Tuesday, April 25, 2023

'Byrne's Sitdown'

Byrne’s Sitdown 

By Paul Davis 

I was sitting in a booth at the Penrose Diner in South Philadelphia waiting for a friend to join me for lunch. 

I was drinking a cup of Penrose’s good coffee and looking out the window to see if my friend had arrived when I received a text on my phone that he could not make it. 

Not wanting to hog a booth by myself, I started to pick up my coffee and move to the counter when someone said my name. I looked up and saw Fred Byrne. 

“Paul, you eating alone? Can I join you?” Byrne said. 

“Sure. I was waiting for a friend, but he just texted me that he can’t make it.” 

Byrne, a stocky man with gray hair, was about 70 years old. He was a retired hardware store manager that I met at a cigar dinner some years ago. He recognized me from my photo that accompanied my crime column in the local newspaper, and he introduced himself. 

As we smoked our fine cigars, we spoke of our military service during the Vietnam War. Byrne had been a Marine at Da Nang and I had been a sailor on an aircraft carrier. 

I liked him and I gave him my card that had my telephone number and email address on it. He wrote his telephone number and email address on a piece of notepaper and handed it to me. But for whatever reason we never contacted each other. 

The waitress stopped by our table and Byrne and I ordered lunch. Byrne had a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News, a newspaper I used to write for, and he showed me an article on the murder of John “Johnny Boy” Grillo, a local mobster who had just been released from federal prison. He had been shot multiple times and died on the street. 

“I read that online this morning,” I said. “I didn’t know him, but I knew his father Dom some years back. I heard the kid was nothing like his father.” 

“I knew them both,” Byrne said. “I knew the father from the neighborhood, but only to say hello to. I knew he was a mob guy, but he was always polite. I knew the kid as he was a friend of my daughter’s. 

“Want to hear a story about my “Sitdown” with Dom over his kid?” 

“Sure,” I replied. 

I didn’t pull out my notebook or small tape recorder, as I didn’t yet know if he was telling me this story for my crime column, and I didn’t want him to shut him down by asking just yet. 

“Well, it wasn’t a formal sitdown, as I wasn’t a member of the mob. Hell, I’m not even Italian. But like I says, Johnny Boy was a friend of my daughter when they was teenagers." 

Our lunch orders arrived and as we ate, Byrne went on to tell me about the time he was returning to his South Philly rowhome years ago when his daughter was a teenager. He was accompanied by his friend Mike Fratelli, a Philly detective. 

Byrne’s daughter and wife and gone to the New Jersey shore and were staying at his in-law’s summer home. Byrne had remained in South Philadelphia as he had to work at the hardware store where he was the manager. He met Fratelli, and they had a couple of beers at their favorite corner taproom. 

They walked from the bar to Byrne’s house and when they got there, Fratelli saw that one of the basement windows and been pushed in. Lights were on in the basement, and they heard music. 

"Your family is down the shore, right?” Fratelli asked. 

“Yeah.”

“Give me your house keys and you stay here,” Fratelli said. 

Fratelli took the keys, drew his firearm, ran up the steps to the front door and let himself in. 

Byrne bent down and looked in the busted basement window and saw about four or five teenage boys and girls drinking his liquor from his basement bar and dancing to the music from his radio. 

Byrne, who had a license to carry a firearm as he handled money at his store, drew his 9mm Beretta and pointed it at the group in his basement. 

“Get the hell out of my house, you punks,” Byrne yelled. 

“Fuck you,” one of the boys said. 

Byrne fired a round into his basement wall away from the teenagers as a warning shot. The teenagers ran up the basement stairs in fright and straight into the arms of Fratelli. Fratelli herded the teenagers out the front door and onto the sidewalk. 

“We thought you were all at the shore,” one of the girls said. “We just broke in as a goof. We weren’t going to steal anything.” 

“I know you. You’re Janice, my daughter’s friend,” Byrne said. “What the heck do you think you all were doing?” 

One of the boys, a big and husky teenager, rushed Byrne and pushed him up against the  wall. Byrne slapped the teenager across the back of his head and face with his Beretta. The kid fell to the sidewalk bleeding. 

“You killed Johnny Boy,” Janice cried out. 

The kid stood up and placed his hand on the back of his head. Byrne told the teenagers to get lost. He told them to never see his daughter again. 

“That kid was Dom Grillo’s kid,” Fratelli said as the teenagers walked away. 

“He shouldn’t have broken into my house.” 


The following evening, Janice and her father visited Byrne. The father apologized for his daughter’s behavior and pleaded with Byrne to not have his teenage daughter arrested. Byrne told the man he did not plan to press charges. 

The father thanked Byrne and assured him that his daughter would be punished. 

The two men shook hands as Janice looked down in shame and embarrassment. 

While at work the next day, a hoodlum strolled into his hardware store and approached Byrne. Byrne’s hand reached behind his back to the holster that held his Beretta. 

The man smiled and said that Dom Grillo wanted to buy him a drink at the Oregon Avenue bar that night at eight o’clock. 

“Tell Dom I’ll be there.”


Promptly at eight, Byrne walked into the dimly lit bar with Fratelli. They began to walk to the back of the bar where Dom Grillo was sitting with his son. 

A young hoodlum stepped in the way and asked if they were armed. 

“Hell, yeah. I got two guns on me,” Byrne said. “And I’m a Marine, so I know how to use ‘em.” 

“I’m a cop, so you know I’m packing,” Fratelli said. 

“Let ‘em through,” Dom Grillo said. 

Grillo, a rugged and gruff man in his 60s, was a captain, or capo, in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. He controlled illegal gambling and loan sharking in the neighborhood. But having faced the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers in close-quarter combat, Byrne was not intimidated by Grillo or any other gangster.

 “Sit down,” Grillo offered. 

Byrne and Fratelli sat down across from Grillo and his son, whose face and head were bandaged. 

“I see you brought Mike the cop with you,” Grillo said. 

“Yeah, he’s my friend and he was with me when we caught your son and the other kids in my house.” 

“And you felt you had to pistol-whip my son because he broke into your house.” 

“He attacked me. So yeah, I was defending myself. I could have shot him.” 

“This true?” Grillo asked Fratelli. 

“Yeah,” Fratelli asked. 

Grillo turned his head and faced his son. 

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” 

"This crazy guy threatened us with a gun, so I rushed him and …” 

“Shut up now.” Grillo ordered. “You broke into the man’s house. He had the right to shoot you. Perhaps he should have.” 

Johnny Boy Grillo sat back and remained quiet. 

“I’m truly sorry for my boy’s rash and stupid behavior, and I’m grateful that you didn’t shoot him. I hear you are a decent man, and I hear you was a Marine, so I respect you.

 “Let me pay for the damage to your home,” Grillo said. 

“I manage a hardware store, so the repairs got done. I don’t need or want any money.” 

Grillo rose and shook Byrne’s hand. 


“After this, Johnny Boy still went on to be a pain in the ass to his father, even after the boy joined the mob,” Byrne said as the Penrose busboy cleared away our dishes. “He was always mouthing off to people and making trouble for his father. 

"I think the old man was glad that Johnny Boy was put in prison. Old Dom got to spend his last years not worrying about his brash and stupid son.” 

Byrne added that he was not surprised that someone shot and killed Johnny Boy Grillo the minute he walked out of prison.  

“Apparently, he didn’t get the kind of homecoming he expected,” I said. 

© 2023 Paul Davis 

Friday, April 21, 2023

Foreign Devil: My Washington Times On Crime Column On Richard Hughes, The Far East Correspondent Who Inspired Ian Fleming And John Le Carre

 Back in 2020 I wrote about an interesting man named Richard Hughes (seen in the above photo), a Far East correspondent for the Sunday Times who inspired both Ian Fleming and John le Carre. Both spy thriller writers modeled a character after Hughes. 

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:  


The foreign correspondent who inspired Ian Fleming and John le Carre - Washington Times


 

Later this year Casemate will publish Edward Abel Smith’s “Ian Fleming’s Inspiration: The Truth Behind the Books.”

 

“James Bond is possibly the most well-known fictional character in history,” Casemate Publishing notes. “What most people don’t know is that almost all of the characters, plots and gadgets come from the real-life experiences of Bond’s creator — Commander Ian Fleming.

 

“In this book, we go through the plots of Fleming’s novels explaining the real-life experiences that inspired them. The reader is taken on a journey through Fleming’s direct involvement in World War II intelligence and how this translated through his typewriter into James Bond’s world, as well as the many other factors of Fleming’s life which were also taken as inspiration.”


 One friend who inspired Fleming was the late Richard Hughes, who was a foreign correspondent for the British Sunday Times. He was the inspiration for the fictional character Dikko Henderson in Ian Fleming’s 1964 James Bond novel “You Only Live Twice.” 


 “He is a giant Australian with a European mind and a quixotic view of the world,” the late Ian Fleming said of Richard Hughes. In 1959, Fleming, then the foreign manager of the Sunday Times, was asked by the newspaper's editor to travel to foreign cities and write about them, as Fleming notes, "through a thriller-writer's eye." The newspaper articles were compiled into a book called "Thrilling Cities" in 1963. 



Monday, April 17, 2023

Don’t Defund The FBI – Change Its Leadership: My Broad + Liberty Piece On How The FBI Is Important To Maintaining Law And Order In America, Even If Change At The Top Is Desperately Needed.

 Broad + Liberty posted my piece on changing the leadership of the FBI, rather than defunding the federal law enforcement agency. 

You can read the piece via the below link or the below text:

 Paul Davis: Don’t defund the FBI – change its leadership (broadandliberty.com)

On March 29th, the Babylon Bee, a Christian satire and humor publication, offered a clever faux news piece that claimed the FBI pledged to commit their full resources to identify, isolate, and destroy whichever Christian beliefs were responsible for the brutal attack at a private Christian school that week.    

Although Christians are not generally known for satire and humor, the piece went on to offer a fake and funny quote from FBI Director Christopher Wray, “Our stated goal is to protect U.S. citizens from foreign and domestic terror threats, such as parents at school board meetings, pro-life demonstrators, and Christians who push innocent trans people toward violence by being mean-heads. I want a halt on all investigations until we figure what Christians did to deserve being attacked.”  

The Babylon Bee is not alone in thinking that the FBI has become “weaponized” by today’s leftist leadership in power. According to a Rasmussen survey last month, 50 percent of likely voters contacted in a national telephone and online survey have a favorable impression of the FBI, which includes 22 percent who have a very favorable impression of the federal law enforcement agency. Of those surveyed by Rasmussen, 45 percent view the FBI unfavorably, which includes 24 percent who have a very unfavorable impression.      

Former FBI special agent Nicole Parker testified on February 9th in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. She stated that the FBI has become “politically weaponized,” from the top leadership in Washington D.C. to the field offices. According to the Rasmussen poll, 64 percent agreed with that statement, including 44 percent who strongly agreed. Just 30 percent disagreed, including 17 percent who strongly disagreed.

To counter the weaponization, some are calling for the defunding of the FBI. Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), angry at the indictment of former president Trump, noted on Fox News that the Republicans now controlling the House would look at defunding the Justice Department and the FBI.

“We control the power of the purse, and we’re gonna have to look at the appropriations process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones who are engaged in the most egregious behavior.”

Jordan mentioned several incidents in which he claimed the Justice Department and the FBI interfered against Trump and the Republicans.

“2016, they spied on his campaign,” Jordan said. “2018, the Mueller investigation. 2020, they suppressed the Hunter Biden story. 2022, they raid his home 91 days before an election. And now, the leading candidate for President of the United States in the 2024 election, they indict the former president and top candidate who’s leading in every poll. Just let we the people decide we wanna elect, and stay out of the election process, for goodness sake!”

Trump has also come out for defunding the FBI. But Trump’s vice president disagrees. Last August, after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago looking for classified documents, Mike Pence advised Republicans to stop attacking the FBI.     

“The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” Pence noted. “And these attacks on the FBI must stop; calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”

Pence stated that Republicans should hold Attorney General Merrick Garland accountable and not attack the FBI’s rank-and-file agents. 

I agree. 

As a law-and-order conservative, I think that the top leadership of the FBI should be given the sack, allowing new apolitical law enforcement officials to take the reins of the world’s most premier law enforcement agency. 

J. Edgar Hoover, despite his flawed character and abuses of power as the first and longest-serving director of the FBI, created the world’s finest and foremost law enforcement agency. In years past, the professionalism of the FBI was the gold standard for the world’s police agencies. Many of the world’s finest police officers have been trained by the FBI. I know several police officers who are most proud of having been trained at the FBI Academy.   

I’ve covered the FBI for many years as a crime reporter and columnist. Several times over the years, I’ve interviewed Joseph Pistone, AKA “Donnie Brasco,” the legendary undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno Cosa Nostra crime family in New York City. I’ve also interviewed criminal profiler John Douglas, another legendary FBI agent, as well as senior officials at FBI headquarters and street agents in Philadelphia. All of them were dedicated and apolitical law enforcement officers.

The former and active FBI special agents that I’ve spoken to recently disagree vehemently with the current leadership of the FBI. Most want to see a large broom sweep out the political activists in the top ranks of the FBI. Most want to see the FBI go after criminals, spies, terrorists, and other threats to Americans, and not engage in petty party politics.        

Paul Davis is a Philadelphia writer who covers crime.

Sunday, April 16, 2023

My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On Ben Macintyre On Ian Fleming And James Bond


The Washington Times published my weekly On Crime column on Ben Macintyre’s take on the late, great thriller writer Ian Fleming and his iconic character James Bond.

With the release of latest James Bond film “No Time to Die” postponed from April to November due to the COVID-19 outbreak, millions of Bond fans around the world will have to be content to watch the older Bond films, or perhaps they should go back to the original source — Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.

They could also read some of the many books written about the popular character and his creator, such as two fine biographies of the late Ian Fleming, John Pearson’s “The Life of Ian Fleming” and Andrew Lycett’s “Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond.”

Ben Macintyre, a columnist for the London Times and the author of “The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War,” (which I reviewed in these pages) “A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal” and “Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal,” also wrote an interesting book called “For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond.”

He wrote the book in 2008 as a companion to the Imperial War Museum exhibition that was held to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth. The exhibition examined the late thriller writer and his fictional character in historical context. The exhibition also looked at Ian Fleming’s experiences as a naval intelligence officer in World War II and how they informed his plots and characters.

Ben Macintyre was chosen to write the companion book because of his nonfiction books on espionage and his many columns on Ian Fleming and James Bond, including one column that revealed that there was a Nazi plot to rob the Bank of England, which perhaps inspired Ian Fleming to use a similar plot to rob Fort Knox in his great thriller “Goldfinger.”

Ian Fleming admitted his plots in the novels were fantastic (the films much more so), but he also said they were often based on the real world of intelligence.  

I recall Ben Macintyre telling me that his book on Fleming and Bond was a personal investigation of two lives, one real and one fictional.     

You can read the rest of the column below or via the below link:


https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/18/ben-macintyre-on-ian-fleming-and-james-bond/ 

Note: The below photos are of Ben Macintyre, Ian Fleming. Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No, and Ian Fleming as a WWII naval intelligence officer:




Friday, April 14, 2023

Operation Underworld: My Washington Times On Crime Column On "Operation Underworld:

 The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and U.S. Government Teamed Up To Win World War II.

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:

BOOK REVIEW: 'Operation Underworld' - Washington Times

While serving time in Dannemora State Prison in 1942, New York Cosa Nostra organized crime boss Salvatore Luciano (seen in the above photo), better known among criminals as “Charlie Lucky” and the public as “Lucky” Luciano, was asked to help the U.S. Navy protect New York ports from sabotage from Nazi Germany during World War II. 

New York Harbor was vulnerable to sabotage from German and Italian agents, and the Navy knew that the Cosa Nostra controlled the unions on the waterfront. 

Matthew Black’s “Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and the U.S. Government Teamed Up to Win World War II,” is an interesting and informative look back at this fascinating alliance between American gangsters and U.S. naval intelligence officers.  

 

I contacted Mr. Black (seen in the bottom photo) and asked him to describe his book.

 

“Operation Underworld is about how the U.S. Navy secured and defended the Port of New York during WWII. Confronted with challenges ranging from spies and saboteurs, to union strikes on the docks, the Navy formed an unprecedented alliance with the mafia to help safeguard ships, war materials, and personnel passing through New York’s harbors. This brought the Navy into a gray area of the law, as the Commander — Charles Radcliffe Haffenden — kept the operation a secret, even as he recruited the top gangster in the country to help — Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano,” Mr. Black said.

 

Here is the rest of the interview:

 

PAUL DAVIS: How did you perform research for the book?

 

Mr. Black: This book was researched and written during the pandemic, and for most writers, that would’ve tanked their research efforts, as libraries and archives were closed all over the country. But the archive I needed to access at the University of Rochester was kind enough to supply digital uploads of everything I requested. Their archive contains the contents of an investigation into Operation Underworld that had been previously classified. It took about a year-and-a-half to upload nearly 3,000 pages of testimony and documents.


Was there anything that you learned that surprised or shocked you?

 

When I first took on this project, I told myself that I’d have to find things that no one else had discovered if I was going to be successful. I’m happy to report: Mission accomplished! Commander Haffenden kept a little black book that contained names of informants and secret agents. For nearly 80 years, several of the agents had yet to be identified, but I was able to not only determine identities, but also find photos of participants such as Agent X and Agent Y. On top of that, I was also able to uncover the entire roster of people who visited Luciano in prison during Operation Underworld. Some of the names I uncovered are shocking, as Operation Underworld granted Luciano access to all of his top capos as he served his term in prison.”

 

How would you describe Salvatore “Charlie Lucky” Luciano?

 

Luciano was tough, calculating, and full of ambition, as he organized crime in America. He ran the mafia like a Fortune 500 company. But when readers meet Luciano in Operation Underworld, he is experiencing the darkest days of his life, serving a 30-50-year sentence in Dannemora prison. As a New York City criminal, his direction had been clear, and his drive unflinching, but in 1942, he was full of doubt, dread, and was losing hope that he would ever get out of prison.


 How would you describe Navy Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden? 

Commander Haffenden (seen in the above photo) was full of ambition, too, and he was an extremely creative thinker. Haffenden was looking to make his mark on history and his legacy with Operation Underworld, and he poured his heart into his efforts. His drive and creativity often took him out of bounds in Navy norms and U.S. law, as he was willing to recruit anyone who could help him protect the Port of New York. This included not only mafia leadership, but other known murderers, and criminals who were under indictment. His unyielding confidence bolstered his unshakeable belief that he could win the war all by himself, and he would stop at nothing to do it.

 

Did organized crime’s involvement with the Navy truly help the war effort?

 

Yes, it most certainly did! The question is: Was it worth the price? Operation Underworld was successful for many reasons that you’ll have to read the book to understand, but the Navy ultimately achieved its objective. But doing so took more than cooperation with the mafia: It took union suppression, beatings of noncombatants, and other violations of worker and human rights.

Mafia members were also successful in setting up a network of informants that helped provide intelligence for the Allied invasion of Sicily. Some of the most important combatants in the first waves that landed on Sicily were naval intelligence officers from New York who used their knowledge of organized crime to contact Sicilian Mafiosi.

 

• Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.



• • •

Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and the U.S. Government Teamed Up to Win World War II
By Matthew Black
Citadel, Dec. 27, 2022
384 pages, $25.49





Thursday, April 13, 2023

Happy 70th Birthday, Mr. Bond: On This Day In History, Ian Flemings First James Bond Thriller, 'Casino Royale,' Was Published

On this date in 1953 Casino Royale, Ian Fleming's first James Bond thriller, was published.

Fleming, a British journalist and WWII naval intelligence officer, wrote the gripping thriller while on holiday at his Jamaican villa, Goldeneye. Raymond Chandler, a friend and fellow thriller writer, believed that Casino Royale was Fleming's best novel.  

Ian Fleming would go on to write more Bond novels and short stories and millions of copies of his books have been sold around the world. 

The film series based on Fleming's Bond novels, which began with Dr No in 1963, is one of the most successful film series in cinematic history.

Scottish actor Sean Connery appeared as James Bond in the early Bond films in the 1960s. Daniel Craig appeared as James Bond in the 2006 film Casino Royale.  

Ian Fleming died in 1964 at the age of 56. 

You can read my Crime Beat columns on Ian Fleming and James Bond via the below links: 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/my-crime-beat-column-happy-anniversary.html  

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html 

My Crime Beat Column: The Ian Fleming and James Bond Phenomenon

 The below column originally appeared in The Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine in 2006.

A British Royal Navy Commander visited Jamaica in 1944 for a conference on the threat of Nazi U-boats in the Caribbean. He fell in love with the island.

Commander Ian Fleming was a slim and athletic 6'2", with black hair and blue eyes. Many of his women friends described him as having cruel good looks, his broken nose adding a touch of ruggedness.

Fleming returned to Jamaica after the war and purchased an old donkey race track in Oracabessa on the North Coast. His built his villa – called Goldeneye - on a bluff overlooking a private beach and the Caribbean. He would spend every January and February there until his death in 1964.

To get over the shock of getting married at the age of 44, he often said, he sat down at his typewriter at Goldeneye in 1952 and wrote his first novel Casino Royale. The novel, published in 1953, introduced the world to a debonair and deadly British secret agent named Bond, James Bond.

Casino Royale, the 21st installment in the world’s most successful film series featuring Fleming’s Bond, opened on November 17th. The thriller features a new actor in the role of Bond, Daniel Craig.

“It has been a long time ambition for us to film the first book in the series, Casino Royale, which defined the complex character of James Bond,” said the producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. “Daniel is a superb actor who has all the qualities needed to bring a contemporary edge to the role. Casino Royale will have all of the action, suspense and espionage that our audiences have come to expect from us, but nevertheless takes the franchise in a new and exciting direction.”

The film was directed by Martin Campbell, who also directed Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as Bond in GoldenEye in 1995. Casino Royale was filmed in the Czech Republic, the Bahamas, Italy and the United Kingdom.

The film has opened to rave reviews and box office success and the film has fueled a renewed interest and respect for Ian Fleming, who died in 1964 at the age of 56.

Since first viewing Dr No in a South Philadelphia movie theater in 1963 when I was eleven years old, I’ve been a serious Bond fan. I went on to read the Fleming novels as a pre-teen and teenager and I was amazed that they were darker, more complex, and far more intriguing than the films. I’ve been a Fleming aficionado ever since.

Born on May 28th 1908 and educated at Eton and Sandhurst, Fleming worked as a journalist at Reuters prior to WWII, reporting from London, Berlin and Moscow. He was a special correspondent for The Times of London in Moscow in 1939 and entered British Naval Intelligence later that year.

He served as the assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence. After the war, he became The Sunday Times' foreign manager. His experience as a naval intelligence officer and a journalist enabled him to write knowledgeably about espionage, crime and terrorism.

The character of James Bond found in the novels was based in part on the WWII commandos, secret agents and intelligence officers Fleming met during his service. He conceived of Bond as merely a cipher, a blunt instrument for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But Fleming said he also infused Bond with his own personal quirks and characteristics.

The Bond character in the films had become exaggerated to the point of self-parody, so I was pleased that the producers were returning to the first novel as source material and made Casino Royale as a true thriller.

The choice of actor to portray this back-to-basics Bond set off a heated debate in work places, bars, cafes and on the Internet. The selection of the blond and not particularly handsome Craig enraged many fans that preferred Brosnan, the previous actor to portray Bond in four films. But for many of the older fans, like me, there is only one actor who is the ideal Bond - Sean Connery.

Beginning in 1962 with Dr No, the Bond films attracted a world-wide audience that loved the suave, yet rugged Connery as Bond. From Russia With Love and Goldfinger followed, and the James Bond craze ignited, creating imitators in film, TV, novels, advertisements and launching a huge business in merchandising and collectibles. To date, the Bond film series has earned more than $4 billion, according to the-numbers.com.

Prior to the release of the new film, I set out to talk to a number of other Fleming aficionados about the film, the new actor and the cultural influence of Ian Fleming and his blunt instrument, James Bond.

“Bond had a tremendous influence on film, television, style and the political spectrum,” said Steven Watt, an English Professor at Indiana University and the author of Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007.

“Fleming was way ahead of his time when he invented SPECTRE, a mobile, multi-national group, headed by a mad genius, mostly made up of cells of hardened criminals, loyal to no nation, only to each other, and that one of their principle objectives is to produce terror. They would be a lot more difficult to beat than a clunky Soviet machine – and he was right!”

“Who else in the 1960s was talking about nuclear blackmail and chemical and biological warfare?” Watt added.

Watt noted that there was much to be learned from Fleming in terms of the evolution of the enemies of the West and on the level of sexuality, ethnicity, global politics, and popular culture.

Watt was one of the organizers of a conference on Ian Fleming at Indiana University in 2003. The University’s Lilly Rare Library purchased Ian Fleming’s entire library in the 1970s, including his papers, the literature he owned, naval and military histories and unpublished and little-known works.

“For people interested in Fleming, the Lilly Library has become a depository of great interest,” Watt said. “Fleming was an extremely literate man, a collector of high modernist work. I think he was an excellent writer. He was a great craftsman and his prose style, though be it fairly direct and simple, is interesting. And certainly he was writing from a pretty intense knowledge of some exotic cities.”

“I think he holds up pretty well in the context of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler,” Watt said.

Watt explained that the English Department and the Lilly Library sponsored the conference, which attracted academics, historians, scholars and writers. Watt explained that one group took the position that if you don’t know anything about Britain during the Cold War, you don’t know anything about Fleming and the audience for whom he wrote these novels, and there was a second group, a series of younger scholars, who said they were not interested in the novels, they were only interested in the way the characters evolved on film.

Watt, a scholar of Anglo-Irish culture, whose major interests are 19th and 20th Century Irish culture, has published books on James Joyce and Sean O’Casey and a book on Samuel Beckett. He also considers himself a scholar on Fleming and he teaches a course on Cold War culture that includes Fleming in the 1950s and 60s.

Watt said that as the Connery era grew, the films became less and less reliant on the novels and by the time Connery came back for Diamonds Are Forever and Roger Moore assumed the role, they left the novels behind. Watt said he was glad the producers were returning to the novels as a source for the newest film. 

“The novel Casino Royale is extremely interesting, extraordinarily sinister and very dark,” Watt said. “Casino Royale has never been given its proper due. As the first Bond novel and one of the darker Bond novels, it never received anything resembling an adequate film treatment.”

“I think Craig will turn out to be an excellent choice. Terrorism is a huge, serious, important issue - much more important than 25 years ago when Roger Moore was cavorting around – and the James Bond of today has to be a tough guy, a serious guy.”


He saw Dr No and From Russia With Love on their original theatrical release in the United Kingdom , but Graham Rye said it wasn’t until he saw Goldfinger in 1964 that he was inspired to read the Fleming novels. He was so hooked, he said, that his interest in Bond has been his career for more than 25 years.

“I think the success of both the books and the films are down to both appearing at just the right time in a historical sense,” said Rye , who is the editor and publisher of 007 MAGAZINE OnLine (http://www.007magazine.co.uk/) and the author of The James Bond Girls.

“In 1953 when Jonathan Cape published Fleming’s first Bond novel Casino Royale, Great Britain was still going through post-war doldrums; it was a very grey time,” Rye explained. “Fleming’s books achieved just the right strength cocktail of exotic sex, violence and adventure to lift the reader out of the harsh realities of everyday life and into the pages with his hero secret agent James Bond.”

Rye went on to say that after all the kitchen-sink/social dramas and neo-realism of British cinema of the Forties and Fifties, film producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman came together at exactly the right time to form a partnership in cinema that remains unequaled to this day.

“Their partnership developed a series of films that have brought untold happiness to billions of people around the world, and still do, and wealth to many of the creative participants in the most enduring film franchise of all time,” Rye said. “I think the world has a lot to be thankful for from Messrs Fleming, Broccoli and Saltzman. Not to mention a certain Scottish knight – Sean Connery!”

 “There has only ever really been one actor for me who was and will forever remain James Bond – Sean Connery,” Rye said. “Other actors have put in some good performances as Bond, but the gap between them and Sean as Bond is the Grand Canyon.”

Rye said that George Lazenby could have grown into a Bond who would have given Connery competition, judging by his first and only outing in 1969’s On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Rye believes the film is the best overall depiction of Fleming’s Bond in the film series, due mostly the film’s director Peter Hunt, and it’s his favorite Bond film and book.

“Roger Moore could never take playing Bond seriously, which was fine by me because I could never take Roger Moore playing Bond seriously, and for the following seven films over the next 12 years I’m afraid my interest in the Bond film series reached an all-time low,” Rye said.

Rye said that Timothy Dalton’s fresh new approach to the Bond role in 1987’s The Living Daylights won him and the series many new fans in a debut that Rye felt was as exciting as it was impressive. Unfortunately, Rye said this all fell apart in his second Bond picture, 1989’s Licence To Kill. Rye explained that the six-year delay between Bond pictures caused by legal wrangles between EON Productions and the financing studio MGM, made it clear that EON should search for a new Bond actor for their 17th film.

Pierce Brosnan, who ironically lost out to Dalton in the role for The Living Daylights, took over as Bond in the 1995 GoldenEye. Rye said the film made significantly more than its predecessor, but was far less impressive.

“Brosnan became christened MGM’s ‘Billion Dollar Bond’ in all the trade ads, before eventually being unceremoniously dumped by the producers after the huge financial success, but almost universal panning, of 2002’s Die Another Day,” Rye said.

Rye believes that Daniel Craig will make an excellent Bond. Noting that the world has changed almost beyond recognition in his lifetime, and since Dr. No in 1962, the 44-year life cycle of the series of films has reflected the changing world in which they are made, so it seems sensible to Rye to “reboot” the character for the 21st century-style of film making.

“While not all of this new turn of affairs is to my own personal taste, Bond is bigger than anyone and will no doubt continue to live on beyond many lifetimes,” Rye said. “I certainly hope so because it has given me a great deal of fun and excitement and I’d like to think kids of the future will have the same chance to see and enjoy this wonderful series of films and read Ian Fleming’s novels.”

I agree with Rye, but differ on his assessment of License To Kill, which I very much liked. I liked that the film took material from Fleming's novels, such as the bait warehouse scene in Florida. I especially liked Robert Davi as the drug kingpin villain. And I also liked Dalton's portrayal of Bond. In my view, he offers the second best Bond portrayal in the series, with Connery, of course, being the best.

Now a new generation will be reading the Fleming novels in part due to the new film and in part to the re-issue of the novels by Penguin Press’s Modern Classics.

“Ian Fleming has shaped British sensibilities now for over half a century and by almost any standard the Bond novels have to be viewed as modern classics,” said Simon Winder, the publishing director of Penguin Press and the author of The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond, a humorous look at the Bond phenomenon.

“At a time when many of his contemporaries from the 1950s have dropped from view, Ian Fleming's invention, thanks to the overwhelming success of the films, continues to resonate in a world fantastically different from the one in which Bond was invented.”

Winder ran Penguin Modern Classics and was involved in buying the rights for Penguin to publish the Bond novels. He said it struck him as both provocative and correct to put the Fleming novels in the series.

“Fleming is one of the three great 1950s visionaries in British literature--together with Arthur C. Clarke and J R R Tolkien - all despised at the time as 'genre' writers, but who have between them had an incalculable effect on world literature, while their notionally more serious contemporaries have almost faded from sight,” Winder said.

Winder said he wrote his book on Fleming and Bond as he was trying to make sense of his own experience – that of a fan in the early 1970s, who at age ten, first watched Live and Let Die.

“I thought it was the pinnacle of sophistication, only to realize as an adult that it was rubbish,” Winder said. “The book takes this point to go back over Ian Fleming's life, the books and the early films to pick apart, in a jokey way, what made them tick.”

“Bond sprung into being in the 1950s because Britain was in a sort of horrible free-fall - the empire falling to bits, the economy in tatters, no real friends, and run by a gang of weird gentlemen with no real vision of how to get out of the mess.”

Bond was invented by Fleming, Winder explained, to reassure the British that while the day-to-day reality was a humiliating fiasco, in secret they were still saving the world. This struck him as an amusing, though admittedly not entirely original, perception and the book plays with this idea through Fleming's life, through the books and the films.

Winder said that he would like to see the producers remake Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever, and the other poor Bond films, with the second try being more faithful to the Fleming novels in the way Casino Royale has promised to be. I agree.

“Daniel Craig seems to be really good - he was terrifically nasty in Munich and has a sort of fish-eyed menace which certainly gives him the potential,” Winder said.

I was initially displeased with the choice of Craig, thinking that Clive Owen was the only young actor to fit Fleming’s physical description and who could deliver a Bond comparable to Connery’s Bond. Having now seen the film, I still think Owen would have been the better choice, but I was pleased with Craig’s portrayal and the film.

Although I would have preferred the film to be a period piece set in Bond’s true time – the 1950s and early 60s – and I truly miss John Barry’s music, the producers did a fine job of updating the plot from the threat of post-WWII communism to the threat of modern terrorism. The film is fast-paced, gripping and intelligent. The introduction of Bond, pre-00 status, was very clever, as was the ending of the film, which made one anxious for the next film.

The producers believe that Craig has the right stuff to play Bond truer to Fleming’s character and have enough faith in him that even before the film’s release, they announced that he will reprise the role in the 22nd Bond film, which will released on May 2, 2008, the year of the centenary of Fleming’s birth.

Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which is run by Fleming’s family, has commissioned a well-known author to write a new James Bond novel, marking the centenary. The author will be kept a secret until the publication.

“There will be a broad range of events and publications designed to celebrate the life of this literary legend and to examine his legacy,” Corinne Turner of Ian Fleming Publications said. “The program includes a major exhibition featuring never-before-seen material and events will reflect Fleming’s passions and experiences in the worlds of art, literature, journalism, sport, motoring and travel.”

“The Ian Fleming Centenary presents an exciting opportunity to celebrate an extraordinary life,” Turner said. “The Bond novels are, however, just one aspect of a fascinating life that combined the flamboyant elements of 007 with a unique creativity. Fleming was not only a novelist, but also a journalist, sportsman, naval commander, traveler, intelligence officer and bon-viveur.”