Sean Connery carefully places his fingers on the gold-plated shoulder of actress Shirley Eaton, under the flashing bulbs of the gentlemen of the press. James Bond's third mission was, primarily, to line the pockets of the film's backers with gold...
April 1964, in the Pinewood Studios on the outskirts of London, the set designers have recreated the rooms of the famous Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach. The plan was to replay a key scene from the third James Bond film, 'Goldfinger', where Bond discovers that his playmate Jill Masterson - played by Shirley Eaton - has been covered with gold covered and hence murdered by 'epidermal suffocation'. The film's producers, along with Director Guy Hamilton, knew only too well that they had created an iconic movie image here - and convened a press photocall to make the most of it. What they couldn't know at this stage was that the Midas touch went beyond the boundaries of the silver screen. The film, which cost about £3 million dollars to make, brought in more than $125 million and made Sean Connery one of the biggest stars of the 1960s. Shirley Eaton's role in Goldfinger brought her worldwide fame as the 'Golden Bond Girl', but she retired from acting five years later to devote herself to motherhood.
