Ian Fleming: Bond Cured Pussy Galore’s Lesbianism But Her Name Started a Bond Tradition
The name Pussy Galore was etched into the brains of many adolescent and not-so-adolescent men since the film Goldfinger released in 1964. At least until recently. Today’s teenagers are more likely—at least publicly—to call the name “problematic”. More problematic is the way Bond forces himself on her, and turns her to the side of “right and virtue” with his magic penis, which includes curing her of her lesbianism.
The film only hints at Pussy’s sexual orientation. The book is more overt. The name, without going into too much detail, is a double entendre in the sense that it not only reduces her value to her sexual parts but also overtly describes what her sexual interests are, all through the lens of the male gaze of course.
Through her name, we know exactly what Pussy Galore is after, and a lot of it!
Even casual readers of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels will note the author used same sex attraction as a peculiar trait of villains. Homosexuality was akin to deviancy in Fleming’s eyes, and most of ‘50s and ‘60s society thought the same.
English literature professor Christine Bold notes that in the Bond series “beauty, heterosexuality, and patriotism go together; ugliness, sexual ‘deviance’ and criminality are linked equally irresistibly”.
Undeniably, Fleming and the later Bond film series did associate homosexuality with evil in figures like Rosa Klebb, especially in her chilling interrogation of Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love. But after Connery’s second film, the film series reverted to a more tongue-in-cheek approach to the association, most notably in the portrayal of the homicidal homosexual couple, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever.
The films then subverted the whole idea in Skyfall, when Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) says, “There’s a first time for everything” as he rubs Bond’s legs. Bond responds, “What makes you think this is my first time?”
Bond’s response outraged many, claiming the producers were deliberately turning Bond bisexual. But the scene is more ambiguous, and Bond could just as likely been trying to unbalance the villain psychologically in his bid to unsettle the British agent.
Pussy, ahem, straddles both the good and the bad, making her lesbianism less permanent and “a condition” cured by the “right man”. Her beauty could, indeed, have been an indicator by Fleming that she is just “confused” and is good at heart. She’s not ugly or plain like the villains who are ascribed with a permanent homosexual “deviance”, as Fleming would say. All she needs is a good rogering from Bond and she changes teams, switching her sexual orientation and allegiance.
Fleming thought as much when he wrote a letter that Pussy Galore “only needed the right man to come along … to cure her [lesbian] psycho-pathological malady”.
The letter, which can be read in the book, The Man with the Golden Typewriter, was written in response to a letter by Dr Gibson, who enjoyed Goldfinger:
“[A]lthough not a psychopathologist, I think it is slightly naughty of you to change a criminal Lesbian into a clinging honeybun (to be bottled by Bond) in the last chapter.”
Screenwriter Richard Maibaum made Bond’s sexual conquest of Pussy more important to the plot. The result of the dalliance—a literal roll in the hay–is strongly suggested to be the reason why she changes the canisters on her planes to spray air over Fort Knox instead of fatal Delta 9 nerve gas.
But Bond’s so-called seduction of Pussy Galore at the end of Fleming’s novel portrays her as completely naive.
As Bond kisses Pussy, he says: “They told me you only liked women.” She responds, “I never met a man before.” Bond promises her “a course of TLC”. The rape-y overtones present in the film, are found in Fleming’s prose. Pussy looks up at Bond’s “passionate, rather cruel mouth” before it comes “ruthlessly down on hers.”
The passage is less overt than the film, though surprisingly, the clinch in the film remained overlooked by most viewers for decades, until very recently.
Nonetheless, Maibaum writes Pussy as a far stronger character than in Fleming’s novel. And Honor Blackman’s performance, including her obvious flirtation with Bond, the quick-fire quips she delivers in response to Bond’s remarks, not to mention Blackman’s real-life Judo skills, make Pussy Galore the premium Bond girl for many. She’s a template for Octopussy, May Day, and others. There’s even a bit of Pussy in Xenia Onatopp.
Not to mention that the name Pussy Galore inspired Plenty O’Toole, Chew Me, Dr. Holly Goodhead, and a litany of others in later films, and Alotta Fagina, Ivana Humpalot, and Felicity Shagwell in the Bond spoof series, Austin Powers.
Her name and Blackman’s performance made Pussy Galore the most recognizable Bond Girl in the franchise.
Blackman certainly had no time for critics of the name, especially the studio.
“It’s very much tongue-in-cheek, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, if you’re so po-faced that you have to take that seriously, well, bad luck. But it was very funny. I was quite shocked that they were shocked. I was rather taken aback. So I used to quite deliberately say, ‘Oh, you mean Pussy?’ And they used to die.”
The studio initially considered changing the name to Kitty Galore, but the suggestion didn’t last long.
