Film Dossier: Diamond Are Forever
By David Pegram
Title Card:
Production:
- Released: 1971
- Director: Guy Hamilton
- Screenplay: Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz
- Music: John Barry
Theme Song:
- “Diamonds Are Forever” performed by Shirley Bassey
Villain:
- Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray)
Evil Plot:
Having kidnapped and stolen the identity of Vegas mogul Willard Whyte, Ernst Stavro Blofeld
Bond: “WEREN’T YOU A BLONDE WHEN I CAME IN?”
smuggles diamonds into a Nevada lab, where he uses them to built a satellite, equipped with a powerful laser.
Locations:
- London
- Amsterdam
- Los Angeles
- Las Vegas
Tiffany case: “Could be.”
Bond Girls:
- Tiffany Case (Jill St. John)
- Plenty O’Toole (Lana Wood)
Supporting Cast:
Bond: “I tend to notice little things like that, whether a girl is a blonde or a brunette.”
Felix Leiter (Norman Burton)
Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean)
Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover)
Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith)
Bert Saxby (Bruce Cabot)
Tiffany Case: “Which do you prefer?”
Q (Desmond Llewelyn)
M (Bernard Lee)
Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell)
Dr. Metz (Joseph Furst)
Peter Franks (Joe Robinson)
Notable Moments:
The pre-title sequence features Bond asking several sources where he can find Blofield.
Bond: “Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match…”
Homosexual partners, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, assassinate a dentist (and diamond smuggler) in South Africa by placing a scorpion in the back of his shirt.
Bond assumes the identity of Peter Franks, a diamond smuggler, in Amsterdam, where he meets Tiffany Case. While in her apartment, she secretly takes his fingerprints and runs them through a computer. He checks out because Q had fitted his fingers with fake skin, designed to replicate Franks’s prints.
Bond kills Franks after a fight in an elevator. He places his own identification on Franks, which Tiffany Case later finds. “You just killed James Bond,” she says, in shock. .
Bond smuggles the diamonds into the United States by placing them in the dead body of Peter Franks.
In Las Vegas, Bond stays at The Whyte House, a hotel owned and operated by the reclusive Willard Whyte. Upon arrival, he meets Plenty O’Toole and invites her to his room, where hit men are waiting for them. Plenty is thrown out the window and lands in the swimming pool below. “Exceptionally fine shot,” Bond says, looking down at her landing. “I didn’t know there was a pool down there,” one of the men says.
Tiffany Case receives the diamonds in a large plush animal she won by playing an arcade game at Circus Circus.
Bond tracks the diamonds to a aerospace lab outside Las Vegas. After sneaking in and learning of the satellite, his presence is learned. Bond escapes in a moon buggy prototype.
Bond leads police in a car chase through downtown Las Vegas.
After learning of Blofeld’s evil plan, Bond looks for Willard Whyte at his home. Two female guards, Bambi and Thumper, attack him.
Blofeld dresses in drag to escape the Whyte House.
Bond stops Blofeld’s plan, with some help from Tiffany Case, on an oil rig off the coast of Baja.