Pussy Galore

Pussy Galore
Character from the James Bond franchise
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. As with many of Ian Fleming's creations, the name is a double entendre; in this case with respect to "pussy", which is a slang term for vagina, or for sex with a woman, ^[1] while galore means an abundant or plentiful supply of something, e.g., a feast is something featuring "food and drink galore." ^[2]

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 herself a lesbian. In the novel, she has black hair, pale skin and the only violet eyes Bond has ever seen. She is about in her thirties, her voice low and attractive.

Her group is enlisted by Auric Goldfinger to aid in "Operation Grand Slam", an operation that would poison the Fort Knox water supply with Strychnine, and, if successful, would rob the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox of one billion in gold bullion.^[3] Goldfinger enlists the Cement Mixers because he needs a group of criminal women to impersonate nurses in the fake emergency medical teams he plans to send into the poison-stricken Fort Knox.

After "Grand Slam" fails, Galore runs into Bond while impersonating a stewardess and, as in the film, she escapes with Bond after he 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 backstory (which somewhat explains her name) is suppressed in the movie, while her sexuality is never openly discussed; traits of lesbianism are subtly suggested (though not without plausible denibility) though throughout the film, however.^[4]

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^{[citation needed]}.

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. She is the oldest actress to play a Bond Girl. Blackman and Diana Rigg are the only two Bond girls who are older than Bond himself; Sean Connery was only 34 when filming Goldfinger, Blackman was 37. 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' character Honey Rider.^[5]

Pussy is first seen after Bond wakes up in Goldfinger's private jet after previously having been knocked out with a tranquilizer gun. Her stunning blonde-framed visage leaning over him being the first thing he sees as he lies on a couch regaining consciousness, the dialog runs as follows:

James Bond: Who are you?

Pussy Galore: My name is Pussy Galore.

James Bond: I must be dreaming. ^[6]

She further explains simply that the nature of her employment for Goldfinger is that she's "a damn good pilot", intending to negate any notion of any more intimate relationship, and then tells Bond "[y]ou can turn off the charm. I'm immune." ^[7] In fact 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.

Later on, however, in what is probably the most audacious assertion of Bond's machismo of the entire series of films in the genre, Bond not only seduces the previously "immune" Pussy, but seemingly as the result of this encounter alone she promptly turns from her heretofore hard-hearted criminal ways to the side of goodness and righteousness. Secretly 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.

References