On This Day

RichardTheBruce

August 2nd

1910: Jack Whittingham is born--Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England.
(He dies 3 July 1972 at age 61--Valletta, Malta.)

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Name’s Whittingham, Jack Whittingham

See the complete article here:

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/07/names-whittingham-jack-whittingham.html

EDITED BY J. KINGSTON PIERCE

With Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care sitting pretty atop British bestseller lists, espionage fiction seems to be all the rage. There is, however, another book, also featuring iconic British secret agent James Bond, that’s had an evolution almost as complex as one of Ian Fleming’s plots. That book is of course the revised second edition of Robert Sellers’ The Battle for Bond, a controversial work detailing the legal wrangling over the rights to Thunderball (1961).

The first edition, which contained a foreword by Raymond Benson (who was the last Bond writer prior to Faulks), was withdrawn from sale shortly after its 2007 release due to legal action from the Fleming family and estate. There a few copies of this collector’s item knocking around, but you’ll need a big checkbook to secure one. If you haven’t done so yet, though, I am pleased to report that Sellers and the independent publisher Tomahawk Press have finally released the second edition, sans the sections that caused the Fleming estate to complain. This revision features a foreword Len Deighton, who concentrates in his essay on long-ago charges of plagiarism leveled against author Fleming. This is a topic that should be familiar those of you who pay attention to the Rap Sheet, since we recalled the case in an obituary of Kevin McClory, the Thunderball collaborator who died in 2006. That case’s resolution included a provision stipulating that all future editions of the novel Thunderball include the writing credit “based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming.”

Very little has been written about the relatively enigmatic Whittingham. But earlier this week the London Times carried a longish report focusing on his daughter, Sylvan Whittingham Mason, who apparently provided much of the background mosaic for Seller’s book. As writer Giles Hattersley explains:

Like a latterday Ms. Moneypenny, she holds the secrets of James Bond. Her name is Whittingham. Sylvan Whittingham.

Is she Ian Fleming’s daughter? God, no. Fleming’s name is anathema here. Her father was Jack Whittingham, a celebrated screenwriter of the 1950s and 1960s. It was Jack, she claims, who gave us Bond as we know him.

In 1959, Whittingham’s father had been brought in by the film producer Kevin McClory to work on an original screenplay based on Fleming’s famous secret agent. (Fleming had had an earlier bash at writing his own, but forgot to put any action in it.)

The problem of how to film Bond had rumbled on for years. What passed for steely cool in the books would come off as charmless froideur on screen. But man-about-town Jack turned out to be the fire to Fleming’s ice. In a tobacco-stained study at his Surrey home, the dashing, hard-drinking ladies’ man produced a thrilling tale called Thunderball. And he injected Fleming’s uptight gentleman spy with quippy humour, arch sexuality and plenty of action. Rather like Jack, in fact.

“I always say that Daddy was an honourable man,” says Whittingham, now 64, in a voice that seems to come courtesy of Diana Rigg. “Except when it came to women, of course.” She smiles.

“But he was a marvellous writer and they’d had real trouble with Fleming’s novels. The violent, sadistic, colder, misogynistic Bond of the books didn’t work on the big screen. The audience, back then, didn’t want it. There was no humour, no charm. Daddy turned Bond into the suave hero they needed.”

This is a fascinating article, really, detailing the playboy similarities between Bond, Fleming, and Wittingham. In the Times, Mason quite clearly credits her father (who died in 1972) with molding 007 into the man who could support a successful long-running film franchise.

... Jack had been toughened by a Bond-like life of fast cars and faster women. Born the son of a Yorkshire wool merchant, he had oozed confidence as a young man and made a splash with the ladies when he went up to Oxford.

“He met Betty Offield there, heir to the Wrigley’s gum fortune,” says Sylvan. “They fell in love and she invited him over to America to stay. They used to go shark-fishing off her island in California. Later, he bought a solitaire diamond ring and went to Chicago to propose--but by the time he got there, she’d fallen for somebody else.

“In a bar, drowning his sorrows, he met a female gangster called Texas Guinan--a glamorous blonde--who took him on. She sent him all over town with deliveries for her, probably drugs. He became her pet for a while, before he sold the ring so he could afford to get home.”

After a stint in Iceland during the war--where he was permanently sloshed and would often fall down on parade--Jack returned to England and his wife, Margot, whom he had married in 1942. He was never faithful. “My mother was stunningly beautiful, with a frightened-rabbit look in her eyes, which were violet. She was a lost soul: mental problems, breakdowns, depression,” Sylvan says.

Posted by Ali Karim at 11:53 AM

1949: Madeline Smith is born--Garfield, Sussex, England.

1961: First flight of the Wallis WA-116 Agile, a British autogyro.

http://www.jamesbondlifestyle.com/product/little-nellie-wallis-wa-116-agile-series-1-gyroplane

1974: The Man With the Golden Gun films the final game of cat and mouse in Scaramanga's funhouse.
1976: The scheduled date for The Spy Who Loved Me to begin filming, after Kevin McClory's failed legal attempts to block that production and receive rights to Bond material beyond just remaking Thunderball.

1982: Octopussy lead actress Maud Adams tells the Los Angeles Times she screen tested with James Brolin.

2012: Vintage Publishing releases eight Fleming Bond novels in paperback.

2016: Funny or Die releases James Bond: Secret Pokémon Go Agent.

2017: Dynamite Entertainment releases James Bond comic Black Box #6 of 6 available in print and online.
Rapha Lobosco, artist. Benjamin Percy, writer.

JAMES BOND #6

https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?CAT=DF-James_Bond_Black_Box
Cover A: Dominic Reardon
Cover B: Jason Masters
Cover C: Patrick Zircher
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Art: Rapha Lobosco
Genre: Action/Adventure, Media Tie-In
Publication Date: August 2017
Format: Comic Book
Page Count: 32 Pages
ON SALE DATE: 8/2

James Bond #6, "Blinded"

In the action-packed finale of the Black Box story arc, James Bond descends into the secret headquarters of Saga Genji -- deep below the Fukushima nuclear reactor -- where he finds himself lost in a labyrinth of dark tunnels and political deceptions. He must overcome both his cyber terrorist adversaries and American and British allies to destroy the black box of vulnerable data that threatens to upend the world.

2020: The Simple Things celebrates scrambled eggs and James Bond.

Photography: Clare Winfield

Eggs: scrambled, not stirred

See the complete article here:

https://www.thesimplethings.com/blog/007-scrambled-eggs

August 2, 2020
Why scrambled eggs were nearly the undoing of James Bond but are still the best breakfast

It was Fay Weldon who originally advised us all to 'Go To Work on an Egg’ for the Egg Marketing Board in the 1950s. And it seems James Bond took her at her word.

If you expected Bond’s favourite dish to be something a little sexier, think again; Britain’s most famous spy liked nothing more than a plate of scrambled eggs and was regularly depicted getting stuck into a plate of them, with bacon, or kidneys… always with a fancy tipple. In fact, there are only three of the Ian Fleming books in which they don't appear (if you’re interested, they are From Russia With Love, The Man with the Golden Gun and You Only Live Twice). It must be pointed out that 007 does eat eggs in all those books, too, just not scrambled.

They made so many appearances in Live and Let Die that a proof reader pointed out to him that Bond’s scrambled egg habit was so impressive it may be his undoing; for any enemy on his tail would only have to nip into a restaurant and ask if an Englishman eating scrambled eggs had been in. He eventually edited a few instances of scrambled eggs out of the second draft, but Bond’s penchant for his favourite breakfast was, in general, unswerving.

In his short story "007 in New York", Fleming included a recipe for ‘Scrambled Eggs James Bond’, which you might like to try for brunch this weekend. It serves four.

Scrambled Eggs James Bond
12 fresh eggs
Salt and pepper
5-6 oz. of fresh butter

Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small copper (or heavy bottomed saucepan) melt 4oz of the butter. When melted, pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk.

While the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove the pan from heat, add rest of butter and continue whisking for half a minute, adding the while finely chopped chives or fines herbes. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink champagne (Taittinger) and low music.

It’s a certainly a classic recipe, but if you’re looking for something a little different, don’t miss our feature on second breakfasts on page 34 of our August issue. It includes a recipe for the Indian Scrambled Eggs with Naan (above), as well as homemade beans on toast, bay-roasted grapes and ricotta on toast and a delicious frittata, all taken from Home Bird: Simple Low-Waste Recipes for the Family and Friends by Megan Davies (Ryland Peters and Small) with photography by Clare Winfield.

https://www.thejamesbonddossier.com/james-bond-food.htm