Eton’s Spillane stops in Gotham
By Ward Morehouse (North American Newspaper Alliance, syndicated to Birmingham News; Feb. 18, 1962)
Ian Fleming, the Eton-educated Mickey Spillane, paid a hurried visit to New York recently, pausing long enough to talk colorfully of President Kennedy, who reads and appreciates the Fleming suspense novels, the theater (which Fleming loathes), actors (another dislike), and gambling (which he loves).
“Yes, the President has said he is a fan of mine, and it’s very nice of him,” he said. “He writes me very nice letters when I send him copies of my books. I rather think he should do more serious reading, but I’m very grateful to him. The whole Kennedy family reads my books.”
More than 2,000,000 copies of Fleming’s novels have been sold in this country and millions more in Europe. London is his home, but the novels are written at his Jamaica estate “Goldeneye,” where he was host to Sir Anthony Eden a few years ago.
A motion picture of a recent Fleming thriller, Doctor No, is now being filmed by United Artists in Jamaica, with Sean Connery as James Bond, the British secret service agent who is hero of all the Fleming novels.
Actors bore him
“Cary Grant, David Niven and James Mason wanted to play James Bond,” said Fleming. “But I said why spend millions of pounds on one of these characters, why not create our own Cary Grant? We made a nationwide search and hit on Sean Connery, a young Shakespearean actor who weightlifts for Scotland and is a very solid fellow. Actors generally bore me to tears. So many of them are pansies, forever flitting about.”
Fleming said of the theater. “I loathe it. I always know what’s going to happen and it annoys me so much when people laugh at the obvious jokes. I like films. They’re much cheaper for one thing, and you can go in and out whenever you want to.”
In 1952 he wrote his first novel, Casino Royale, an instant success, “Having been a bachelor until I was 43, I was suddenly trapped by marriage and I was so appalled by it I had to write a thriller to take my mind off it. I’m still happily married.” His wife is the former Lady Rothermere.
A novel a year
He has since turned out a novel a year. “I go to Jamaica in January and stay to March and write one of these books. Noel Coward’s place is only 30 minutes from mine. I’m quite fond of Noel. We cabled him about playing the villain in Doctor No and he cabled back, ‘No, no, no, no, no. Love. love, love. No.’ I agree with him. He would have been wrong for it.”
Fleming loves to talk of his gambling coups. He won a million (francs) at chemin-de-fer in Le Touquet. And in Las Vegas he hit the jackpot on a dollar slot machine, a memory that still gives him visible shivers of pleasure.
“The ugly brute erupted suddenly, and the floor was rolling with silver dollars. One of those fellows with a gun on his hip came over to help me. Las Vegas is a daft place, all those women with blued hair standing at the machines like so many dazed hens. They never even go to the zoo.”