If James Bond were to have any personal friends, one would think they would be either his fellow Double O agents or Bill Tanner, M’s Chief of Staff (Bond’s best friend in the Service according to Ian Fleming). However, Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 had one unlikely friend-a man that was not only an American, but also a bona fide Texan. This man shared more adventures with Bond than any other character in the Fleming canon and grew to be the closest personal friend Bond would come to have during his career in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This man’s name is Leiter. Felix Leiter.

Felix Leiter appeared in six of the fourteen novels and short story collections written by Ian Fleming (In chronological order, these were Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and The Man with the Golden Gun). In Fleming’s original novel, Casino Royale, Fleming tells us that Leiter had served in the United States Marine Corps before being recruited to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with whom he was employed when he met James Bond. Throughout their adventures, Felix aided Bond both as a CIA agent and, for a time, as a detective for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. Much to their mutual lament, Bond never got the opportunity to visit Felix’s home in Texas (or see his “oil well”) and Felix never visited Bond’s Chelsea flat in London. However, the two men shared a camaraderie that transcended their common occupation and their distant homes. Long before Felix’s final appearance in The Man with the Golden Gun, the two men had already achieved a level of friendship that could certainly be viewed as brotherhood, and that dynamic continued throughout their careers together all the way through the end of the Fleming canon (It should be noted that Leiter also appeared in various continuation novels after Fleming’s death but this article is exclusively concerned with Fleming’s work).

Over the course of the James Bond films produced by Albert R. Broccoli’s EON Productions, Felix Leiter has taken on many physical forms-Tall, short, brown hair, black hair, grey hair-he has even gone from being Caucasian to African American. Many James Bond fans have grown to have an affinity for the cinematic Felix, and even favor certain actors and physical types that have been seen throughout the series. Only two of these actors have played Felix more than once, and the rest of the time Felix never had the same face twice. This writer assumes the reason for this was so that the viewer would be as surprised to see Leiter as Bond was, by not knowing what he would look like beforehand. This was not the producers’ original intent; however, it is possible that it simply became the standard mode of operation for them. Ian Fleming’s Felix Leiter was quite different from his celluloid counterparts in the popular film franchise. None of the actors who have portrayed him on film have truly played him as he was originally written (although some of the actors have given stellar performances). The main detail abandoned in the films is that the literary Bond and Leiter shared a much more brotherly and sentimental relationship than was often portrayed onscreen.

In contrast to the various shapes and sizes in which Felix was eventually seen onscreen, Ian Fleming gave Felix Leiter a very distinct, unequivocal physical description in Casino Royale:

“Felix Leiter was about thirty-five. He was tall with a thin bony frame and his lightweight, tan-coloured suit hung loosely from his shoulders like the clothes of Frank Sinatra. His movements and speech were slow, but one had the feeling that there was plenty of speed and strength in him, and that he would be a tough and cruel fighter. As he sat hunched over the table, he seemed to have some of the jackknife quality of a falcon. There was this impression also in his face, in the sharpness of his chin and cheekbones and the wide wry mouth. His grey eyes had a feline slant which was increased by his habit of screwing them up against the smoke of the Chesterfields which he tapped out of the pack in a chain. The permanent wrinkles which this habit had etched at the corners gave the impression that he smiled more with his eyes than with his mouth. A mop of straw-coloured hair lent his face a boyish look which closer examination contradicted.”

         Casino Royale, Chapter Seven

In this story, Felix Leiter made his debut as Bond’s CIA contact in Royale-les-Eaux, France, on loan from his regular posting in Fontainebleau. Bond first met Leiter when he noticed across the baccarat table that an American had been paying particular attention to Bond’s winning streak and had been giving him subtle visual hints that he wanted to have a conversation. Upon meeting, the two spies instantly took to each other, and Bond bought Leiter a drink. After they discussed business, Leiter joined René Mathis and Vesper Lynd as Bond’s official back-up for the mission.

During Bond’s baccarat game with Le Chiffre, he was cleaned out with no hope of buying back in until he received an envelope full of money, containing a note, which read:

“Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the U.S.A.”

Leiter backed Bond’s re-entry into the game, enabling Bond to eventually beat Le Chiffre and win all of the money. Afterward, Leiter felt responsible for Bond’s welfare and insisted upon walking with him to his hotel room, fearing Le Chiffre might attempt to assassinate Bond. They then parted ways.

In Fleming’s second novel, Live and Let Die, Leiter teamed up with Bond once more as they sought to track down and destroy the gold smuggling operation financed by SMERSH and led by black Russian agent “Mister Big.” It is in this novel that we begin to see Leiter’s friendship with Bond blossom. Bond and Leiter reunited in New York City and went about visiting bars and restaurants in Harlem while working their way to Mister Big’s own establishment. After being watched and finally caught by Mister Big and his thugs, Bond was interrogated by the big man himself. Meanwhile, Leiter was taunted and bruised up by some of the thugs until he managed to spark up a conversation about jazz music with one of the men and was later secretly allowed to go free. Leiter was dumped at Bellvue Hospital and met up with Bond again in St. Petersburg, Florida.

While in St. Petersburg, Bond and Leiter set out to visit the Ourobouros Worm & Bait warehouse, Mister Big’s front company and his main port in the United States. After a tense encounter with the warehouse’s proprietor (an operative of Mr. Big’s called “The Robber”), they learned that Solitaire had been kidnapped right out of Bond’s hotel room. An angry, scared Bond drowned his sorrows in spirits and passed out while Leiter went back to the warehouse during the wee hours.

When Bond finally woke, he was disturbed by a phone call apparently from the local hospital, saying that Leiter had been left there with a “Dr. Roberts” and was in critical condition. Bond raced to the hospital, only to find that there was no such physician, and that no man by the name of Felix Leiter had been admitted there.

Bond realized he’d been had and raced back to the hotel. To his horror, a nearly-dead body was lying in wet rags and cloths on his bed, with a note sticking out of the place where the mouth should have been, saying:

“He disagreed with something that ate him.

                                    (P.S. We have plenty more jokes as funny as this.)”

Hearing that it had to have been a shark that maimed Felix, Bond returned to the warehouse that night and engaged the Robber in a gun battle and fist fight. Eventually the Robber fell through a secret trap door, grabbing the edge just in time. Bond looked beneath him and saw the black ocean waters, along with what was sure to be the large shark. Bond saw in his mind what must have happened-The Robber would have tricked Felix into standing over the same trap door and would have flipped the switch. Bond lashed out in a fit of rage and kicked the Robber in the face, twice, and he fell to a justly horrific death.

The last thing Bond had heard about Felix is that he was still unconscious, and that his right arm and left leg were gone. Fortunately, Bond successfully avenged Felix and killed Mister Big, thus destroying his gold smuggling operation.

After a departure from Fleming’s Moonraker, Felix made his return in Diamonds Are Forever. While investigating a diamond smuggling ring in the United States, Bond was surprised on the street by his old friend in New York City who had been tailing him. Not having seen each other since Felix’s near-death in Florida, the two were elated to see each other again. It is in this story that we get the sense that these two men have become like brothers, always taunting and teasing each other. In this novel, Fleming updated the reading audience on Felix’s new appearance:

“Sure,” said Leiter. He slipped his steel hook into the right-hand pocket of his coat and took Bond’s arm with his left hand. They moved out onto the street, and Bond noticed that Leiter walked with a decided limp…His limp was more noticeable as he held onto the [stair]banisters…The right arm had gone, and the left leg, and there were imperceptible scars below the hairline above the right eye that suggested a good deal of grafting, but otherwise Leiter looked in reasonable shape. The steady eyes were undefeated, the shock of straw-coloured hair had no hint of grey in it and there was none of the bitterness of a cripple around the mouth. But in their short walk there had been a hint of reticence in Leiter’s manner, and Bond felt this had something to do with him, Bond, and perhaps with Leiter’s present activities. Certainly not, he thought as he walked across the room to join his friend, with Leiter’s injuries.

  Diamonds Are Forever, Chapter Eight

By this time, Felix had also left the employ of the CIA and was now employed by Pinkerton’s Detective Agency:

“With my gun hand gone they could only offer me desk work. Very nice about it, and paid me off handsomely when I said I wanted an open-air job. Then Pinkertons made me a good offer. You know, ‘The Eye That Never Sleeps’ people. So now I’m just a ‘door-basher’-private detective, ‘put-on-some-clothes-and-open-up’ routine. But it’s fun. They’re a nice crowd to work for, and someday I’ll be able to retire with a pension and a presentation gold watch that goes green in the summer. As a matter of fact I’m in charge of their Race Gang squad-doping, crooked running, nightguards at the stables, that sort of thing. Good job, and it takes you all over the country.”

        Diamonds Are Forever, Chapter Eight

Leiter and Bond chose not to team as closely on this outing, as their respective agencies were not collaborating on the case. However, Felix was able to get Bond a reliable Pinkerton’s contact in Las Vegas, and personally helped when he could. He drove Bond to Saratoga in his pride and joy-his “Studillac”-a Studebaker with a Cadillac engine. Leiter frequently liked to make playful jabs at the British, whether by simply calling Bond a “limey” or by engaging Bond’s competitive nature by threatening that his Studillac could outperform Bond’s prized Bentley. Felix always felt the need to defend the American motoring reputation to Europeans like Bond.

After rescuing Bond from the clutches of the Spangled Mob outside Las Vegas, Leiter bid Bond a fond farewell near the end of Diamonds Are Forever. As Bond felt a lump in his throat seeing Felix limping back to his car and driving off, Tiffany Case remarked to him-

“You’ve got yourself a good friend there.”

(To which Bond replied)

“Yes–Felix is all of that.”

         Diamonds Are Forever, Chapter Twenty-One

Leiter only made a brief appearance near the end of Goldfinger, where he was delivered a note that Bond had written as a last ditch attempt to thwart Auric Goldfinger’s plan to rob Fort Knox. When Goldfinger and his men had seemingly incapacitated the military guard around Fort Knox and Bond thought it was all finally over, a maroon signal went off and the soldiers sprung to life. Bond heard a familiar voice cry “Santiago!” (St. James-the battle cry of Cortez) and turned to see Leiter in his Marine Captain uniform carrying a bazooka and leading a unit of men in the ambush. With the Marines, Leiter and Bond crushed Goldfinger’s great robbery plan and spent a short amount of time relaxing and speeding in the Studillac along the highway on Bond’s way to Washington, D.C. There, they parted ways once again.

Felix returned again in full form in Thunderball. While Bond waited on his assigned CIA contact in Nassau, Felix caught Bond completely by surprise and explained that he had been “drafted” back into the CIA to work with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) to find the two missing NATO nuclear bombs stolen by S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Working with Bond much more closely again, Felix accompanied Bond onto a yacht owned by Emilio Largo-a suspicious man whom they believed to be involved in the theft of the bombs. Felix brought with him a now-famous gadget: a camera with a Geiger counter hidden inside, which is connected to a wristwatch whose sweep hand shows the radiation count.

Finding nothing but still suspecting Largo, Leiter and Bond searched all over the sea surrounding Nassau for the aircraft from which the bombs were stolen. With little time to spare before S.P.E.C.T.R.E.’s ransom was due, they found the aircraft sitting on the bottom of a grotto and brought the U.S. Navy on board in the form of a submarine and underwater commandos. Leiter aided the Navy in chasing down Largo’s yacht while Bond fought Largo and his men underwater. With S.P.E.C.T.R.E. crushed, the bombs were finally retrieved.

Felix made his final appearance in Fleming’s final novel, The Man With The Golden Gun. While still working for Pinkerton’s, Felix was once again drafted into the CIA specifically to work with his old friend James in Jamaica to eliminate Cuban hitman Francisco “Pistols” Scaramanga. Scaramanga was organizing a deadly union of the American mob, the Sicilian Mafia, and the KGB. While Bond posed undercover as Scaramanga’s bodyguard under the name of Mark Hazard, Leiter posed under the name of “Mr. Travis” as a temporary accountant at the hotel run by Scaramanga. His objective was to collect and record evidence of Scaramanga’s connection to the KGB. Leiter was assisted by another CIA agent named Nick Nicholson, an electronics and wiretapping expert.

Eventually, Bond discovered that Scaramanga and his KGB handler, Mr. Hendriks, knew that he was a spy. Fortunately, Leiter had maintained his cover and aided his friend in making sure that he would be forewarned and, thus, forearmed. Scaramanga planned to kill Bond in full view of the group of criminals by exposing Bond and killing him during an excursion to hunt game. While on his train, Scaramanga used a dummy tied to the tracks (by Leiter earlier, under Scaramanga’s pressure) to trick Bond into thinking it was his girlfriend, and forced Bond’s hand. A gunfight ensued in which Bond killed Hendriks and severely wounded Scaramanga, but he was still outnumbered and outgunned. Just as he was nearly done for, Felix popped up behind Scaramanga (having ridden aboard the train in secret) and ambushed the other thugs, telling Bond to jump. Bond and Leiter jumped, as did Scaramanga, and the train went up in a fireball thanks to explosives that Leiter had planted ahead on a bridge.

Bond and Leiter were badly wounded, Bond even more so after his final confrontation with Scaramanga in the mangrove swamps. The two spies were hospitalized, though Leiter visited Bond often and was with him as he recovered from his near-fatal gunshot wound. Both were honored by the Jamaican police, after which they parted ways as Leiter prepared to go back to America. Bond and Leiter curiously never shook hands, but still knew each other well and knew that, while they had difficulty expressing their brotherly affection, they were two sides of the same coin and would always be so.

While the relationship between James Bond and Felix Leiter has never been fully fleshed out in the film series, fans of Fleming know that there is much more to Felix than Bond’s American sidekick who simply makes Bond look great by comparison. Fleming’s Felix is a beloved character that has endured with the novels themselves; a charming, professional, deadly American spy and detective who has suffered, prevailed and lived to be considered James Bond’s closest friend and ally for many years and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Discuss Fleming’s Felix: The CIA Man as Originally Envisioned in this thread on the FelixLeiter.com Forums, the only place dedicated to the discussion of Felix Leiter on the Internet.

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