Ernst Stavro Blofeld
Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a supervillain in the James Bond series of novels and films, created by Ian Fleming. A criminal mastermind with aspirations of world domination, he is the archenemy of British MI6 agent James Bond. Blofeld is head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE and is commonly referred to by the codename Number 1 within this organisation. The character was originally written by Fleming as a physically massive and powerfully built man, standing around and weighing, who had become flabby with a huge belly.
The most recurring antagonist in the franchise, Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and You Only Live Twice; as well as eight films from Eon Productions: From Russia with Love, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, possibly For Your Eyes Only, Spectre and No Time to Die. The latter two films are set in a rebooted continuity, which started with Casino Royale. Blofeld also appears in Never Say Never Again, a remake of Thunderball that was not produced by Eon.
Blofeld has been played on-screen by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Max von Sydow and Christoph Waltz, among others. It was initially a convention of the films not to show Blofeld's face, only a close-up of his hands stroking his white, blue-eyed Persian cat. His face is revealed in You Only Live Twice when he introduces himself to Bond for the first time in person.
Many of Blofeld's characteristics–particularly his stroking of a white cat–have become tropes in popular fiction which allude to the criminal mastermind stock character. Such parodies can be seen in the Austin Powers film series with the villain Dr. Evil and his cat Mr. Bigglesworth; in the Inspector Gadget franchise with Dr. Claw and MAD Cat; in Danger Mouse with Baron Silas Greenback; and in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, with Feathers McGraw and a white seal pup.
Character
includes information about Ernst Stavro Blofeld's background in his novel Thunderball. According to the novel, Blofeld was born on 28 May 1908 in Gdingen, Imperial Germany ; his father Ernst George Blofeld was Polish of German descent, and his mother Maria Stavro Michelopoulos was Greek, hence his Greek middle name Stavro. After World War I, Blofeld became a Polish national. As a young man, he was well-versed in the social science disciplines, but also in the natural science and technology disciplines. He first graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in Political History and Economics, and then from the Warsaw University of Technology with a degree in Engineering and Radionics. He was then hired by the Polish Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs and appointed to a sensitive communication position, which he used for buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange.Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them for cash to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved first to Sweden, then to Turkey, where he worked for Turkish Radio and began to set up his own private intelligence organisation. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel, he decided to back the Allied war effort, and was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. Blofeld then moved temporarily to South America before founding SPECTRE.
In the John Gardner novel For Special Services, Blofeld is depicted as having had a daughter, Nena, with a French prostitute.
Although Fleming himself never confirmed it, it is generally thought that the character of Blofeld was based on real-life Greek arms dealer Basil Zaharoff. It is commonly believed that the name Blofeld was inspired by the English cricket commentator Henry Blofeld's father, Thomas Blofeld, with whom Fleming went to school. Henry Blofeld offered on the BBC Radio 4 series Just a Minute that "Ian took my father's name as the name of the baddie." It was actually revealed that it was based off of John Blofeld, after Fleming saw his name on the membership list at Boodle's and deemed it as an appropriate villain's name.
In novels
Blofeld has three appearances in Ian Fleming's novels. He first appears in a minor role as the leader of SPECTRE in the 1961 novel Thunderball. The plot that he formulates is carried out by his second-in-command Emilio Largo. Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, weighing roughly, who had previously been a champion amateur weightlifter in his youth before becoming obese in middle age; he has black crew-cut hair, black eyes, heavy eyelashes, a thin mouth, and long pointed hands and feet. He has violet-scented breath from chewing flavored cachous, a habit he adopts whenever he must deliver bad news. A meticulous planner of formidable intellect, he seems to be without conscience but not necessarily insane, and is motivated solely by financial gain. Blofeld's lifestyle is described in one chapter in Thunderball: "For the rest, he didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much."The novel Thunderball indicates that Blofeld wants to be a man of honour, or at least pose as one. During a meeting of SPECTRE agents, he refers to the kidnapping of a teenage girl, who was to be returned unharmed once her father paid the ransom. However, he refunded half the money after learning that she had been raped by her abductor Pierre Borraud, and he kills Borraud by electrocuting him in his chair. This is the third instance in which Blofeld kills an operative for a breach of discipline; he had earlier shot one through the heart with a needle fired from a compressed-air gun, and strangled another with a garrote. In the movie Thunderball, Blofeld kills his agent No. 9 for embezzlement rather than rape.
Blofeld is absent from the next novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, though its events take place while James Bond is battling SPECTRE in North America. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond learns that Blofeld has altered his appearance radicallyhe is now tall and thin, having reduced his weight to ; sports long silver hair, a syphilitic infection on his nose, and no earlobes; and he wears dark green tinted contact lenses to hide his distinctive eyes. Perhaps less calculating than previously, he is notably saddled with the exploitable weakness of snobbery about his assumed nobility, indicating that he is losing his sanity. He is hiding in Switzerland in the guise of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville and Bond defeats his vindictive plans to destroy Britain's agricultural economy. In the final sequence of the novel, Blofeld gets revenge by murdering Bond's new wife, Tracy Bond.
In You Only Live Twice, published in 1964, Blofeld returns and Bond finds him hiding in Japan under the alias Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. He has once again changed his appearance. He has put on some muscle and has a gold-capped tooth, a fully healed nose, and a drooping grey mustache. Bond describes Blofeld on their confrontation as being "a big man, perhaps six foot three, and powerfully built." It is indicated that Blofeld has by now gone completely insane, as he all but admits himself when Bond levels the accusation. Bond strangles him to death in a fit of rage at the end of the novel.
In both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, Blofeld is aided in his schemes by Irma Bunt, who is clearly his lover in the latter, and posing as Shatterhand's wife Emmy. Bond incapacitates her in their Japanese castle base before it blows up, killing her.
The final mention of Blofeld is in the beginning of the next novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, published in 1965.
In films
Blofeld's depiction in film influenced with great effect the depiction of supervillains and that of Mafia bosses both in films and printed media, as, since his first appearance on the big screen in 1963, he established some "standards" imitated for decades, such as mysterious identities, being portrayed stroking a pet and with the face unseen by the spectator or the viewpoint character, and the concept of spectacularly executing underlings who fail to defeat the main protagonist.Original timeline
In the film series, Blofeld first appears in From Russia with Love, then in Thunderball. In these two appearances, his name is never spoken, his face is not seen, and only his lower body is visible as he strokes his trademark white cat. He is portrayed by Anthony Dawson and voiced by Eric Pohlmann.Originally, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was to include the twist that Blofeld was Auric Goldfinger's twin brother, and would be portrayed by Gert Fröbe. However, this plotline was scrapped when it was delayed in favor of You Only Live Twice. Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast by producer Harry Saltzman to play Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Upon his arrival at the Pinewood set, both producer Albert R. Broccoli and director Lewis Gilbert felt that he was a bad choice, resembling a "poor, benevolent Santa Claus." Nonetheless, in an attempt to make the casting work, Gilbert continued filming. After five days, both Gilbert and Broccoli determined that Werich was not menacing enough, and recast Donald Pleasence in the role – the official excuse being that Werich was ill.
In the third, fourth, and fifth appearancesYou Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Foreverhe is the primary antagonist, meeting Bond face-to-face. In the film version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Blofeld is not Tracy Bond's actual killer—rather, he plots to have Tracy killed. He drives the car from which Irma Bunt fires the fatal shots at Tracy, minutes after she had married Bond. During the opening sequence of Diamonds Are Forever, Bond searches relentlessly for Blofeld and finds him overseeing the transformation of a henchman into a decoy duplicate, using plastic surgery. Bond drowns the decoy in a mud bath and kills Blofeld by shoving him into a volcanic pool, saying "Welcome to Hell, Blofeld." After the credits, M tells Bond that now that Blofeld is dead, finished, he expects Bond to engage in "a little plain, solid work." Of course, the man Bond killed turns out to be a duplicate. Bond would meet Blofeld again, along with another decoy, later in the film before eliminating the second decoy, and crashing Blofeld's bathosub into the control room of an exploding oil rig, his fate left ambiguous.
In a sixth appearancein the pre-credit sequence of For Your Eyes Onlyhe is an anonymous bald villain who uses a wheelchair and is trying to kill Bond once again. Due to the then-ongoing legal dispute between Kevin McClory and Eon Productions/United Artists over the Thunderball copyrights, Blofeld remained unnamed. The only clues to his identity are the trademark white cat, similar clothes to his previous onscreen appearances, the dialogue indicating he and Bond have met before, and the fact that the scene begins with Bond paying his respects at Tracy's grave, often considered by the producers as a means of providing an "immediate continuity link" in the event of a new actor taking the part of Bond, as was almost the case before Roger Moore signed on again as Bond.
Blofeld's appearance changes according to the personifying actor and the production. He has a full head of black hair in From Russia With Love and Thunderball; a bald head and a facial dueling scar in You Only Live Twice; a bald head with no scar or earlobes in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and silver-grey hair in Diamonds Are Forever. This metamorphosing matches Fleming's literary portrayal of a master criminal who will go to great lengths to preserve his anonymity, including the use of plastic surgery. He often wears a jacket without lapels, based loosely either on the Nehru jacket or on the Mao suit, a feature which is used in spoofs like the Austin Powers series, though in his early two appearances on film he wears a black business suit.