For 57 years (and counting), Ernst Stavro Blofeld
has been Bond’s biggest nemesis. As he returns
again in No Time To Die, we pay tribute to one of
cinema’s most malevolent masterminds
RELATIVELY FEW WORLD events occurred
on 10 April 1963. A US nuclear submarine sank.
A Communist offi cial suff ered a stroke. Lee
Harvey Oswald, pre-Kennedy assassination,
tried and failed to kill a former US Army General.
Most importantly though, on that day, Ernst
Stavro Blofeld was reborn for the fi rst time.
As cameras rolled on the second James Bond
fi lm, From Russia With Love, 007’s best-known
bad guy slunk from the pages of Ian Fleming ’s
novels onto the big screen. Richard Maibaum’s
script directions set the shady über-villain’s
mysterious tone immediately, keeping Blofeld’s
face hidden from the audience and unwittingly
introducing the source of countless future
parodies: a white Persian cat, which somehow
added to the air of malevolence despite being
a thoroughly adorable fl oof.
Blofeld would go on to have almost as many
lives as his fl uff y feline friend. His introduction
in From Russia With Love marked the diabolical
mastermind’s second incarnation, but his fi rst
— the original, literary Blofeld — was still going
strong in Fleming ’s books.
Four years earlier, Fleming had got together
with fi lmmaker Kevin McClory to create
Blofeld — and his villainous organisation
SPECTRE — for an unrealised fi lm script, which
Fleming would turn into his eighth Bond novel,
Thunderball, published in 1961. Blofeld in the
books is unrecognisable from his cinematic
counterparts — he’s not bald, never hides his
face and is entirely fl oof-free. In Fleming ’s
Thunderball he’s an absolute unit at 20 stone:
a former weightlifter-turned-gangster with a
black crew cut, who doesn’t drink or smoke and
is totally asexual. In other words, the anti-Bond.
Fleming eventually struck a movie deal and,
six months after Dr. No opened in October 1962,
director Terence Young trained his camera on
the back of a luxurious leather chair and showed
us the arm, hand and cat of SPECTRE’s big
cheese. The character is never referred to by
name in From Russia With Love. A ‘Blofeld’
is credited in the end crawl, but a playful
question mark takes the place of the actor’s
name. In fact, he was played by Anthony Dawson
(Dr. No’s Professor Dent) in a black suit and tie,
and voiced by Austrian actor Eric Pohlmann.
He enjoys fewer than fi ve minutes of screen time
over two scenes, but his presence hangs over the
fi lm like a sinister cloud.
Blofeld’s antagonism with 007 is established
from the off. After Bond (Sean Connery)
consigned SPECTRE associate Dr No to an
early bath in the previous fi lm, the organisation
devises a plot to steal a decoding machine from
the Russians and lure Bond into obtaining it,
and subsequently to his death.
The plot fails, and a SPECTRE minion is
ruthlessly dispatched in what would become
a Blofeldian trope. Little remains of Fleming ’s
description of Blofeld, although we do get to
see a little black hair peeking above his chair.
Male-pattern baldness was yet to trouble the
head of the head of SPECTRE. ❯•••^ WORDS NEIL ALCOCK