Master & Servant

Goldfinger and Oddjob are the quintessential mastermind/henchman in the Bond canon. Memorably played by German actor Gert Fröbe and weightlifter-wrestler turned actor Harold Sakata respectively, the pair deliver the textbook mixture of brains and brawn that often outwit and outmuscle James Bond. Here’s how they push 007 to the limit…

GOLDFINGER

Bond might quip that Auric Goldfinger sounds like a “French nail varnish” but the British businessman is a man of many talents; bullion dealer, licenced jeweller and smuggler. One of the richest men in the world, Goldfinger lives an exotic lifestyle, owning a golf course in Kent, a stud farm in Kentucky and a factory in Switzerland, moving between his operations in a private jet flown by his personal pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). 

Yet behind his ostentatious but legitimate front, Goldfinger uses his connections with high society to smuggle gold out of the UK on a huge scale. This is achieved by melting down gold and hiding it in his Rolls-Royce Phantom III — number plate AUI — that allows the smuggler to move the bullion around undetected. 

Yet all this is prelude to a bigger plan that would see him control the world’s gold supply. As Goldfinger himself puts it: “Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He has fired rockets to the moon. Split the atom. Achieved miracles in every field of human endeavour… except crime!”

Bond first encounters Goldfinger cheating, firstly at gin rummy in a Miami hotel and then at golf on his private course. Bond manages to disrupt his ruse on both occasions — the golf game sees 007 engage in his own duplicity by switching golf balls — but not without raising the criminal mastermind’s ire.

The game-playing soon transforms into a more psychological sport of cat and mouse. After Bond is captured spying in Goldfinger’s Geneva factory, the crime mastermind straps him onto a table and activates an industrial laser.

The scenario quickly becomes a battle of wits, as thinking fast, Bond hints at his knowledge of Operation Grand Slam — a phrase he overheard randomly in the factory — suggesting he will be missed if he doesn’t report for duty. Not wishing to have his grand scheme stymied, Goldfinger spares Bond’s life, but it is perhaps the closest 007 has ever come to being outmanoeuvred.

Flying to Kentucky, Goldfinger reveals his master plan to both his criminal investors (whom he later kills) and Bond. Operation Grand Slam involves irradiating the billions in gold reserves at Fort Knox with a Chinese-made atomic bomb, rendering the stockpile unusable and therefore increasing the value of his own gold tenfold. He will gain entry to the secure facility by dropping nerve gas over the base, distributed by Pussy Galore and her flying circus, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the surrounding area. Even Bond can’t help marvel at the audacity of the plan.

After Bond foils Operation Grand Slam and is invited to meet the US President, Goldfinger infiltrates the private jet, sets a course for Cuba and surprises 007 in the cabin with a revolver. Bond makes a grab for the gun and the two men scuffle, the revolver going off and blowing out of the window. Goldfinger is sucked out of the depressurised cabin. When Pussy Galore asks where her former boss is, Bond drily quips, “Playing his golden harp.”

ODDJOB

A one-man army, Oddjob is Goldfinger’s manservant who performs a number of functions for the criminal mastermind; valet, driver, golf caddy, henchman and bodyguard. A mute, Oddjob is loyal to a fault and will stop at nothing to carry out his boss’s demands. Stocky, strong and perma-suited, he is a seemingly indestructible force, his major weapon a steel-brimmed hat that can cut through anything from stone to metal.

As a henchman, he is ruthless, knocking Bond unconscious in his Miami hotel suite for revealing Goldfinger’s cheating, and killing Goldfinger’s disloyal assistant Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) by covering her body in gold paint, causing her to die through skin suffocation. 

As a golf caddy, Oddjob is without scruples — after Goldfinger plants a shot into the rough, Oddjob surreptitiously drops a duplicate ball from his trouser leg —and underlines his master’s threat and power by flinging his steel-brimmed hat and decapitating a statue which he later uses to kill Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet), out for revenge for her sister. As Bond hands back Goldfinger’s ball, Oddjob effortlessly crushes it with one hand.

After the action switches to Kentucky, Oddjob displays no remorse in shooting a gangster (Martin Benson) who has deserted Goldfinger and then disposing of his body by crushing the car into a metal cube at a junkyard. 

When Operation Grand Slam starts to go awry, Oddjob shows unswerving loyalty to his boss, even after Goldfinger has locked him in the vault with Bond and the nuclear bomb, facing certain death. In a showdown, Oddjob proves to be an immovable force, Bond hitting him with blocks of wood and gold ingots to little effect, Oddjob throwing 007 around the vault with abandon.

In the heat of battle, Oddjob puts his hand on the steel rim of his hat nestled between two bars, after Bond has thrown and missed. Acting quickly, 007 slides along the shiny floor and grabs a severed electrical cable, places it on the bar and electrocutes the henchman in a shower of sparks. As 007 once said, positively shocking.