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Diamonds Are Forever, published in 1956, is the fourth James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming. It is also the seventh film in the EON Productions film franchise, produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. It was released in 1971.

Diamonds Are Forever marks the sixth and final official film appearance of Sean Connery as British Secret Service Agent, Commander James Bond. Connery would later portray Bond again in the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again in 1983 and lend his voice for Bond in the 2005 video game adaptation of From Russia with Love.

The novel

Plot summary

The novel takes place just over two months from the end of Moonraker, which ended with James Bond taking a small vacation. When Diamonds Are Forever begins, M instructs Bond to infiltrate a smuggling ring, which is running diamonds from African mines to the United States. Bond's job is to travel down the "pipeline" as far as he can and find out who is behind it all. Under the name of Peter Franks, a petty crook already known as a diamond smuggler, he meets a mysterious "go-between" named Tiffany Case, with whom he falls in love. Bond discovers that the smuggling ring is operated by a ruthless American gang called "The Spangled Mob", which is run by the brothers Jack Spang and Seraffimo Spang. Also part of the Spangled Mob are Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd who, along with Tiffany and certain parts of how the smuggling pipeline works, are the only things retained for the film.

As Bond learns throughout the novel, the pipeline begins in Africa where a dentist would pay miners to smuggle diamonds in their mouth which the dentist would extract during a routine appointment. From there the dentist would take the diamonds and rendezvous with a German pilot who would transport the diamonds to London via helicopter. In London, Tiffany would get an assignment from a contact only known as ABC, she would then meet with "the hire" (in this case, Bond) and explain to that person how to smuggle the diamonds to New York City. The pipeline ends in Las Vegas where Seraffimo Spang owns the Tiara hotel and a ghost town that headquarters the Spangled Mob, named "Spectreville" (Spectreville actually has no connection whatsoever to Bond's nemesis S.P.E.C.T.R.E., which appears later in Thunderball and is established at the start of the James Bond film series in Dr. No).

Felix Leiter plays a major part in the story, assisting Bond with inside information on crooked horse racing. They find that they are both investigating the same people. Leiter has left the CIA due to injuries sustained in Live and Let Die and is working for Pinkerton's as a private detective. Bond is captured by the Mob and tortured, but escapes with the assistance of Tiffany Case. The diamond pipeline is destroyed.

Comic strip adaptation

Fleming's original novel was adapted as a daily comic strip which was published in the British Daily Express newspaper and syndicated around the world. The adaptation ran from August 10, 1959 to January 30, 1960. The adaptation was written by Henry Gammidge and illustrated by John McLusky. The James Bond 007 Fan Club published a reprint of the strip in 1981. Diamonds Are Forever was published again in 2005 as part of the Dr. No anthology by Titan Books.

Related works

Diamond smuggling was a topic of great interest to author Ian Fleming. In 1957 Fleming wrote a non-fiction book on the subject, titled The Diamond Smugglers, which was published in the same format as his Bond novels and, as a result, is often erroneously listed as Bond book. Additionally, author Geoffrey Jenkins claims that he had collaborated with Fleming on the plot of a novel featuring James Bond and dealing with diamond smuggling, titled Per Fine Ounce. This book is claimed by numerous sources, including The Bond Files by Andy Lane and Paul Simpson, as being commissioned by Glidrose Productions. The book completed circa 1966 was never published.

The film

Plot summary

Relatively little of the original novel survives the adaptation to film, though many characters from the original book, plus the idea of Tiffany being a diamond smuggler, are retained, so it isn't a complete "rewrite."

The movie begins with Bond's worldwide pursuit of the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., Ernst Stavro Blofeld in revenge for the murder of his wife, Tracy Bond with the implied permission of MI6, at the end of the previous adventure, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Cornering Blofeld in an underground lab where the villain is in the process of creating duplicates of himself (via a form of plastic surgery), Bond throws Blofeld into a vat of superheated mud. "Welcome to Hell, Blofeld," he quips.

Meanwhile, huge quantities of South African diamonds are being stolen but have not been sold on the market. Suspecting that the stones are being stockpiled to depress prices, the Government orders Bond to assume the identity of a professional diamond smuggler called Peter Franks to infiltrate the smuggling operation and find out who the stockpilers are.

With the help of fellow smuggler Tiffany Case, and amidst the bright lights of Las Vegas, he uncovers a plot by Blofeld (who didn't die in the cave; Bond had killed another duplicate instead) to create a laser satellite capable of destroying any target on Earth. He uses this weapon to selectively destroy nuclear installations in America, Russia, and China, setting up an international auction, with nuclear supremacy going to the highest bidder.

A notable part of the plot of the movie involves Blofeld's use of the industrial properties of a recluse Nevada multimillionaire (played by Jimmy Dean) by the name of Willard Whyte, the character being a thinly veiled version of Howard Hughes.

The film features a very unusual couple of henchmen: Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. There is a strong suggestion that they are involved in more than just a professional relationship; they appear to be homosexual, although the film never explicitly makes that clear. Throughout the film, they use several interesting ways of assassinating their victims, from the use of a scorpion to kill a South African dentist, tying the feet of Plenty O'Toole to a metal plate and drowning her in a swimming pool, and attempting to incinerate James Bond alive in a crematorium furnace.

Also memorable are the female guards placed by Blofeld over Willard Whyte, named Bambi and Thumper.

Cast & characters

Crew

Soundtrack

"Diamonds Are Forever", the title song, was the second James Bond theme to be performed by Shirley Bassey, after "Goldfinger" in 1964. Bassey would later return for a third performance for 1979's "Moonraker". The title song was later sampled by Chicago rapper Kanye West for a single titled "Diamonds from Sierra Leone."

The original soundtrack was once again composed by John Barry. This was his sixth time composing for a James Bond film.

Track listing
  1. Diamonds Are Forever (Main Title) - Shirley Bassey
  2. Bond Meets Bambi And Thumper
  3. Moon Buggy Ride
  4. Circus, Circus
  5. Death At The Whyte House
  6. Diamonds Are Forever (Source Instrumental)
  7. Diamonds Are Forever (Bond And Tiffany)
  8. Bond Smells A Rat
  9. Tiffany Case
  10. 007 And Counting
  11. Q's Trick
  12. To Hell With Blofeld
  13. Gunbarrel and Manhunt
  14. Mr.Wint and Mr.Kidd/Bond To Holland
  15. Peter Franks
  16. Airport Source/On The Road
  17. Slumber, Inc.
  18. The Whyte House
  19. Plenty, Then Tiffany
  20. Following The Diamonds
  21. Additional and Alternate Cues

Vehicles & gadgets

  • Pocket snap trap — A small gadget hidden in a pocket to give a person performing an unwanted search on the wielder a painful surprise that would provide a critical distraction for the wielder to exploit for an attack.
  • 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 — Tiffany Case picks up Bond after eluding some henchmen.
  • Moon buggy — Used by Bond to escape from the laboratory.
  • Fake Fingerprint — Bond uses a fake fingerprint that clings to his thumb to trick Tiffany Case into believing he is Peter Franks.
  • Slot Machine Ring — Q created a ring that when used ensures a jackpot at the slot machines every time.
  • Grappling braces — When Bond rides on top of the elevator to the suite of Willard Whyte he uses for the last leg of this trip the rappelling cord built into his braces. (A similar gadget is the belt used in GoldenEye.) Bond uses a special gun to fire the pitons needed to rappel, and later demonstrates that this can also be a deadly weapon.

Locations

Film locations

Shooting locations

Trivia

  • According to the 'making of' documentary on the DVD the series producers originally intended Diamonds Are Forever as an extensive reboot of the Bond franchise to appeal to an American audience.

  • It was originally proposed for the previous film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, to end before it does in its book form. The film would end with Bond and Tracy driving off after their wedding, and then the already-filmed sequence of Bond and Tracy pulling over, only to be shot at by Blofeld and Irma Bunt, would provide the pre-title sequence for Diamonds Are Forever. The idea was dropped prior to the theatrical release of On Her Majesty's Secret Service because George Lazenby had already announced he would not be returning to the role for the next film.

  • John Gavin, an American actor who had played Sam Loomis in Psycho for Alfred Hitchcock amongst many other credits, was originally cast as Bond. However, United Artists' chief David Picker was unhappy with this decision and made it clear that Sean Connery should be enticed back to the role and that money was, essentially, no object. When approached about resuming the role of Bond Sean Connery demanded the fee of £1.2 million (then $2 million, and over $20m inflation adjusted for 2005) and that UA agree to back two films of his choice. Both demands were met and Connery used part of the fee to establish, in collaboration with the Scots racing driver Jackie Stewart, a charity to help deprived children in Edinburgh. Gavin's contract was quietly bought out by UA. The first film made under Connery's deal was The Offence directed by his friend Sidney Lumet. The second was to be an adaptation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare using only Scottish actors and in which Connery himself would play the title role. This project was abandoned due to the Roman Polański film version that was also in production at the same time. Sean Connery never played Macbeth on film, although his son Jason Connery later did.

  • Albert R. Broccoli claimed to have literally dreamed up the plot for this film. A close friend of Howard Hughes, Broccoli dreamed that Hughes had been replaced by an imposter.

  • Sammy Davis Jr.'s brief cameo appearance was cut from the theatrical release. It would later be restored on the DVD. A still photo of him can be seen in the program Bond reads when he notices Shady Tree has a stage show.

  • Scenes also cut from the theatrical release include a wet, towel clad Plenty O' Toole sneaking back into Bond's hotel room and searching through Tiffany Case's purse, and Plenty breaking into Tiffany's house.

  • The climax of the film was changed several times during pre-production. Early drafts included a boat chase on Lake Mead that ended with Blofeld getting trapped above Hoover Dam. When the climax was relocated to an oil rig, the original ending had Bond pursue Blofeld who was trying to escape in his mini submarine. They both would have ended up fighting each other in a salt mine.

  • The woman in the bikini named "Marie", who in the beginning of the film is "convinced" by Bond to give up the location of Blofeld, was Denise Perrier, Miss World 1953.

  • The expletives "God damn" and "bitch" are heard in dialogue, marking the first use of adult language in a Bond film (previous films never used words stronger than "damn" or "hell"). The film still retained its PG rating in the USA, though.

  • This was the second time in which Lana Wood's character was sent out of a window. In the film The Searchers, where Lana played the young version of her older sister Natalie Wood's character, she is sent out of a window to escape being killed by rampaging Indians. In this film, Lana's character, Plenty O'Toole, is thrown almost completely naked out of a window to what was supposed to be her death, but survived, albeit temporarily, by landing in the pool.

  • The filmmakers must have had some sort of arrangement to use Ford vehicles. Besides Tiffany's Mustang, Blofeld's chief scientist drives a Ford Econoline van, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd drive a Ford Thunderbird, and in the moon buggy chase the security guards are driving Ford Custon 500s. About the only non-Ford vehicles that appears in the scenes shot in America is Blofeld's Mercedes limousine, along with a Plymouth Fury III (used by CIA agents where 007 is sitting in a parked Galaxie 500 sedan).

  • The distinctive round house where Willard Whyte was being held prisoner and where Bond fought Bambi and Thumper, supposedly just outside Las Vegas, is actually located in Palm Springs, California.

External links

1956 novels | 1971 films | James Bond films | James Bond books | British novels

Diamantenfieber | Diamantes para la eternidad | Les diamants sont éternels | Agente 007 - Una cascata di diamanti | Diamonds Are Forever | 007 ダイヤモンドは永遠に | Diamanter varer evig | Diamonds Are Forever | Бриллианты остаются навсегда (фильм) | Дијаманти су вечни | Döden spelar falskt

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Diamonds Are Forever".

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