Honor Blackman: the ultimate Bond girl

Such was the manner in which James Bond (Sean Connery) and Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) consummated their 'flirtation' in the 1964 007 classic Goldfinger.

Watched today, the scene plays out as a sexual assault. "There now… let's both play," Bond jokes as he wrenches Galore to the floor. But in the 1960s, nobody thought twice of a dashing super-spy wrestling a reluctant love interest into submission.

It's fair to say we've travelled a long way since James Bond could get the girl whether the girl wanted it or not. So it's been strange to reflect on Pussy Galore and her legacy this week following the death of Blackman at age 94.

"Who are you?" Bond had wondered when first clapping eyes on Blackman's character. "My name is Pussy Galore," she responds. Connery smirks. "I must be dreaming."

And with that, Pussy Galore took her place among the most memorable Bond girls. Blackman was 39 at the time: old age in Bond girl years. Yet she was very much Connery's match on screen, even as Galore made clear her lack of interest in Bond romantically.

It was heavily implied that she was lesbian. This being the 1960s, it wasn't spelled out, of course. And clearly her sexuality was malleable. All Bond had to do was assault her in a barn and she melted in his arms.

Blackman herself seemed unsure of her feelings about Bond. She got the humour that was part of 007. And she regarded her most famous character's name as a bit of a jape.

"Tongue in cheek, isn't it?" she said of Pussy. "If you're so po-faced that you had to take that seriously, well, bad luck."

However, she didn't see herself as a pin-up and did not accept that Pussy was just another disposable love interest draped around Bond. "I hate being referred to as a Bond girl simply because Pussy Galore was a great character," she said in 2004. "It wouldn't have mattered what she was in."

Still, though she was by far the most interesting thing about Goldfinger - and effortlessly outshone the smarmy Connery - it's fair to say Blackman's character wouldn't fly today. The world has changed, and with it the Bond girl.

The forthcoming 25th Bond movie, No Time to Die, has been pushed back because of coronavirus. So it's too soon to say how new 007 director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, will deal the most problematic of the franchise's traditions.

We do know Bond 25 will pit Daniel Craig's super-spy against formidable licensed-to-kill agent Nomi, portrayed by Lashana Lynch. The actress has expressed the hope Nomi will be a role model for young girls - not something that could be historically said of many female protagonists in Bond movies.

She wants Nomi to be "embraced by many women, many black women, many young girls, being hopefully some kind of shining light, a little bit of inspiration for people that have never seen something like that before... We're just moving the needle more and more".

No Time to Die will welcome a second female heroine in CIA operative Palomo (Ana de Armas). Described as a "Cuban agent", she wasn't in the original script. Palomo was added by Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge, bought in to give the film a more contemporary gloss (and also presumably to make Bond funnier and less rampantly sexist).

"There's been a lot of talk about whether or not (the Bond franchise) is relevant now because of who he is and the way he treats women," Waller-Bridge said when her participation was announced. "I think that's b****cks. I think he's absolutely relevant now."

"It has just got to grow," she continued. "It has just got to evolve, and the important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn't have to. He needs to be true to this character."

"You could… tell that Phoebe was in there," said De Armas of her character in a recent Vanity Fair interview.

"There was that humour and spikiness so specific to her. My character feels like a real woman. But you know, we can evolve and grow and incorporate reality, but Bond is a fantasy. In the end, you can't take things out of where they live."

The Bond girl has in fact been evolving for quite some time. In 1983, Maud Adams' Octopussy was the first Bond girl to have a 007 movie named after her. She was an imposing matriarch with a collection of killer molluscs (she also slept with Bond).

In 1999's The World is Not Enough, Pierce Brosnan squared off with Denise Richards' headstrong nuclear physicist Dr Christmas Jones (who also slept with him). Even in the 1970s, with feminism going mainstream, Bond had to sit up and take notice. In 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond faced a worthy adversary in Barbara Bach's Major Anya 'Triple X' Amasova (reader, she slept with him).

Depressingly, however, even these relatively forward-facing Bond girls were obliged to follow the franchise's formula.

In 1967, You Only Live Twice screenwriter, Roald Dahl, set down the blueprint for Bond love interests. Until recently, it has been followed rigorously.

"You use three different girls and Bond has them all. No more and no less," he wrote.

"Girl number one is violently pro-Bond. She stays around roughly the first reel of the picture. Then, she is bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond's arms."

Girl number two, he continued, is "anti-Bond". "She works for the enemy and stays around for 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."

Which brought us to Bond girl number three. "She occupies the final third of the picture, and she must on no account be killed. Nor must she permit Bond to take any lecherous liberties with her until the very end of the story. We'll keep that for the fade-out."

Things had become more sophisticated by the time Craig took over the role in 2006. He had a great love in Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (the relationship grew slightly complicated as it emerged she was a double agent).

This was gutsy as it showed us Bond as a vulnerable, flesh-and-blood human being. Of course, even here, the series stumbled into the historical problem that female characters in Bond movies exist simply as glorified plot devices.

Though portrayed with impressive intensity by Eva Green, Lynd was just another prop with which Bond could interact.

As was Monica Bellucci's Lucia Sciarra in 2015's Spectre, no matter that Bellucci was the oldest Bond girl at age 51.

The series, it is true, had progressed a considerable distance from Sean Connery wrestling Honor Blackman to the floor. But to give us a fully modern Bond girl, Fukunaga and Waller-Bridge will have to go further still.

One sign of the changing climate is Craig's recently admission that he avoids, wherever possible, using the term 'Bond girl'.

"I don't even call them Bond girls," he told Vanity Fair. "I'm not going to deny it to anybody else. It's just I can't have a sensible conversation with somebody if we're talking about 'Bond girls'."