Lots Of Ian Fleming In James Bond

Exhibit Makes Clear Creator Of Famous Spy "007" Had Exciting Life Himself

(CBS/AP)  He loved fast cars, dry martinis and beautiful women.

His name was Fleming, Ian Fleming.

On the hundredth anniversary of his birth, a new exhibition at London's Imperial War Museum looks at a writer whose life was almost as exciting as that of his most famous creation: secret agent James Bond.

"There are many parallels: the cars, the girls, the love of martinis," said Godfrey Smith, who worked with Fleming for a decade on The Times newspaper in London. "My first and last pink gin was bought for me by Ian Fleming. I didn't like it much."

"007 is what Fleming wanted to be," observes CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey. "But then, don't we all?!"

Pizzey added, "The theme music and gun barrel shot may be the most famous and enduring in movie history," even if "the literary value of James Bond is debatable."

Smith said Wednesday that, for the newspaper's young journalists in the 1950s, Fleming was a role model, renowned for dating glamorous women and dashing off in his sports car on Friday afternoons for a round of golf.

"He gave an example of how life should be lived," Smith said.

"For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond" marks the first time the war museum - best known for displays recounting the Battle of Trafalgar and the London Blitz - has devoted a major show to a writer and his fictional creation.

But Bond is larger than life - and so, it turns out, was Fleming.

The exhibition, which opened Thursday and runs until March 1, 2009, has plenty for Bond movie aficionados as well as Fleming fans. There are vintage film posters, models of rocket belts and high-tech car-submarines - even the bikini worn by Halle Berry in "Die Another Day."

The show also traces Fleming's eventful life, from a privileged childhood as the son of a Conservative legislator who was killed in World War I when Ian was 8 through his early career as a journalist. When World War II broke out, Fleming joined British Naval Intelligence as an assistant to its director, Adm. John Godfrey - widely regarded as the model for spymaster M in the Bond stories.

"Throughout the wartime years, he was gathering material for the Bond stories," said Ben Macintyre, author of a book that accompanies the exhibition.

"Fleming was very careful in his writing to anchor the fiction as closely as he could in political reality," Macintyre told CBS News. "Bond is, in a way, a kind of Second World War character in a Cold War context."

Macintyre said Fleming was employed by Naval Intelligence as "an outside-the-box planner," and some of his wartime schemes could have come from the pages of his novels. He dreamed up Operation Ruthless, a plan to capture the codebooks for a German Enigma machine. British agents disguised as a Luftwaffe crew would take a captured German bomber, crash-land in the English Channel and then ambush the German rescue boat when it arrived. The idea was quickly abandoned.

"It was a completely lunatic idea," Macintyre said. "It was never going to work. But in a way, it was the prototype Bond story."

To his regret, Fleming was not a front-line spy - he knew too many secrets to be risked in the field. His only taste of action was accompanying the Allies' failed Dieppe landing in 1942.

"Ian was not a man of action, although he would have loved to have been," said Smith. "Bond did all the things he couldn't."

[akakjb]

Hmmm... no mention of the influence of WWI British super-spy Sydney Reilly, the man generally credited for creating what we now perceive as general spycraft (before then, it was more of a ''gentleman''s game'' with all the spies on various sides actually knowing each other). There is even a great quote I''m about to butcher from Fleming claiming that Bond couldn''t do everything - he''s not Sydney Reilly, you know.

[erasmus6]

The only James Bond movies that I have seen are the ones with Pierce Brosnan. And let me tell you, he was HOT!

[jankebenz]

I enjoyed every bond film exept the last one, casino royale, with Craig Daniel,it was horrible.Small wonder though,Barbara Broccoli, a producer, put the effeminate part in , and ruined the masculine soul of the super spy adventures. Ian Flemming would not have condoned the stipping of 007''s image.I read that Craig Daniel wants to have Bond become more modern, and play a "queer" spy, that would totally ruin it for me. And while were on the subject, please! put a man back in to head the agency, Judi dench sucks at playing "M".

[jjarden]

Roger Moore was the BEST Bond...PERIOD.

[voidmaster-2009]

A few years ago I saw a movie about Ian Fleming. It was pretty clear from events depicted in the movie that Fleming%u2019s own life was his inspiration for Bond. I wish I could remember the name of the flick, but I can%u2019t.

One bit of irony that I%u2019m sure was no coincidence: Sean Connery%u2019s son played Fleming in the movie.

[ramos937]

For me Sean Connery is James Bond. All others are poor imitators.