Wolf Mankowitz, Bond screenwriter

[julian_craster]

To Russia with love: Wolf Mankowitz suspected of bonding with enemy

Man behind early Bond films was seen 'security risk' and BBC warned against giving him staff job





Alan Travis, Home affairs editor

The Guardian, Thursday 26 August 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/au...owitz-bond-spy

MI5 first took an interest in Wolf Mankowitz (left) in 1944 after he married his communist wife Ann, whom he met while studying English at Cambridge

Wolf Mankowitz, one of the men behind the early James Bond films, was suspected of being a communist agent, according to MI5 files released today.



Mankowitz, who died in 1998 aged 73, introduced the Bond producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to one another. He was also involved in writing the script for Dr No and wrote the screenplay for the 1966 spoof Casino Royale.



He was one of the most successful British screenwriters of the 1950s with A Kid for Two Farthings and Expresso Bongo, a music industry satire starring Cliff Richard. The security service file released at the National Archives today shows that for more than a decade after the second world war, Mankowitz was in MI5's sights as a possible communist agent.



The file includes covert surveillance photographs of Mankowitz showing him in the 1950s to be a noted visitor to the Soviet "consulate" in London.



MI5 first took an interest in him in 1944 after he married his wife Ann, whom he met while studying English at Cambridge. She was a communist party member and when the two moved to Newcastle upon Tyne they were said to be "avoiding national service and doing themselves well by lecturing for the Workers' Educational Association at about £6 a week. Wolf appears to be at least a pure Marxist."



One piece of evidence was an intercepted letter by a former soldier and CP member, David Holbrook, to a mutual friend, saying that Wolf "assaults me with the denouncement 'You know you're not really a Marxist' which is probably true but I like to sneer a bit and think I am more useful than he is."



In 1951, a Captain Hindemarch told MI5 that he had joined the CP after being approached by a man called "Mankiewitch" who now worked for the BBC Third Programme. The security services warned the BBC that Mankowitz was a convinced Marxist, married to a CP member and "a security risk would exist should Mankowitz have access to classified information".



Mankowitz unsuccessfully applied several times for a BBC staff job and in 1957 the corporation phoned MI5 before engaging him on a three-week contract to translate and dub a film of Anton Chekhov's The Bear for television.



Even so MI5 felt they had to tell the BBC that Mankowitz had visited Moscow the year before and had been in touch with Soviet officials over a film project. Both officials, however, agreed that translating Chekhov was unlikely to give Mankowitz access to any classified information. As the file shows, he did play an active role in the Anglo-Soviet Friendship Society and was repeatedly invited to Moscow by the Union of Soviet Writers.



But even MI5 was bound to note that he was critical of the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956 and called for the right of free expression for Russian writers.



A lot of interest was generated when Mankowitz appeared to be playing a leading role in organising a British delegation to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957, attempting to recruit the likes of Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson and others in the cast of Look Back in Anger then playing at the Royal Court.



But MI5 lost interest when Mankowitz cancelled the trip to Moscow because he was filming in the West Indies.



His career seems to have taken off after the success of A Kid for Two Farthings and by 1958 he had a Friday night interview programme on ITV. According to a press cutting in the file on one show his guest, Ludovic Kennedy tried to turn the tables on him and accused him of being a communist: "No, I am not a communist," he replied in a flash. "I am an anarchist."



In December 1946, the Metropolitan police special branch wrote to MI5 saying that a "Jew name Mankowitz", said to be a Cambridge professor, intended to take up residence in a renovated labourer's cottage at Mistley Heath, near Manningtree, Essex. It was rumoured that he intended to lecture for the Communist party in that part of Essex. "I thought it a little odd for a Cambridge University professor (if such he be) to settle in such a forsaken place," reported the special branch officer.



A British scientist who won a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on the DNA double helix was investigated by MI5 as a possible atom spy who had passed US nuclear secrets to the Russians.



The files show the New Zealand-born Professor Maurice Wilkins who worked during the second world war on the Manhattan Project, building the hydrogen bomb, was put under surveillance.



In 1951 the FBI told MI5 that one of the nine Australian and New Zealand scientists had been in close contact with members of the American Communist party.



Wilkins's post was opened and his movements tracked. But the only evidence against him was from a junior MI5 officer who had been with Wilkins at St Andrews University when the first of the atom spies, Dr Allan Nunn May, had been uncovered in 1946. Wilkins had known May personally and defended his action as justifiable.



The investigation was dropped in 1953 when his colleagues insisted that any leftwing sympathies had disappeared. "He comes to the college every morning with a copy of the the Times, which he has apparently read on the journey," said MI5's informant.

[Moor Larkin]

Possibly no great surprise if he was associating with known Communists at the time. The cause of International Socialism had been being pursued by the Bolsheviks prior to WW2 and of course the role of the Soviets in stopping Hitler's Nazi's made even Stalin seem heroic for a few years afterwards. It was the time of the Hollywood Ten around 1948, so just as the Americans caught up with the Soviet model of insider politics, people like Mankowitz would get picked on in Britain I suppose. It didn't seem to hold Mankowitz back in popular culture though. He seems to have become a huge figure in British theatre and television particularly, at the time. I cannot see a 'Jew' being very welcome at the BBC anyhow. Men like John Boorman have said how much they hated the class-ridden nature of the BBC around that time.



Certainly by 1961, Mankowitz had a significant resume in Theatre Who's Who and was producing with the likes of Orson Welles and he also was involved with the 59 Company that made Patrick McGoohan an overnight theatre superstar (if only briefly). He moved into Independent Television very smoothly and I have copies of Wolf Mankowitz's A-Z guide to Showbusiness, which is quite witty and sharply satirical in places. His original script for Dr. No sounds a little like what he got away with in Casino Royale - in the case of Dr No he had the monkey turning out to be the Number One villain...

[Moor Larkin]

Our first problem was the character of Dr No. Since he was going to be 007’s first and most fiendish adversary, the situation called for a character of menacing dimensions. This was the brief which our writers took away with them.

Later, as we sat reading the pages, I had a sinking feeling. They had decided to make Dr No a monkey. I repeat – a monkey. This threw Harry and me into some dismay. A million dollars was being invested. We didn’t think that a monkey, even with a high IQ, could in any circumstances be 007’s ‘merciless antagonist’.
Read more: JAMES BOND MOVIES: Why we said no to Dr No being a monkey and other revelations | Mail Online



Some interesting advice from Ian Fleming too:
There should, I think, be no monocles, moustaches, bowler hats or bobbies or other “Limey” gimmicks. There should be no blatant English slang, a minimum of public-school ties and accents, and subsidiary characters should, generally speaking, speak with a Scots or Irish accent.