Odd this day
Well, to begin with, happy 129th birthday to this diary entry from 19th century novelist George Gissing:
That’s from The Faber Book of Diaries, whose editor provides this potted biography for the unfortunate man:
1962
This day 62 years ago saw two momentous cultural events: the release of The Beatles’ Love Me Do, and the premiere of Dr No.
The Bond films have always liked responding to the zeitgeist, which is why, two years later, in Goldfinger, Connery had the line:
My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done; such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.
Obviously, they couldn’t have responded to John, Paul, George and Ringo in the first film, but they did have time to refer to a significant event from 1961: the theft of Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery. (This, fact fans, took place on 21 August, 50 years to the day after the Mona Lisa was nicked from the Louvre.)
Thinking
it would be fun for him to have some stolen art
…production designer Ken Adam knocked up a Goya in a weekend, and they added it to the set.
Then, in the kind of coincidence which this blog enjoys, the fake went walkabout, too, with Adam telling the Guardian:
It was pretty good so they used it for publicity purposes but, just like the real one, it got stolen while it was on display.
Presumably, it’s in the attic of some former Pinewood stagehand, and would make the provenance bit of the process difficult if their children ever took it on Antiques Roadshow.
