Tiffany Case

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James Bond character
Tiffany Case
Gender Female
Affiliation The Spangled Mob (novel)
SPECTRE (unknowing) (film)
Portrayed by Jill St. John

Tiffany Case is a fictional character in the James Bond novel and film Diamonds Are Forever. For the 1971 film she was portrayed by Jill St. John. In the film it is stated that she was named after her (accidental) birthplace, Tiffany & Co., where her parents were going through a choice of wedding bands, to which Bond drily jokes that she was lucky that it hadn't happened at Woolworth's.


[edit] The novel

In Ian Fleming's novel, she is an American diamond smuggler working as a fence for "The Spangled Mob," a ruthless American gang that is smuggling diamonds from Africa through an international pipeline. Bond contacts her in London using the identity of petty crook Peter Franks, using her professionally as a gateway into the pipeline even as he develops a personal interest in her.[1] Felix Leiter, familiar with Tiffany's background, acquaints Bond with the fact that she was gang-raped as a teenager and, as a result, has developed an antipathy towards men.[2] But despite this, she is attracted to Bond, and the two ultimately become lovers.

Tiffany turns against her former partners, and helps Bond escape from their clutches. In the novel, she is later kidnapped by Wint & Kidd on the Queen Elizabeth, but she is in turn rescued by Bond.

After this adventure, the two briefly live together, but, like many of Bond's women, she is out of his life by the next novel, From Russia With Love. Fleming explains her departure therein. He explains that Bond, by his own admission, is difficult to live with in a domestic setting, and that Tiffany returned to the United States with an American military officer, apparently intending to marry him.[3] The explanation was somewhat unusual both because Fleming rarely even mentions Bond girls for more than one book, and because for the first time since Casino Royale, Bond actually seemed emotionally affected at the dissolution of a relationship.

[edit] The film

The 1971 film adaptation of Diamonds are Forever substantially revised the plot and, with it, Tiffany's character. In the novel Tiffany is a vulnerable young woman with a sardonic exterior and an experience of the world beyond her years, similar in many ways to female characters in noir fiction.[4] The cinematic Tiffany, however, while often wise-cracking, is also somewhat ditzy, slightly naive, and more money-grubbing. While she is still a diamond smuggler, she is now unwittingly working for Bond's archnemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his terrorist organization, SPECTRE. Bond arranges a partnership with her in disguise, but this time it is to investigate her role in Blofeld's latest criminal scheme. She initially believes that she and "Franks" are going to make millions, but gets caught up in much more than she bargained for when the real Peter Franks arrives on her doorstep. From the moment she and Bond find Plenty O'Toole soaking in Tiffany's swimming pool, drowned mistakenly instead of her, Tiffany helps Bond follow the path of the smuggled diamonds until the trail leads to Blofeld.

By the end of the film, Tiffany has helped Bond defeat Blofeld, and the two go on a romantic cruise together. They are briefly interrupted by an assassination attempt by Blofeld's henchmen, Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd, but Bond foils it, and the two sail off into the sunset.


[edit] References

  1. ^ Fleming, Ian (1956). "chs. 5, 9", Diamonds Are Forever. MacMillan. 
  2. ^ Fleming, Ian (1956). "ch. 8", Diamonds Are Forever. MacMillan. 
  3. ^ Fleming, Ian (1957). "ch. 11, 12", From Russia, With Love. MacMillan. 
  4. ^ See, e.g., Ian Fleming, Diamonds Are Forever (MacMillan, 1956), chs. 5, 9.
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