Dig That Gold

I can’t help it. Every time I hear the theme song to Goldfinger (1964), I think of the alternative lyrics cooked up for a 1972 TV advertisement for Butterfinger candy bars. I must have watched that rip-off commercial dozens of times during my television-obsessed boyhood, so firmly imprinted is it upon my brain. However, this isn’t the time for nostalgia of that sort. It’s the occasion, instead, for a different but related sort of nostalgia. For today, you see, marks 45 years since the release, in Great Britain, of the third action film featuring Scottish actor Sean Connery as Ian Fleming’s dashing but deadly super spy, Agent 007 himself, James Bond. (The American release of Goldfinger didn’t come until December 22, 1964.)

Some of the best writing about this anniversary for Goldfinger--“the first mega-007 hit”--has come from that Bond-obsessed site, The HMSS Weblog. Over the last month, contributors have remarked on singer Shirley Bassey’s rendition of the movie theme, “10 major decisions that helped shape the movie,” the golf match pitting Bond against antagonist Auric Goldfinger, the Aston Martin DB 5 with which 007 has become so closely identified, how composer John Barry’s now-celebrated Goldfinger theme was almost deep-sixed (apparently, co-producer Harry Saltzman hated it), and the film’s legacy.

To read The HMSS Weblog’s whole series, click here.

READ MORE: “Bond Goes for the Gold,” by J. Kingston Pierce
(Kirkus Reviews).