George Lazenby and the film of Len Deighton's Horse Under Water (1963) that never was

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”

With most of the general discussion on contemporary spy fiction and films currently revolving around the “Bond-Bourne” debate, a rather reluctant spy from the 1960s who could give both characters some competition and is long overdue a comeback is Harry Palmer. This was the bland name given by Michael Caine to the nameless ‘anti-hero’ of Len Deighton’s original spy novels. The most appropriate source for a Harry Palmer comeback film would be Len Deighton’s second novel, Horse Under Water (1963) which, although it fell between The Ipcress File (1962) on the one side and Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion-Dollar Brain (1966) on the other, remains tantalisingly un-filmed at present. Horse Under Water was first published in Britain by Jonathan Cape on 21 October 1963, with an original print run of 15,000 copies.[i]

In Len Deighton’s perceptive article on the 1960s spy-craze, entitled “Why Does My Art Go Boom” in the May 1966 edition of Playboy magazine, he revealed that after the success of the film The Ipcress File (1965), the film’s Canadian producer Harry Saltzman bought the film rights to the follow-up ‘Harry Palmer’ novel Horse Under Water:

“In the autumn of 1963 my second book, Horse Under Water, was published and Saltzman bought the film rights of that, too. There was more conjecture in the press. “Out-Bonds Bond” and “Anti-Bond,” they said.”[ii]

In an interview with author Edward Milward-Oliver ("EMO" below), Len Deighton revealed another connection which his second novel Horse Under Water had with James Bond:

“EMO: Had you already written your second novel Horse Under Water before The IPCRESS File was published?

DEIGHTON: It was in first draft. I took it to Hodder & Stoughton and asked them to read it through, because they’d warned me that second books always get slaughtered by the critics. So I got a bit nervous about this, and took a long time writing it – even today I must be one of the world’s slowest writers – until finally I had it ready. I took it to them, and they said they didn’t want to read it. They told me they had a policy of not dealing with a second book until the first had come out.

EMO: Tom Maschler at Jonathan Cape published Horse Under Water.

DEIGHTON: That’s right. And that enraged some people, who claimed I was now going to be trained as the successor to Ian Fleming, who Cape also published.”[iii]

Indeed, Queen reviewed Horse Under Water at the time in the following way:

“James Bond’s most serious rival…Deighton decorates his thrilling plot with equally enthralling detail about secret service routine.”[iv]

It has long been something of an enigma why Horse Under Water was never filmed along with the other ‘Palmer’ novels in the 1960s. It certainly had the potential for being the source for a successful film, as, for instance, the “whole of the first Penguin edition of Len Deighton’s Horse Under Water – over 60,000 books – sold out completely within 48 hours of publication.”[v]

Christopher Bray’s recent biography of Sir Michael Caine, Michael Caine: A Class Act, (2005) has an interesting passage in the 1966-67 chapter which reveals that plans to film Horse Under Water in the 1960s were actually dealt a fatal blow by what could be described as the “Anti-Palmer” (at least in commercial terms), namely, the arrival of the first replacement James Bond actor in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) - the Australian ex-model George Lazenby:

“The critical reaction to the film [Billion Dollar Brain (1967)] was the most negative any of the trilogy had had, and while Saltzman had plans to film Deighton’s next Palmer novel, Horse Under Water, Caine was adamant (rightly enough as it turned out) that he had done everything he could with the character. ‘I hope some new actor can give his interpretation of Harry,’ said Caine, ‘but after three films I don’t think the Palmer character holds anything for me anymore.’ Saltzman did look around for another actor – ‘We don’t want anyone who looks like Mike and he probably won’t even wear spectacles or even be a cockney,’ he said – but nothing ever came of the idea. Since Saltzman was talking during the period of Sean Connery’s absence from the Bond series, when the part was taken over – disastrously, as far as the box office was concerned – by George Lazenby, he had good reason to change his mind and let the series go.”[vi]

Christopher Bray takes the quotes from Caine and Saltzman on the possibility of a new Palmer film from an article in the Daily Mirror on 3 December 1968.[vii] It is believed that the actor that producer Harry Saltzman had in mind to replace Michael Caine in the role of Harry Palmer was Nigel Davenport.[viii] It is interesting that Michael Caine felt he could do no more with the role of Harry Palmer, and in some ways this mirrors Sean Connery’s attitude towards the role of James Bond, especially during his experiences with an intrusive media whilst filming You Only Live Twice (1967) in Japan. This led to him vacating the Bond role after what was to be his fifth (and seemingly final) Bond film.[ix] It is also interesting to note that if the projected film version of Horse Under Water had went ahead as planned the Harry Palmer character would probably have been visually and audibly very different from the blonde and bespectacled chippy cockney spy in the mackintosh raincoat as portrayed by Michael Caine in the three preceding films, The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967).

It is submitted then that the main reason for the proposed film version of Horse Under Water being ‘dead in the water’ had as much to do with Harry Saltzman’s negative experience with the first change of lead actor in the James Bond film series at the time as it had to do with the relatively poor critical reaction to the film of Billion Dollar Brain. It is fascinating to consider how the Harry Palmer series might have continued had a new actor been cast for a film of Horse Under Water. It is revealing how contemporary events in the ‘rival’ James Bond film series (which had the ever-restless Harry Saltzman as co-producer, alongside Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli) impinged on the Harry Palmer film series and ultimately ensured that the Palmer character did not have a fourth film in the classic 1960s “spy-mania” era. Either a 1960s period piece or a contemporary film version of Horse Under Water would still be a very welcome prospect for fans of Harry Palmer – and would surely represent a much more fitting comeback for the Palmer film series than the ‘straight-to-video’ Bullet to Beijing (1996) and Midnight in St. Petersburg (1997) were, in which Michael Caine reprised his famous role as Harry Palmer. Neither Bullet to Beijing nor Midnight in St. Petersburg were based on any Deighton material, (though the project did have the author’s blessing)[x] but if ever a future film producer or director deigns to notice the obvious potential of Len Deighton’s ‘Harry Palmer’ a film of Horse Under Water would be as good a place to look for cinematic inspiration as any. In the meantime, Deighton and Palmer fans can only hope that this particular Horse will yet get a to have a refreshing drink at the box office at some point in the not-too-distant future.[xi]

Bibliography

Bray, Christopher, Michael Caine: A Class Act, (Faber and Faber, London, 2005),

Deighton, Len, Funeral in Berlin, (Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1966 reprint),

Deighton, Len, Horse Under Water, (Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1970 reprint),

Deighton, Len, “Why Does My Art Go Boom”, (subtitle ‘as the spy craze continues to spiral skyward, the author of  “the ipcress file” files a personal report on the phenomenon’), Playboy (Chicago, May 1966),

Milward-Oliver, Edward, The Len Deighton Companion, (Grafton Books, London, 1987).

(17/2/09).

This article originally appeared on The Len Deighton Discussion Group and Archive in February 2009 to celebrate Len Deighton's 80th Birthday.


TBB Article No. 17

© The Bondologist Blog, 2009.

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[i] Edward Milward-Oliver, The Len Deighton Companion, (Grafton Books, London, 1987).

[ii] Len Deighton, “Why Does My Art Go Boom”, (subtitle ‘as the spy craze continues to spiral skyward, the author of  “the ipcress file” files a personal report on the phenomenon’), Playboy (Chicago, May 1966), p. 182.

[iii] Edward Milward-Oliver, The Len Deighton Companion, (Grafton Books, London, 1987), pp. 13-14.

[iv] Quoted on the Horse Under Water Penguin paperback back cover, (Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1970 reprint).

[v] Quoted on the Funeral in Berlin Penguin paperback back cover, (Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1966 reprint).

[vi] Christopher Bray, Michael Caine:  A Class Act, (Faber and Faber, London, 2005), pp. 104-105.

[vii] Ibid, n. 19 and 20, p. 294. 

[viii] From Kees Stam’s unofficial Harry Palmer Movie Site: http://members.tripod.com/keesstam/harrypalmer.html

 “Bob Engesser added this on the messageboard, interesting enough to add here: “I recall a press release from the late 1960s stating that Harry Saltzman would produce Horse Under Water with Nigel Davenport and not Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. Poor box office from Billion Dollar Brain the movie and not poor sales from Horse Under Water the book probably killed this project. Davenport costarred with Caine in the underrated war film Play Dirty which was produced by Saltzman.”” (from: http://keesstam.tripod.com/trivia.html, accessed 17 February 2009).

[ix] Sean Connery was actually contracted for six James Bond films, but he would later return to his most famous role as 007 in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) for the official Eon Productions series after George Lazenby’s sole Bond outing, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), and later in the aptly titled and unofficial film Never Say Never Again (1983), a remake of his fourth Bond film, Thunderball (1965), which was released in the same year as Eon’s Octopussy, starring his successor Roger Moore as 007, prompting the press to refer to the ‘Battle of the Bonds’ in 1983.

[x] Christopher Bray, Michael Caine:  A Class Act, (Faber and Faber, London, 2005), p. 254 and n. 11, p. 304, “Quoted in the Sunday Times Magazine, 23 July 1995”).

[xi] © 2009, “The Len Deighton Discussion Group” Moderator.

Whatever Happened to the Literary James Bond in the 1970s?

The literary James Bond’s life and adventures are chronicled from the early 1950s onwards, and we know something of his life in the period before this. We know of his missions on into about the mid 1960s, with Kingsley Amis’ Colonel Sun (1968). After this mission however the life of Bond becomes sketchier. In fact the only decade of the literary Bond’s life that we do not seem to know very much about is the 1970s. This decade had no real continuation novel connected to Ian Fleming’s Bond novels as such, but it did have John Pearson’s James Bond: The Authorised Biography of James Bond (1973). It details Bond’s life from his birth to the events just after Colonel Sun, which means that it is still set in the 1960s.

The other real literary continuation of James Bond in the 1970s were the two screenplays from the two last Bond films of the 1970s, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, published by the screenwriter and novelist Christopher Wood under the titles James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond And Moonraker, published in 1977 and 1979 respectively. As these are novelisations of the films to tie in with the Fleming Bond universe, they are not really seen by fans as being part of the literary Bond continuation. They do however tie in well with Fleming’s style of writing, making the books of the film at least owing more to Fleming than the films on which they are based. When Glidrose continued the literary Bond series proper with Licence Renewed (1981) by John Gardner, there are some very interesting details of Bond’s life in the period in between. We learn that “there was not much to console Bond these days. There had even been times, recently, when he had seriously considered resigning – to use the jargon, ‘go private’.” There is recalled the famous exchange between M. and Bond on the disbanding of the Double-O Section, 

“‘Changing world; changing times, James,’ M had said to him a couple of years ago, when breaking the news that the elite Double-O status- which meant being licensed to kill in the line of duty- was being abolished.

“This was during the so-called Realignment Purge, often referred to in the Service as the SNAFU Slaughter, similar to the C.I.A’s famous Hallowe’en massacre, in which large numbers of faithful members of the American service had been dismissed, literally overnight. Similar things had happened in Britain, with financial horns being pulled in, and what a pompous Whitehall detective called ‘a more realistic logic being enforced upon the Secret and Security Services’.”

Gardner assures us that Bond’s role will still remain much the same. As M says to Bond, we are told a two years before Licence Renewed begins, so it can be assumed this was in 1979, 

‘As far as I’m concerned, 007, you will remain 007. I shall take full responsibility for you; and you will, as ever, accept orders and assignments only from me. There are moments when this country needs a trouble-shooter – a blunt instrument – and by God it’s going to have one. They can issue their pieces of bumf and abolish the Double-O Section. We can simply change its name. It will now be the Special Section and you are it.”

Later we learn,

“Bond had left M’s office on that occasion in an elated mood. Yet, in the few years that had passed since, he had performed only four missions in which his Double-O prefix had played any part. [...] It was the active life that Bond missed; the continual challenge of a new problem, a difficult decision in the field, the sense of purpose and of serving his country. Sometimes he wondered if he was falling under the spell of that malaise which seemed, on occasions, to grip Britain by the throat – political and economic lethargy, combined with a short-term view of the world’s problems.

Bond’s four most recent missions had been quick, cut and dried, undercover operations; and while it would be wrong to say that James Bond yearned for danger, his life now seemed, at times, to lack real purpose.”

We learn of the changes in Bond’s lifestyle since the 1960s,

“Bond had even managed to alter his lifestyle, very slightly, adapting to the changing pressures of the 1970s and early 1980s: drastically cutting back – for most of the time – on his alcohol intake, and arranging with Morelands of Grosvenor Street for a new special blend of cigarettes, with a tar content slightly lower than any currently available on the market.”

“With fuel costs running high, and the inevitability that they would continue to do so, Bond had allowed the beloved old Mark II Continental Bentley to go the way of its predecessor, the 4.5-litre Bentley.”

The most interesting titbit of information comes when the details of Dr. Anton Murik and Franco are being told to Bond in M’s office. Bond says,

‘Not a healthy mix – an international terrorist and a renowned nuclear physicist. Been one of the nightmares for some time, hasn’t it, sir? That some group would get hold of not only the materials but the means to construct a really lethal nuclear device? We suspect some of them have the materials – look at that fellow Achmed Yastaff I took out for you. At least four of the ships he arranged to go missing were carrying materials…’

M snorted, ‘Don’t be a fool, 007. Easiest thing in the world to construct a crude device.’

It would perhaps be an interesting idea for a future Bond continuation author to look afresh at the literary Bond in the 1970s because there has been so little written about Fleming’s creation in this particular time period. It would give new scope and new ground for the literary Bond to work within. Perhaps the mentions of the four missions where Bond used his licence to kill could be expanded on in a novel or short story collection by a new continuation author at some stage, including the story of Achmed Yastaff. It might be some sort of an answer to the problem some see in continuing the literary Bond character indefinitely into the future, as the dates given in Fleming’s work give his revised date of birth as 1924. It would also be an adult antidote to the ‘Young Bond’ series. Of course in the novels Bond hasn’t really aged very much, but the 1970s could be an interesting retro angle rather than writing adventures in between the 1950s novels as some have suggested.

TBB Article No. 16. 


© The Bondologist Blog, 2005.