Hairy Marshmallow

Doctor No. Anybody who has read a thriller by Ian Fleming is bloody well aware why the Russians have absquatulated with so many of Britain's state secrets. It's that blinking British Agent 007, it's that blithering bounder James Bond! To begin with, the man is an appliance snob--doesn't really mind if he shoots the wrong bloke so long as he shoots him with the right gun (8.5 oz. Beretta .25); wouldn't be caught dead, when he skindives after a killer, in anything but the very latest scuba suit. What's more, he is a cooking kook who cares more for his belly than he does for Britain--the sort of waiter baiter who considers himself a gourmet because he speaks menu French and probably reads the food page in Playboy. And of course he is a martini crank ("vodka not gin, shaken not stirred"), a tailor's dummy (Benson, Perry and Whitley, 9 Cork Street, London W.1), and a blood sportsman who would rather hunt quail (Eunice Gay son) than Red birds.

Agent Bond, in short, is just a great big hairy marshmallow, but he sure does titillate the popular taste. In the past ten years the ten novels in which he figures have sold more than 11 million copies in the U.S. and abroad. And now at last the varlet pimpernel can be seen on the screen. He looks pretty good. As portrayed by Scotland's Sean Connery, he moves with a tensile grace that excitingly suggests the violence that is bottled in Bond. But somehow the poor chap almost always manages to seem slightly silly--he can hardly help it in a story like this:

Sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a British agent there, 007 in less than 24 hours finds himself 1) abducted by a Chigro (Chinese Negro) chauffeur, 2) attacked by a furry Caribbean tarantula, 3) rammed by a hit-and-run Cadillac hearse, 4) waylaid by a sinister Chinese cutie, 5) smershed by the six-gun of a sneaky geologist. 007 senses that somebody is out to get him. Could it be the mysterious Doctor No, the mad scientist who lives in a mountain of bird droppings on Crab Key? 007 paddles over to have a look around. On the beach he meets Ursula Andress, a skindiver who seems to wear her air tanks in front, but before 007 can find time to examine the lady's apparatus the villain appears.

Poor No. He was an illegitimate child, farmed out to unfeeling foster parents. So naturally he grew up to be a mad scientist, joined the mad scientists' union (S.P.E.C.T.R.E.--the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), and set out to rule the world. When 007 finds him, he is about to "topple" a U.S. rocket carrying an astronaut. 007 tries to stop him, but No sneers evilly and shuts Bond up in a warm, dark cell. To escape, 007 has to crawl through a steaming-hot tube about a mile long. He comes out limp. Doctor No leaps upon him, snarling. Locked together, they reel toward the incandescent core of an atomic furnace . . .

Is it possible to make a good movie out of a James Bond thriller? Fleming fans probably won't take No for an answer.

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