Focus Of The Week: Jill Masterson
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Focus Of The Week: Jill Masterson

007’s Golden Girl

Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) makes a brief but memorable appearance in Goldfinger (1964). Bored, adventurous and fun-loving, she begins as an employee of Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) but switches allegiances to 007 — much to her cost.

Bond meets Jill at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami. He is instructed by M (Bernard Lee), via Felix Leiter (Cec Linder), to investigate Goldfinger. Bond notices the crooked bullion dealer is having an incredible streak of luck during a game of gin rummy against Mr. Simmons (Austin Willis) and suspects cheating.

007 sneaks into Goldfinger’s suite to find Jill, lying on a sunbed, spying on Simmons’ hand with high-powered binoculars, relaying useful information about his cards to her boss through a radio and earpiece. Bond commandeers the radio and tells Goldfinger he will inform the Miami Beach police about his foul play unless he starts losing his ill-gotten winnings.

Impressed by Bond, Jill accepts 007’s invitation to dinner in his hotel suite, perhaps seeing a way out of her life with Goldfinger. Yet her feelings of optimism are tragically short lived. When Bond moves to the refrigerator to replenish the champagne (“(My dear girl, there are some things that are just not done, like drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above a temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit”), he is knocked unconscious by Goldfinger’s manservant Oddjob (Harold Sakata).

When he awakes he finds Jill dead in his bed, painted from head to toe in gold. Bond later learns that she has died from skin asphyxiation.

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