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It's clear that Fleming, like a lot of his public [the British equivalent of American private] school generation, was not averse to a little bit of experimentation. Certainly I think he enjoyed slightly masochistic relations with his various girlfriends, and even with his wife.

What about the rumors that he was gay?

Also Today Best of Bond Ian Fleming's 007 is often most memorable when he's most offensive. By Emily Jenkins The sensitive Bond Even as a preteen girl, I knew that Ian Fleming's James Bond was a vulnerable guy -- and his creator, an equal-opportunity voyeur. By Emily Jenkins Book Information Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films By James Chapman Columbia University Press, 315 pages Nonfiction

Well, I'd take that with a pinch of salt. The thing about Bond, where the Bond character is interesting in relation to Fleming's own psychological makeup, is that Bond became this fantasy projection of what Fleming would like to be like. I mean, Fleming was a very attractive man to women -- he was effortlessly charming, he was viewed as being a sportsman, a strong athletic type, though the smoking and drinking eventually took their toll in middle age.

So Bond wasn't an entirely fantastic figure, but I do think Bond's physical and sexual exploits are that much greater than Fleming's own were. What's interesting about the representation of sex and sexuality in the Fleming books is that they were, at the time, attacked by some critics for their moral degeneracy -- for "sex, sadism and snobbery," as the critic Paul Johnson put it in reviewing the book "Doctor No" in 1958. And that book, in particular, was taken apart for the perceived excesses of sex and violence, which often go together in Bond.

In your book you point out that Fleming's first Bond book appeared the same year Playboy magazine did.

Yes, it's no coincidence that the first book was published in 1953, the year the first Playboy was published, and what you could call the "Bond morals" chime in with the Playboy ethos of the '50s and '60s, of this kind of free, easily available, nonhypocritical sexuality. It's no coincidence that Playboy serialized some of the later novels, and when the films started the actresses often did photo shoots for Playboy.

In some ways the films downplay the sex that was in Fleming's novels.

You could take the film of "Doctor No," that famous shot of Ursula Andress walking out of the Caribbean onto this beautiful golden beach wearing a bikini that was very skimpy for the time: These days it'd seem quite modest, perhaps, but at the time it was something else. But in the book, the character Honeychile Rider walks out of the sea, and Bond looks at her and she's naked. You couldn't show that on film in the early '60s. And you wouldn't even do it today in a Bond film. They have all these exciting adventures, he sleeps with lots of women, but it's done in a sort of coy way -- there's never explicit nudity or explicit sexual scenes.

You say in the book that you're not going to take sides on the eternal question of which actor is the best Bond. But if I had to guess, I'd say you lean toward Timothy Dalton, who you point out has a little more emotional range.

Really, I'm not sure I have a favorite Bond anymore. I think all the actors who have played him have brought something to the character. And I also think the casting has always been right for the times -- Roger Moore wouldn't have worked in the early '60s, for example. But on the other hand, the Dalton interpretation, the more morally serious interpretation of the late '80s, wouldn't have worked in the '70s, when the nature of popular cinema was moving toward camp and parody. Actually, the first Bond film I ever saw was "The Spy Who Loved Me," and I maintain a great fondness for Roger Moore's Bond ever since as a result of that. But he's not the favorite of the hardcore fan culture.
salon.com | May 1, 2000

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