Tiffany Case

Tiffany Case
Character from the James Bond franchise
Affiliation	The Spangled Mob (novel) SPECTRE (unknowing) (film)
Portrayed by	Jill St. John

Tiffany Case is a fictional character in the James Bond novel and film Diamonds Are Forever. For the 1971 film she was portrayed by Jill St. John. In the film it is stated that she was named after her (accidental) birthplace, Tiffany & Co., where her parents were going through a choice of wedding bands, to which Bond dryly jokes that she was lucky that it hadn't happened at Van Cleef & Arpels.^[1]

The novel

In Ian Fleming's novel, she is an American diamond smuggler working as a fence for The Spangled Mob, a ruthless American gang that is smuggling diamonds from Africa through an international pipeline. Bond contacts her in London posing as petty crook Peter Franks, using her professionally as a gateway into the pipeline even as he develops a personal interest in her.^[2] Felix Leiter, familiar with Tiffany's background, acquaints Bond with the fact that she was gang-raped as a teenager and, as a result, has developed a hatred of men.^[3] She is nevertheless attracted to Bond, and the two ultimately become lovers.

Tiffany turns against her former partners, and helps Bond escape from their clutches. In the novel, she is later kidnapped by Wint & Kidd on the Queen Elizabeth, but she is in turn rescued by Bond.

After this adventure, the two briefly live together, but, like many of Bond's women, she is out of his life by the next novel, From Russia With Love. In this novel, Fleming writes that Tiffany found Bond too difficult to live with and returned to the United States with an American military officer, apparently intending to marry him.^[4] The explanation was somewhat unusual both because Fleming rarely even mentions Bond girls for more than one book and because Bond actually seemed emotionally affected at the dissolution of a relationship.

In the novel, in the scene where Tiffany is introduced, several Bond girls are mentioned, including two that had not yet appeared. When Bond is speculating what "T. Case" stands for, two names that come to mind are Tilly and Teresa. Both names would later be used for Bond girls, Tilly Masterton and Teresa de Vicenzo.

The film

The 1971 film adaptation of Diamonds are Forever substantially revised the plot and, with it, Tiffany's character. In the novel Tiffany is a vulnerable young woman with a sardonic exterior and an experience of the world beyond her years, similar in many ways to female characters in noir fiction.^[5] While she is still a diamond smuggler, she is now unwittingly working for Bond's archnemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his terrorist organisation, SPECTRE. Bond arranges a partnership with her in disguise, but this time it is to investigate her role in Blofeld's latest criminal scheme. She initially believes that she and "Peter Franks" are going to make millions, but gets caught up in much more than she bargained for when the real Peter Franks arrives on her doorstep. In a change of pace for the series, Tiffany is the first Bond girl to be shown gaining pleasure from watching Bond undress (albeit off camera), and encourages him with remarks such as "So far so good, keep going" and (still believing him to be Franks) "Peter, I'm very impressed. There's a lot more to you than I had expected." From the moment she and Bond find Plenty O'Toole soaking in Tiffany's swimming pool, drowned mistakenly instead of her, Tiffany helps Bond follow the path of the smuggled diamonds until the trail leads to Blofeld.

By the end of the film, Tiffany has helped Bond defeat Blofeld, and the two go on a romantic cruise together. They are briefly interrupted by an assassination attempt by Blofeld's henchmen, Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd, but Bond foils it, and the two sail off into the sunset.

In an attempt to leave Las Vegas with the diamonds, Tiffany hires a red Ford Mustang Mach 1 which is later driven by Bond.^[6]

References

1. ^ MI6 :: Diamonds Are Forever (1971) :: James Bond 007
2. ^ Fleming, Ian (1956). "chs. 5, 9". Diamonds Are Forever. MacMillan. 
3. ^ Fleming, Ian (1956). "ch. 8". Diamonds Are Forever. MacMillan. 
4. ^ Fleming, Ian (1957). "ch. 11, 12". From Russia, With Love. MacMillan. 
5. ^ See, e.g., Ian Fleming, Diamonds Are Forever (MacMillan, 1956), chs. 5, 9.
6. ^ http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/vehicles/ford-mustang