When we Leiter fans think of Jack Wade from EON Productions’ GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, we see middle-aged, portly character actor Joe Don Baker donning a Hawaiian shirt and playing a CIA agent (and amateur gardener) with an amusing but ultimately exasperating penchant for referring to 007 as “Jimbo,” “Jimmy,” or simply “another stiff-assed Brit”. Wade is surely more lackadaisical, more campy and more of a stereotypical southern American than the familiar Felix Leiter of the film series; in all, a seemingly random choice to replace the long-running CIA counterpart to Bond. 

However, there may have been method to the madness of Kevin Wade, the uncredited writer who wrote many of Jack Wade’s scenes and was the character’s namesake. While fans that are familiar mainly with the cinematic Felix Leiter may look upon Wade as an inferior replacement to the beloved character, Wade ironically embodied more of the personality traits of Fleming’s literary Leiter than did the cinematic version. Fleming’s Felix was a southern American with a slow Texan drawl, lots of southern charm and a penchant for jokingly jabbing at his friend, James. Take this excerpt from Leiter’s speech about finding Bond and Tiffany Case in the Nevada desert in Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever:

…and when I get into town I call my friend Ernie Cureo. His wife is having hysterics and Ernie’s in the hospital. So I go right over and he tells me the score and I figure that James may need reinforcements. So I jump on my coal-black charger and gallop through the night and when I get near to Spectreville I see the light in the sky. Mr. Spang’s having himself a barbecue, I figure. The gate in the fence is open so I decide to join the feast. Well, believe me or believe me not, there’s not a soul in the place except a guy with a busted leg and multiple contusions who’s crawling down the road trying to get away. And he looks to me mighty like a young hood called Frasso from Detroit. Ernie Cureo tells me he was one of the guys who carted James away. The greaser’s in no state to deny this and I more or less get the picture and figure that Rhyolite’s my next stop. So I tell the kid he’ll soon be having plenty of company from the Fire Department and I take him to the gate and leave him there and after a while there’s a girl standing in the middle of the desert looking as if she’s been fired from a cannon and here we all are. Now you tell.

                                                                                      Chapter Twenty One, Diamonds Are Forever

This is not a speech that many would agree sounds terribly natural coming from the mouth of the cinematic Felix Leiter, not even David Hedison’s portrayal. Hedison, more than any of the other Leiter actors thus far, captured the sentimental tone of the literary Leiter and the sense of affection for Bond that Leiter was known to have. In addition, it was probably either Jack Lord or Rik Van Nutter who most closely resembled the literary Leiter’s tall, lean physique. However, the overall spirit of Fleming’s Texan CIA agent was still arguably adapted the closest in Jack Wade.

Leiter’s eagerness to bend or outright break official protocol to aid his friend James, as well as his close ties to the Marines, was evident in Wade through his offering Bond Marine support in Cuba (a nation that the United States government is well known for considering “off-limits”) during the last act of GoldenEye, especially when Wade personally shows up with them in the end. Leiter’s aversion to protocol is also seen in Wade’s later willingness to use official U.S. Naval personnel and equipment to insert Bond into the South China Sea (another area considered “off-limits” by the United States government) to investigate the sunken H.M.S. Devonshire in Tomorrow Never Dies. Though their relationship had gotten off to a rocky start, Wade and Bond’s mutual disdain for abiding by the rules quickly set them on the road to becoming friends.

In addition, some of Wade’s more low-key exchanges with Bond are very strongly reminiscent of the exact type of banter that would ensue between Leiter and Bond in the pages of Fleming:

Wade: Now you’re sure you wanna do this? Last guy who went in uninvited went home air freight…in very small boxes.
Bond: Make sure they send me home first class.

                                                                                                                                       GoldenEye

In the end, Jack Wade became known as a minimally respected character among many Bond fans and a downright likeable one among others. For this writer, a substantial part of Wade’s appeal comes from the echoes of Fleming’s Felix that strongly shine through him and for providing the necessary foil with his tongue-in-cheek antics and eccentricities, which have often been cited as the less endearing attributes of the character. 

A number of Brosnan’s fans have lamented that in his four films, he was never allowed the opportunity to be seen onscreen with “dear old Uncle Felix”. This may be due to the producers’ desire not to bring a disabled Felix back into the series (even though Felix had been disabled very early in the literary series and had appeared as a disabled man in the rest of his appearances). It would be very interesting to be able to speak with Kevin Wade to ask if emulating the literary Felix Leiter was a specific and deliberate goal; until that is possible, this writer continues to believe that there is a good possibility that Fleming’s Felix was the primary template for the creation of Jack Wade in EON Productions’ GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.