Although the many books I own on the matter of James Bond motion pictures have only become more scattered hither and yon as acquisitions mount, a 1983 edition of The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History (including Octopussy & Never Say Never Again) continues to hold favored place in the glass-doored bookshelf, some ten feet from my office desk.
Likely wouldn’t guess that I’d bought it new, during a business trip layover at one of those book stores ubiquitous at larger metropolitan airports. Binding dried and failing, pages discolored as intended to validate claims of this material as authentic, history.
Author Steven Jay Rubin approached the movie Goldfinger thirty-seven pages in, with his Chapter 4 titled “Oddjobs and Hard Knox.” The next page featured a full-page image of Leicester Square Theatre, “Goldfinger” emblazoned across marque, and throngs of patrons. Seven pages later, a quarter-page image touted “The merchandising bonanza [that] had already begun with these toys advertised in a 1964 Sears catalog.”
But the photograph that holds most indelibly in my mind — here, in black and white and taking up just a part of the page, as well as elsewhere, more appropriately-sized in larger, full-color spreads — is the photograph of “Golden Girls” Darlene Larson and Diane Sandra, delivering “the premiere print of Goldfinger, in New York … [via] armored truck.”
That is the sort of momentum every next James Bond motion picture has enjoyed from the very instant of announcement. A foresight and investment set out three or four years before Daniel Craig was born, there for the taking of any actor who might have gone on to play Agent 007 in Casino Royale or No Time to Die. Not all of it, to be sure. Ian Fleming, Albert R Broccoli, Harry Salzman, and, most recently, Sean Connery, have all passed on; none in a position to deliver another Goldfinger for decades before that.
Even if they were, even if that magic concoction of collaboration had somehow been “bottled,” available for injection (in dosings neither too much nor too little!) from the very embryonic conception of each new James Bond movie project, would it deliver, today? Would the type of spectacle be accepted? able to break through the noise of social media and twenty-four-seven cable entertainment? Engaging a global population of thrill-seekers with low thresholds for boredom, utterly convinced that they’ve already seen all that there is to see?
As my own calendar grows ever closer to my first pre-title-to-closing watch-through of Goldfinger, I am keenly aware that all such marketing, history, and societal context will be essential to developing my “Goldfinger Standard.” At the same time, I plan to balance that against the fact that movie releases are movies — and not academic deconstructions. The moviegoer knows that he thoroughly, passionately enjoys Goldfinger.
And he wants and needs, somewhat, to know Why? But only to the point necessary, and no further.
