JA ... BOND'S JA
Columnist Lance Neita, on receiving news of the return of production for the 007 thriller to Jamaica’s shores, walks down memory lane to recall the scenes on the island in 1962 when news spread of the intention to film the first in the James Bond series, Dr No. He takes the reader up to when the cameras started rolling and chronicles the list of celebrities who subsequently made their way here. Neita’s own docudrama would not be complete without a few stories of a time many today only see on the silver screen.
Jamaica has already earned enormous publicity from the new James Bond film, sections of which are being shot in on the island. and so it should, as James Bond of Dr No and Live and Let Die, among others, is the motion picture hero who simply cannot die.
The James Bond legend was created in Jamaica by British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming, who built a house in St Mary he named Goldeneye — impishly renamed by his famous friends at the time, Goldeneye, nose and throat.
The stars are here shooting scenes in Portland and other areas for ‘Bond 25’ along the north coast, and giving a number of Jamaican local stars and extras a run for their money.
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has already claimed ownership for the initial steps taken to set the story in Jamaica — that may not have been too difficult, knowing the Bond affiliation with Jamaica. What may be more difficult is keeping our ebullient minister out of the picture. We may yet see him doing a Hitchcock style of cameo appearances as the story develops.
But a James Bond film guarantees mega publicity for whatever and wherever the location. Jamaica claims pride of place for not only being the site of the first film, Dr No, produced in 1962, but also the fact that the author, Ian Fleming, made Jamaica his home for at least two months each year and wrote all his James Bond books at his beloved Goldeneye, nose and throat.
Dr No, starring Sean Connery and Ursula Andress, was filmed in Jamaica and England. James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a fellow British agent. The trail leads him to the underground base of Dr No, who is plotting to disrupt an early American space launch with a radio beam.
The arrival of Eon Productions and a host of international stars in Jamaica in January 1962 generated a huge amount of excitement in the country. Director Terence Young announced that he was to audition local musicians at the Copacabana Club for the cabaret scenes in Pussfeller’s Bar. The scenes were actually shot at Morgan’s Harbour with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires playing their lively Carnival piece Jump Up.
So the cameras started rolling in mid-january with the first scene shot at the Palisadoes airport. There was
plenty of action right at the start to keep Jamaicans on the edge of their seats. The photographer who attempted to take a sly photograph of Bond on his arrival was none other than Marguerite Lewars — our own Miss Jamaica 1961.
If, like myself, you had been reading Bond books up to 1962 you would understand the excitement that gripped Jamaica at that time. The Tourism Office must have been in seventh heaven.
We who lived on the south coast did not know it at the time, but the beach where bikini-clad Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) rises from the waves is Laughing Waters. However, we could identify with the scenes in Kingston, where the ‘three blind mice’, ubiquitous gunmen even from those days, amble through Harbour Street, downtown. If you couldn’t make him out then I will remind you that one of the ‘mice’ was Eric Coverley, husband of Louise Bennett.
Jamaicans who played a role in the movie included Reggie Carter, Count Prince Miller, Carey Robinson, Chris Blackwell, Kes Chin, William Foster-davis, and quite a few more.
Of course, Jamaicans had to make their own scene. At one time during the filming about 100 people blocked the gate at the Eon Productions Office in Carib, Ocho Rios, seeking work on the production. They even demanded that no more work must take place until they got their share. Eventually, it took the local councillor — a gentleman named Sydney James, I am told — to cool them down and allow the production to go on.
The most telling moment in Dr No, to me, had to be the scene where Bond introduces himself around a gambling table in a night club in London. After losing a hand to Bond, a lady asks his name. He pauses, lights a cigarette, and in his super cool manner gives her the famous line, “Bond…james Bond.”
Immediately the Bond music theme with its distinctive guitar-driven rhythm comes into play, and that great moment in the film becomes indelibly etched into the 007 fan’s mind forever, and for all 24 movies that follow.
Following the release of Dr No, the quote “Bond... James Bond” became a catchphrase in popular film culture and one of the most famous film lines ever.
As a young employee (some years ago) I mistakenly opened a wrong door in the administrative Building at my workplace and surprised a group of senior managers at their meeting around the conference table. They stared haughtily at the young man as if I were a side dish they hadn’t ordered. Quick to recover, I murmured “Bond, James Bond,” bowed, and made a hasty exit before anyone recognised me. Somehow I managed to keep my job.
Fleming’s Goldeneye became the social epicentre of Jamaica’s north coast, along with nearby Firefly owned by the internationally famous playwright, composer, actor and singer Noel Coward.
Goldeneye was a popular hangout for a string of Hollywood stars and distinguished literary greats, and Fleming counted British aristocrats and heads of state among his many guests. See Errol Flynn, David Niven, Truman Capote, Princess Margaret, and English Prime Minister Anthony Eden on his guest list.
The area of the north coast between Oracabessa and Port Antonio reeks with the pranks and misbehaviour of society jet-setters of those days.
One of the sights of Port Antonio in the 1950s was Flynn’s luxury yacht, Zacca, featured in a popular film The Cruise of the Zacca. The likes of Clara Bow, Bette Davis, and Ginger Rodgers became a part of the Port Antonio scene partying on the Zacca or on Flynn’s Navy Island.
Folly Great House was built by one Alfred Mitchell in 1905 as a monumental two-storey residence, 200 feet long, with a large block of stabling and staff quarters. Mitchell installed a colony of monkeys on nearby Woods Island, and it is said that he stocked the property with white geese, white pheasants, and white peacocks. Must have been quite a sight.
Similarly, the sight of Baroness Thyssen bathing in the nude every morning on Pelew Island in San San Bay must have kept the local sightseers busy. Pellew Island was given to her as a wedding gift by her first husband Baron Thyssen. She next married Prince Sadruddin, son of the late Aga Khan III. In those days the world came to Portland.
Other high-end visitors who took their millions to Jamaica for weekends or lengthy stopovers have left behind similar legends of the eccentric behaviour natural to the rich and famous, and fascinating to Jamaicans.
Morris Cargill gives amusing stories in his book Jamaica Farewell of the eccentricities of even British Government visitors to Goldeneye in the 1950s. On one occasion, Sir Anthony Eden, prime minister of England, spent a few weeks at Goldeneye to recuperate following a gall bladder operation. It was just after the ill-fated Suez Canal invasion and the British press made much about the prime minister enjoying the Jamaican beaches after such a serious crisis.
Shortly after Eden’s visit the Leader of the Opposition Labour Party Hugh Gaitskell also came. It was well known that Gaitskell and Fleming’s wife Anne were good friends, so the British press were on watch to get photos of the Labour Party leader sunning himself at Goldeneye and enjoying all the ‘capitalist privileges’ for which Eden had been criticised.
As luck would have it, Gaitskell turned up at Goldeneye for lunch one day only to find a horde of journalists waiting at the gate for him. He dashed off in the car, abandoning his passenger, Anne, who was in the post office sending a telegram to her friend, newspaper icon Lord Beaverbrook, in Europe to ‘call off his dogs’.
When Cargill turned up for the lunch party, Gaitskell was nowhere to be found. Eventually, Cargill got a telephone number to call. He phoned, and it happened to be a hardware store in Port Maria. When he asked for Gaitskell, the owner said, “Oh, you mean the strange Englishman who jus’ run into mi shop an’ hiding behind a barrel of nails?”
Eventually it was sorted out and the leader of the Opposition managed to get out unscathed, but to a good belly laugh and much conversation around Ian Fleming’s lunch table.
Of such were the antics and misadventures of the society folk who dashed in and out of Fleming’s house in St Mary. With those hilarious moments and unconventional behaviours that typified life at Goldeneye, it couldn’t have taken much imagination to conjure up those incredible adventures of the man who introduced himself as “Bond….james Bond.”
Lance Neita is a public relations writer and consultant. Send comments to the Observer or lanceneita@ hotmail.com.