Ian Fleming / James Bond: A copy Memorandum to Jack Whittingham and copy first draft screen treatment titled James Bond of the Secret Service
a copy of a one page memo accompanying Ian Fleming's first draft treatment, given to Jack Whittingham outlining his intentions for the first James Bond film, he states a brief outline of his plan for the plot content It is the story of an attempt by the Mafia to blackmail the West for £100 million using as a lever an automatic warhead stolen from one of Britain's rocket sites he continues My concern has been only to stitch together a more or less plausible narrative based on this plot and to make it as fast-moving and packed with incidents as possible., Fleming narrates his problem with the draft idea for the story I am badly in need of good Italian names for the Mafia gangsters and these could perhaps be obtained from the Venice telephone directory!; the first draft treatment of 57 copied mimeographed typescript, some with copy annotations and crossings out as well as 7 addition pages and rewrites; with court reference document attached to the verso,
It was from this first treatment that Jack Whittingham formed a screenplay for the first James Bond film. Robert Sellers comments in his book, With his trained eye Whittingham immediately saw the deficiencies in Fleming's treatment and after reading it formed the opinion that the author had very little idea of writing for the screen. "In my view Fleming's film treatment was terribly bad...and completely inappropriate for film development". Whittingham had very firm notions of the differences between a screenwriter and an author of books. He had the experience and understanding to tell a story using as little dialogue as possible and tapping into the viewer's visual senses to portray characters and storyline. As Sylvan Mason, Whittingham's daughter explains Fleming was a wonderful writer in his written descriptions, but that didn't work on Film.
Literature:
Sellers, Robert, The Battle For Bond, Sheffield, (Tomahawk Press), 2007, pp.39-41
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a copy of a one page memo accompanying Ian Fleming's first draft treatment, given to Jack Whittingham outlining his intentions for the first James Bond film, he states a brief outline of his plan for the plot content It is the story of an attempt by the Mafia to blackmail the West for £100 million using as a lever an automatic warhead stolen from one of Britain's rocket sites he continues My concern has been only to stitch together a more or less plausible narrative based on this plot and to make it as fast-moving and packed with incidents as possible., Fleming narrates his problem with the draft idea for the story I am badly in need of good Italian names for the Mafia gangsters and these could perhaps be obtained from the Venice telephone directory!; the first draft treatment of 57 copied mimeographed typescript, some with copy annotations and crossings out as well as 7 addition pages and rewrites; with court reference document attached to the verso,
It was from this first treatment that Jack Whittingham formed a screenplay for the first James Bond film. Robert Sellers comments in his book, With his trained eye Whittingham immediately saw the deficiencies in Fleming's treatment and after reading it formed the opinion that the author had very little idea of writing for the screen. "In my view Fleming's film treatment was terribly bad...and completely inappropriate for film development". Whittingham had very firm notions of the differences between a screenwriter and an author of books. He had the experience and understanding to tell a story using as little dialogue as possible and tapping into the viewer's visual senses to portray characters and storyline. As Sylvan Mason, Whittingham's daughter explains Fleming was a wonderful writer in his written descriptions, but that didn't work on Film.
Literature:
Sellers, Robert, The Battle For Bond, Sheffield, (Tomahawk Press), 2007, pp.39-41
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
