was because he was the only one who hadn't PLAYED him yet...(In "Never Say Never Again", yet another rehash of "Thunderball".)
In the first two Bond films, "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love" and the fourth, (you guessed it,) "Thunderball", Blofeld was heard but his face never seen, usually stroking the fur of his angora cat, with a voice-over that sounded, in fact, a lot like Von Sydow.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Tracy Di Vicenzo (Draco), played by Diana Rigg in the movie, is the daughter of a crime boss who also happens to be minor European royalty. At the end of the novel, she is killed by Blofeld's wife while she and Bond are on their way to their honeymoon.
In New York City , St. Petersburg, Fla. and Jamaica. Another novel altered for the screen, "L&LD" originally had the plot of Mr. Big running yet another Fleming gold hoarding scheme to finance cold war Soviet spy operations. Seventeenth century antique gold coins are used. Felix Leiter, as he is in the film "License To Kill" by Franz Sanchez's gunsels, is critically injured by Mr. Big's henchmen in the novel.
In the film, "Mr. Big" (Katanga) was a heroin trafficker, and the film largely resembled a "blaxploitation" flick. This was Roger Moore's first outing as Bond, and was ridiculous from the very start. The ending featured Mr. Big, played by Yaphet Kotto, being blown up by swallowing a small nodule of highly compressed gas. The jump cut to a dummy was obvious, perhaps rightly so, but it still put the topping on what was the first in a long line of truly ridiculous Bond movies starring Moore. If you'll notice, in the highway chase scene near the beginning of the movie, just about every other car _on_ the highway, except for the pimpmobiles, is a Chevy Impala or Caprice. A precursor to "Batman Returns", perhaps?
A collective sigh of relief must have gone up among Bond fandom when Moore announced his retirement from the role. I know most movie critics were probably relieved.
| What was similar about "Dr. No" and "You Only Live Twice", as far as water is concerned? | A Quiz...BOND Quiz....
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They both have scenes near the end that involve 007 frantically avoiding being drowned by water rushing through conduits. In "You Only Live Twice", near the end, Bond is in a stunned state, trying hard to avoid being waterlogged by geyser eruptions in an aqueduct, as he is in "Dr. No", but by sewage and used hot water rushing through pipes.
Some tense moments in both the novels _and_ the movies!
_He_ was the one sucked out of the airplane near the end. Yep! _Oddjob_ was the one sucked out of the airplane near the end, _not_ Goldfinger! The imbroglio in Fort Knox didn't go the way it did in the movie. Oddjob survived to attack Bond on the plane, wrestling with him for possession of a gun, which, as in the film, blasts a plane window open, drawing Oddjob through it. Goldfinger, in fact, was strangled by Bond, who used his own bare hands, soon after.
Amnesia. At the very end of the novel, after Blofeld is disposed of, the stress of the preceding adventure gives Bond a bout of amnesia, with the novel ending there. Presumably Kissy will "re-educate" him, giving him "very _best_ duck"!
A man named Junius Du Pont. Junius Du Pont, a man who had run into Bond once before while he was in the casino in "Casino Royale" playing baccarat against a Frenchman named "La Chiffre", ran into him again in an airport in the Caribbean while he was on his way to New York after an assignment. He had him pegged as an intelligence man, and had dabbled in the field himself, post-war! He told Bond about Goldfinger, and about being rooked out of tens of thousands of dollars by him. He _knew_ he was cheating, but couldn't prove it! This piqued Bond's interest in a man he had, until then, never heard of.
SMERSH. Yes, Goldfinger was working for the Russians, as a member of SMERSH, an actual organization formed in Russia in 1943 as a counterintelligence agency to take care of traitors, spies and troublemakers. Its name means "Death to spies".
| What Bond novel had scenes of suspected Sapphic admiration between two of the female characters? | A Quiz...BOND Quiz....
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Goldfinger. In the novel, near the end, when "Operation Grandslam" is in full swing, Tilly Masterson casts somewhat obvious, admiring glances at Pussy Galore whenever she encounters her. Bond takes note of it and comments to himself about it! T'is a pity, since he had been plotting a way to get into her pants _himself_!
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