It has, by necessity, become the norm to cut out a lot of the smaller details in books when adapting them for the silver screen.
Countless screenwriters and editors have been faced with the unenviable task of deciding what is important enough to include in the final cut of a film and what the story can ultimately do without, even though the original author considered those details important enough to include in the book. Just by sheer proportions, probably no author has seen more of their work on the cutting room floor than Ian Fleming and the adaptations made of his series focused on James Bond.
James Bond Tries Not To Kill People
In the movies, James Bond kills hundreds of people directly, by his own hand, and hundreds more die just by proximity to him or due to consequences from his actions. James Bond himself can never age or die, it seems, though he’s come close more than once, but that doesn’t stop the film version of him from murdering indiscriminately.
In the books, though, it’s the total opposite — though Bond, like the other double-Os, has the license to kill in the Secret Service, he states outright that he doesn’t like killing people and he only does it for his job when he absolutely has to.
He Became 007 At Age 38
Most people think of James Bond as the suave older gentleman, which became even more apparent when Daniel Craig was cast and people went ballistic over a young, blonde, blue-eyed James Bond, even though he did an amazing job and James Bond doesn’t necessarily need to look any specific way.
In the books, though, James Bond is only thirty-eight when he becomes 007, and he seems to hover nebulously in the late thirties/early forties age range in every book Fleming writes him in. He truly just never seems to age, which is probably for the best, because then we’d stop getting these amazing stories.
Bond Smokes 70 Cigarettes A Day
In the movies, James Bond hasn’t smoked anything besides a bad guy in quite a few years, now. In the books, though, Bond is a heavy and frequent smoker. He even has his cigarettes custom-made for himself by Morland of Grosvenor Street.
Fleming describes the specific cigarettes Bond smokes in detail in the books: a mix of Balkan and Turkish tobacco, a high nicotine content (higher than an average cigarette), et cetera. He also describes them as being carried in a gunmetal case of fifty along with his black oxidized Ronson lighter. On top of all that, Fleming even adds in the little detail that each of those seventy cigarettes in a day has three gold bands on the filter. A man of taste.
He Looks Like Hoagy Carmichael
The fact that James Bond looks like Hoagy Carmichael actually comes up multiple times in the book, so this is clearly an image that Ian Fleming had in his head while writing the books. Hoagy Carmichael, a singer/songwriter and actor who recorded hundreds of songs from the nineteen-teens until his death in the 1980s, was a classic sort of masculine handsome.
Vesper Lynd comments in Casino Royale that Bond reminds her of a “cruel and ruthless” Hoagy Carmichael, and Special Branch Officer Gala Brand mentions in Moonraker that Bond looks like Hoagy Carmichael, especially in the bone structure, but that his mouth is “cruel” and his eyes are “cold.”
James Bond is Six Feet Tall
One thing that remains consistent in the books that does not, by necessity, remain consistent in the movies is James Bond’s physical appearance. Though there have been numerous actors who have played Bond on screen, and still more to come, Fleming describes Bond pretty much the same way every time (in addition to his resemblance to Hoagy Carmichael, of course).
Consistently, Bond is described as slim, six feet tall, 168 lbs, with short black hair and blue-grey eyes. There’s a long, thin scar on his right cheek, vertically, and the Russian Cyrillic letter Ш carved into the back of one of his hands, branding him a spy. He also, of course, has that cruel mouth everyone’s always going on about, plus a curl of hair that falls across his forehead in a dashing Clark Kent sort of way, often described by Fleming as a “comma” of hair.
His Cocktail Has A Name
Have you ever asked for a martini “shaken, not stirred?” Well, did you order the right drink when you asked? James Bond has a very specific drink that he makes that he brings up in the very first book about him, Casino Royale: a martini.
The martini was made up of gin, vodka, and Kina Lillet, and he ended up naming the cocktail The Vesper, after Vesper Lynd. The next time you go to a bar and ask for a martini shaken, not stirred, ask for The Vesper, or The Vesper Martini, to complete your Bond drinking experience.
Bond is Not Always Very Fashionable
James Bond is usually seen as the pinnacle of cinema fashion and an inspiration to middle-aged wannabe spy-guys everywhere. However, in the books, Fleming describes Bond as a pretty relaxed dresser and a usually fairly business-dressed fellow.
In fact, Fleming even describes Bond as wearing “moccasins” with his business suits — to translate, he was wearing loafers. With his business suits. In Britain. In the 1950s. Historically, this was barely a fashionable move until the United States in the 1970s, so, yikes. The man just loves to wear a short-sleeved shirt, a knit tie, and a good pair of comfortable loafers, God love him.
James Bond Didn’t Always Use the Walther PPK
Bond may try not to kill people, but he still has the license to do so and occasionally needs to do it for work, and so he needs a good, reliable weapon to do so. In the beginning, 007’s weapon of choice is a .25 ACP Beretta automatic pistol. He carries the weapon in a lightweight chamois leather holster. After From Russia, with Love, however, that all changed.
A combination gun expert/Bond superfan named Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote to author Ian Fleming saying his gun selection doesn’t make too much sense, and instead suggested Bond’s preferred weapon that we now all know and love: his Walther PPK 7.65mm, securely carried in the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster as of Dr. No. Boothroyd got a little extra legacy, too, in the form of Major Boothroyd, better known as Q.
Bond’s Not Always the Best
If James Bond were always the best at everything, the books and movies would, honestly, get really boring, really fast. Showing that Bond can be beaten not only shows there’s room for him to continue growing, developing, and improving, but it also shows that there are still active and present challenges in his day-to-day life.
For example, he’s mentioned as being only okay at skills like driving and judo, good at them but many others are much better. When it comes to swimming, golfing, hand-to-hand combat, and skiing, Bond is very good, but has still been beaten by others in the books. Most importantly, Bond may be the best shot in the Secret Service, but he’s still beaten by his instructor, which is good — if he was better than his instructor, why even have one? Just have Bond train everyone.
Bond Has A Great Scrambled Eggs Recipe
The most important fact about James Bond that the movies leave out? His bomb scrambled eggs recipe. A lot of people reading the Fleming Bond books as they were coming out had some complaints about the purple descriptions of the exotic meals and foods Bond would eat, which prompted Ian Fleming to comment that his own favorite food was scrambled eggs, a trait he passed onto Bond.
Though each meal described by Fleming in the Bond books is different, scrambled eggs do appear often. In fact, in a Bond short story written by Fleming, “007 in New York” (later included with Octopussy and The Living Daylights), has Bond openly just thinking about his favorite scrambled eggs recipe. In the book, this recipe came from a chef for the Edwardian Room at the Plaza Hotel; in real life, this recipe came from Fleming’s friend Ivar Bryce’s housekeeper, May.