Pussy Galore
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| James Bond character | |
 |
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| Pussy Galore | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Affiliation | Auric Goldfinger (film) The Cement Mixers (novel) |
| Portrayed by | Honor Blackman |
Pussy Galore is a fictional character from the James Bond film and novel Goldfinger. In the film, she is played by Honor Blackman.
[edit] Novel
In the novel, Pussy Galore is the only known woman in America who runs an organized crime gang. Initially a trapeze artist, her group of circus performing cat-women, "Pussy Galore and her Abrocats" were unsuccessful and were later trained as cat burglars.
Her group grew into a Harlem lesbian organization known as "The Cement Mixers." Pussy Galore is a lesbian herself as well. In the novel, she has black hair, pale skin, and she has the only violet eyes Bond thinks he has ever seen. She is about in her thirties and her voice is low and attractive.
Her group is enlisted by Goldfinger to aid in "Operation Grand Slam," an operation that would poison the Ft. Knox water supply with nerve gas, and, if successful, would rob the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox of fifteen billion in gold bullion. Goldfinger enlists the Cement Mixers because he needs a group of criminal women to impersonate nurses (always women, in the world of the novel) in the fake emergency medical teams he plans to send into the poison-stricken Fort Knox.
After "Grand Slam" fails, Galore is still working to impersonate a nurse, not a pilot. However, as in the film, she escapes with Bond after Bond kills Goldfinger aboard an airplane. Pussy explains to Bond that she became a lesbian after she was sexually abused by her uncle at an early age.
Pussy's past (which somewhat explains her name) is suppressed in the movie, her sexuality is never openly discussed yet traits of lesbianism are thinly veiled throughout the film.[1]
Her original band of Amazon catwomen still feature in the film as they did in the book. They are in keeping with a long list of 1950s movies and books about dangerous bands of cat-woman lesbians.
[edit] Film
Concerned about censors, the film's producers thought about changing her name to "Kitty Galore", but kept the original name when British newspapers began to refer to Honor Blackman as "Pussy" in the lead up to production. Blackman, aged 37 at filming, is the oldest actress to take the role of a Bond girl in the series of Bond films from EON Productions. Blackman and Diana Rigg are furthermore the only two Bond girls who are older than Bond himself; Sean Connery was only 34 when filming Goldfinger, while Rigg was 31 when filming On Her Majesty's Secret Service opposite the then 30-year-old George Lazenby. Pussy ranked number 2 in a poll of favourite Bond Girls in 2007, beaten only by Ursula Andress's character Honey Ryder.[2]
Pussy is first seen after Bond is knocked out with a tranquilizer gun in Goldfinger's private jet. She claims she's a "damn good pilot" and seems at first immune to Bond's trademark boyish charms. Pussy is the leader of Pussy Galore's Flying Circus, a group of professional women aviators in connection with Goldfinger's "Operation: Grand Slam" (played in certain scenes by stuntmen in blonde wigs). Pussy is seen later using judo on Bond after catching him eavesdropping on Goldfinger's plan. She turns him in to Goldfinger. Bond later seduces Pussy and, turning against Goldfinger, she switches the deadly nerve gas to be used on Fort Knox with a harmless replacement as well as alerting the Central Intelligence Agency of her employer's scheme. After Bond foils Goldfinger's plan, the now fugitive millionaire forces Pussy to participate in hijacking the President's private plane carrying Bond to the White House. Bond defeats Goldfinger and saves Galore from the crashing plane and they make love in an unknown region under a parachute.
Honor Blackman, in the Bond Girls Are Forever documentary, mentions she knows that Galore was written as a lesbian, and played the role as if she had been abused in the past.
Pussy Galore is parodied by Alotta Fagina in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
[edit] References
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