Goldfinger

1964/Action, PG 2Discs/3:27:44
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Crew: Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore), Gert Fröbe (Auric Goldfinger), Shirley Eaton (Jill Masterson), Tania Mallet (Tilly Masterson), Harold Sakata (Oddjob)
Details: The third installment in the 007 series finds überspy James Bond (Sean Connery) trying to thwart baddie Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) and his elaborate gambit to corner the gold market by contaminating Fort Knox. (Netflix)
Content:
Disc 1 - Theatrical Version 1:49:55
- Commentary Featuring Guy Hamilton
- Commentary Featuring Cast & Crew
Disc 2 - Extras ~1:37:49
- Sean Connery From the Set 3:11
- Screen Tests: Theodore Bikel 5:38, Tito Vandis 4:12
- On Tour With the Aston Martin DB-5 11:42
- Honor Blackman Open-Ended Interview 3:58
- The Making of Goldfinger 26:03
- The Goldfinger Phenomenon 29:15
- Original Publicity Featurette 2:15
- Theatrical Trailer 3:08
- TV Broadcasts (2:18): 1. Stop Look He's Gunning for Trouble :54, 2. Miss Honey & Miss Galore :21, 3. Have James Bond Back for More 1:01
- 34 Radio Communications: 1. Sean Connery Interview 11:47
- 242 Image Database (Slideshow) Includes: 1. Filmmakers (4), 2. Portraits (10), 3. Pre-Credits (16), 4. Fountainbleau (11), 5. Bond & Jill (8), 6. M's Office (4), 7. Dinner with Colonel Smithers (4), 8. Stoke Poges (32), 9. Andermatt (16), 10. Laser Table (8), 11. Honored with Honor (4), 12. Flying Circus (7), 13. Auric Stud (23), 14. A Roll in the Hay (11), 15. Fort Knox (10), 16. No Time to be Rescued (5), 17. Aston Martin D85 (4), 18. Gilding Jill (9), 19. Ken Adam (3), 20. Bond Meets His Maker (5), 21. Around the Globe (8), 22. Merchandising (40)
Eggs: (Eeggs, Eggs, DVD Town)
Musical Highlights: Shirley Bassey-Goldfinger
Factoids: (IMDB, Mistakes, BondMovies, Wiki) Mi6
1. "Goldfinger" was the seventh and longest of the Ian Fleming James Bond novels at 270 pages. It was written at 'Goldeneye', Jamaica during January and February of 1958. Its working title was 'The Richest Man In The World" and it was first published on 23 March 23 1959.
2. The villain's first name, Auric, is an adjective meaning 'of gold' (from the Latin word for gold, 'aurum'). Producers wanted Orson Welles to play Auric Goldfinger, but Welles was too expensive. Then Gert Fröbe began arguing over his salary (he wanted 10% from the movie's earnings), prompting the producers to wonder whether Welles would have been cheaper after all. Gert Fröbe was a child prodigy at the violin. Fröbe was a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party. Owing to his connection to the Nazi Party, 'Goldfinger' was banned in Israel until he was publicly thanked by a Jewish family, thus revealing that he had actually aided German Jews by hiding them from the Gestapo before 1945.
3. The Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami is a crescent shaped building; the guest room hallways are therefore curved, not straight as seen when Bond first approaches Goldfinger's room. The Bellboy, starring Jerry Lewis, was the first of many movies to be shot at the hotel.
4. Tilly Masterson's Ford Mustang was supposedly the first appearance by a Mustang in a major motion picture. The Mustang was introduced in April of 1964 and Goldfinger was released in December. Ford supplied many cars to the film including the CIA agents' Thunderbird, all of Goldfinger's goons cars, and the Lincoln Continental that is crushed.
5. Auric Goldfinger's 3D Model Map used for his Operation Grandslam is now housed at the actual Fort Knox and is permanently on exhibition.
6. Sean Connery learned to play golf for his first time.
7. In the Ian Fleming novel, Pussy Galore (named after Fleming's pet octopus, according to the book, The Essential World of 007) is a lesbian (changed in the movie to appease the social climate of the era), which is why she gives Bond the cold shoulder at the start. When she introduces herself to Bond, he replies "I must be dreaming." The original script had Bond replying "I know you are, but what's your name?" This was deemed too suggestive.
8. A 1965 episode of "The Avengers" (1961) made sly reference to Honor Blackman quitting her Cathy Gale role to appear in Goldfinger by having John Steed receive a postcard from Cathy Gale - sent from Fort Knox.
9. First appearance of the Q-Branch workshop and its gadget testing gags. Which also has the first use of the bulletprof vest, years ahead of its time.
10. The 1964 Lincoln Continental that Oddjob takes to be crushed becomes an engineless 1963 Continental as it is being compacted. After the Lincoln is crushed, it is gently lowered onto the bed of Oddjob's Ford Ranchero pickup, which would have crushed it. A '64 Lincoln weighs close to 5000 lbs, not counting the the extra weight of the gold that was supposed to be in it (or the body... ), and that year Ranchero had a max load weight of approximately 1000 lbs.
11. The helicopter that delivers Pussy Galore, Goldfinger and the "nuclear device" to the depository has the registration N-ASAZ. Aircraft registrations in the USA haven't used the "N-and four letters" system (as used in the UK, for instance, with G in place of N) since 1927.
12. When the Flying Circus is on it's way to Ft Knox, the lead pilot reports they are proceeding at 240 knots. Top speed on a Piper Comanche 180 was 141 knots.
13. Goldfinger's disguised henchmen are dressed in Army uniforms, however, their rank insignia is Air Force.
14. The sign on Ft. Knox bears the name "Gen. Russhon," Charles Russhon was the technical advisor for the film.
15. In the Fort Knox vault, the gold is stacked too high to be practical. Given the weight and softness of gold, the lower bars of the stacks would be flattened by the sheer weight of the bars above them.
16. The U.S. Army Brigadier General is addressed as "Brigadier"; U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps officers of this rank are addressed as "General", since in the U.S. military it is a General officer's rank. "Brigadier" is strictly a British or Commonwealth form of address.17. Sean Connery hurt his back during the fight sequence with Oddjob in Fort Knox, which delayed filming and some say provided him leverage to get a better deal out of the next film. Connery had also walked off the set for a couple days and had to be asked to return after Harold Sakata's Oddjob delivered a full contact karate chop during the first take of the "golden girl" scene.
18. CIA director Allen Dulles assigned a research team to determine the feasibility the homing system in the Aston Martin.
19. This movie marks Bond's first visit to America, however, Sean Connery never traveled to the United States to film this movie.
20. Goldfinger's "private" jet. The first Lear Jet was still unsold when this film was released, and the Lockheed JetStar used in the movie as both Goldfinger's jet and the government's jet, was still very new, so the idea of a business jet or private jet was quite novel in 1964.
21. The film's opening teaser sequence is based on the novel's opening where Bond is in the Miami Airport lounge thinking about the recent killing of a drug smuggler.
22. Asphyxiation Argument: In one scene, the villain's girlfriend, Jill Masterson, is murdered by "skin suffocation." She is painted with gold paint and died, because her skin is unable to breathe. According to urban legend, the concept was based on the death of a Swiss fashion model who painted herself and asphyxiated. Another urban legend in Europe involved Italian children who were painted gold as part of a religious parade, and died. Though this is a plausible explanation for this unusual method of killing, it has been argued whether or not it is possible. Humans, being mammals, achieve respiration via their mouths and nostrils to fill their lungs with air. The only animals that breathe through their skin are amphibians, insects and worms. In fact, were it true that people breathe, in auxiliary fashion, through their skin, it would, therefore, be impossible for people to engage in extended bathing, mud baths, scuba diving and, indeed, body painting - activities requiring extended covering of the skin. If one did try murder via gilding, the victim would die of heat stroke, but only after a long period and not in the manner shown in the movie. The gold paint would clog the pores and prevent perspiration, rendering the body unable to properly regulate its temperature. Dying in this fashion, however, would take several days and is a very inefficient manner of killing.
23. Explosive Decompression Airplane Window Argument: In a 2003 episode of Discovery Channel's MythBusters, the mythbusters attempted to recreate a scene in several movies (including Goldfinger) in which a window in a jet at high altitude is broken by a bullet, resulting in a passenger being sucked through the window hole by the force of the decompression. The popular idea that this was a realistic possibility almost certainly dates from the Goldfinger book and film (Bond in the film claims a .45 bullet fired at 35,000 feet will cause people to be sucked into "outer space"), and it had settled into the national consciousness firmly enough to be mentioned in the 1970 film Airport (where a character tells of seeing this happen). MythBusters' attempted a recreation of the phenomenon by over-pressurizing a commercial airliner sitting on the ground to a differential of 8 p.s.i. (the normal pressure difference between inside and outside a commercial airliner at cruising altitude), then firing a handgun at the window. They were unable to re-create any kind of window blowout or sudden cabin decompression, using a firearm (instead, a small hole merely appeared in the plastic). Even when explosives were used to blow a window out entirely, a dummy passenger near the window stayed in the cabin. A claim was later made by the MythBusters team in a Skeptic Magazine interview, that the U.S. government had sought data from this particular segment, since federal agencies and their contractors had been seriously contemplating the same sort of tests, in relation to its armed sky-marshal program, after the events of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Fortunately, today's airliner windows apparently do not behave in the same way as the window in the Lockheed JetStar used to represent a jet at 35,000 ft in the film.
Comments: B. The Ultimate Collectors Edition adds 23:03 of new material to approximately 1:14:46 of older material.