The Fleming Fatherly Friend Figure

BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
Before I start, I’d like to acknowledge Kingsley Amis and his “The James Bond Dossier” for laying the groundwork for the following thoughts.

The usually cited figure for being James Bond’s friend is, of course, Felix Leiter. He appears in many of the books and films and there is no denying that the two are close buddies, helping each other when needed and hanging out when the opportunity arises. To a lesser extent, Rene Mathis fits that bill also.

I’d argue, however, that, the archetypal Bond friend figure is neither of these two. It’s an older man, verging on father figure, that Bond comes across in his adventures. This man is often (though not always) bordering on the shady side of the law though he can be trusted. His appetites are large and he’s frequently described as a big man (though not always). Most of all, he provides a warmth in his relationship with Bond which 007 reciprocates.

Book order-

Quarrel- LALD
Ernie Cuneo- DAF
Kerim- FRWL
Quarrel again- DN
Colombo- Risico
Fidele Barbey- The Hildebrand Rarity
Marc-Ange Draco- OHMSS (the father figure angle is hard to miss here- he's Bond's father-in-law)
Dikko Henderson- YOLT
Tiger Tanaka- YOLT
plus
Litsas- Colonel Sun, by Amis himself

(I'm not going into Gardner, Benson etc but please feel free to add to the list)

Most of these are in the films, and I’d add Raoul in DAD to the list once we go into the films, which use Mathis in this category.

Please note that this character is different from the “sacrificial lamb” character, though they do sometimes overlap. Thus Chuck Lee in AVTAK fits the second category, but not the first.

I’d be grateful for any thoughts, especially from Higgins who inspired this post.

Comments

  • HigginsHiggins GermanyPosts: 16,618MI6 Agent
    Interesting thoughts Barbel.

    Having read all novels (in German),but not being the bookworm that you are, let‘s decline the movies *under this aspect cronologically and I strictly rely to the ‚older, friendly and often on the shady side of the law‘ definition.

    Dr. No: - we see Felix though
    FRWL: Kerim
    GF: - we see Leiter though
    TB: - we see Leiter
    Yolt : - I see Tanaka more like a japanese Felix, Dikko Henderson would be that but he dies too soon as one and not the only sacrificial lamb
    OHMSS: Marc Ange Draco for sure!
    DAF: Felix in this mess
    LALD: Felix
    TMWTGG: none, but someone could argue Scaramanga in parts. Lt. yip does not fill the criteria imo
    TSWLM: none?
    MR: none?
    FYEO: That would be Columbo
    OP: probably the first female figure -Octopussy herself
    AVTAK: Tibbett, but his character is very different to the mould
    GE: ?
    TND: ?
    TWiNE: ?
    DAD: ?
    CR: Mathis in parts
    QoS: Mathis in parts
    SF: ?
    SP: ?




    * of course it could be speculated that Ian sneaked himself into the play with those fatherfigures
    President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.

    Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    In TWINE, Valentin comes close.
    Tibbett is a good thought, though as you say he's very different. If they'd merged his character with M. Aubergine and Bond had been played by an actor 20 years younger then he'd fit right in.
  • HigginsHiggins GermanyPosts: 16,618MI6 Agent
    Imo, Tibbett serves another purpose.

    The banter between him and Bond is supposed to bring some lightness and to distract from the visual reality, that Moore was too old.

    And it only works so well because MacNee and Moore went so well with each other - otherwise it would have been very un-pc in many regards
    President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.

    Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    Yes, you're right (which is why I said "if"). Tibbett is also one of that film's sacrificial lambs, which is sometimes another function of the "father" character (Quarrel, Kerim) though not always (Draco, Colombo).
  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters
    Barbel wrote:
    I’d argue, however, that, the archetypal Bond friend figure is neither of these two. It’s an older man, verging on father figure, that Bond comes across in his adventures. This man is often (though not always) bordering on the shady side of the law though he can be trusted. His appetites are large and he’s frequently described as a big man (though not always). Most of all, he provides a warmth in his relationship with Bond which 007 reciprocates.

    Kerim in FRWL is always the example of this that comes to mind for me. His likeable roguish nature and the warmth of his relationshop with Bond come across well in Armendariz's performance in the film. Certainly Kerim was firmly established in my mind as one of my favourite characters in the Bond series some time before I ever read the novel. Since then I've read the novel 3 or 4 times, and even on subesquent readings I've always been taken aback at just how 'colourful' Fleming made him in the book, with his consumption of large quantities of woman, alcohol and tobacco. and his stories, especially how he won a "Bessarabian hell-cat" in a fight with some gypsies who he keeps chained naked under his table in order to tame her. If Bond himself has something of a roguish nature, he is nothing compared to Darko Kerim.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    Yes, Kerim is probably the best example.
    I should have mentioned above that the character is usually a native of whatever country Bond is currently in, and will introduce him to the culture there (Kerim), show him around (Tiger), and so on.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    TSPWM probably has Hosein, Bond's old university chum, but he's barely in it of course. He's good though, I actually wouldn't have minded him in that role.

    I think Sharkey and Felix might just about both qualify for LTK, but they're not quite in the Kerim mould. Actually Q might even qualify for that one!
  • HigginsHiggins GermanyPosts: 16,618MI6 Agent
    Barbel, maybe you want to edit the title.
    Imo it‘s important to mention Fatherly Friend Figure
    President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.

    Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
  • HigginsHiggins GermanyPosts: 16,618MI6 Agent
    Do we know, if Fleming tried to sneak himself in into the books that way?
    President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.

    Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    I'm not aware of any reason to think he did. He probably fancied himself as a bit of Bond and a bit of M.
    Higgins wrote:
    Barbel, maybe you want to edit the title.
    Imo it‘s important to mention Fatherly Friend Figure

    Yes that's why I said Q.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    Higgins, title duly changed.
    emtiem, I've always thought of Sharkey as simply a fake Quarrel. Quarrel by another name, for some reason (can't have been copyright).
    Hosein is very close, it would have been nice if his role in the plot had been larger.
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent
    Other than Moneypenny and May, are there any female friends of Bond? Other than the friends with benefits, I mean.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    edited May 2020
    Barbel wrote:
    Higgins, title duly changed.
    emtiem, I've always thought of Sharkey as simply a fake Quarrel. Quarrel by another name, for some reason (can't have been copyright).


    He absolutely is, but if you listed Quarrel yourself then the Quarrel stand-in has to count! :)
    Barbel wrote:
    Hosein is very close, it would have been nice if his role in the plot had been larger.

    Yeah I'd never really thought about it before but he's really good in his one scene and would have made a good ally in a larger role. Bond and him instantly work well together onscreen.

    Raoul is the attempt to do another Kerim in DAD but it's all a bit half-hearted.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    Number24 wrote:
    Other than Moneypenny and May, are there any female friends of Bond? Other than the friends with benefits, I mean.

    Well Goodnight I suppose, although even she gets the benefit by the last book.
    There's his aunt I suppose who although we never meet her is the closest to an actual father figure! :)

    Trivia quiz: which film does Bond mention her in? :D
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent
    Number24 wrote:
    Other than Moneypenny and May, are there any female friends of Bond? Other than the friends with benefits, I mean.
    he was raised by his Aunt Charmian after his parents died. Mentioned once in the YOLT obit
    ...the youth came under the guardianship of an aunt, since deceased, Miss Charmian Bond, and went to live with her at the quaintly-named hamlet of Pett Bottom near Canterbury in Kent. There, in a small cottage hard by the attractive Duck Inn, his aunt, who must have been a most erudite and accomplished lady, completed his education for an English public school, and, at the age of twelve or thereabouts, he passed satisfactorily into Eton, for which College he had been entered at birth by his father
    she is a major recurring character in the Young Bond books, where she is a globetrotting anthropologists, a kind of a Katharine Hepburn type who wears pants, drives he original Bentley very fast, and teaches Young Bond to prefer coffee to that mud the English call tea.
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent
    Higgins wrote:
    Imo, Tibbett serves another purpose.

    The banter between him and Bond is supposed to bring some lightness and to distract from the visual reality, that Moore was too old.

    And it only works so well because MacNee and Moore went so well with each other - otherwise it would have been very un-pc in many regards
    He's also a variation of the Expert character who delivers some mcguffinly exposition about the case. The Expert usually appears only once in M's office as part of the briefing, before the mission proper begins. Like the gold expert, or the diamond expert. ConneryBond usually does not pay attention to the Expert, MooreBond usually cuts him midsentence off to show he knows more than the Expert does.

    If Tibbett'd been played by anyone other than John Steed, I don't think his character would have gone into the field and traded witticisms for the first act of the movie.
    The first time I watched the film I did not recognise the actor and wondered why he was getting so much screen time.


    Also, if you consider those scenes to be a version of the Saratoga chapters from Fleming's DaF, Tibbet is taking the place of Leiter, who was independently investigating the Spang Brothers' race track cheating.
    (the Spangs replaced a dud horse with a Ringer, Zorin injects the dud horse with super-soldier steroids during the race)
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent

    If Tibbett'd been played by anyone other than John Steed,

    More like Watson ;)
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    emtiem wrote:
    Number24 wrote:
    Other than Moneypenny and May, are there any female friends of Bond? Other than the friends with benefits, I mean.

    Well Goodnight I suppose, although even she gets the benefit by the last book.
    There's his aunt I suppose who although we never meet her is the closest to an actual father figure! :)

    Trivia quiz: which film does Bond mention her in? :D

    TMWTGG
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    emtiem wrote:

    If Tibbett'd been played by anyone other than John Steed,

    More like Watson ;)

    :D :D :D

    Sherlock-Holmes-in-New-York-Roger-Moore-Patrick-Macnee.jpg
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    Higgins wrote:
    Imo, Tibbett serves another purpose.

    The banter between him and Bond is supposed to bring some lightness and to distract from the visual reality, that Moore was too old.

    And it only works so well because MacNee and Moore went so well with each other - otherwise it would have been very un-pc in many regards
    He's also a variation of the Expert character who delivers some mcguffinly exposition about the case. The Expert usually appears only once in M's office as part of the briefing, before the mission proper begins. Like the gold expert, or the diamond expert. ConneryBond usually does not pay attention to the Expert, MooreBond usually cuts him midsentence off to show he knows more than the Expert does.

    If Tibbett'd been played by anyone other than John Steed, I don't think his character would have gone into the field and traded witticisms for the first act of the movie.
    The first time I watched the film I did not recognise the actor and wondered why he was getting so much screen time.


    Also, if you consider those scenes to be a version of the Saratoga chapters from Fleming's DaF, Tibbet is taking the place of Leiter, who was independently investigating the Spang Brothers' race track cheating.
    (the Spangs replaced a dud horse with a Ringer, Zorin injects the dud horse with super-soldier steroids during the race)

    That's a good point, cp. I've always thought of those scenes as inspired by the Ascot scenes in Gardner's then recent "Licence Renewed" though, rather than Fleming's DAF.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    Barbel wrote:
    emtiem wrote:

    If Tibbett'd been played by anyone other than John Steed,

    More like Watson ;)

    :D :D :D

    Sherlock-Holmes-in-New-York-Roger-Moore-Patrick-Macnee.jpg

    Yay! :D
    They're actually rather good in that, if obviously not exactly as Doyle imagined :)
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent
    Barbel wrote:
    I've always thought of those scenes as inspired by the Ascot scenes in Gardner's then recent "Licence Renewed" though, rather than Fleming's DAF.
    me too, especially the preceding scenes where the villains are introduced at the racetrack.

    Some body else here once claimed the stable scenes were adapted from DaF, and I doubted it, til one time I actually reread those chapters just before rewatching the film, and I did indeed see the parallels.
    (its a boring part of a boring book, I confess I never remembered those chapters clearly before)

    I expect the filmmakers can incorporate more than one source at the same time, finding similar scenes and picking what they like best and putting them in a blender to generate a "new" plot.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    Barbel wrote:
    I've always thought of those scenes as inspired by the Ascot scenes in Gardner's then recent "Licence Renewed" though, rather than Fleming's DAF.
    me too, especially the preceding scenes where the villains are introduced at the racetrack.

    Some body else here once claimed the stable scenes were adapted from DaF, and I doubted it, til one time I actually reread those chapters just before rewatching the film, and I did indeed see the parallels.
    (its a boring part of a boring book, I confess I never remembered those chapters clearly before)

    Yes I'm the same, I can't even fully remember if I've read DAF or not! :D
    It's funny though, a bit like how someone recently pointed out to me that LTK appears to be based loosely on TMWTGG; I hadn't actually noticed how that was a little Fleming nod before. Well spotted! :)
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    MGW said there was a bit of "Yojimbo" in there, too. If you haven't seen that, "Fistful Of Dollars" is the same plot.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    Barbel wrote:
    MGW said there was a bit of "Yojimbo" in there, too. If you haven't seen that, "Fistful Of Dollars" is the same plot.

    In LTK? Sure I think now you say that it sounds familiar, although in a way the TMWTGG book probably gives you enough to hang it on. I guess those films explore the idea of a man getting hired by his unsuspecting enemy more than Fleming does though.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    It's where MGW as writer was heading, but it may not be where John Glen as director ended up. At the time, I was more concerned with watching how much Fleming material was included and there is a fair bit of that.
  • Shady TreeShady Tree London, UKPosts: 2,965MI6 Agent
    edited May 2020
    On Bond and friends:

    Fleming's Bond is a character who, we're told, has few personal friends. But he counts Bill Tanner, the Service's Chief of Staff, as one of them. Whenever Bond is in London between missions, the two men routinely lunch together. Of course, this is more of a peer friendship, despite the different roles in the Service which the two men occupy. In the films, the latest iteration of Tanner (Rory Kinnear) is enough of a friend with Bond that they feel able, in SF, to take each other into their confidence about what they make of Mallory. The Michael Kitchen iteration of Tanner is similarly easy in his relationship with Bond - enough so to share with him, in GE, his view that the new M is an "evil queen of numbers". His main function, though, is expository. (James Villiers' one-stop Tanner of FYEO is an altogether different proposition: he's an irascible supervisor of Bond; school-masterly, not a friend.)


    Barbel wrote:
    I’d argue, however, that, the archetypal Bond friend figure is [...] an older man, verging on father figure, that Bond comes across in his adventures. This man is often (though not always) bordering on the shady side of the law though he can be trusted.

    When considering the fatherly ally's tendency to operate on the wrong side of the law, it's interesting to look at how the novels and films distinguish alike between what, by their lights, is acceptable criminality - on the part of the ally - and the sort of criminality which puts others beyond the pale. In the movie FYEO, for example, Topol's Columbo admits to smuggling contraband - but the heroin he leaves to Kristatos (the villain of the piece). I seem to recall that Fleming somewhere in the novels classifies trafficking women among the pursuits of an acceptable rogue/ally - which obviously, if so, makes the novel's relational moral alignment a lot more problematic than the author probably intended (certainly for readers today. In the world of the most recent Bond, trafficking women is an offence committed by *principal* criminals, not allies: witness SPECTRE's board meeting in SP.).**

    ** It's Marc Ange Draco that I was thinking of. Bond "knew that [the Union Corse, which Draco leads] controlled most organized crime in metropolitan France and her colonies - protection rackets, smuggling, prostitution and the suppression of rival gangs" - as well as legitimate business interests. ('On Her Majesty's Secret Service', Ch. 5: 'The Capu'.) Yet in the worlds of James Bond, Fleming's Draco is probably second only to Kerim Bey as the typical figure of fatherly friend to Bond.

    ** I'm afraid that Fleming's Colombo is in the same boat. From 'Risico': "'My friend, I am a smuggler. [...] And there have been many other things - even beautiful girls from Syria and Persia for the houses of Naples. I have also smuggled out escaped convicts. But,' Colombo's fist crashed on the table, 'drugs, heroin, opium, hemp - no! Never! I will have nothing to do with these things. These things are evil. There is no sin in the others.'"

    The sarcasm of Gregg Beam's line in QOS comes to mind: "Yeah, you're right. We should just deal with nice people."
    Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    He's in TMWTGG too (presumably it's Tanner anyway).
  • superadosuperado Regent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,651MI6 Agent
    Barbel wrote:
    MGW said there was a bit of "Yojimbo" in there, too. If you haven't seen that, "Fistful Of Dollars" is the same plot.
    Yes, with Bond playing off Sanchez against his own lieutenants. Interestingly, Kurosawa sued Leone for ripping off his film’s plot and won the distribution rights of Fistfull in Japan. In the Bond cinematic universe however, Blofeld can be credited with using the Yojimbo strategy, starting in FRWL.
    "...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
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