Fun Facts 477 -478
Fun Fact #477
Not quite a Coward
In 1938, Noël Coward was a performer and a surprisingly good one at that. Although most people saw him as a bummering fool who couldn't remember what was just told to him, he had climbed to where he was by being anything but a fool and organizing most details of the plays and musicals he performed in. Thus the (British) Secret Service (MI6) recruited him to spy on the Nazis for them.
He actually proved well at this, as most Nazis did not pay him any mind and often openly discussed sensitive material with him, as long as the discussions portrayed Coward as a fool. Then MI6 learned that the American Congress loved his acts and so his new assignment was to be an “Agent of Persuasion” to convince the US to openly Join the Allied powers. Thus he “Fled” to the US and in exchange for room and board performed for congress for a time, and gave persuasive arguments to support Britain to anyone who would listen. Publicly all except Roosvelt gained sympathy for the British cause as a result, and suddenly Coward found himself at the top of the Nazi hit-list right as he returned to operating in the now occupied Europe and somehow wasn't assassinated along the way.
Post War,Noël Coward moved to Jamaica to bother his friend and new neighbor, a fellow ex-spy: Ian Fleming. It was in this place that he mentioned that Fleming should write a spy Novel and two months later Casino Royale was on its way to be published.
Coward singing aboard the HMS Victoria for sailors in August 1944
Fun Fact # 478
The Bond Series
When his friend Noël Coward suggested to him to write that book he had always talked about, it caught Ian Fleming’s imagination. Here he was off work for 3 months in Jamaica, and all he began to think about was that book and so he wrote Casino Royale in less than 2 months and although he had trouble getting it published at first it became an instant hit.
As Fleming would later go on to say, “I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument …” and so after stumbling across a birdwatcher’s book Fleming took what he thought to be the dullest, least interesting name on earth “James Bond”. As for Bond’s character he made him a combination of every spy and commando he met during the war including but not limited to the following:
Patrick Liegh Fermor
Bill “Biffy” Dunderdale
Sir Fitzroy Mclean
Dusko Popov (Famous member of Operation Double-Cross and The Twenty Commission)
Patrick Dazel-Job
(Yes those are all real names, and quite interesting stories too.)
Fleming would also base several plots on experiences from his Commando’s lives –even going so far as to use the following mission codenames as inspirations for his book titles– with Goldfinger, Thunderball, Casino Royale, and Moonraker all being actual mission names although the plots have nothing to do with reality. He also wrote Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang for his son during this time. Funny enough, what most people consider his best book –Goldfinger– was written primarily as an excuse to flee from his wife whenever she got angry at him while she was pregnant. It was his fastest time for writing a book in just 3 weeks.
In the end James Bond was anything but dull, helping to inspire the next generation of spies (even with its unrealistic storylines), while Fleming himself left a lasting impact on the world by
Helping “wild” Bill Donovon as a contractor to organize how the CIA operates
Creating the units T-Force and the No. 30 Commandos
Units which impacted the space race, manhattan project, Invasions of Italy and Sicaly, and even gave russia trouble during the cold war.
Helping to Build The Sunday Times into one of the premier newspapers in the world
Creating Operations Mincemeat, and the Aslos Mission
As always thanks for reading and please have a wonderful weekend.
