Here is the thread for comments on Dr. No and From Russia With Love. Mrs. Six and I watch Goldfinger this weekend, so I thought I’d get the thread started early.
Any comments are welcome.
Do you expect me talk, Goldfinger?
No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.
You guys just beat me to my favorite lines in any of the Bond movies.
Although I am not sure how the producers of Goldfinger got away with:
“My name is Pussy Galore”
“I must be dreaming”
The gilding of Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson was done to a strict time limit under the supervision of studio doctors. They warned that after 60 minutes the blocking of the pores by the paint could be dangerous. Shirley’s appearance in the film lasts for 3 minutes only. A photograph of her gold-painted body appeared on the front cover of Life magazine.
Goldfinger features the only screen role played by Tania Mallet (Tilly Masterson). She didn’t like acting and refused all further offers.
Nadja Regin, who plays the Latin nightclub dancer Bonita, also appeared in From Russia With Love as Kerim Bey’s lady friend.
Margaret Nolan (also known as Vickie Kennedy) plays Dink, a blonde lady who shares a poolside scene with Sean Connery, and she is also the golden girl who features in the opening and closing credits.
The US censors certainly had a problem with the name Pussy Galore. They wouldn’t let it through. Then Goldfinger was released in London and Honor Blackman was presented to Prince Philip. The next day the headline Pussy And The Prince appeared in the newspapers above a photograph of the two of them. The US censors then gave the film the all-clear.
This crucial information has been gleaned from my copy of The James Bond Girls by Graham Rye. An invaluable work of reference (including lots of pictures) for serious students of 007.
One thing that quite disturbed me is that in the film I recall the civilians being laid out with some kind of knockout gas from the planes. In the book, IIRC, it’s a nerve gas and the whole town is wiped out.
Not my personal favorite Bond film overall, IMO (that would be OHMSS, believe it or not) although Gert Frobe and that guy who played Oddjob are perhaps the greatest Bond villians. And who has never wished to have a turn behind the wheel of that Aston Martin DB4 with the various “enhancements”?
Not sure if this is true, but Goldfinger is the first film I can recall ever using that now-famous plot device, “the digital countdown”.
I’ll go way out on a limb here, and say that IMHO, the sequence in Speilberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which the military simulates a chemical attack to evacuate the area around Devil’s Tower, was heavily influenced by (if not an outright hommage to) Goldfinger’s plan to take over Fort Knox.
At the time it came out, I distinctly recall my parents refusing to let me see Goldfingeron the grounds that it was “too exciting” for my young sensibilities. I knew what they really meant was there were naked babes in it.
In the film, Goldfinger’s plan was to irradiate the gold supply (thus increasing the value of his gold by removing tons of gold from the world market). In the book, his plan was to actually steal the gold. IIRC, he wanted to use a low-yield nuclear device to blow open the door.
Actually, it was a DB5
Each of the enhancements on the DB5 was actually possible IRL, but it wouldn’t have been possible to put them all in a single car. For the movie, a different car had to be modified for each of the enhancements shown, plus one for just driving around. It’s the coolest car in the series. Moore’s Lotus is mediocre, but Dalton’s “optional extras” are very nice, as is the remote-controlled BMW 750il, though that one did seem to borrow from KITT a little bit.
In the book:
Bond leaves a $10,000.00 reward message under the toliet seat in the train. The janitor finds the message, dutifully turns it in to Felix Leiter, and collects the reward.
The US Government intercepts the nerve gas carriers, stages a simulated nerve gas attack complete with faked automobile accidents and pretend dead babies with pink froth on their chins.
Oh yeah, then Bond “cures” Pussy Galore of her lesbianism.
All in a day’s work [well a couple days] for 007.
In the movie, Goldfinger intends to kill everyone on the base and nearby town with the nerve gas, but Bond turns Pussy, she notifies Washington and switches the containers. The base and town then fake their deaths much as 5 time describes in the book.
I love this movie. It is pure entertainment without regard to logic or plausibility.
Things to look for in the movie:
After stopping the Bomb, the timer reads 007. As originally filmed, the timer stopped at 003, but it was decided to change the time for obvious reasons. However, the final scenes had already been film, which is why Bond says “Three more ticks and Mr. Goldfinger would have hit the jackpot.”
Felix tells Bond he told the stewardess “liquor for three.” When we see the knocked-out crew, they’re all men.
Goldfinger intends to kill the mobsters the entire time. Why then would he offer them a choice of taking their money or cooperating? Why make the presentation in the first place? He had a very expensive, complex, presentation prepared for a group of men he intended to kill minutes later.
The rear bulletproof shield makes no sense. The front windscreen and side windows are bulletproof, but they have to build in a retractable screen for the rear? Did they run out of bulletproof glass?
Bond turns away from the exit to Goldfinger’s compound because the onld woman is shooting a machine gun at him. He’s driving a bulletproof car at the time.
How did Goldfinger get the combination to the vault door?
If Fort knox doesn’t look like the movie inside, it should. That is one seriously cool set.
Oddjob wears a steel-rimmed bowler, and works with Honor Blackman. Honor Blackman’s partner in a previous role also wore a steel-brimmed bowler. Note: I haven’t been able to locate info on when John Steed’s steel bowler first appeared, ie, before or after Oddjob’s. Anyone know if the steel bowler was in the Cathy Gale episodes?
In the book, the mobsters were part of the heist. As I mentioned, Goldfinger was going to steal the gold. The mobsters had various specialties. For example, one gang had strong control over the Teamsters. His crew would supply the trucks to transport the gold. (Goldfinger would take his share and escape by train.) Pussy Galore wasn’t just a pilot who was hired to do a little crop dusting. In the book she was the leader of a tough lesbians.
I thought you’d show up here with info from the book, Johhny. Yeah, I’d expect the book to make more logical sense. This was the first movie where they decided to dispense with plausibility and go for spectacle, and it worked well here. I suppose it may look as if I were whining up above, but actually the cheerfully obvious plot holes are one of the things I like about this film.
That should have been “a tough gang of lesbians”.
:o
The fact that not only did PlanMan and Nostradamus nail that alley-oop but that they did so on the very first two replies is why I love these boards.
–Cliffy
As much as I like the movie, I just like the theme song… it’s so… I dunno, amusing? Just the part where the singer is like “Goooooooold-fing-ah!”
lol
Cracks me up every time. Sometimes i’ll call up friends of mine who are 007 fans and when they answer the phone i’ll respnd with “Goooooooold-fing-ah!”
lol
oi
“Goooooooold-fing-ah!”
Well, how else could they compete with the over-the-top opening credits of “From Russia With Love” (credits superimposed over a bellydancer’s spirited undulations).
I’ve got the now-outdated VHS set with the “making of ‘Goldfinger’” video. Tons of fun stuff on that, including the revelation of Ken Adam’s set as pure fantasy (the filmmakers had asked for info, photographs, etc. of Fort Knox, and were denied).
The flub-spotting reminds me of an anecdote related on that video: a schoolboy had written Broccoli or the director about a discrepancy he’d spotted regarding the make of the tires on the Aston Martin. He received a reply congratulating him for spotting one of, I think, “six intentional errors,” and promising a tour of some Bond stuff if he & his friends could come up with the other flubs. 
One thing I like about “Goldfinger” is all the sexy, playful, tousling that Connery enjoys with the various actresses. IMHO no other Bond flick compares to this one in that department. There’s a relaxed, self-assured, and very human quality about those scenes. Certainly, Connery was never sexier…