11 replies to this topic

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...gets-movie.html

Christine, the spy who loved Ian Fleming, gets her own movie



The story of beautiful wartime spy Christine Granville, who was Ian Fleming’s lover and the inspiration for the James Bond character Vesper Lynd, is to be made into a major film.


(just for the sake of posting her picture..sorry.. )


Entitled Christine: War My Love, the big-budget movie is expected to begin filming in June with a ‘Hollywood A-lister’ in the title role.

The production team has yet to finalise who its star will be but Oscar-nominated Kate Winslet is one of the names said to be interested in the part.

Also in the running is French actress Eva Green, who won a Bafta for her portrayal of Vesper in Casino Royale, Daniel Craig’s debut as Fleming’s 007.

The movie will tell the story of the Polish countess Krystyna Skarbek, who adopted the name Christine Granville for her wartime exploits with Britain’s Special Operations Executive.

Dubbed ‘Churchill’s favourite spy’, she was awarded the George Medal for her work against the Gestapo.

Her courageous actions, including a treacherous crossing into her native Poland from Hungary with the help of an Olympic skiing champion, helped saved countless lives.
After the war, she drifted into a series of affairs – including one with Fleming – before enrolling as a stewardess on a cruise ship where she met the man who was to murder her in 1952.

The film is now in pre-production and will be directed by Agnieszka Holland, whose credits include Total Eclipse, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Ms Holland said: ‘Krystyna was almost certainly the most remarkable female spy of the Second World War. She was intelligent, courageous, seductive and bewitchingly attractive and men were willing to sacrifice everything for her and go to any lengths to have and keep her.’

Skarbek’s cloak-and-dagger exploits saw daring raids into occupied Poland, with forays into Egypt and Syria. Parachuted into occupied France in 1944, she took on the persona ‘Pauline Armand’ to rally the Resistance.

After the war, Skarbek apparently found it difficult to settle. She took a job as a stewardess on a liner between Southampton and Australia, where she befriended the man who would later kill her.


An inadequate loner and obsessive, Dennis Muldowney turned into a pest, leading to a final confrontation at a hotel in Kensington. In a fit of rage, Muldowney brutally stabbed her to death. She was 44.

Muldowney was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, declaring on the way to the gallows: ‘To kill is the final possession.’

James Bond casting director Debbie McWilliams, who chose Eva Green to play Vesper, is currently auditioning actresses for the title role. She said: ‘We are looking for a Hollywood A-lister to carry this wonderful story.’

Edited by danslittlefinger, 15 February 2009 - 03:06 AM.

[Santa]

Excellent!

[Agent 76]

Seems interesting the story.

[spynovelfan]

Christine Granville's story is a fascinating one, but having spent some time looking into it I'm pretty sure that the ideas that Fleming had an affair with her and that she was the inspiration for Vesper Lynd were invented out of whole cloth by the writer Donald McCormick (aka Richard Deacon), who was responsible for several other hoaxes. I'd be interested if anyone could point to any evidence of either claim: photographs, correspondence, documents, interviews with either Granville or Fleming, etc - anything this is not simple assertion or repetition or paraphrasing of McCormick's claims.

[danslittlefinger]

Christine Granville's story is a fascinating one, but having spent some time looking into it I'm pretty sure that the ideas that Fleming had an affair with her and that she was the inspiration for Vesper Lynd were invented out of whole cloth by the writer Donald McCormick (aka Richard Deacon), who was responsible for several other hoaxes. I'd be interested if anyone could point to any evidence of either claim: photographs, correspondence, documents, interviews with either Granville or Fleming, etc - anything this is not simple assertion or repetition or paraphrasing of McCormick's claims.

Interesting, I had not really read about this woman and yes, likely it has been made up or elaborated for effect over time.
Can you suggest any decent readings on her at all? She does intrigue me.

Edited by danslittlefinger, 15 February 2009 - 10:17 PM.

[spynovelfan]

She's one of those characters where it has become almost impossible in some instances to separate the truth from very attractive-sounding myth. Madeleine Masson's biography seemed the most informed account to me, but even she made the mistake in a later edition of including all the Fleming stuff in a prologue, simply because it had appeared in an earlier biography (McCormick's). To be fair, McCormick did go to quite some length, quoting letters and so on. All fairly convincing. But there's not a single source for any of it, and considering his history (on Jack the Ripper, for instance) and that John Pearson and Andrew Lycett did not even mention her, it looks to me like it wasn't just a fling that has been made into something more - I think McCormick made up the whole lot to juice up his book. It certainly worked, as the idea has persisted unchallenged ever since.

McCormick included one very clever detail: that Granville's nickname was Vesperale, given to her by her father. The whole thing just sounds so perfect, and it's the sort of story that you want to be true. Brilliantly, he gave Masson as the source, even though that's nowhere in her book. (She seems not to have spotted this when she used him as the source for the whole thing in the later edition.) So where, one wonders, did McCormick get all his information from? Nobody else in the world seems to have seen it - including all the other biographers of Granville and Fleming.

[danslittlefinger]

She's one of those characters where it has become almost impossible in some instances to separate the truth from very attractive-sounding myth. Madeleine Masson's biography seemed the most informed account to me, but even she made the mistake in a later edition of including all the Fleming stuff in a prologue, simply because it had appeared in an earlier biography (McCormick's). To be fair, McCormick did go to quite some length, quoting letters and so on. All fairly convincing. But there's not a single source for any of it, and considering his history (on Jack the Ripper, for instance) and that John Pearson and Henry Chancellor and others have not even mentioned this, it looks to me like it wasn't just a fling that has been made into something more - I think McCormick made up the whole lot to juice up his book. Where, one wonders, did McCormick get all his information from - nobody else in the world seems to have seen it.

Well yes, one wonders where most of the stuff people seem to get/know materializes from.
I will look for Masson's biog. I think this would make a great film but alas, we will be pawns in the whole Hollywood spy/romance fluff that will inevitably crop up in these projects. Maybe focus on the other work she did and leave the Fleming connection to a minimum?
I would adore Eva in this role. Irony is alive and well although casting her would make the Vesper Lynd connection even more of a talking point. Might work against her case.
If Kate wins the Oscar (I am no doubt she will) then I would presume we will see Ms Winslet.
I don't know the in's and out's of the casting but one of those two gals would be ok with me...or maybe Cate Blanchett thrown in there too..

Thanks for the info.

[spynovelfan]

No problem. I edited my post a bit - Chancellor does mention her in fact; he says her nickname was Vesperale and that some think she was the model for Vesper and had an affair with Fleming. No source.

[danslittlefinger]

No problem. I edited my post a bit - Chancellor does mention her in fact; he says her nickname was Vesperale and that some think she was the model for Vesper and had an affair with Fleming. No source.

Does Vesperale mean anything or is that a usual name?

[spynovelfan]

McCormick claimed in 17F that Granville's father called her that as it meant 'like the evening star'. I don't think it's very common.

In the 2005 edition of her biography of Granville (in the afterword, not the foreword, sorry), retitled CHRISTINE: SOE AGENT & CHURCHILL'S FAVOURITE SPY, Masson related the whole story and ended by saying that one of Fleming's many biographers, Donald McCormick, 'majors' on Fleming's affair with Granville. It sounded as if everything she'd said about it was her research, and that perhaps there was more in McCormick's account than in others because he majored in it (Fleming's other biographers, by implication, only mentioning it in passing or not to such a great extent). But I didn't remember it from other accounts. I read McCormick and realised that everything Masson had written had come straight from his book; that nobody else has any evidence for the claims; that Masson herself has no other evidence and even concluded by covering her back and saying she couldn't 'confirm' that Fleming used her as a model for Vesper; that Fleming wasn't mentioned once in the previous edition of her book; that McCormick was a serial hoaxer; and that many of the other claims in his biography were very implausible, such as the whole business with Fleming and Hess - he's also the only source for that.

I think what happened is something like this: McCormick spotted a reference in Masson's original 1975 biography to a friend of Granville's in Cairo called Ted Howe. Howe was in SOE but later became a journalist with Kemsley, along with Fleming and McCormick. So he had inside knowledge he could use. He concocted the story that Howe introduced Granville to Fleming, and gave a plausible restraurant and date for it, and even quoted letters from Howe to Fleming and vice versa. Rather bold! I imagine Howe must have been dead at this time (ealry Nineties), as Fleming of course was, so neither could object and McCormick had plausibility, having known both of them. This is quite some hoaxing, I know, but he'd invented letters from nothing before when writing about Jack The Ripper, and I think that's what he did here, too. Vesper based on daring SOE spy. Great stuff. So great we're still talking about - perhaps McCormick should have written novels, like Fleming. But it doesn't really make much sense. Other than the fact that both were spies, had dark hair and were beautiful, in what way was Vesper based on Christine? There's nothing in the plot of CR that could be seen to have been based on Granville's extraordinary life, so we're left with the idea that he modelled Vesper on her physically. Yes, but... look at the descriptions of Solitaitre and Tatiana and several other characters: they're all very similar! And that's not really basing a character on someone anyway, making them look a bit the same.

But the most damning thing is that there's no prior record for any of this anywhere else but in the work of a known hoaxer, and all subsequent references lead back to him.

[danslittlefinger]

Wow, thanks for the extra info. It does all add up to the viewer/reader (as usual) being discerning in their approach to these things..reader beware..

A lot to chew on. You are very informed. I'm impressed.

As for casting for the various people, your choices?

[spynovelfan]

Cheers. Re casting, Daniel Craig as Muldowney? Eva Green's actually pretty good casting, I think (and the French scenes would be a doddle!) - but from interviews I've read with her I doubt she'd be interested in playing a part so closely linked to Vesper. Keira Knightley might be an interesting choice.