On This Day in Film and Television

Today's Birthdays in Film & TV History

1908 Ian Fleming, English author (James Bond novels), born in London, England (d. 1964)

Jamaican muse and mistress of 007’s creator, Ian Fleming, dies at 104

By Matt Schudel August 12 at 3:44 PM

Blanche Blackwell's romantic life inspired one of Noël 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 was best known as the mistress and muse of Ian Fleming, 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.

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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 north coast, midway between Coward’s island retreat and Fleming’s estate, Goldeneye, where Fleming wrote his novels and stories about Bond, Agent 007. ... She was divorced and in her 40s by the time she met Fleming in the mid-1950s. She had recently returned to Jamaica after several years in England, where her son was attending school. ... “I remember I sat next to him at dinner and he said: ‘Why haven’t I seen you before?’ ” she recalled to London’s Sunday Express newspaper in 2012. “I told him I was just over from England and he said, ‘Oh good God, you’re not a lesbian, are you?’ ”

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 — a fair summary of Fleming’s earlier life. His wife, Ann, usually stayed in England. ... Mrs. Blackwell left Fleming alone to work in the mornings, then stopped by at midday for snorkeling and lunch. She came back for the cocktail hour, after his afternoon writing session. He called her “Birdie.”

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It is widely believed that Mrs. Blackwell was the inspiration for one of Fleming's most memorable female characters, Pussy Galore, the bisexual leader of a female criminal gang in "Goldfinger." Another character, the Jamaican-born Honeychile Rider in "Dr. No" (renamed Honey Ryder and played by Ursula Andress in the film) was also thought to be modeled after Mrs. Blackwell. ...“She was a sort of macho female,” Chris Blackwell told Vanity Fair in 2012. “The relationship they had, how she and Ian bonded, was that they were both into doing things: climbing these falls, going into those caves, swimming here, snorkeling there.” ... One of the gifts Mrs. Blackwell gave Fleming was a small fishing boat, which he named Octopussy. The title of the 14th and final Bond book, “Octopussy and the Living Daylights,” was published in 1966, two years after Fleming’s death at age 56. (He was also the author of the children’s classic “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.”)

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By Matt Schudel
Matt Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004. He previously worked for publications in Washington, New York, North Carolina and Florida.