16 replies to this topic

[Qwerty]

The secret war mission that inspired Goldfinger scene

The opening sequence of James Bond film Goldfinger was inspired by a real mission carried out by MI6 during the Second World War and written into the script by an expert on secret wartime operations.

It is one of James Bond's most famous scenes, showing the agent at his deadliest – and most dapper.

Emerging from the water in a wetsuit, he knocks out a sentry and plants explosives before unzipping his suit to reveal a pristine dinner jacket underneath. He then walks into the nearest bar, glances at his watch and nonchalantly lights a cigarette just as the storage tanks erupt into flames behind him.

Jeremy Duns, a British author researching his new book, has discovered that a Dutch spy used an almost identical technique to get into Nazi-occupied Netherlands.

Peter Tazelaar was under orders from the exiled Dutch queen, Wilhelmina, to slip into the country to extract two fellow countrymen to join the government-in-exile in Britain.

He and his fellow secret agents – Eric Hazelhoff Roelfzema and Bob Van der Stok – had often spent time at the seaside resort of Scheveningen, near The Hague, and knew that the Palace hotel there had been taken over by the Germans as a headquarters, and that every Friday night they held large and boisterous parties there.

Their plan was simple but audacious – approach Scheveningen in darkness by boat, and take Mr Tazelaar into the surf by dinghy, from where he could scramble ashore. Once there, he would strip off his wetsuit, to reveal his evening clothes underneath, to enable him to pose as a partygoer and slip past the sentries.

The scene it inspired, in the opening sequence of the 1964 film, was not in Ian Fleming's book, on which it is based, and the original draft screenplay began with Bond, played by Sean Connery, already in a bar.

But Mr Duns believes that Paul Dehn, a British scriptwriter and former senior intelligence officer during the Second World War who was called in to polish the screenplay, knew about the Dutch operation and wrote in the scene to give the film a powerful, dramatic opening.

"Dehn was steeped in the world of intelligence and special operations and his senior position meant he would certainly have been aware of the amazing Dutch operation, and he decided to use in the screenplay," Mr Duns said...

Read more...

http://commanderbond...quicknews/57867 - Telegraph

[Mr. Blofeld]

I heard about this from him on Facebook a few months ago! Didn't know he'd turn it into an article, but nice, nonetheless...

[Guy Haines]

Spotted this in the online version of The Daily Telegraph last night. Interesting read. Definitely more interesting than the wall to wall coverage of the General Election and the unpronounceable volcano and its ash cloud which is dominating the news at the moment over here!

[Aris007]

Interesting!

[spynovelfan]

I hope some people here enjoyed this. I spent a while researching it, and had a lot of fun. It was a real thrill to talk to Guy Hamilton. I prefer the headline they used in the print version of the paper: 'Forget Bond: the name's Tazelaar, Peter Tazelaar'.

This short scene in Goldfinger has been regarded for years as an example of the James Bond films presenting a fantasy vision of espionage, far removed from the reality. The idea of a secret agent emerging onto a coastline, stripping off a watertight suit to reveal immaculate evening clothes beneath it and then blending into festivities in the area seems, on the face of it, extremely unlikely.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Peter Tazelaar and his friends had a hard time persuading MI6 to do it - they thought it sounded foolhardy and more like a 'student prank' than a serious operation. But they eventually agreed to it, and spent weeks planning it, training the agents, designing the watertight suit and testing it. It took several attempts to land them. But they pulled it off. It was one of the most imaginative and audacious operations of the war. According to the official history of the Special Operations Executive by MRD Foot, SOE were rather envous of the style with which it had been done.

Paul Dehn was a senior instructor in SOE, and an expert in espionage techniques. Peter Tazelaar was also in SOE later, and even an instructor for the Dutch military in Canada at the same time Dehn was an instructor at Camp X. The details of the operation were also revealed at a seminar in Oxford in 1962. I think it's possible but astronomically unlikely that Paul Dehn never heard of this operation, and thought up one so similar in concept independently when he came to write this scene. The Sunday Telegraph article is aimed at a general readership, rather than Bond fans, so it didn't go into every detail of my research. (One detail I wish they had found space for is that Queen Wilhelmina wrote a message for Tazelaar to give his contacts in Holland, and MI6 then reduced it to the size of a fingernail and placed it inside the collar of Tazelaar’s dress shirt!)

I hope to publish a much fuller article on this one day, with photographs of the participants, quotes from Dehn's script and SOE's training manual, and a lot more, but in essence I think it boils down to this:

• In the early hours of November 23 1941, Peter Tazelaar came ashore in an 'experimental watertight suit' that had been specially designed for him by MI6, with 'immaculate' evening clothes beneath. Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema unzipped it and Tazelaar walked past the sentries pretending to be part of festivities in the area. My primary sources for this were Hazelhoff Roelfzema's memoirs Soldier of Orange and his later memoir In Pursuit of Life.
• In Paul Dehn's December 23 1963 draft of Goldfinger, James Bond comes ashore in 'a black water proof suit, zip-pocketed all over and a water proof ruck-sack'. He unzips it to reveal 'immaculate' evening clothes, and blends into nearby festivities. My source for this was the script itself, provided to me by the University of Iowa.

[DAN LIGHTER]

Wow! I wish I could bring info infomation to the table like this. What a find! Thank you JD.

[spynovelfan]

Thanks, DAN. Delighted you found it interesting.

[marktmurphy]

That's amazing. Those guys had balls.

[DAN LIGHTER]

This article reminds me of the one Jeremy did about the fictional spy world and how it actual relates to reality, you wouldn’t believe how both actually can reflect each other.

I watched Goldfinger only the other day and thought how daft it was, when in fact it now transpires it was actually based on reality. Do you think they put it into the film with serious intentions Spynovelfan? Or was it always meant to be a bit tongue in cheek?

I didnt know Guy Hamilton had such an intresting past in the War.

[sharpshooter]

Very interesting.

They had a large article about this in our paper today, along with a massive picture of Connery in the Goldfinger PTS.

[spynovelfan]

For anyone interested in this, there's a more detailed article here, which includes (as far I am aware) previously unpublished information about and excerpts from Paul Dehn's draft of Goldfinger, as well as quotes from the Camp X manual, photos and a lot more: http://bit.ly/90zuEL

And an interview on CBC's As It Happens - click on part 1 and fast forward to 19 minutes in: http://bit.ly/1579l

[Aris007]

Whoever the real spy, was I doubt if he could lit his cigarette as cool as Connery did!

He had nuts though, I have to say!

[spynovelfan]

Whoever the real spy, was I doubt if he could lit his cigarette as cool as Connery did!

He had nuts though, I have to say!

True! He was a smoker, though:

[spynovelfan]

I watched Goldfinger only the other day and thought how daft it was, when in fact it now transpires it was actually based on reality. Do you think they put it into the film with serious intentions Spynovelfan? Or was it always meant to be a bit tongue in cheek?

Sorry, DAN, I didn't see this question of yours earlier. It's hard to say, but Dehn's first draft of the scene was grittier: Bond used the cadaver of a dog as his camouflage, instead of a seagull. Maibaum's earlier draft had started with Bond in a white tux in a nightclub watching a dancer, when the explosion happens. Everyone scarpers, but Bond sits their calmly. Then Sierra, a local agent, comes in and apologises for being late: 'There were last-minute complications.' I discuss this in my article: http://bit.ly/90zuEL Incidentally, in Maibaum's earlier treatment of May 19 1963, the agent who enters to tell Bond the mission is accomplised is none other than Felix Leiter.

I think Paul Dehn decided it would be much more exciting to show the operation leading to the explosion, and to make it Bond doing it, rather than Sierra. I think the tux sparked off the memory of this remarkable operation, which was a cause célèbre in British intelligence circles, for obvious reasons. SOE had envied the style with which MI6 had pulled it off, and it's not hard to see why: it was pretty stylish! I think it's also unlikely to be the sort of thing thought up twice. So I think Dehn wrote it up in the most exciting way he could. Along the way, he included a lot of other real espionage expertise he had learned (and taught) with SOE during the war: how to use floating vegetation to camouflage the head when crossing water, kill sentries silently, attack storage tanks, and use plastic explosive. In hindsight, it seems like an odd way for Bond to have reached this place in peacetime: up until he strips off his wetsuit, the sequence is a textbook SOE operation - literally so.

I think Paul Dehn intended this to be an exciting and sensational opening sequence, but which drew on a lot of real espionage history and expertise, and in some way was a tribute to the ingenuity and bravery of Allied secret agents he had worked with or heard about during the war. In that sense, I think it has a lot in common with Ian Fleming's novels.

Incidentally, there are several things I dug up researching this that weren't strictly relevant to the article, but which I found interesting. Perhaps for another article. Here are a couple of examples.

Adrian Turner, in his excellent book on Goldfinger, quoted a letter from Richard Maibaum to Harry Saltzman complaining about the tone of Dehn's 'Englishy' script. Maibaum's notes on the script were in fact even harsher, and he softened them for his letter to Saltzman. For example, he noted: 'The whole point of a Fleming film has been missed' and 'Even M thinks he's David Niven'.

Turner also didn't quote the first paragraph of that letter, which I think is rather interesting, as it was written in 1964:

'Dear Harry,

I like your concept of Diamonds Are Forever - and should know by the end of the week whether I can do the script for you. You're aware, I'm sure, how much I like working with you and Cubby, but, as I told you, there are other considerations.'

It would be another seven years before Diamonds Are Forever was released: I find it interesting that Harry Saltzman appears to have been considering it as early as this, and had an idea for it.

[Revelator]

What a superb and endlessly surprising article! And what a splendid purpose it serves in keeping alive history that is too good (and bizarre) to be forgotten. It also increased my interest in Paul Dehn, whom I had already thought of as the extra ingredient that elevated Goldfinger above the other Bond films (he was someone who ought to have been retained for later Bonds). That impression was partly based on Dehn's other credits and Adrian Turner's book--at any rate, Dehn seems like a brighter figure than Maibaum, who was a solid writer but not a brilliant one.

Spynovelfan, based on your examination of the Goldfinger scripts, does Maibaum's too 'Englishy' complaint hold water, or is it just territorial griping?

Edited by Revelator, 22 April 2010 - 11:56 PM.

[Major Tallon]

Adrian Turner, in his excellent book on Goldfinger, quoted a letter from Richard Maibaum to Harry Saltzman complaining about the tone of Dehn's 'Englishy' script. Mauibaum's notes on the script were in fact even harsher, and he softened them for his letter to Saltzman. For example, he noted: 'The whole point of a Fleming film has been missed' and 'Even M thinks he's David Niven'.

Turner also didn't quote the first paragraph of that letter, which I think is rather interesting, as it was written in 1964:

'Dear Harry,

I like your concept of Diamonds Are Forever - and should know by the end of the week whether I can do the script for you. You're aware, I'm sure, how much I like working with you and Cubby, but, as I told you, there are other considerations.'

It would be another seven years before Diamonds Are Forever was released: I find it interesting that Harry Saltzman appears to have been considering it as early as this, and had an idea for it.

Another fascinating revelation. Suddenly, we're awash in some extremely interesting information about the literary James Bond, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

[spynovelfan]

What a superb and endlessly surprising article! And what a splendid purpose it serves in keeping alive history that is too good (and bizarre) to be forgotten. It also increased my interest in Paul Dehn, whom I had already thought of as the extra ingredient that elevated Goldfinger above the other Bond films (he was someone who ought to have been retained for later Bonds). That impression was partly based on Dehn's other credits and Adrian Turner's book--at any rate, Dehn seems like a brighter figure than Maibaum, who was a solid writer but not a brilliant one.

Spynovelfan, based on your examination of the Goldfinger scripts, does Maibaum's too 'Englishy' complaint hold water, or is it just territorial griping?

Thank you very much for those comments, Revelator and Major Tallon.

As I've just explained in another thread, I've had three threads I started here recently deleted without any warning or even explanation, and I feel my points in them haven't even been read, or if they have nobody's cared enough to consider them much.

I would like to discuss this more, of course, but I'm afraid I don't want to spend my time in a place that values my presence that little, so I won't be posting about this or anything else unless the situation changes. I'm sorry if that seems petty, but I just don't feel it's worth my spending time somewhere I'm repeatedly labelled as a bully and a troll and told to shut up, and nobody even blinks. I think it's CBn's loss, as I hope this thread shows, and as I hope someone will eventually realize. In the meantime, I can always be reached by email.