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Dating Watches through Fleming’s
Writing Routine
Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond stories between January 1952 and August
1964, following a strict, self-imposed cycle to produce one book per
year, resulting in a total of 14.
With his second novel, Live and Let Die, he established a routine
that all but the last two books would follow to publication. His
preliminary research and notes organization began some 18 months out.
Individual manuscripts were then written, start-to-finish, during the
initial two months of the year prior to publication. Over the course of
the next 12 months, those complete drafts were revised, fact-checked,
and edited to final form.
Understanding this history is critical in accurately dating references
to physical wristwatches. So the sequencing above, for example, at least
initially suggested to me that the Bond Rolex in Live and Let Die
would have had to be based on something from the fourth quarter of 1952.
This is consistent with my review of the typed Live and Let Die
manuscript archived in the Lilly Library on the campus of Indiana
University at Bloomington. The word “Rolex” in Fleming’s own bound
edition there appears on page 111.
The larger context of the Live and Let Die plot makes that watch
mission-specific. In other words, Fleming didn’t intend to define Bond’s
personal watch choice, but, rather, deliberately used the Rolex name to
validate a tool watch among a larger inventory of diving gear and
weaponry he described as having been received by 007 from his
quartermaster (“Q-Branch”) in London. “Rolex” merely enhances plot
credibility, in this case, giving his protagonist the ability to check
the time while submerged. It’s on par with “Champion,” maker of the
Live and Let Die harpoon gun, also sourced from Q-Branch.
In an earlier chapter that describes preparations for the dive,
Jacques Cousteau is named more than once as a source from which Bond
was learning through books he’d borrowed. This mirrors Fleming’s own
real-life research technique. He had just struck up a friendship with
Cousteau at that time and even visited with him during his work
surrounding discovery of the 2,200-year-old Marcus Sestius wine
ship off the Bay of Marseilles.
All the evidence I’ve seen points to a high likelihood that Captain
Cousteau provided quite a bit of
technical detail, if not motivation, for sequences related to Bond’s
climactic 300-yard swim in Live and Let Die. Exciting as this
association may be, however, I would not connect it to a specific watch
nor to any particular Rolex model.
Ian Fleming thought no more of that Rolex than as an efficient shorthand
to substantiate a wristwatch that could perform as required on a
commando mission to mine an enemy ship, moored at an anchorage of about
30 feet. His writing shows not the slightest trace of his otherwise
characteristic attention to detail when describing physical pieces he’d
seen (e.g., Where is the dial luminescence and rotating bezel — obvious
and extremely relevant, if these had been features of a developmental
Submariner that had served as its basis?).
Responsible research requires that I draw this line as well. Editors at
WatchTime felt the same way, deleting a discussion of Jacques
Cousteau from the earliest draft of my feature article.
Further reason to avoid overreaching here comes from evidence of just
how effective Fleming otherwise could be in using horology as a means of
carefully defining characters and enriching plotlines.
His first novel,
Casino Royale (1953), features a shadowy Swiss figure who is “a
traveller in watches.” Fleming’s first script treatment (1959) for a
proposed 007 motion picture provides the heroine with a cover story of
working for customs in search of stolen Swiss watches. He gave other
high-profile characters important timepieces by
Patek Philippe in 1955, Cartier in 1956, and
Girard-Perregaux in 1957. One story published in 1961 even used a
radium-painted watch dial to test a Geiger Counter.
Photos from the 1950s clearly show that Fleming wore a variety of
different watches into his Bond era. These were alternatively on
bracelets and straps. He seemed to favor lower-profile cases and dark
dials, simply decorated, with no complications of any sort.
So I concluded many years ago that it was not due to oversight, nor for
any lack of interest or knowledge that Ian Fleming had chosen to be so
oblique in defining the James Bond watch. Nor was it out of any
reluctance to get into the particulars of Bond’s individual tastes,
since Fleming otherwise routinely explored the minutiae of Agent 007’s
preferences in food and women.
Naming James Bond watch brands throughout the series would have
perfectly, intimately served Fleming, then. But that’s not what he did.
Why not? Because, purposefully, Bond’s watch needed to be a commodity
due to the nature of his work. This is confirmed by the copy of a letter
provided to me by Lucy Fleming, the author’s niece. In correspondence
dated June 5, 1958, Ian Fleming responded to a fan by the name of B. W.
Goodden, stating that the practice of James Bond, “in fact, is to use
fairly cheap, expendable wrist watches on expanding metal bracelets….”
Thus, not only is the reference to Rolex in Live and Let Die an
anomaly, but, as I wrote above, it is an exception that had to be
allowed to credibly have a wristwatch available to function underwater.
Otherwise, it was Fleming’s clear intent for all James Bond watch
choices to be generics, through
Goldfinger (1959). In no case before 1961 was there an actual
watch he referenced from the real world. So long as watches meet the
criteria of “cheap” and “expendable,” worn on “expanding metal
bracelets,” any number of timekeepers fit the bill as James Bond watches
in books one through ten.
And this is how the earliest James Bond watch was presented on the wrist
of an actor. See Barry Nelson in the Chrysler Climax Mystery Theater
version of Casino Royale for CBS television, October 21, 1954.
That show aired less than six months after the May 5 publication of
Live and Let Die.
Go to
"How I Found the Original James Bond Watch," part 2 |
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07/28/2010 08:22 AM |
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