The James Bond Bedside Companion by Raymond Benson Read Free Book Online Page B

very worst instincts of his readers.
    Bernard Bergonzi, in Twentieth Century magazine, also objected to the "sex, snobbery, and sadism" in the book. But Simon Raven in the Spectator defended the novel:
     
    . . . Commander Fleming, by reason of his cool and analytical intelligence, his informed use of technical facts, his plausibility, sense of pace, brilliant descriptive powers and superb imagination, provides sheer entertainment such as I, who must read many novels, am seldom lucky to find.
     
    The Times Literary Supplement noted that a lesser writer couldn't have pulled the story off. Controversy always helps, and DOCTOR NO began outselling the previous Bond novels.
    The jacket, the last designed by Pat Marriott, featured a silhouette of Honeychile Rider standing among tropical plants on a brown background. It was the first novel to actually show Glidrose Productions as copyright holders as a result of the 1956 copyright act DOCTOR NO was released in the United States in June. (In Britain the title was written DR NO, in the United States it was DOCTOR NO.) James Sandoe of the New York Herald Tribune Book Review said that it was the most artfully bold, dizzyingly poised thriller of the decade. You'd much better read it than read about it."L. G. Offord of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "This reviewer must admit that it strikes her as so wildly funny that it might almost be a leg-pull, and at the same time hair-raising in a loony way." True to form, Anthony Boucher continued his tirade against Fleming by saying, ". . . it is 80,000 words long, with enough plot for 8,000 and enough originality for 800."
    In April 1958, Fleming flew to Bombay to investigate a treasure hunt in the Seychelles islands for a Sunday Times article. There, the French pirate Levasseur supposedly had hidden £120 million worth of gold and other booty. The treasure hunt turned out to be disappointing, but Fleming retained his impressions of the islands for the setting of a future James Bond short story entitled "The Hildebrand Rarity." From there, Fleming flew to Rome to meet Anne, and the couple spent a holiday in Venice and the Lido peninsula, which provided the background for another short story, "Risico."
    When Fleming returned to London, he discovered that CBS had made him a lucrative offer to write thirty-two James Bond episodes for television over the next two years. Fleming accepted the offer and began working on the first few outlines.
    At about this time Fleming and his friend Ivar Bryce began talking about making a James Bond movie themselves. Bryce had recently gone into film production, and had formed a partnership, Xanadu Productions, with young writer/director Kevin McClory. McClory had been associate producer and foreign location director for Around the World in Eighty Days, and had also worked with director John Huston. He was at that time directing and producing a film called The Boy and the Bridge, which he had also co-scripted. Ivar Bryce had put up the money for the production.
    McClory met Fleming in late winter of 1958. Bryce had asked Fleming to preview a rough cut of The Boy and the Bridge in his absence. Fleming liked the film very much, only complaining a bit about the sentimentality of the story. As he and McClory saw more of each other they began talking about a James Bond film. Bryce had given McClory some of Fleming's novels to read, and the writer/director, immediately grasping the cinematic potential of a character like James Bond, became excited about making a 007 picture after The Boy and the Bridge was completed. McClory, keen on oceanography, had written a screenplay to an underwater picture he had always planned to make someday. It followed that the Bahamas was suggested for a setting for the Bond film, especially since McClory knew the area well, and the production could also benefit from the Eady Subsidy Plan, which allowed the making of a film on a British base with American actors. It was finally agreed that