Quantum of Polishness: James Bond's Links to Poland
Most people don’t associate super spy James Bond with Poland, but true 007 fans know that they share many curious links. One Bond villain enjoyed performing Chopin’s preludes, for example, while the spy’s most famous nemesis was even born on the Polish coast. Culture.pl reveals all these entertaining connections and more below.
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Sean Connery as James Bond & Donald Pleasence as Blofeld in 'You Only Live Twice’, 1967, photo: The Legacy Collection / Photoshot / Reporter / East News
We start off with one of the most recognizable characters in the James Bond film series apart from 007 himself – Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He’s the archetypal Bond villain and the secret agent’s arch-rival. Blofeld is just as important in Ian Fleming’s original novels which were the basis for the movies. In 1961’s Thunderball, Fleming describes Blofeld’s early days, giving him a Polish background:
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This man’s name was Ernst Stavro Blofeld and he was born in Gdynia of a Polish father and a Greek mother on May 28th, 1908. After matriculating in economics and political history at the University of Warsaw he studied engineering and radionics at the Warsaw Technical Institute and, at the age of twenty-five, obtained a modest post in the central administration of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs.
Blofeld appears as Bond’s adversary in a number of films including You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever. In most of these movies, his backstory isn’t revealed. However, in the 2015 picture Spectre Blofeld is given – contrary to Fleming’s Polish portrayal – an Austrian ancestry (possibly because they now had famed Austrian actor Christoph Waltz playing the role). Moreover, in this film Bond is Blofeld’s adopted brother. We wonder what would Ian Fleming have to say about all of that…
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A photograph of Krystyna Skarbek from the book ‘Christine. Powieść o Krystynie Skarbek’, photo: OsnoVa publishing house
Another important character in the Bond universe that may be linked to Poland is Vesper Lynd. In Fleming’s 1953 novel Casino Royale, she’s an MI6 worker who becomes the true love of 007. However, she’s also involved with Soviet intelligence which makes her a double agent. She eventually commits suicide to free Bond of the danger that her ties to the Soviets pose for him. A somewhat altered version of Vesper appears in the 2006 film Casino Royale, based on Fleming’s novel.
Interestingly, the character of Vesper Lynd is said to have been inspired by the Polish spy Krystyna Skarbek:
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Some say that the character of Vesper Lynd was inspired by the spy Christine Granville, whose real name was Krystyna Skarbek, a Polish agent of the British Special Operations Executive during Second World War. It has been claimed that Fleming had an affair with Granville, whose father’s nickname for her was ‘Vesperale.’
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From ‘Shaken: Drinking with James Bond & Ian Fleming’, a 2019 book published by Harper Design
Although there’s no evidence that Fleming ever met Skarbek, he may have very well heard about her. Skarbek was born in 1908 in Poland and became a very successful agent for Britain; she obtained, for example, information about Germany’s preparations to invade the Soviet Union. Fleming, who had himself worked as a naval intelligence officer in World War II, could’ve learned about Skarbek’s accomplishments through his ties to the world of espionage. It’s perfectly plausible that Skarbek’s expertise impressed the writer and prompted him to create a character based on her. Or even two characters. Some believe that Flemming’s character Tatiana Romanova, who plays a significant part in 1957’s From Russia With Love (adapted as a Bond movie in 1963), was also inspired by Skarbek.
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Pierce Brosnan & Izabella Scorupco in ‘GoldenEye’, 1995, photo: Eon Productions / United Artists / East News
Vesper Lynd and Tatiana Romanova aren’t the only important female characters in the Bond films that can be tied to Poland. In 1995’s GoldenEye, the prominent role of computer programmer and Bond girl Natalya Simonova is played by Polish actress Izabella Scorupco. This film shows Simonova getting caught up in a series of dramatic events linked to a villainous plot to destroy all of London’s computer systems. In the end, thanks to her programming skills, Simonova helps 007 save the British capital. Here’s how Scorupco describes her character in a documentary titled GoldenEye: Behind The Scenes:
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She’s just a very normal, natural girl, happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Scorupco was born in 1970 in Białystok, Poland and at a young age moved to Sweden where she eventually began a singing and acting career. Her 1991 pop album Iza, including the single Shame, Shame, Shame achieved golden-record status in the Scandinavian country. Apart from GoldenEye she has acted, for example, in the Hollywood films Sleepwalker and Reign of Fire. Fans of Polish cinema will remember her from the 1999 historical feature Ogniem i Mieczem (With Fire and Sword), based on the same-titled novel by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Henryk Sienkiewicz, in which she plays a 17th-century noblewoman called Helena Kurcewiczówna.
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Władysław Sheybal in 'From Russia With Love’, 1963, photo: Danjaq / EON Productions / Imperial
A somewhat less prominent, but nevertheless meaningful role was played by a Polish actor in From Russia With Love, reputed to be one of the best films in the Bond series. It features Władysław Sheybal (aka Vladek Sheybal) portraying Tov Kronsteen, a genius chess player working for Blofeld. Kronsteen uses his brilliant intellect to devise an intricate scheme to help Blofeld obtain a top secret cipher machine as well as kill off Bond. As expected, Bond manages to overcome this evil plot and Kronsteen is killed in punishment by his boss’s henchmen.
Władysław Sheybal (1923-1992) was born in the Polish town of Zgierz. After World War II, he became a theatre actor and eventually landed a role in Andrzej Wajda’s noted 1956 picture Kanał (Canal), a tale about the last days of the Warsaw Uprising. The year after, Sheybal moved to London where he continued his film acting career, appearing for example in Billion Dollar Brain and Women in Love. Interestingly, From Russia With Love isn’t the only Bond movie Sheybal has played in. He also had a small part in the 1967 Bond parody Casino Royale.
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Bogdan Kominowski & Grace Jones in 'A View to a Kill’, 1985, photo: United Archives IFA The Film Archive / East News
A small role, but a rather characteristic one, was played by the Polish-born actor Bogdan Kominowski in 1985’s A View to a Kill. Kominowski portrays a KGB agent by the name of Klotkoff who only appears in a couple of scenes. However, one of them is memorable as it involves a jaw-dropping encounter between Klotkoff and May Day, a character played by Grace Jones. May Day is the bodyguard and lover of the film’s main villain, the wealthy industrialist Zorin. When Zorin has an unpleasant chat with the KGB at a horse racetrack, she lifts Klotkoff high up above her head and hurls him to the ground! It’s one of those episodes that sticks with you after you’re done watching the film.
Kominowski was born in 1945 to Polish parents in a Nazi concentration camp near Dusseldorf, Germany. His father died but Bogdan and his mother survived and emigrated to New Zealand in 1949.
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A Manawatu Standard news clipping from 1967 recounts that the day mother and son left Germany four-year-old Bogdan ‘clambered on to a table top in a restaurant, and sang the Polish national anthem. This brief appearance cost him four hours in jail while his mother arranged for his release.’
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From ‘Our Mr Lee Grant’, a 2007 article by the Manawatu Standard
In 1960s New Zealand, Kominowski became a celebrated pop singer known as Mr Lee Grant. A couple of his songs such as 1967’s Opportunity topped the country’s charts. Later Kominowski moved to London where he started a career as a stage, TV and film actor. Apart from playing in A View to a Kill he appeared, for instance, as Jesus in a West End production of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and in the 1980 film Flash Gordon.
From behind the Iron Curtain
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PZL Świdnik’s Mi-2 chopper in ‘For Your Eyes Only’, photo: courtesy of The James Bond Archives / 007.com
From one KGB agent to another in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, in which a Polish-made chopper is used to transport the fictional KGB chief Anatoly Gogol. In one of the closing scenes, Gogol is flown in a helicopter to collect a British military device from the villain Kristatos. The filmmakers wanted Gogol’s chopper to have an eastern-bloc look so they opted to hire a helicopter from Poland which at the time of the movie’s making was under the communist regime.
They used an Mi-2, a Soviet-designed machine manufactured serially only in Poland by a company named PZL Świdnik. You can clearly see the company’s logo (which rented out the chopper) on the helicopter’s side in the film. The machine was flown onto the set in Greece from Poland by the Polish pilot Czesław Dyzma. For a brief moment in the film, you can actually see his face as he’s piloting the helicopter with Gogol on board over the breath-taking landscapes of the Meteora. Also, Dyzma’s name appears in the movie’s end credits.
Here’s how the Polish pilot commented on his experience on the set of For Your Eyes Only in a 2020 interview by aviation24.pl:
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‘When Roger Moore was the first to get off the bus, he was holding a big bottle of wine. Going to the hotel, from a distance he shouted to the crew manager: What does your helicopter look like?! I realized they were very interested in the helicopter from behind the Iron Curtain.’
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From ‘For Your Eyes Only - How was the movie made with the Polish Helicopter Mi-2’ at Youtube
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Michael Lonsdale as Hugo Drax in ‘Moonraker’, 1979, photo: courtesy of The James Bond Archives / 007.com
After A View to a Kill and For Your Eyes Only, we have another Bond movie starring Roger Moore in the main role. In 1979’s Moonraker, you can hear some great Polish music being played by… the main villain Hugo Drax. While investigating the disappearance of a spacecraft, Bond pays a visit to the lavish residence of Drax. As a butler leads 007 into the drawing room to meet his adversary, Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 15 aka the Raindrop Prelude can be heard. It turns out it’s Drax himself at a grand piano playing this beautiful tune by one of Poland’s most important composers.
The eminent musicologist and Chopin expert Mieczysław Tomaszewski wrote the following about the Raindrop Prelude:
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[It] seems at first to be an oasis of calm and quietness. But once it shifts from the bright D-flat major to the dark C-sharp minor you can hear sounds that are sombre, grim, disturbing.
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From ‘Chopin: Preludium Deszczowe’, an article at nutowo.pl, trans. MK
Disturbing and grim after initial calm, that seems to match the villainous character of Drax rather well…
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Łukasz Bielan, photo: Tomasz Urbanek / East News
Chopin is not only the surname of the most famous Polish pianist and composer, but also a brand of Polish vodka. However, it doesn’t seem that 007 ever drank it. But another brand of Polish vodka, Belvedere, was the official vodka for the 2015 movie Spectre. Belvedere partnered with the movie’s creators and around the time of the premiere, the brand had released a Bond-inspired commercial featuring actress Stephanie Sigman, who also appears in the film. Special Belvedere bottles were issued to go along with it, sporting things like the 007 logo or a graphic showing the MI6 building in London.
As to the movie itself, it’s hard to spot Belvedere vodka in it anywhere. Some claim that Bond drinks this beverage straight out of the bottle in one of the scenes at the L’Americane Hotel. It has to be said, though, that the bottle in question can’t be seen clearly, making it really hard to say whether it’s a bottle of Belvedere or not.
Grain alcohol isn’t the only thing that links Spectre to Poland. The main camera operator for this film was Poland’s Łukasz Bielan. Bielan, who was born in Warsaw 1967, has been living in the USA for over 30 years and has worked as a cameraman on many Hollywood productions including Life of Pi and Tomorrowland. Here’s how he described what he and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema aimed for while collaborating on Spectre:
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[We wanted] each place of action to have its own colour characteristic. Italy was to be warm and pastel. In Austria, we were to feel the deep chill of an alpine lake. Mexico was to be hot, but with less intense colours, so that the local Day of the Dead wouldn’t look too cheerful.
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From ‘Spectre Kręcił Polski Operator’ a 2015 interview with Łukasz Bielan by Gazeta Wyborcza, trans. MK
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A photograph of James Albert Bond who was stationed in Poland in the years 1964-65, photo: archive of the Institute of National Remembrance
To top things off we have what is possibly Poland’s most curious link to the character of James Bond, even if it’s an indirect one. It turns out that during the Cold War, James Bond was stationed in Poland. Not the famous fictional character though, but a real-life person bearing the same name.
In September 2020, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, an institution dealing, among other things, with state archives, revealed a couple of 1960s documents describing a certain James Bond. According to these documents, which were created by Polish counterintelligence, Bond came to Warsaw in February 1964 and took the position of archivist for the British Embassy Military Attaché. Bond came under surveillance which showed that he tried to obtain information about Poland’s military installations. However, he didn’t prove to be particularly effective and left Poland in January 1965 not having accomplished anything that would be worthy of portraying in an actual James Bond movie.
The aforementioned documents describe him as follows:
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He was talkative, but very careful. He liked beer and was interested in women.
It’s worth noticing that by the time the real James Bond arrived in Poland, two movies about the fictional one had already been released. In 1964, 007 was already a world-famous character. This may lead to the conclusion that the real James Bond’s mission in Poland was a kind of joke played by British intelligence. It must’ve been apparent that the employment of a man bearing that name at the British Embassy in Poland during the communist regime would have raised a few eyebrows.
As for the fictional James Bond, he is yet to visit Poland in his films. Let’s hope he eventually does that so that our list of his links to Poland can be expanded with even more entertaining things!
Written by Marek Kępa, Jan 21
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