007: License to Kill [Girlfriends]
January 2, 2020
Welcome to the Dead Fictional Girlfriends Report, your #1 site for tracking which franchise kills off the most female love interests. Today, we can report on Contestant #1: cinematic character James Bond. If you've heard of him, you already know that he's usually surrounded by women - and not all of them live to tell the tale. Let us begin our analysis with:
The Character
James Bond is an agent for MI6, the British spy agency. His code name is 007, where the "00" means he has a license to kill. He is an excellent shot, a tough fighter, a gambler, a drinker, and a prolific lover of women.
James Bond the cinematic character is based on James Bond the literary character, who was named for a British ornithologist (who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve such treatment). Literary Bond debuted in 1953, and made 13 book appearances before the author, Ian Fleming, died. Our analysis, however, will focus on Cinematic Bond, a character in the ongoing Eon Productions series of films, for one simple reason: the movies have a "girl formula."
Bond's first film appearance was in 1962's Dr. No. By 1967, Eon Productions founders Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had already codified the "girl formula." We know this because the screenwriter for Bond's 5th movie, Roald Dahl (yes, that Roald Dahl) published the girl formula in Playboy. Broccoli & Saltzman described their formula as follows:
You use three different girls and Bond has them all...
Girl number one is pro-Bond. She stays around roughly through the first reel of the picture. Then she is bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond’s arms...
Girl number two is anti Bond. She works for the enemy and stays around throughout the middle third of the picture. She must capture Bond, and Bond must save himself by bowling her over with sheer sexual magnetism. This girl should also be bumped off, preferably in an original fashion...
Girl number three is violently pro Bond. She occupies the final third of the picture. and she must on no account he killed. Nor must she permit Bond to take any lecherous liberties with her until the very end of the story. We keep that for the fade-out.
The girl formula has changed remarkably little, considering this franchise kicked off during the Kennedy administration. The real world has changed quite a bit since 1962, both socially, politically, and technologically. Certain other aspects of Bond's character have, in fact, evolved with the times: he stopped slapping women circa 1975, quit smoking cigarettes in 1989, and by 2004 was willing to acknowledge that a life spent fighting/drinking/gambling/killing isn't psychologically healthy. Yet wherever he goes and whatever he does, James Bond perennially encounters women who are willing to be "bowled over with sheer sexual magnetism."
In case you think I'm exaggerating, please consider this partial list of places in which James Bond has seduced a woman he barely knows:
- Inside the bad guy's house
- Hotel room, while another woman was hidden in his closet
- Submarine escape capsule
- Scuba dive
- Forest infested with voodoo practitioners
- Cruise ship into which he's just crash-landed
- Doctor's office, during a physical
- Speeding car, during a psychiatric evaluation
- Hijacked space shuttle
And now consider this: some of those have happened more than once.
The Women Behind the Scenes
Are there any women screenwriters?
In April 2020, Eon Productions will release its twenty-fifth James Bond movie, which will be the first post-#MeToo installment. Not coincidentally, No Time To Die was partially written by a female screenwriter, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Remarkably, although the franchise is 58 years old, Waller-Bridge is only the second lady to write for it. The first was Johanna Harwood, who worked on Dr. No and From Russia With Love - which was the last movie that President Kennedy watched before his fatal trip to Dallas.
In other words, Eon Productions has let men write every Bond movie released in the past nine presidential administrations. #TimesUp, indeed.
Are there any women directors?
Nope.
Are there any women producers?
Just one - although she is quite a badass. Cubby Broccoli's only daughter, Barbara Broccoli, went into the family business at age 17, running publicity for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Cubby turned over control of the company to her and her half-brother, Michael G. Wilson, in 1990. The past 9 installments have been under the siblings' joint creative control.
The Women On Screen
In general usage, all women who appear in Bond films are collectively known as "Bond girls." For our purposes, we have only counted women shown kissing, or flirting with, James Bond. This means that we did not count his superior officer, M, as lately played by Dame Judi Dench. We also did not count Queen Elizabeth II, who appeared in a Bond short for the London Olympics opening ceremony.
It's not that we didn't like Her Majesty's performance. It's just that, being immortal, she would've skewed our numbers.
The Study
Before launching the #DFGRR, I had been a casual James Bond fan for years, having seen the latest 4 movies in theaters and caught some of the older ones on DVD or weekend cable. Between March and June of 2017, however, my boyfriend and I went on a mission to watch all 24 movies, and catalog the women who flirt, hook up, or fall in love with James Bond.
Our methodology involved the New York Public Library’s DVD request feature, and a Google Sheet.
Mortality Rate
I can confidently state that no one is ever going to surpass James Bond for sheer number of deceased girlfriends.
Bond Girl Mortality
Total Bond love interests: 76
Total deaths: 23
Mortality rate: 30.26%
The causes of death are invariably violent, ranging from the mundane:
To the fairly absurd:
To the horrifying:
Not one deceased Bond girl has had a natural death, as you can see from the following chart:
Still, there are 53 surviving Bond women, meaning at least 2 per movie make it out alive.
Pregnant Mortality Rate
When it comes to killing off women, having the dead girl be pregnant is one way to portray the death as more tragic and the villain as more heartless (even if the pregnancy is not yet visible.) Therefore, I have looked into the pregnancy/mortality correlation for the franchises listed. In the James Bond universe, that was pretty easy.
Total # of Pregnant Bond Girls: 0.
Yes. In 24 movies, and at least 54 confirmed sexual encounters, James Bond has never once conceived a child. (The novel version of You Only Live Twice implies otherwise, but Ian Fleming died before following up on that dangling plot thread.)
I have explored a few fan theories on why that could be.
1. Too many sex partners die off before conception is possible. This is supported by the fact that 17 of Bond's 54 sex partners don't survive the movie in which they appear.
2. Bond is sterile. This is supported by his exposure to radiation in both Dr. No (1962) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), as well as the blunt force trauma he took to the groin in Casino Royale (2004).
3. The world is suffering an infertility plague. This is supported by the fact that there has been exactly 1 child with a speaking role in a Bond film: a Thai souvenir peddler whom 007 shoved into the Chao Phraya River in 1975.
4. Q Branch has perfected condoms, and invented a gadget that ensures 007 always has one handy. This is unsupported.
Attempts Made on James Bond's Life by Bond Girls
In studying the mortality rates of fictional women, you start to realize that a LOT of fictional women have nefarious intentions towards the protagonist. In James Bond's case, 17 of them have made attempts on his life.
Percentage of Bond girls who tried to kill James Bond: 22.37%
I give points to Xenia Onnatopp (Goldeneye, 1995) for the best attempt: trying to crack Pierce Brosnan's ribs with her thighs, in a sauna, while they're both half-naked and he's soaking wet.
Oh, sorry, I said "best" when I meant "hottest."
Anyway, the worst attempt on 007's life came from an unnamed snuggle partner in Austria (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977): She radioed a Soviet ski infantry unit to let them know when he was leaving her place. This kicked off a daring chase/fight scene that culminated in 007 skiing off an Alpine cliff.
C'mon, Unnamed Austrian Lady, you should've known 007 is immune to death by action prologue!
Reasons Why Sex Happens in the James Bond Universe
Just for fun, I placed James Bond's sexual encounters in 5 categories. Much of the time, he's trying to gain a strategic advantage by seducing someone. To be fair, a lot of the time, women are trying to entrap him, too.
In short: if you and James Bond are screwing, there's a 50.8% chance one of you is also screwing the other over.
Conclusions
The Bond girl mortality rate, 30.26%, could easily be surpassed. But no group of ladies is likely to beat the Bond girls for number, variety, violent tendencies, or absurd thought processes. I also hereby award the Bond girls a trophy for Most Ridiculous Names, because one of them calls herself Pussy Galore.
The Bond franchise also shines in another category: the extent to which the main character is defined by his relationships with women. The revolving door for women forms a major part of the franchise's tone, both in and out of universe. One or more Bond girls is usually in the first scene and the last scene of every movie. When a new film is announced, the fandom eagerly awaits casting for the Bond girls just as much as it looks forward to the latest Bond villain. Many a successful actress has gotten her big break as a Bond girl, including such luminaries as Rosamund Pike and Jane Seymour.
"Wait a minute, Claire," you're probably thinking, "Aren't the Bond girls sexist punchlines?" Well, yes and no. They do get bowled over by sheer sexual magnetism quite often, as per the girl formula. Many of them have little to no character development, and couldn't pass the Sexy Lamp test if it were multiple choice. Some of them were seemingly put into the universe specifically to be in danger at inconvenient moments. One villain managed to sneak up on a particularly dim-witted Bond girl in an actual zeppelin. Feminist icons, most Bond girls are not.
On the other hand, there are Bond girls who break that mold. At various times, women have called Bond out on his addiction to violence, his sexist assumptions, his fear of commitment, and his attempts to manipulate them. He never listens, but the audience does - and those conversations demonstrate that the franchise is at least somewhat self-aware. Through 6 decades, Bond has taken orders from women, accepted help from women, and fought female villains on their own terms. It's worth noting that in a franchise with a triple-digit death toll, Bond has only ever apologized for killing one person, and it was because the man's death had hurt his girlfriend, Anya Amasova, who is Bond's Soviet counterpart and respected rival.
Furthermore, the existence of the Bond girls guarantees that no Bond film will ever have an all-male principal cast, unlike some action franchises I could name. For proof of how central the girls are to Bond's universe, I invite you to watch James Bond's character-establishing moment from Dr. No:
That's right: his distinctive introduction as "Bond, James Bond" was actually an echo of "Trench, Sylvia Trench." From the very first moment we met this character, he was taking his cues from the woman in the room.
In short, he's not Bond without the girls. The sexual revolution may come and go, second-wave feminism might crest and recede, HIV/AIDS will ravage the world, the Cold War can end, and at the end of it all, the Bond franchise will still cast at least 3 actresses per movie. And they'll still be called "girls," not "women," no matter how many decades pass. It just wouldn't feel right otherwise.
Wouldn't it be nice if more girls could live to tell the tale, though?