The Playboy and The James Bond

6 The bond beyond

Since the November 1965 issue, Playboy magazine has maintained some strong connections to James Bond, albeit in changing cultural circum- stances. Though the social and cultural landscape of Britain and America has changed dramatically since the sixties, the use of the Bond and Playboy formulas has largely endured, and for the most part the relations established between them continue over fifty years later. However, this does not mean there have not been some necessary adjustments, especially since critics and commentators have long speculated that perhaps James Bond and Playboy have outlived their cultural moment, questioning any apparent contemporary resonance and its meaning. The longevity of the Playboy–Bond relationship allows for further consideration of the interactions between these two phenomena during the sixties and continuing for decades into the twenty-first century, despite many obvious challenges. This chapter picks up the historical thread at the point of the mid-1960s, and aspects of the Playboy–Bond relationship discussed in previous chapters, in order to revisit and extend these insights into the years afterwards. The chapter considers how Bond and Playboy remain interconnected both periodically in the formal sense, and as long-standing cultural icons representing the playboy lifestyle fantasy. This has been achieved with varying degrees of success over the years through, among other things, humour, affection and nostalgia as a means of (re)negotiating the past and the ongoing cultural associations of the playboy.

 

 

Knowing bonds

 

In the mid-1960s, Playboy serialised the last of Ian Fleming’s Bond fiction and held up Sean Connery’s screen Bond for admiration, but

at times that did not stop the magazine from also taking pleasure in a tongue-in-cheek or parodic approach to what had already become a highly culturally loaded image and character. This was something obviously encouraged by the Bond-related phenomenon of spy spoofery that quickly took hold. By 1965, the popularity of Bond worldwide led to a host of imitators and influenced an international trend that continued into the late 1960s for spy-themed adventures, particularly on the big and small screens. Notably, the light-hearted film versions of superspies Matt Helm and Derek Flint, and television series £he Man fvom U.N.C.L.E (1964–1968), which had some early input from Fleming, were a few of the many attempts to take advantage of the spy craze in the US. In Ouv Man Flint (1966) and the sequel In Like Flint (1967), James Coburn starred as Derek Flint, an overly suave American secret agent, and ladies’ man. Among the signs of parody are the use of acronyms such as ZOWIE (the Zonal Organisation for World Intelligence and Espionage), Flint’s gadgetry in the form of a supermodified cigarette lighter, and his total invincibility, never losing his cool. In 1966, famed Rat Pack entertainer Dean Martin starred in £he Silencevs, the first of four Matt Helm films, followed by Muvdevev’s Row (1966), £he Ambushevs (1967) and £he Wvecking Cvew (1968), which were an exaggerated play on the Bond formula and style. Like James Bond, sometime secret agent Helm encounters a succession of beautiful women, spoofing the spy’s womanising exploits in much the same spirit as Flint. As Playboy drolly observed in an appreciative review of the first film: ‘£he Silencevs casts Dean Martin as Matt Helm in a spy spoof that is more double Ovid than 007. Compared with Dino’s operative, Sean Connery’s James Bond seems as lustful as a Trappist monk.’1

Though by the second instalment Playboy had already lost interest in the Helm films, it was no less enthusiastic about other contributions to the spy craze, including, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the so-called anti-Bond films. In contrast to the silliness of many of the Bond parodies was the gritty look and tone of the British Harry Palmer film series, £he Ipcvess File (1965) and its 1960s sequels Funeval in Bevlin (1966) and Billion Dollav Bvain (1967). The films were adapted from the spy novels written by Len Deighton, and produced by Harry Saltzman as an alternative to Bond. Appropriately enough, Deighton developed a close relationship with Playboy for a time. Not only did he write a