The Greatest
James Bond Girls



Thunderball (1965)

See also Greatest Film Series Franchises: James Bond Films (illustrated)
See also James Bond Films - Summary

Greatest Bond Girls in James Bond Films
See the remake of Thunderball, the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) with similar Bond girls
Title Screen
Film Title/Year/Director, Bond Girl (Actress)
Screenshots

Thunderball (1965)
d. Terence Young

Patricia Fearing (Molly Peters)

Patricia Fearing was a pretty blonde physical therapist/nurse at the Shrublands Health Clinic in England, where Bond (Connery) was taking a rest-cure and detoxification. She was assigned to administer massages to Bond, and during one appointment, Bond forced an unappreciated kiss on her, and she reprimanded him: "Behave yourself, Mr. Bond."

She strapped him to a motorized traction table ("the rack") to stretch his spine, and joked: "First time I've felt really safe all day."

Patricia saved Bond after he passed out on the sabotaged table, rigged to kill him by SPECTRE agent Count Lippe (Guy Doleman). To retaliate, Bond sabotaged Lippe's steam-bath cabinet and trapped him inside.

After she asked for him to keep silent about the incident (otherwise she would have been fired) - his price for cooperation ("I suppose my silence could have a price") was for her to join him in the Turkish steam bath room.

She was the first Bond girl to appear nude (in silhouette behind frosted glass) with the agent - in this scene.

Later in his room (in two scenes), Bond rubbed a soft black mink glove over the naked back of now sexually-liberated and appreciative Patricia, who enjoyed his therapeutic moves ("Mink. It reduces the tensions").

When Bond left Shrublands, he asked her to "keep in touch," and she cordially replied: "Any time, James. Any place." He responded: "Another time. Another place."





Thunderball (1965)

Bond 'Bad' Girl Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi)

Voluptuous, red-haired 'black widow' mistress and assassinatrix Fiona Volpe, working for SPECTRE No. 2 villain Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), was first seen seducing NATO's French pilot Major Francois Derval (Paul Stassino) before he was killed, as part of a plot to steal two thermonuclear weapons from a NATO jet.

Later, after other SPECTRE agents had failed to kill Bond (Connery), the sensual and feisty bad girl infiltrated into Bond's Nassau hotel, took the adjoining room, and was taking a bath as Bond entered. When she asked for something to put on, Bond handed her slippers. Shortly after, they made love in the bedroom (she asked: "Do you like wild things, Mr. Bond, James Bond." Bond replied: "Wild? You should be locked up in a cage").

But as they were leaving the room afterwards (when she called him a "sadistic brute" who had messed up her hair), she betrayed Bond and held a gun on him, although he knew she was an enemy agent even before they made love (she was wearing the same ring as Largo) (Bond: "What I did this evening was for king and country. You don't think it gave me any pleasure, do you?").

She spitefully told him he had a big ego: "James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents and immediately returns to the side of right and virtue - but not this one! What a blow it must have been. You, having a failure." Bond responded: "Well, you can't win them all!"

Bond soon escaped from Fiona and other thugs during a local Junkanoo carnival/parade, but she caught up with him at the Kiss Kiss Club. She danced with Bond on the open-air dance floor, as she moved him closer to an assassin's gun pointed in their direction, but he turned her around and she was shot in the back with a fatal bullet intended for Bond.

007 left her corpse at a table, claiming: "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead."





Thunderball (1965)

Dominique ("Domino") Derval (Claudine Auger)

"Domino" (named after her black/white bikini) was the beautiful, but love-starved, imprisoned and pampered kept-mistress of possessive "guardian" SPECTRE No. 2 villain Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), who was intent on stealing two nuclear warheads from a NATO Vulcan jet and blackmailing NATO for a ransom of £100 million pounds.

She was also the sister of Major Francois Derval (Paul Stassino), a NATO pilot unwittingly used in SPECTRE's scheme, through a disguised imposter named Angelo Palazzi (also Paul Stassino) who had undergone plastic surgery to look like Derval.

From the Thunderball briefing materials, Bond knew that she had a birthmark (two moles) on her left thigh. Domino first met Bond (Connery) during his diving trip at Nassau in the Bahamas, when her flipper was caught on some coral and Bond extricated her. After they had a poolside lunch together, Bond unexpectedly knew her nickname and she inquired: "How do you know my friends call me Domino?" Bond: "It's on the bracelet on your ankle." Domino: "So! What sharp little eyes you've got." Bond: "Wait till you get to my teeth."

Later in the film, during a second dive together, their underwater tryst was discreetly hidden from view as they embraced and sank behind coral (and bubbles exploded to the surface). On shore, Bond later quipped: "I hope we didn't frighten the fish."

She began to trust him after he told her about her dead brother, killed by Largo - "It's a long story and it involves your friend, Largo...Largo had your brother murdered, or it was on his orders." Bond believed that once she knew Largo had killed her brother, she would join his side and plot against him. Bond asked for her help, thought to be necessary to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

In the end, the emotionally-shattered Domino was the one who vengefully killed Largo in the cabin of his hydrofoil yacht. When Largo was about to shoot Bond dead, Domino shot him in the back with a harpoon-spear gun, and then told Bond: "I'm glad I killed him." Bond retorted, in relief: "You're glad?"

In the film's brief closing in a yellow life raft, after jumping from the hydrofoil with jammed steering to escape its explosion, Bond activated a large red balloon tied to a rope that was snagged by a skyhook from a US Navy Boeing B-17 plane to facilitate their rescue.

[Trivia note: In one of her earlier roles, Kim Basinger also played Domino in the unofficial remake Never Say Never Again (1983).]







Greatest Bond Girls in James Bond Films
(chronological, each Bond film a separate page)
Introduction | Dr. No (1962) | From Russia With Love (1963) | Goldfinger (1964) | Thunderball (1965)
You Only Live Twice (1967) | On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) | Diamonds are Forever (1971) | Live and Let Die (1973)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Moonraker (1979) | For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Octopussy (1983) | A View to a Kill (1985) | The Living Daylights (1987) | Licence to Kill (1989)
GoldenEye (1995) | Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | The World is Not Enough (1999) | Die Another Day (2002)
Casino Royale (2006) | Quantum of Solace (2008) | Skyfall (2012) | Spectre (2015) | No Time to Die (2021) | Unofficial Never Say Never Again (1983)

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