It was 1964 and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI obviously had a reputation to maintain – did it want to be associated with a fictional spy who has “beautiful women presenting themselves to him in scanty attire”? The answer, according to newly revealed FBI files, was a resounding no.
The files show how spooked the FBI became at the prospect of being portrayed in the 1964 Bond movie Goldfinger, in which 007 foils the eponymous baddie in an attempt to steal bullion from Fort Knox. A memorandum from Hoover’s office to officers in Los Angeles and Miami reveals that Goldfinger’s producer Harry Saltzman had requested the use of military aircraft in the film.
It said Goldfinger was based on books by Ian Fleming that were “generally filled with sex and bizarre situations”. The LA office was instructed to advise the bureau on the proposed movie, while Miami was told to contact Saltzman at the Fountainebleu hotel and “vigorously protest any mention of FBI or portrayal of its agents in his proposed movie”.
There was even a federal law prohibiting the studio using the name or initials of the FBI without written permission: “If a copy of this law is available in your office, it should be furnished to Saltzman.”
The memo set in train a flurry of background checks on Saltzman, Fleming and the screenplay writer Richard Maibaum – or Malibaum and Naibaum as the FBI wrongly call him. But the investigations were far from exhaustive. Could the film’s producer be the same Harry Saltzman who came to the bureau in 1951 as a newspaper photographer to take a picture of a laboratory? The file reads: “It was not possible to determine from our files whether this photographer is identical with captioned individual.” Another section lists Saltzman’s output – Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer – after an officer consulted “the 1963 edition of the International Motion Picture Almanac”.
One memo reveals that several of Fleming’s books had previously come to the bureau’s attention after referring to the FBI. “All of these references have been favourable in the past. His stories are generally filled with beautiful women presenting themselves to him in scanty attire … it was reported in Life magazine in August 1962 that President Kennedy was one of his most avid readers.”
Another memo reveals that the film company United Artists had paid $300,000 for the book rights to Goldfinger and was making it for a budget of $3m.
The memos also get some facts wrong. Felix Leiter is described as “a fictional FBI agent” whereas, as all Bond fans know, he was CIA. It also says he was played by Jack Lord, who took the part in Dr No but was replaced by Cec Linder in Goldfinger.
Whether the FBI would have figured more heavily in Goldfinger if Hoover had not objected so vigorously remains unclear. Certainly, one line in a memo does not ring entirely true: “Saltzman stated that the movie concerns a plan to rob Fort Knox, which robbery is solved by the FBI.” James Bond, surely?
