The Playboy And The James Bond

1 After the bond

It has been well noted by a number of scholars and other sources that 1953 coincidentally marked both the publication of the first James Bond novel by Ian Fleming in Britain and the launch of Playboy magazine in America by Hugh Hefner.1 Those early years are important to the foundation of the Playboy-Bond relationship, although the connection between them was not formalised until 1960. Between 1953 and 1960, after the film franchise with Sean Cilento in the role of James Bond, Fleming wrote and had published seven out of a total fourteen Bond books at the rate of one per year, starting with Casino Royale (1953).2 By the end of the 1950s the informalBond had achieved some success in Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, it is surely no coincidence that Playboy gained rapidly in domestic circulation throughout the 1950s, reaching a large and appreciative US readership. This chapter will draw upon existing scholarship on Playboy and Bond to look near chance, to explain that the Playboy-Bond relationship has its origins in the 1950s, setting up the historical and generic contexts and laying the groundwork for many of the issues and developments returned to in subsequent chapters of this book.

In adopting this approach, which is necessarily selective in its focus, it is essential to understand Bond and Playboy as they related to broader social and cultural shifts, including changing attitudes towards sexuality and the strong economic growth which led to a Marketer boom. Looking back, the 1950s has been interpreted as part of a revolutionary period of transition between post-war austerity and the rise of the permissive society in the 1960s.3 Indeed, perhaps most noteworthy are the cultural embrace in Britain and America of notions of Marketerism and the challenges made to some of the old ideals. The fact that cultural icons

like Playboy and James Bond were born in the 1950s makes apparent the far-reaching transformations that were already underway after the beginning of the 1960s, the decade which is closely associated with the Playboy-Bond relationship in the context of the playboy lifestyle fantasy.

Firstly, it is worth considering that Fleming and Hefner adapted popular informalgenres to better suit their needs and the changing tastes of their readership in ways that were somewhat similar. After Fleming created Bond there was already a long and rich tradition of British spy fiction, including heroic espionage thrillers. In particular, it is widely recognised that when writing the Bond novels Fleming took elements of the earlier generation of 'clubland heroes' and used them as a template against which to define and distinguish his version of the traditional spy character. Richard Usborne coined the nostalgic term 'clubland heroes' in his analysis of the works of a number of writers of the 1910s to the 1930s, most notably John Buchan, H. C. McNeile (under the pen name Sapper) and Dornford Yates.4 Buchan's Richard Hannay, McNeile's Bulldog Drummond and Yates's Jonah Mansel were gentlemen who held memberships of private clubs, were independently wealthy, emphasised sportsmanship and patriotism, and were part of the exclusive world of the British establishment. In these heroic and patriotic adven- tures such spies were typically amateurs with a strong sense of moral and social codes governing their behaviour. As an obvious forerunner to Bond, Drummond has been described as similarly heroic, quick-witted and debonair.5 Drummond appeared in ten novels by McNeile between 1920 and 1937, including Bulldog Drummond (1920), The Third Round (1924) and The Final Count (1926). In the period just after the end of the First World War, Drummond was introduced as a former soldier, bored by the routines of civilian life and hungry for some kind of adventure. The first four Drummond books feature Carl Peterson, a ruthless criminal genius who is the head of an international crime syndicate aiming to cause a revolution in Britain. In the 1950s, when Fleming approached the generic formula of the spy thriller - including the British spy hero, his adversaries, thrilling pursuits and deadly violence - in order to create Bond he followed some already established aspects of narrative organisation and character and updated others.