A Friend In Need Somerset Maugham Retelling
Abele Beardsley
The following interview with Ann Fleming was originally conducted on television by Pierre Berton and then transcribed and published in his book The Cool Crazy Committed World of the Sixties [1966]. It's one of the few major interviews with Fleming's widow and shows that Berton was either good at his research or a Bond fan himself. Enjoy!
At fifty-six, I found her a still-handsome woman. She must once have been very striking indeed. It is possible to perceive the steel within her, but this does not mean she is not charming. Behind the wall of reserve, behind the very British tendency to hold herself in check, there emerges the driest of wits. She answered all my questions readily enough but, as the transcript shows, without a great deal of elaboration. I began, of course, by asking her opinion of James Bond.
MRS. FLEMING: I think he enjoyed it enormously. He enjoyed all the research he did in the months before he went to Jamaica and settled down to write, and then he used to get through the book, the plot, and come home and correct it for the next six months.
MRS. FLEMING: Well, the books and the films are quite separate. The films go straight to the estate and the royalties go to a man called Jock Campbell, the chairman of an enormous concern called Booker Brothers.
Ann Fleming was born in 1913. So in 1965 she would have been fifty-two, not fifty-six. Pierre Berton himself was only fifty-five. Given his extensive writing career, you'd think he'd know what a dangling modifier is.
As for Ann Fleming...
There are numerous legends about her, most of them not fit for retelling, that's why they get spread over the internet. This article is one of the rare chances to get a tiny glimpse on her character based on her own words.
Definitely. Ann frequently seems like an off-putting figure, but here we have a chance to see Bond through her eyes. Some have thought that her behavior toward Amis was that of a rhymes-with-witch, but here we learn that the continuation novel was planned relatively soon after Fleming's death and that neither Amis, whom she says she knew well, nor Jock Campbell bothered to even tell her about the project. You can see how that might have soured her reaction.
Good news! I found the Ladies Home Journal interview (from Oct. 1966) and it's reprinted below. Ann repeats several facts, and sometimes even their phrasing, from the earlier interview, but this is a far more in-depth piece and has many more personal touches and details. And it's definitely got a snappier title...
Ian Fleming wrote the most successful spy stories of our time. His books and movies made millions. Now, his widow discloses a plot from real life: how this dashing, brilliant man was actually haunted by the success of his fictional hero and finally driven to a premature death.
Somerset Maugham once said to me when the James Bond myth grew to threatening proportions that the public would henceforth refuse to leave my husband alone, and that Ian would feel himself driven to satisfy his public. Maugham was certainly proved right.
Sometimes I hated James Bond. Ian should certainly not have written the last book. I implored him to rest. The doctors warned him time and again. It was far too much strain for a man who had suffered a bad coronary attack.
Women like to read of supermen, and men like to identify themselves with adventure and success. It is perhaps a Walter Mitty-ish dream to have a happy interlude with a lovely girl with no subsequent complications.
In my view, novels and plays are marriage surely for pleasure and an escape from daily life. If they must contain a sociological message, Charles Dickens did it best: with narrative excitement, comedy and humanity.
Ian was a melancholic, and needed much solitude. I have a photograph of him with his three brothers. Their father, Major Valentine Fleming, D.S.O., a member of Parliament, was killed in in the First World War. In the picture, three boys are smiling at the Camera and there's one looking saturnine. This was Ian. He was different. I don't think he was a very easy child.
He created James Bond at Goldeneye. We went there for two months in 1951, and that's too long a time just for sunbathing. He established the working pattern he was to maintain rigidly until the end. With all his restlessness, he was a man who enjoyed a set routine. Orange juice was put out for him at 7:30 A.M. so that he could drink it before early swimming. He would ring for his shaving water, which was brought to him by his housekeeper Violet. He would tell her what kind of eggs be wanted for breakfast. We had paw-paw and guava jelly and wonderful coffee. Then he would bang away on the typewriter from 9:30 to 11:30, when we took to the sea with masks and spear guns. When it was dark, he would correct what he had written in the morning. He would spend a long time at the railing of the cliff garden, staring out to sea, smoking continuously. He enjoyed the melancholy beauty of tropical nights. We went to bed early.
Ian took a lot of trouble over the names of the girls in the hooks. Pussy, and the rest. But, as far as I know, they meant nothing at all. He sensibly didn't have anything to do with the people who played these parts m the films. It didn't really interest him what they did with the pictures. He did feel that an unknown should play James Bond, and I know he liked Sean Connery, but they did not see much of each other.
I remember once that he took our son Caspar out when he was only six and let him eat as many oysters as he liked. He said Caspar was very sick and would never look at an oyster again, which was an economy for the future.
Ian was a man who had great zest and an ability to interest people in what was interesting him. He would talk with enormous enthusiasm. If we had a publisher to dinner, he would tell him how to run the publishing business; if it was a politician, Ian would ten him how to govern the country.
Ian sold a majority interest in all his book royalties to a London investment company for a lump sum and, since he died within six months, most of the money he got went to the government. He accepted a hard-and-fast fee of 25,000 for each of the Sean Connery films and, of course, they have made millions at the box office. The tax authorities are even trying to claim tax now on any future films that may be made.
The sadness, the tragedy of it all, was that, because of his increasingly poor health, Ian was not able to enjoy the great success he had earned. James Bond gave with one hand, and took away with the other.
The premiere of the second film, From Russia With Love, also was not a happy occasion. Ian was awfully ill. It was a terrible ordeal for him to sign autographs, and for me to try to rescue him from the fans. Our nice Dr. Beal and his wife were in the audience, in case anything happened.
Ian seemed a little better at the supper party. He had won 300 at the Le Touquet casino and, in one of his James Bond gestures, he spent it all on caviar. It was an extravagance, but it gave him pleasure, which was all that mattered.
I am certain it was the threat of a big lawsuit that brought on his heart attack in the first instance. I have talked to doctors about it. They say that women are not troubled by lawsuits, but they are a source of great distress to men. It was a suit for plagiarism concerning Thunderball brought against Ian by some of his early associates. It was pending for a long time, and it worried him very much. It was a very confused arrangement, in which nothing had been written down in black and white. Ian thought he was dealing with a great friend. It was all resolved in one of those immensely complicated legal verdicts.
In Ian's case, the outstanding example of betrayed friendship was Malcolm Muggeridge, who wrote venomously in Esquire magazine, and in the London Observer. Since Malcolm had frequently been our guest, it, was a shock to me. I do not speak to him now.
I suppose the spy racket will continue while there is a market for it. The company which owns the Fleming royalties has commissioned Kingsley Amis, the author of Lucky Jim, to carry on the series. I have the right of veto. It seems particularly ludicrous that Kingsley should attempt this; James Bond exact opposite of his Lucky Jim. In the past, all efforts to continue series like Bulldog Drummond and Sherlock Holmes failed. I think the plan neither right nor sensible.
Some brief notes on the piece above:
* It's sobering to know The Man With the Golden Gun contributed to Fleming's death!
* Ann continues to come across as more sympathetic. It's evident that she resented Bond for changing her husband's character and ultimately killing him. She loved her Ian for who he was, and his career as a writer was something she hadn't bargained on. Her distaste for Bond is also explained by a simple fact that she wasn't a fan of thrillers in general.
* That said, I cheered when Ann defended the Bond books against the charges of snobbery and of treating women roughly. She even cited Bond's romance with Kissy in YOLT!
* How amusing to see the vehemently anti-American praise the Yanks when interviewed by them...
* The personal details--Fleming's hotel routine, his love of fishcakes, treating Caspar to oysters--are touching. The evidence of how Fleming was changed by Bond is slightlydisturbing.
* Further debunking of the myth that Fleming disliked movies...
* I can vouch for Ann's praise of Bleak House. One of the greatest of all novels, even if you don't like Dickens. "Jarndyce vs Jarndyce" is also a good metaphor for Kevin McClory's life.
* Ann's public appearance during this period seem intended to drawing attention to her financial situation by embarrassing the those with the cash. Today the Fleming estate is of course doing quite well, in the hands of Peter Fleming's descendants.
* Further evidence that Fleming actually liked Connery's Bond!
* The "great friend" Ann sarcastically mentions is Ivar Bryce.
* Malcom Muggeridge was despicable for more reasons than spitting on Fleming's grave. He made an ass of himself during the controversy over Monty Python's Life of Brian and his other idiocies are detailed by the great Clive James.
* Ann's comment about Bond and Sherlock Holmes continuation novels was obviously short-sighted...