Bond
Fans go for Goldfinger From This is London, by Tim Cooper, May 17 2000
James Bond fans have named Goldfinger, the third film featuring the quintessential British
spy, as the all-time best of his 38-year screen history. The 1964 film also produced the
winners of three other categories - best Bond girl, best car and best soundtrack.
Goldfinger set the tone for the enduring hi-tech, tongue-in-cheek style and was the first
Bond box office blockbuster. In an online survey conducted by the Amazon website to launch
its James Bond store on the internet, fans were asked to name their favourite films,
characters, music and gadgets.
The results, published today, come in the week when box office receipts for the three most
recent films - Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough - broke the
billion-dollar mark.
Goldfinger features Sean Connery - most voters' favourite Bond -uncovering a plot by gold
magnate Auric Goldfinger to contaminate Fort Knox's reserves and make his own stockpile
worth billions. It also wrote a place in film history for Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore,
with her flying circus of female stunt pilots, and Shirley Eaton's Jill Masterson, meeting
her bizarre fate by being coated from head to toe in gold paint.
It polled 20 per cent of the vote for best film, to leave Live And Let Die trailing in
second place with 13 per cent, followed by the first Bond of all, Dr No. The highest-rated
recent Bond adventure was last year's The World is Not Enough, in fourth place with 10 per cent.
Sean Connery was named the best Bond by two out of every three fans, collecting 67 per cent
of the votes. The first actor to play 007, he left the current star, Pierce Brosnan, far
behind in second place with 22 per cent of the vote, followed by Roger Moore with 11 per cent.
Male model and one-Bond wonder George Lazenby, and classically-trained Shakespearean actor
Timothy Dalton, did not poll a single vote between them from the 550 fans who responded to
the survey.
The title of best international master criminal went to Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The
character's three appearances - in You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and
Diamonds Are Forever - made him the clear winner with a third of the vote, beating Bond's
first enemy Dr No, and Christopher Lee's triple-nippled Scaramanga from The Man With The
Golden Gun, who each polled 12 per cent.
The other favourite villain was seven-foot giant Richard Kiel's memorable metal-mouthed
monster Jaws, who took 55 per cent of the vote to win best supporting henchman for The Spy
Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Oddjob, who famously wore the razor-edged bowler hat in
Goldfinger, came second with 23 per cent, and third was Nick Nack, the pint-sized goon who
was packed up in a suitcase in the closing scenes of The Man With The Golden Gun.
Every fan has their favourite Bond girl but voters could not choose between Ursula Andress,
whose Honey Rider remains the seminal Bond girl image as she emerged from the sea in a
bikini in Dr No nearly 40 years ago, and Pussy Galore. The result was a dead heat.
Moving on to the hardware - as important a part of Bond films as the cast - the clear winner
of the best car title was the classic silver Aston Martin DB5, which made its first
appearance in Goldfinger, with 79 per cent of the vote, shooting down the BMW cars of the
latest films with its trademark machine guns, ejector seat, oil-slick dispenser, bullet-
proof shields, tyre slashers and a homing/tracking device.
The category of best gadget was the only one in which the latter-day films triumphed with
Q's increasingly hi-tech gizmos, a close vote resulting in victory for Pierce Brosnan's X-
ray spectacles from The World Is Not Enough, just ahead of the watch from Tomorrow Never
Dies and the wrist dart gun from Moonraker.
Best title song, from a star-studded series, was inevitably Shirley Bassey's classic
Goldfinger, with 30 per cent of the vote, followed by Carly Simon singing Nobody Does It
Better from the The Spy Who Loved Me and Live And Let Die by Wings.
Vincent Toolan of Amazon.co.uk, said today: "After 21 films, five actors, countless world
domination plots, passionate liaisons with the world's most beautiful women and the most
ingenious gadgets, James Bond has lost none of his appeal.
"Our customers are as keen on Bond as Miss Moneypenny, so we've created a special Bond store
to meet the demand."
The store sells all things Bond-connected including videos and books.