How Goldfinger nearly became Goldprick

After cartoons like Mickey Muse, arguably the most popular character in the history of cinema is James Bond -with 23 very successful films over 52 years, and still counting. In fact, it has been calculated that a quarter of the world's population has seen at least one Bond film. It is, admittedly, unlikely that any of these films would ever win an award at Cannes, but if there was a lifetime Oscar for Commercial Success it would, quite possibly, go to Bond.It all began exactly 50 years ago, with Goldfinger. No, it wasn't the first Bond film (it was preceded by Dr No and From Russia with Love), but it was the film where the Bond formula, as we know it, came together for the first time: with the new elements of snappy humour, high-tech gadgets and a villain bent on world domination being injected into the existing, incendiary mixture of action, sexy girls and exotic lifestyle, and which -with the help of slick new marketing techniques -now created a whole that was much more than the sum of its cinematic parts. From Goldfinger onwards, as one critic observed, the Bond movies didn't get any better, they got bigger.
According to Rotten Tomatoes' ratings Goldfinger scores 96% - ahead of Casino Royale's 94% and Skyfall's 92%. But Goldfinger also has other things going for it: it is ranked among the American Film Institute's Top 100 Lists in various categories. The film also features one of the great nonspeaking roles in cinema, that of Oddjob, the villain's grotesque, larger-than-life henchman, who proved so effective that he provided the template for an entire procession of grotesque, larger-than-life henchmen that would follow over the years. And, needless to add, there's Sean Connery's characteristically suave 007, played with lethal charm.
Despite the fact that Goldfinger was produced on a budget that was enormous for its time -more than both the previous Bond films put together -it recouped its investment in just two weeks, and went on to become one of the biggest blockbusters of the decade.Its success triggered a whole new genre of spy films, and spy spoofs (sometimes you couldn't tell the difference between one and the other), featuring secret agentslike The Man from UNCLE. and Our Man Flint. The ripples it created still continue: some of today's characters, like Jason Bourne, can arguably be traced, directly or indirectly, back to the Goldfinger phenomenon.
It is also remembered by cinephiles for the controversies that accompanied it. First, author Ian Fleming had named his creepy villain after the well-known architect of the time, Erno Goldfinger, whose "brutal" modern style of architecture he hated. Erno Goldfinger threatened to sue; Fleming sent word back through his lawyers that he would, in that case, change the villain's name to "Goldprick".Erno capitulated.
Even more controversially, the US censors objected to the name of the heroine, "Pussy Galore", and pushed for it to be changed to "Kitty Galore". The producers fought back; the censors wouldn't relent.Finally, it is said that it was only Sean Connery's charmingly soft Scottish way of pronouncing the name, as "Pusey", that resolved the problem.
Author Ian Fleming, unfortu nately, died one month before the movie was released. But on second thoughts, that might have been just as well, for Fleming was in the process of losing control over the films to the producers. While the first two Bond films, Dr No and From Russia With Love, were true to the stylish, faintly Hemingway esque spy Fleming had created, Goldfinger began to take Bond into a whole new area of mass entertainment, which the author might not have appreciated (his own rather snobbish vision was to have Richard Burton play the role, and Alfred Hitchcock direct). Over time, the producers would continue to evolve the hero with a marketing man's eye on public tastes, not artistic integrity.Which is what has kept Bond so relevant over half a century. Watching the over-the-top Roger Moore or the brutal Daniel Craig playing Bond (whose character was originally based on the author's own personality) would have, doubtless, left Fleming feeling shaken rather than, in any way, stirred.
(The writer is an advertising professional, cinephile and social historian.)