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Ernst Stavro Blofeld
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Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a fictional character from the James Bond series of novels and films created by Ian Fleming. An evil genius, he is the archenemy of the British Secret Service agent James Bond and head of the global criminal organization SPECTRE with aspirations of world domination. SPECTRE deals in terrorism, revenge and extortion, most often potentially resulting in mass murder and annihilation in achieving its objectives. As head of the organization, Blofeld is commonly referred to as Number 1, a sign of authority and respect from his henchmen, and an official numerical position given to members of SPECTRE.
Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice; and six official James Bond films: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and his final appearance is the pre-title teaser of For Your Eyes Only (1981).
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Encyclopedia
Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a fictional character from the James Bond series of novels and films created by Ian Fleming. An evil genius, he is the archenemy of the British Secret Service agent James Bond and head of the global criminal organization SPECTRE with aspirations of world domination. SPECTRE deals in terrorism, revenge and extortion, most often potentially resulting in mass murder and annihilation in achieving its objectives. As head of the organization, Blofeld is commonly referred to as Number 1, a sign of authority and respect from his henchmen, and an official numerical position given to members of SPECTRE.
Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice; and six official James Bond films: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and his final appearance is the pre-title teaser of For Your Eyes Only (1981). He also appears in Never Say Never Again, the 1983 remake of Thunderball, which makes him the most persistent of James Bond's enemies.
In the films, Blofeld almost always appears with a white Persian cat. It was also briefly a convention of the Bond films not to show Blofeld's face: only a closeup of him stroking his cat. This convention was later broken in You Only Live Twice and subsequent films.
Many of Blofeld's characteristics have become clichés of supervillains in popular fiction, representing the stock character of the evil genius. In many versions, even the stroking of his white cat has been retained as a parodistic allusion to Blofeld's character.
Character
Fleming details Blofeld's background in the novel Thunderball, though none of his past is ever revealed in the Bond films. According to the novel, Blofeld was born on May 28, 1908, to a Polish father and a Greek mother in Gdingen, Germany (now Gdynia, Poland). After World War I, he became a Polish national. Blofeld attended the University of Warsaw where he studied economics and political history, and then the Warsaw University of Technology to study engineering and radionics. He then took a communication position at the Polish Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, and used his position for buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved to Turkey, where he worked for the Turkish radio and set up an intelligence organization. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel, he decided to back the Allied war effort. Ironically, he was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. Blofeld then temporarily moved to South America before founding SPECTRE.
In the John Gardner novel For Special Services, Blofeld is depicted as having had a daughter, Nena, with a French mistress.
Blofeld was named after Tom Blofeld (father of Henry), who attended Eton College with Fleming.
He and Fleming belonged to the same London club and, when seeking a name for his villain, Fleming flicked alphabetically through the membership lists, lighting upon the name Blofeld as being suitably villainous.
Novels
Blofeld makes three appearances in the Ian Fleming novels. He first appears in a minor role as the leader of SPECTRE in the 1961 novel Thunderball. The plot that he formulates is carried out by his henchman Emilio Largo. Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, once a bodybuilder but having gone to fat. He has violet-scented breath from chewing capsules.
Blofeld is absent from the next book, The Spy Who Loved Me, though its events take place while Bond is searching for Blofeld in North America. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) Bond learns that Blofeld – having radically altered his appearance – is in hiding in Switzerland under the guise of Comte de Bleuville, and defeats his plans to destroy Britain's agricultural economy. In the final sequence of the novel, Blofeld gets revenge by murdering Bond's new wife, Tracy.
In You Only Live Twice published in 1964, Blofeld returns and is found by Bond to be in hiding in Japan under the alias Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. Bond strangles him to death at the end of the novel, making it the villain's last appearance. In both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, he is aided in his schemes by Irma Bunt, who is clearly his lover in the latter and posing as Shatterhand's wife. Bond either kills or incapacitates her here in their Japanese castle base before it blows up.
Films
In the film series Blofeld first appears in From Russia with Love, then in Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds are Forever, and For Your Eyes Only. In his first two appearances, he is a perceived, but physically unseen character, with only his lower body visible as he strokes his trademark white cat. In the third, fourth, and fifth appearances, he is the formal antagonist, and, in the sixth and final appearance, in the pre-credit sequence of For Your Eyes Only, he is an anonymous, bald villain trying to kill the hero. In the last instance, he is anonymous because of the legal dispute, between Kevin McClory and EON Productions, over the Thunderball copyrights; Blofeld remains anonymous, unmentioned, and unlisted in the film’s end credits, the only clue to his identity being the trademark white cat. Blofeld is apparently killed in the beginning sequence of For Your Eyes Only when, after attempting to kill Bond by trapping him in a remote-controlled helicopter and forcing him to crash, Bond takes control of the helicopter and subsequently drops Blofeld (in his wheelchair) down a chimney stack resulting in a loud crash.
Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast by producer Harry Saltzman to play Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Upon arriving at the Pinewood set, both producer Albert R. Broccoli and director Lewis Gilbert felt that he was a bad choice, resembling a "poor, benevolent Santa Claus". Nonetheless, in an attempt to make the casting work, Gilbert continued filming. After five days, both Gilbert and Broccoli determined that Werich wasn't menacing enough, and recast Donald Pleasence in the role — the official excuse being that Werich was ill.
As a villain, Blofeld’s appearance and personality change according to the personifying actor. He has a full head of black hair in From Russia With Love and Thunderball; a facial dueling scar in You Only Live Twice; no scar or earlobes in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and silver-grey hair in Diamonds Are Forever. This metamorphosing is per Fleming’s literary portrayal of a chameleonic master criminal striving to go unnoticed with a massive employ of plastic surgery. He often wears a jacket without lapel, based loosely on the Mao suit, a feature which is used in spoofs like the Austin Powers series, though in his early two appearances on film he wore a black business suit.
Henchmen
From Russia With Love
- Morzeny
- Mehmet
- Donald Red Grant
- Kronsteen
Thunderball
- SPECTRE Agent # 11
- SPECTRE Agent # 9
You Only Live Twice
- Hans
- Mr. Osato
- Helga Brandt
- SPECTRE Agent # 3
- SPECTRE Agent # 4
- Dikko Henderson's Assassin
- Car Driver
- SPECTRE Astronaut
- Mr. Fong
- Helicopter Squad
- Tiger Tanaka's Ninja School Assassin
- Bedroom Assassin
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
- Irma Bunt
- Grunther
- Gebruder Gumbold
- Braun
- Felsen
- Toussaint
- Che-Che
- Josef
- Slovak
- Eckford
- Chrono
- Sonny
- Herb
- Tony
- Jacky
Diamonds Are Forever
- Mr. Wint
- Mr. Kidd
- Bert Saxby
- Professor-Dr. Metz
- Chinese Contact
- Egyptian Contact
- Marie
- Dr. Tynan
- Joe
- Mrs. Whistler
- Tiffany Case
- Peter Franks
- Morton Slumber
- Shady Tree
- Klaus Hergersheimer
- Ivanhorff
- Rodney
- Bambi
- Thumper
- Maxie
For Your Eyes Only
Other appearances
Blofeld appears in the 2004 game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, this time with the likeness of Donald Pleasence.
Cultural impact
- Waldorf released a desktop synthesizer named Blofeld, after Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
- Pleasance's incarnation as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice served as inspiration for Dr. Evil, the chief villain of the Austin Powers films, portrayed by Mike Myers.
- The Inspector Gadget cartoon series features a character named Dr. Claw who was a parody of Blofeld, including signature shots of just the chair, and arms, similar to shots of Blofeld. Like Blofeld, Claw was the head of a large criminal organization, and had a cat.
- In the Evil Genius computer game, the character of Maximillian is based on Blofeld.
- In the TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and TimeSplitters 2 computer games, the character of Khallos is based on Blofeld. Khallos in Future Perfect also appears with a robotic white pet cat named Strudel.
- Additional puns on Blofeld can be found in:
- In the video game Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4, Uzi Bazooka is shown on the video left in the office sitting in a big chair, head out of view, stroking The Cheat. This is a parody of Blofeld from the James Bond series.
- In the Dragon Ball cartoon series, the Red Ribbon Army and his commander are loosely based in Blofeld and SPECTRE. In this fact, the Commander Red's face doesn't be seen in early episodes of the Red Ribbon Army Saga, and only appear his hands with a extrange cat. The failure misions are punished with the execution, like SPECTRE, and his members are identificated with colors instead the numbers on SPECTRE.
- In the Jimmy Neutron episode Operation: Jet Fusion, a film starring Jet Fusion (a pun on James Bond) has two villains, one who resembles Blofeld and another who looks like Auric Goldfinger.
- In an episode of Scrubs, the Janitor, being approached by Dr. Cox, turns around in his chair to face him, stroking an imaginary animal in his lap. When Dr. Cox asks what it is, the Janitor responds, in an English accent, "Leonard, half-kitten, half-monkey."
- In the 1972 animated film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks, the main villain Rastapopoulos is based on Blofeld Character, at this point in the first part of the film only appear the chair and arms, but his face only appear later in the movie.
- In Danger Mouse cartoon series, the main antagonist, Baron Greenback, is also based in Blofeld. In the series, he appear stroking a white haired caterpillar instead the white angora cat.
- The main villain of Charles Stross's novel The Jennifer Morgue patterns himself after Blofeld consciously, including the white cat, Nehru suit, and elaborate plan for world domination (using the Glomar Explorer to raise a Chthonian superweapon from the Caribbean sea floor). In the afterward of the novel, Stross discusses Blofeld's influences (Doctor Mabuse, Professor Moriarty, and Fantômas), as well as featuring a fictional interview between Stross and Blofeld. The 'real' Blofeld is currently serving as the Minister of Interior Investment of Transnistria and, as a follower of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, was attempting to restore liberty to Britain after he considered it taken over by communist agents such as Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.
- In an episode of The Simpsons, season five, Bart acts like Blofeld and calls Lisa Octopussy.
- In the Pokemon animated series, Giovanni is a reference to Blofeld, being the head of a Criminal Organization, being rarely shown (often with just his lower body visible) whilst having a white cat - Persian
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