New James Bond Short Story to Appear in November/December PLAYBOY

Continuing a long tradition begun with the publication of Ian Fleming's short story "The Hildebrand Rarity" in the March 1960 issue, James Bond will once again appear in the pages of Playboy Magazine this fall, in a brand new short story. The only difference is this one will be in comic book form. Dynamite and Ian Fleming Publications announced jointly today that an exclusive, 6-page story from the team behind Dynamite's James Bond Origin comic book will see print in the November/December issue. Like the series, the story is written by Jeff Parker (The Interman, Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and drawn by Bob Q, both of whom have done stellar work on the first two issues of the comic. The new story takes place in March 1941, flashing forward a bit from events in the current issues. According to the press release, "James is dropped off the coast of Belgium to help a Resistance cell take out a supply train that's important to the Nazis." This is very exciting news, not just because it extends a longstanding tradition of appropriate brand partnership, but because more James Bond Origin is definitely a good thing! As previously reported, James Bond Origin bridges the gap between the Young Bond novels and Fleming's Casino Royale, finally telling the story of James Bond's war years. The November/December issue of Playboy hits newsstands October 30, but the digital version is already available now. The first two physical issues of Dynamite's ongoing comics series James Bond Origin are currently available in comics shops or digitally.

While Playboy (which now bills itself as "Entertainment for All," not "Entertainment for Men") published many Fleming stories and serialized novels back in the Sixties, the magazine also has more recent history with 007. During Raymond Benson's tenure as continuation author in the late Nineties, he published two Bond short stories and an excerpt of his first novel in the magazine. (The stories were eventually collected in the Benson anthologies The Union Trilogy and Choice of Weapons.) The most recent James Bond short stories to be published in magazines were written by Samantha Weinberg during her stint writing the excellent Moneypenny Diaries spinoff novels, and focused on that character as well as 007. "For Your Eyes Only, James" (review here) was published in Tatler in 2006, and "Moneypenny's First Date With Bond" (review here) was published in The Spectator that same year. To date, neither story has ever been collected.

Thanks to Gary for the alert!

Tradecraft: THE IRREGULARS TV Series Explores Wartime Espionage Exploits of Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl

Buried in an exciting Deadline article about Paramount's latest attempt to reboot the venerable Matt Helm spy franchise was another item of note to spy fans. The writer who will be tackling the Donald Hamilton spy series, Tom Shepherd, has already adapted another great spy tome—this one non-fiction. Giving background on Shepherd, the trade mentioned that along with an upcoming Dr. Dolittle movie with Robert Downey Jr. and a period action-adventure spec script teaming up a young Agatha Christie with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to solve a baffling mystery, Shepherd has already written an adaptation of Jennet Conant's terrific Roald Dahl biography The Irregulars for Anonymous Content and Paramount TV. No further information is provided, but I would assume the format would be a limited series. (Or miniseries, as we used to call them.) The Irregulars focuses on Dahl's period as a British spy operating in Washington D.C. during WWII. The future Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author and You Only Live Twice screenwriter worked for Sir William Stephenson's BSC (British Security Coordination) after he was shot down early in the war and unable to continue as an aviator due to his injuries. In Washington, he was basically a gigolo for England ("the things I do for England," as 007 would quip in You Only Live Twice), seducing society wives with the goal of getting them to convince their powerful husbands that America should join the war and come to the aid of Great Britain. Ian Fleming and his friend Ivar Bryce also figure prominently in the narrative, Fleming having worked for British Naval Intelligence at the time and Bryce, eventually, for the American OSS. There's an amusing account of Dahl and Fleming competing for the affections of the same woman, and the revelation that Fleming gave Dahl the idea for one of his more famous short stories that would later be adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The Irregulars is essential reading for anyone interested in Dahl, Fleming, James Bond, or wartime espionage (and a great companion piece to William Stevenson's famous Stephenson biography A Man Called Intrepid, or William Boyd's fabulous BSC novel Restless), and should make for great viewing as well. I'll definitely have my eyes open for more information on this project.

Trailer: Len Deighton's SS-GB (Updated With Widescreen Version)

The BBC has finally put out a trailer for their adaptation of Len Deighton's alternate history spy novel SS-GB (first reported on in November 2014). Set in an alternate 1941 in which Germany successfully invaded Britain, the story follows a police detective (Sam Riley) in Nazi-occupied London as his routine murder investigation leads him into a conspiracy of espionage, atomic secrets, and the fate of the world. Kate Bosworth co-stars. Regular James Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade penned the 5-part miniseries, which premieres this month in the U.K. While The Weinstein Company partnered with the Beeb for U.S. distribution, no American network or premiere date has yet been announced. TWC and BBC last partnered on War and Peace, which aired domestically on Lifetime.

The Ian Fleming Episode of Timeless Airs Tonight on NBC

The Ian Fleming appearance on NBC’s Timeless that EW first reported over the summer will air tonight at 10/9c. Sean Maguire, who played Robin Hood on Once Upon A Time and, it should be noted, bears no resemblance to Fleming, will play the James Bond author in a story set during his wartime service for British Naval Intelligence. Based on the trailers and clips, however, I don’t think we should expect a historically accurate Fleming on the time travel adventure show. Instead, it looks like we’ll get the James Bond surrogate the author is usually used as on television. Which isn’t automatically a bad thing; it could still be a lot of fun. Based on the clips, it looks like we’ll be seeing Maguire playing Jason Connery’s Ian Fleming from the 1990 TV movie Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming. This Fleming is undercover behind German lines, something the real, deskbound Fleming may have dreamed of doing, but couldn’t risk owing to the secrets that he knew. Yet the notion of Fleming on a commando raid disguised in Nazi drag persists in popular culture (seen most recently in the BBC miniseries Fleming). Indeed, it has its barest roots in reality, as written in John Pearson's still excellent biography. Screenwriters are wont to spin some of Fleming's more creative notional operations that he dreamed up for the 30 Assault Unit commandos into the very sorts of adventures the future author probably imagined himself going on... and frequently combine that with an actual intelligence gathering trip he undertook, after the fighting had been done, to recover the German Naval Archive. Indeed, Timeless Executive Producer Eric Kripke admits that Fleming was more or less filling a void in their script. He told EW, "We needed a spy in Germany to help our heroes and bring them into this world… and we turned to our historian, and he said, ‘Let me work on it,’ and then he comes running in the room an hour later and says, ‘Ian Fleming was there!'" So it doesn't sound like a history lesson, but then it hardly needs to be. It does sound like it could be pretty fun, so I'll certainly be watching tonight. (And Timeless is a fun show already.) Unfortunately, one of the main rules of the series is that the characters can't return to points in time they've already visited, so it seems highly unlikely that Fleming could become a recurring character.

New Allied TV Spot

Today Paramount and GK Films released a new TV spot for Robert Zemeckis's upcoming WWII romantic spy epic Allied, starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. Though it largely flew under the radar until the first trailer dropped last month, I firmly believe that Allied may be the spy movie of 2016. I can't wait to see it!

Trailer: Allied

One of the potentially biggest spy movies of the year has been going largely under the radar until now. That would be Allied, Robert Zemeckis' WWII romantic spy thriller starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. The trailer for the lavish period drama recalls not only (obviously) Casablanca, but also Pitt's previous spy hits Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Inglourious Basterds, as well as Cotillard's stunning performance as a sexy WWI-era assassin in A Very Long Engagement. All this with a script by rumored Bond 25 scribe Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Hummingbird) and a supporting cast including Lizzy Caplan (The Interview), Matthew Goode (Imitation Game) and Jared Harris (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) makes Allied a movie I'm very much looking forward to! Check out the trailer:

Tradecraft: Paul Rudd to Play Moe Berg

Variety reports that Paul Rudd (Captain America: Civil War) will play the legendary baseball player/spy (more legendary as the former than the latter) Moe Berg in The Catcher Was a Spy for Palmstar Media. Since it has the same title, I'm assuming this film will be based on Nicholas Davidoff's 1995 book, and I honestly can't believe it's taken so long for that to make it to the screen. There have been many books on Berg, however (ESPN calls him "the only utility player to be the subject of three biographies"), so it's possible that the movie has other source material. Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan) wrote the screenplay and Ben Lewin (The Sessions) will direct.

Berg was perhaps the ultimate Renaissance man. With degrees from Princeton and Columbia Law (as well as studying at the Sorbonne), he was a polyglot and an athlete. During a fifteen-year career in the major league he bounced around between multiple teams including the Chicago White Sox, the Washington Senators and the Boston Red Sox. An undistinguished record didn't stop him from accompanying the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Japan in the years before WWII, where he covertly photographed Tokyo for the U.S. government, taking films that were supposedly used in planning the Doolittle raid. He went on to serve in the OSS and the CIA, taking on numerous perilous wartime assignments.

Trailer: Dad's Army

1970s UK sitcom Dad's Army has been reinvented for the bigscreen as an all-star spy comedy from Johnny English Reborn director Oliver Parker. Bill Nighy (Page Eight), Michael Gambon (Page Eight), Toby Jones (Wayward Pines), Tom Courtenay (Otley), Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (RED 2) star. In the film, the outcome of WWII suddenly depends on the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard discovering the identity of a German spy for MI5. Check out the trailer:

Tradecraft: Lily James and Christopher Plummer Topline WWII Spy Thriller The Kaiser's Last Kiss

Deadline reports that Downton Abbey's Lily James has joined Oscar winning veteran Christopher Plummer (Triple Cross) in a fact-based spy thriller set during the early days of WWII, The Kaiser's Last Kiss. David Leveaux, a veteran theater director with five Tony nominations under his belt, will make his film debut. Set in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, The Kaiser's Last Kiss tells the story of Dutch resistance fighters working covertly with Winston Churchill to infiltrate an agent into the household of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the former German emperor who has lived in exile in Holland since his country's defeat in WWI. "A lethally dangerous love affair ignites between a German officer and a young Jewish Dutch woman (James) with devastating consequences as the Nazis race to identify and eliminate the agent behind the potentially disastrous defection of their former Emperor to England." Producer Judy Tossell told the trade, "It’s about loyalty, duty and a forgotten pocket of history. It’s also a really exciting spy thriller with a love story running through the middle of it." She's right about that forgotten pocket of history. I've long been fascinated by the the Kaiser's days in exile, his contradictory relationship with Hitler, and his rejection of Churchill's offer of asylum in England. I'd definitely be interested in learning more about all that, especially if it involves a good spy story—real or fictional.

Coming off the worldwide success of Disney's Cinderella, James has become one of the most in-demand female leads out there. She's already got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the television epic War and Peace in the pipeline, and Edgar Wright's contemporary musical Baby Driver coming up. According to Deadline, she will fit in The Kaiser's Last Kiss prior to shooting Baby Driver. Filming is expected to commence in the fall "somewhere in Europe."

New Spy DVDs: Double Crossed: 10 Classic Spy Thrillers

Mill Creek is famous for their budget collections of ten, twenty-five, fifty, even 100 classic (read: public domain) movies in a single set. They're usually grouped by genre, like 50 War Classics or 50 Great Mysteries or something along those lines, and I've long wished they'd do a set of spy movies. Because obviously there are plenty of great spy movies in the public domain! What's more, Mill Creek now distributes a lot of titles from the MGM catalog, so that opens up their options. And, sure enough, they've finally gotten around to the espionage genre. Granted, on the lower end of the quantity spectrum, and focusing solely on WWII espionage movies. But still, their set Double Crossed - 10 Classic Spy Thrillers seems like a pretty great bargain for just over $10! (And under from some retailers.) While the odds are good many spy fans will already own a few of these (the Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Moto movies, for example, have long been available in boxed sets of their respective heroes), the set is probably still worth its low cost for the others. Included are "classics" (both legitimate and otherwise) starring the likes of James Cagney, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Peter O'Toole. Below is a list of he movies spread across these three discs, including the distributor's descriptions.

Mr. Moto's Last Warning
Mr. Moto investigates a plot involving the French and British governments that could start a war over the Suez Canal. In a race against time and assassins on his tail, he must expose the agents before it's too late.
Starring Peter Lorre, John Carradine
(1939) Black and White 71 Min NR

British Intelligence
During the beginning of World War II, a German woman comes to stay in the home of a high-ranking British official. The family does not know their visitor is really a German spy who is meeting up with another agent already in the house trying to steal documents.
Starring Boris Karloff, Margaret Lindsay
(1940) Black and White 61 Min NR (Violence)

The Black Dragons
A famous plastic surgeon is hired by Japan's Black Dragon Society to transform six operatives into exact duplicates of six power American executives to sabotage the U.S. war effort. Will agents from the F.B.I. be able to unravel the plot?
Starring Bela Lugosi, Clayton Moore
(1942) Black and White 62 Min NR

Submarine Alert
In a devious plot, the FBI unexpectedly fires a loyal radio engineer who is recruited by the Nazis. But is he actually bait to trap their spy ring of saboteurs?
Starring Richard Arlen, Wendy Barrie
(1943) Black and White 67 Min NR (Violence)

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) are searching for a kidnapped scientist whose invention may decide the fate of World War II. Both the Allies and the Nazis are in a desperate race to possess it for their own benefit.
Starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce
(1943) Black and White 68 Min NR

The Adventures of Tartu
A British soldier is recruited for an undercover assignment inside Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia. His must infiltrate a chemical factory and work with the local underground resistance to sabotage the operation.
Starring Robert Donat, Valerie Hobson
(1943) Black and White 104 Min NR (Violence)

Blood on the Sun
This Oscar-winning film begins prior to the outbreak of World War II. Nick Condon (James Cagney), the American editor of a Tokyo newspaper, discovers plans for Japan's military conquest of the world. He vows to secure the document and get it into the hands of the American military at any cost.
Starring James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney
(1945) Black and White 94 Min NR (Violence)

The Green Glove
Glenn Ford stars as an American GI who travels back to France after the end of World War II, to try and recover a jewel-encrusted glove, which had been pillaged from a country church during hostilities.
Starring Glenn Ford, Geraldine Brooks
(1952) Black and White 89 Min NR

The Limping Man
An American WW II veteran returns to England to visit an old flame he met during the war. When he arrives at the airport, a fellow passenger, with ties to the woman, is gunned down.
Starring Lloyd Bridges, Moira Lister
(1953) Black and White 76 Min NR

Rogue Male
An English aristocrat attempts to assassinate Adolph Hitler but is captured by the Nazis and horribly tortured. After enduring the suffering, he escapes and returns to England, but he is trailed by Nazi agents bent upon preventing him from revealing Hitler s true plans.
Starring Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim
(1976) Color 103 Min NR

The latter, the most recent movie in the collection by a good twenty years (though still in keeping with the WWII theme), is a remake of Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (review here), based on the novel by Geoffrey Household.

Tradecraft: Purvis and Wade Adapt Deighton for BBC

Variety reports that James Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Skyfall, Casino Royale, The World Is Not Enough) have signed on to write a 5-episode miniseries for BBC One based on Ipcress File author Len Deighton's novel SS-GB. As much as I love Deighton, I have to confess I've never read that one because his alternate history novels never interested me as much as his Cold War spy thrillers. So I'll rely on the trade's plot summary. "It is set in an imaginary Britain controlled by the Nazis, if Germany had occupied the country. It centers on a police detective caught between the Nazis and the British resistance." But the alternate history setting doesn't mean that it's not a spy story! Speaking to The Guardian, Purvis and Wade called SS-GB "a brilliant tale of espionage that dares to think the unthinkable." I'll certainly have to read the book before this miniseries airs in 2015! I can't help but be a tad disappointed that this isn't news on the new television adaptation of Deighton's masterful Bernard Samson cycle that was first reported on last year, but on which there have been no updates ever since, but I guess I should just be glad that any Deighton is coming to television. And this sounds like fertile ground for a series, for sure! Besides their contributions to the last five Bond movies, Purvis and Wade's other genre credits include Johhny English and The Italian Job remake (on which they ended up uncredited).

Double O Section Classic: Encore Review: Espionage Agent (1939)

In the days leading up to WWII, Joel McCrea made near back-to-back spy films with polar opposite political agendas. Alfred Hitchcock’s genre-defining action masterpiece Foreign Correspondent warned of the chaos brewing in Europe and made the clear case that it would be impossible for America and Americans to avoid being caught up in it, so the U.S. should make a stand soon and come to the aid of its overseas allies. (As a Brit working in Hollywood, Hitchcock himself had an obvious patriotic agenda.) Prior to that role, however, McCrea played an American diplomat in Espionage Agent, a movie that dared to vilify Hitler’s Germany at a time when studios preferred to play it safe with international politics, yet at the same time advocated America’s neutrality. "If America, lacking the protective laws it needs, is drawn into another war," one mouthpiece character declares, "it will be because of those human ostriches who keep their heads buried in the sand." While advocating isolationism, the movie recognizes its drawbacks. "Isolation is a political policy, and not a brick wall around the nation," comments another character. "And fancy pants guys [meaning spies] walk right through political policies."

Espionage Agent blames nefarious foreign spies and saboteurs for warmongering in America, ignoring all the other factors that led to U.S. involvement in the Second World War, but at the same time makes the sound case that the United States badly needs a counterintelligence agency of its own to root out those spies. That, the film’s creators naively believe, will be the end of it. As long as U.S. authorities can round up all the foreign agents operating within the country, America need have no more involvement with the war in Europe. So while it’s heart may have been in the right place, the movie’s politics have dated badly. But how does Espionage Agent fare as pure entertainment? Sadly not so well. Director Lloyd Bacon and the four credited writers had not yet cracked the genre the way Hitchcock had.

At a time when Hollywood films weren’t supposed to stir up trouble by specifically identifying the foreign powers behind the spies and saboteurs creeping all over movie screens, Espionage Agent boldly opens with headlines about German agents operating subversively on U.S. soil and Congress’s need to take action. They get away with this by hiding behind a title card that identifies these events as occurring in 1915, but the implication is clear that they’re happening again. Once we flash forward to the contemporary setting of 1939, there’s no more specific mention of Germany, though all the foreign agents speak with German accents and have names like Muller and come from a country that borders Switzerland with soldiers whose uniforms closely resemble those of the SS.

McCrea plays Barry Corvall, a U.S. diplomat in Algiers. He helps a throng of American travelers escape the revolution-rocked nation, including the beautiful Brenda Ballard (played by the equally beautiful Brenda Marshall). When he sees Brenda, it’s love at first sight. Unfortunately, we’ve just seen her agreeing out of desperation to spy for the loathsome Herr Muller (Martin Kosleck) if only he’ll furnish her with an American passport so she can get home. Barry books Brenda passage on the same steamship he’s taking back to the States, and woos her throughout the voyage. Not wanting to drag him into her own unfortunate predicament, Brenda adamantly refuses his advances.

Back in America, Barry and his friend Lowell enroll in some sort of advanced diplomat school, and learn more about the dangers of foreign spies. This section plays out like the Top Gun of the diplomatic corps; it’s clearly designed to attract eager recruits for foreign service. Barry eventually completes his higher learning and gets posted to Paris. And he finally convinces Brenda to marry him. Of course, that’s when the snake Muller emerges from the shadows, reminding her of her debt of service to his organization. Here, the movie does something surprising. It doesn’t milk the drama of a wife coerced into spying on her husband. Instead, Brenda comes clean with Barry and tells him everything. He, in turn, reveals all this to his bosses in the State Department.

I don’t know if their response accurately belies the astonishing ignorance of the pre-war U.S. intelligence community, or merely the astonishing ignorance of Hollywood’s screenwriters at telling good spy stories. Either way, instead of using this newfound asset as a double agent to pass misinformation along to the Germans, the honchos at the State Department call Muller into their office and tell him exactly what they know, blowing their chances at running any sort of counterspy operation. Muller smiles and says it’s all true, but what can they do about it? He’s a foreign citizen, so under the current U.S. law they have no choice but to let him go. Way to go, State Department; way to accomplish nothing. Yes, that’s the movie’s point, but it makes for frustrating plot development.

So halfway through the movie, we’re robbed (twice) of what could have been the compelling espionage drama promised in the film’s title. Luckily, Corvall feels just as cheated as the audience, and vows to single-handedly bust up this spy ring. Of course Brenda won’t let him go it alone, so he reluctantly accepts her help. As a private citizen, he’ll fashion himself and Brenda into a two-person CIA. And so they head off together to take on all the espionage agents in Europe, trying to gather evidence of infiltration that will force Congress to act... somehow. This private mission leads to the good stuff we expect from Thirties spy movies, like secret codes, foreign embassies, listening to conversations through windows and–of course–crossing borders on trains. But still, Barry and Brenda are dogged by America’s general lack of preparedness to function as a superpower. When Barry tries to bluff that American agents are watching all the train stations, the head German (oops, I mean head "foreign") agent snidely gloats, "Ve know America has no counter-espionage service."

Things still manage to get exciting in a kind of third-rate way, and then wrap up very suddenly against the same conditions that end Foreign Correspondent, with the world on the verge of war. It’s not giving away too much about a movie of this era to say that Barry does something worthy of praise, but sadly America is in no position to offer it. "You helped forge the weapon the service so badly needed," says his former State Department superior. "And yet the service can’t show its gratitude for it." The age-old secret agent’s dilemma: there’s no public reward for secret service. Of course, the movie itself has managed to make its very public case for an American counterintelligence agency, so it’s undeniably successful to some degree, and of considerable interest to students of spy history. Yet its creators remain blissfully hopeful that such an organization will enable the country to maintain its isolationist outlook, and steer clear of the troubles in Europe.

Espionage Agent is a curious time capsule from that moment when Hollywood was first dabbling with the notion of a secret agent hero. Spies were still shadowy villains, aiming to do America harm, but what about a counterintelligence officer, protecting the country from such threats? Barry Corvall is still a private citizen, and a cinematic James Bond is still two decades away. Despite a few anomalies during WWII, the heroic counter agent wouldn’t emerge until the Cold War, but Espionage Agent is notable as an early experiment in that direction. It’s also worth seeing for solid performances from Joel McCrea and the truly stunning Brenda Marshall, whose career was sadly never as big as it should have been. But it’s far from top-shelf spy entertainment. For that, seek out McCrea’s next spy movie, Foreign Correspondent.