The silhouetted figures, geometric patterns, and ominous animations that make up the average James Bond movie opening credits sequence long ago require a certain chilly, high-tech flavor.
In the early days of the series, however, more primitive versions of the opening sequences resembled elaborate mid-1960s-era fashion shoots rather than tricked-up screen savers. A case in point is the opening to Goldfinger (1964), which, by wide agreement, is among the best of the Bond movies. Presaging a plot point in which gold paint is used as a means of suffocation, the opening features a bikini-clad woman made up in gold on whom key scenes (and crew members’ names) are projected.
The sequence, the handiwork of the brilliant graphic designer Robert Brownjohn, arguably encourages us to view the woman as a mere backdrop for the movie to come — a kind of shapely blank slate — but she was far from a faceless, nameless figure: The performer in that enduring opening was British model and actress Margaret Nolan, who died Oct. 5 at age 76.
Born in London in 1943, Nolan had accumulated a few minor television guest spots when Bond producers deemed her the ideal performer for their opening. Nolan agreed to don the gold paint with the proviso that she be cast in an actual part in the movie proper. The producers agreed. Sharing a scene with Sean Connery, her appearance as Dink, a masseuse, is fleeting, but her demeanor suggests a healthy self-awareness of the silliness of the whole thing.
Putting her foot down again — and, ironically, anticipating the future efforts of Bond leading men to extricate themselves from the franchise — Nolan resisted being deemed the so-called “Goldfinger girl,” declining to participate in a two-year tour in which she would accompany the movie as it wound its way around the world. “They were quite pissed off because they’d already spent loads of money on me,” Nolan said in a 2007 interview on Den of Geek. “It was because of what was going on politically at the time, and I wanted to do more serious stuff and be taken as a serious actress.”
And she did so, parlaying her appearance in a work of pure pop art into a substantial acting career. When she died, obituaries spotlighted her uncredited part in the Beatles musical A Hard Day’s Night (1964), but she was in no way a two-hit wonder. Working steadily for three decades, Nolan accumulated an impressive array of credits on British film and television, appearing in the Warren Beatty sex farce Promise Her Anything (1966), a heaping of Carry On comedies, and episodes of everything from ITV’s Armchair Theatre to the BBC’s The World of Beachcomber with Spike Milligan. Major parts may have eluded her, but she surely counts as the only ex-Bond girl to speak lines written by Evelyn Waugh when in 1981 she turned up in an installment of ITV’s adaptation of Brideshead Revisited.
Perhaps only starting in the 20th century could a young woman who won international renown for being doused in gold paint repurpose that fame to such idiosyncratic ends. Committed to left-wing politics, Nolan reminisced wistfully about the spirit of dissent exemplified in the May 1968 protests in Paris. “I remember getting a phone call from my husband from the Odeon, which is the theatre all the actors had occupied at the time, and he was saying that they were picking up the cobblestones and throwing them,” she told Den of Geek. “Oh, it was an incredible time!”
Nolan’s website is a case study of her range of interests and experiences, many of which she nurtured after retiring from the screen in the mid-1980s. Alongside a collection of conventional stills from her glamour days are her “photomontages,” artsy collages consisting of cut-up photos of the actress. Their sharp angles and duplicated images suggest the influence of the Bond opening sequences. Another section of her website attests to her belief in “permaculture,” an environmental movement.
Her death should also be mourned by anyone who admires self-created, self-directed lives. The Goldfinger star, who refused to be a Goldfinger girl, did it her way.
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Humanities.
