Blanche Blackwell, Mistress And Muse Of James Bond’s Creator, Ian Fleming, Dies at 104

Matt Schudel at the Washington Post offers an obituary of Blanche Blackwell, a British socialite who lived in Jamaica and inspired Errol Flynn, Noel Coward and Ian Fleming.

Blanche Blackwell inspired one of Noel Coward’s plays about an upper-crust love triangle, and swashbuckling Hollywood star Errol Flynn wanted to marry her. She was a member of one of Jamaica’s richest families, but she was best known as the mistress and muse of Ian Fleming (seen in the below photo), the rakish author who was the creator of James Bond.

Mrs. Blackwell died Aug. 8 in London at 104. Her death was confirmed by Andrew Lycett, Fleming’s biographer. Other details were not available.

Vivacious and outdoorsy, Mrs. Blackwell was known for her bright smile and casual allure. She first met Flynn — “a gorgeous god,” in her words — in the 1940s, during one of his Jamaican vacations. He described her laugh as “like the sounds of water tinkling over a waterfall” and was so enchanted that he wanted to propose, even both were married to other people.

One of her closest friends was Coward, the gay playwright and entertainer who based a character on Mrs. Blackwell in his play 1957 “Volcano,” which was so sexually charged that it wasn’t performed in public until 2012. (Mrs. Blackwell attended the opening.)

  

She lived long enough to give business advice to U2’s Bono, whose career was launched by her son, Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records.

“She always says, ‘I love men — they make such good pets,’ ” Chris Blackwell told the British magazine Tatler this year.

Mrs. Blackwell had a home on Jamaica’s northern coast, midway between Coward’s island retreat and Fleming’s estate, Goldeneye, where he wrote his novels and stories about Bond, Agent 007.

…“She always says, ‘I love men — they make such good pets,’ ” Chris Blackwell told the British magazine Tatler this year.

Mrs. Blackwell had a home on Jamaica’s northern coast, midway between Coward’s island retreat and Fleming’s estate, Goldeneye, where he wrote his novels and stories about Bond, Agent 007.

…In Jamaica, what began as “a tropical dalliance” between the writer and Mrs. Blackwell “developed into a deep love affair,” Lycett wrote in his 1995 biography of Fleming.

Beginning in 1952, Fleming returned to Goldeneye every winter to write a new book about Bond’s adventures as a British intelligence officer and serial seducer of women — both of which he could describe from his personal experience. His wife, Ann, usually stayed in England.

…“She was really somebody who offered him friendship,” Lycett said in an interview. “She made him content and happy at a difficult time in his life. She was a woman of great charm and intelligence and was extraordinarily good company.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/mistress-and-muse-of-james-bonds-creator-ian-fleming-dies-at-104/2017/08/11/27f65c7a-7eb2-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.f013c4927861 

Jamaican Man First To Be Extradited To Face Fraud Charges In International Lottery Scheme

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

A 28-year-old man was extradited from Jamaica based on charges that he committed fraud as part of an international lottery scheme against elderly victims in the United States, the Justice Department announced today.

Damion Bryan Barrett is charged in a 38-count indictment in the Southern District of Florida with conspiracy and 37 counts of wire fraud, and with committing these offenses via telemarketing.

According to the indictment, Barrett and his co-conspirators fraudulently induced elderly victims in the United States to send them thousands of dollars to pay purported fees for lottery winnings that victims had not in fact won.  Barrett is the first Jamaican citizen to be extradited from Jamaica to the United States based on charges of defrauding Americans in connection with a lottery scheme.

Barrett arrived today in Opa-locka, Florida.  He will make his initial appearance on Feb. 13 before Magistrate Judge Alicia O. Valle in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Barrett was indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on Aug. 9, 2012, and was arrested last month in Jamaica based on the United States’ request that he be extradited.  Barrett’s extradition is the latest step in the United States’ ongoing crackdown on fraudulent lottery schemes based in Jamaica.

According to the indictment, beginning in October 2008, Barrett and his co-conspirators contacted victims in the United States announcing that the victims had won cash and prizes and persuaded the victims to send them thousands of dollars in fees to release the money.  The victims never received cash or prizes.  The defendant and his co-conspirators allegedly made calls from Jamaica using voice over internet protocol technology that allowed them to use a telephone number with a U.S. area code.  According to the indictment, Barrett convinced victims to send money to middlemen in South Florida, who then forwarded the money to Jamaica.

“The Department of Justice will find and prosecute those responsible for fraud against American consumers, no matter where the perpetrator resides,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Joyce R. Branda of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.  “Lottery schemes that target elderly victims for fraud cannot, and will not, be tolerated.”

“Persons who commit crimes against American seniors from outside of the United States will be held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida.  “This case serves as an example that there are no borders when it comes to obtaining justice for the victims of these lottery schemes.”

“Today's extradition signals strong partnership between the Jamaica Constabulary Force and our U.S. law enforcement partners,” said Commissioner of Police Dr. Carl Williams of the  Jamaica
Constabulary Force.  “We use this opportunity to warn other lottery scammers who continue to prey on unsuspecting U.S. citizens, that they too will pay the penalty, whether through conviction in Jamaica or through extradition to the United States.  We continue to address this with a high level of attention to contain the scourge.”

If convicted, Barrett faces a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years in prison per count, a possible fine and mandatory restitution.  Barrett’s co-defendant, Oneike Barnett, 29, pleaded guilty on Feb. 28, 2014, to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.  On April 29, 2014, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch sentenced Barnett to serve 60 months in prison and five years of supervised release, and to pay $94,456 in restitution for his role in this case.   

“These criminal telemarking scams heartlessly target the elderly in the United States, at times stealing their life savings,” said Special Agent in Charge Alysa D. Erichs of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Miami.  “The successful extradition of Damion Bryan Barrett sends a clear message that the cooperation between our countries is focused on bringing these offenders to justice despite borders that separate us.  This extradition and hopefully others that may follow suit will have a positive impact on diminishing this crime.”

“Together with our international and domestic law enforcement partners we have proven that justice has no borders,” said U.S. Postal Inspector in Charge Ronald Verrochio of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s (USPIS) Miami Division.  “We will continue to investigate and prosecute those who defraud American citizens, anywhere in the world.”

“The U.S. Marshals Service, together with our federal partners, will continue to track down and bring to justice those that would pray on our most vulnerable in our country,” said U.S. Marshal Amos Rojas of the Southern District of Florida.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Branda and U.S. Attorney Ferrer commended the investigative efforts of USPIS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) HSI Miami and the U.S. Marshals Service.  The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Kathryn Drenning of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bertha Mitrani of the Southern District of Florida.

An indictment is merely an allegation, and every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Jamaica: The Island That Defined Ian Fleming's Iconic Character James Bond

 

Fifty years after Ian Fleming's death, Jonathan Thompson at the Telegraph explores Jamaica, an island the writer loved so much it is stamped throughout James Bond's DNA for.

It all began with a naked girl on a beach. Peering down from the clifftop as she emerged from the waves on to a pristine white beach, Ian Fleming’s friend Ivar Bryce knew he’d found the spot. “Tie it up tomorrow,” he said to the Jamaican fixer with him. “Ian will adore this place.”
 

Bryce had first introduced Fleming to Jamaica three years earlier, during a wartime naval conference in Kingston. As their return flight took off, Fleming slammed his briefcase shut and turned to his friend: “Ivar, I’ve made a great decision,” he said. “When we’ve won this blasted war, I’m going to live in Jamaica. Just live in Jamaica and lap it up, and swim in the sea and write books.” Those books, of course, would become his bestselling James Bond novels. But first that home would become Goldeneye – built on the clifftop overlooking that pristine white beach.
 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Fleming’s death, but the house he built – rather like the super-spy he created there – is still going strong. Pre-production is well under way on Bond’s latest movie outing, his 24th no less, but the little estate where he was conceived continues to grow too. And now a new book, Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born, Ian Fleming’s Jamaica, by
historian Matthew Parker, looks to analyse the close links between the two.

 “Would the books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday?” wrote Fleming, “I doubt it.” But Parker goes further, arguing that Fleming’s love for Jamaica was so great that it is stamped throughout Bond’s DNA.

 

At the heart of this love affair, of course, was Goldeneye, located midway along Jamaica’s north coast, next to the pretty little banana port of Oracabessa. Fleming designed the house himself, and lived there for two months every winter between 1946 and his death in 1964. A sleek, U-shaped bungalow with glassless windows looking out across the Caribbean, the property was named Goldeneye after a wartime plan Fleming had helped devise for the protection of Gibraltar. It was also as a nod (or wink) to Oracabessa itself, which translates as “Golden Head”.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/centralamericaandcaribbean/jamaica/11231441/Jamaica-the-island-that-defined-James-Bond.html

Note: My beautiful wife and I first visited Jamiaca in 1981 and we have visited the beautiful island again and again over the years. As a life-long Ian Fleming aficionado, I was of course interested in Jamaica, the scene of three of Fleming's James Bond novels.

In 1987 my wife arranged for us to visit Fleming's Goldeneye villa. This was when the villa and grounds were as rustic as when the late great thriller writer lived here. Fleming's beloved housekeeper Violet (seen in the below photo with me) was still alive and when I asked her about Fleming, she got tears in her eyes and said "The Commander was a nice man."

I wrote at Ian Fleming's desk and went free diving in his cove. We ate, drank, swam and lived like true Jamaicans. We truly loved our week at Goldeneye. 

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born, Ian Fleming’s Jamaica by Matthew Parker, Review: 'Melancholic And Thought-Provoking'

Sinclair McKay at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a review of a new book on Ian Fleming and the Jamaican villa where James Bond was born.

While the pleasure of reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond thrillers never diminishes, the irony is that 007’s creator is actually the more compelling figure of the two. The Bond novels were once described by Fleming’s biographer John Pearson as exercises in “the autobiography of dreams”. 
 

So the spy who goes into battle with diabolical masterminds and gets soppy over women such as Galatea Brand and Tiffany Case is the wish-fulfilment of an author who was forced to stay behind a desk at Naval Intelligence throughout the war. Fleming’s knowledge of Britain’s greatest secrets (including the Bletchley code-breaking triumphs) meant that capture in the field could never be risked. But throughout Matthew Parker’s account of Fleming’s post-war sojourns in Jamaica, and how they shaped his fiction, we can imagine Bond himself looking on and feeling a perverse stab of envy.
 

Not that Parker glamorises: the story of Goldeneye, the house that Fleming built, is shot through with melancholy and creeping mortality. In the later stages of the war, Fleming became infatuated with Jamaica. This was still a colonial world, though independence was fast approaching. Immediately after the war, in 1946, he found a plot of land and arranged to have a stark property constructed – plain bedrooms, hard floors, rudimentary plumbing that “hissed like vipers and ululated like stricken bloodhounds”. The point of Goldeneye was communion with the fecund life outside, as well as a retreat from freezing, grey Britain – a refuge in which Fleming could write books. It was an uncompromisingly masculine place.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11002831/Goldeneye-Where-Bond-Was-Born-Ian-Flemings-Jamaica-by-Matthew-Parker-review-melancholic-and-thought-provoking.html

Note: I was fortunate to have spent a week at Goldeneye with my wife in the mid-1980s before the villa and estate was upgraded and modernized.

When we visited the villa it was basically as rustic as when Fleming lived there. I sat and wrote at Fleming's desk, eat at his dining table, and was served by his former housekeeper Violet. I also lounged on his private beach, and went free diving in his cove. Goldeneye was a magical place.      

Yeah, Mon!: Our Jamaican Vacation At Sandals' Royal Caribbean Resort In Montego Bay

I've not posted in a while as I was offline while vacationing in Jamaica.

I spent a week at Sandals' Royal Caribbean Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

My wife and I love Jamaica and we have been visiting the island for more than 30 years. We've stayed at a number of hotels and resorts over the years, and one year we rented Ian Fleming's villa Goldeneye in Oracabessa, Jamaica. Fleming wrote all of his James Bond novels at Goldeneye. 

The cliff-top villa overlooks the Caribbean Sea and there are steps carved out of the cliff that lead to a secluded, private beach. Goldeneye (seen in the above photo) is a truly magical place.

This year we stayed at the Royal Caribbean to celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary.

The weather, the beach, the ocean, the pools and the clubs and restaurants on the resort were all truly wonderful. We also met and became friends with some good and interesting people there.

The top photo and below photos are of the Royal Caribbean:

Note: You can click on the above photos to enlarge. 

Why Men Bond With The 007 Theme

Marc Myers at the Wall Street Journal offers an interesting piece on why men bond with the James Bond theme.

Maybe it's the stealthy bass line. Or the machine-gun guitar solo. Or the swaggering wail of the horns. Or maybe it's all three shaken together. Whatever the reasons (and there are many), the "James Bond Theme" still has a way of making guys feel, well, more guy-ly.

Fifty years after appearing in "Dr. No"—the first James Bond film, which had its premiere in London on Oct. 5, 1962—the jaunty theme is back with a vengeance. At the Olympics' opening ceremony, the theme played as Britain's "queen" parachuted from a helicopter. On Oct. 5, Vic Flick, the theme's original guitarist, will perform his signature solo during "The Music of James Bond: The First 50 Years" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And it will be laced throughout the latest Bond film, "Skyfall," opening on Nov. 9.

For millions of baby-boomer males who saw their first car chase and sex scene in a Bond film in the '60s, the theme song stirs powerful psychological coals, flipping a primal switch as images of silencers, casinos, bikinis, gin and gadgets flood the male brain.

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578018422429741896.html

 

And you can listen to the 007 theme via the Dr No intro via the below link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5jjYLsh1V4  

The Dark Secrets Of Noel Coward's Play 'Volcano'

Michael Thornton at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers the back story to Noel Coward's forgotten play Volcano.

This week, Volcano, a play he wrote in that very house but which was unproduced for 56 years, received its West End premiere at the Vaudeville Theatre. It is set on the island of Samolo (obviously Jamaica), to a background of native drums and the ominous rumble of the neighbouring volcano.
*

It features a saga of serial infidelity, adulterous betrayal and acrimonious marital conflict taken straight from Coward’s own Jamaican doorstep. The lead role of Adela Shelley, a handsome woman in her middle forties, played by Jenny Seagrove, is a thinly disguised depiction of Blanche Blackwell, still alive in her 100th year, Coward’s former neighbour in Jamaica.
*

The other two characters in this turbulent triangle – the island’s Lothario, Guy Littleton, and his bitchy and vengeful wife Melissa – are equally thinly disguised portrayals of Coward’s womanising friend, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, who is alleged to have been Blackwell’s lover, and his wife, Ann, the former Viscountess Rothermere.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/9483001/The-dark-secrets-of-the-Volcano.html

Note: The top photo is of Noel Coward and the above photo is of Ian Fleming at Goldeneye. 

I visited Noel Coward's Jamaican villa Firefly and my wife and I stayed a week at Goldeneye. Like Coward and Fleming, we love Jamaica and Goldeneye was truly magical.

Happy 104th Birthday, Ian Fleming

The web site HMSS Weblog notes that today is the late great thriller writer Ian Fleming's birthday.

Today is what would have been Ian Fleming’s 104th birthday. Fleming created James Bond as he composed the first draft of the Casino Royale novel in Jamaica six decades ago. A decade later, after a number of false starts and aborted projects, the first film based on a Bond novels was filmed and released.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/happy-104th-birthday-ian-fleming/

You can also read my piece on Ian Fleming's World War II service in British naval intelligence and his creation of a naval commando group called 30 Assault Unit, which appeared in Counterterrorism magazine, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2011/11/look-back-at-30-assault-unit-british.html

Where Every Arrival And Departure Is Flight 007: Jamaican Airport Named After James Bond Creator Ian Fleming

David McFadden of the AP wrote a good piece in The Washington Examiner about the airport in Orcabessa, Jamaica that was named after the late, great British thriller writer Ian Fleming.

Fleming created his iconic character secret agent James Bond at his Jamaican villa Goldeneye, which is located near the airport. Fleming (seen in the above photo at Goldeneye) wrote all of the James Bond thrillers in Jamaica.

Back in 1986 my wife surprised me by arranged for us to spend a week at Goldeneye. For a life-long Fleming aficionado, Goldeneye (seen in the below photo) was a magical place. We loved the villa, Orcabessa and Jamaica.

You can read the AP piece via the below link:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/2011/01/jamaica-opens-new-airport-named-ian-fleming


You can read more about Ian Fleming and James Bond in my Crime Beat column via the link below:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html