We were talking here the other day about the silliness of one particular scene in the movie, Goldfinger. Bond is cavorting (as they say) with the lady, Jill Masterson, played by Shirley Eaton. Bond gets hit on the head and knocked-out. When he comes to, Jill is not only dead but she has been painted, head-to-toe, with gold paint. He later explains she died of "skin suffocation." That is, I noted, maybe the hardest way possible to kill someone. Just how did that work? Did she hold still for being painted? Did he knock her out and then paint her? And how did Goldfinger's Korean assistant Oddjob manage to paint her without spilling gold paint all over? And why kill someone that way at all?
Ihsan Amanatullah went to The Source to get some answers which he sent me. He sent the following from Ian Fleming's original novel of the same name. Jill's death occurs off-screen and Bond learns of it from her sister, Tilly…
She whispered, almost to herself, "He killed my sister. You knew her — Jill Masterton."
Bond said fiercely, "What happened?"
"He has a woman once a month. Jill told me this when she first took the job. He hypnotizes them. Then he — he paints them gold."
"Christ! Why?"
"I don't know. Jill told me he's mad about gold. I suppose he sort of thinks he's — that he's possessing gold. You know — marrying it. He gets some Korean servant to paint them. The man has to leave their backbones unpainted. Jill couldn't explain that. I found out it's so they wouldn't die. If their bodies were completely covered with gold paint, the pores of the skin wouldn't be able to breathe. Then they'd die. Afterwards, they're washed down by the Korean with resin or something. Goldfinger gives them a thousand dollars and sends them away."
Bond saw the dreadful Oddjob with his pot of gold paint, Goldfinger's eyes gloating over the glistening statue, the fierce possession. "What happened to Jill?"
"She cabled me to come. She was in an emergency ward in a hospital in Miami. Goldfinger had thrown her out. She was dying. The doctors didn't know what was the matter. She told me what happened to her — what he had done to her. She died the same night." The girl's voice was dry, matter of fact. "When I got back to England I went to Train, the skin specialist. He told me this business about the pores of the skin. It had happened to some cabaret girl who had to pose as a silver statue. He showed me the details of the case and the autopsy. Then I knew what had happened to Jill. Goldfinger had had her painted her all over. He had murdered her. It must have been out of revenge for — for going with you." There was a pause. The girl said dully, "She told me about you. She — she liked you. She told me if I ever met you, I was to give you this ring."
Bond closed his eyes tight, fighting with a wave of mental nausea. More death! More blood on his hands.
Okay, so let me see if I have this right: Goldfinger gets women to his place, hypnotizes them and when they're in a trance, Oddjob paints them gold…and I guess it's implied Mr. Goldfinger rapes them at some point. They wake up and Oddjob takes the paint off them and they get a thousand bucks and he kicks them out. They don't die because Oddjob doesn't paint their spines. But as punishment for being with Bond, Jill Masterson got her spine painted and then…
Well, I'm not sure. She wound up in an emergency ward. Was she still painted gold? I guess not because the doctors didn't know what the matter was. So the idea here is that Oddjob had taken the paint off but she was still dying from having had it on, is that it? But she was also coherent enough to send a cable to her sister to travel to see her…and she was alive when the sister got there, which was the same night because she died the same night she was painted. And she told the sister what Goldfinger had done to her but I guess she didn't tell the doctors who were trying to save her life. And then she died and…oh, this whole idea of killing women by painting them gold is getting to sound really impractical. It might be easier to just deep-fry a turkey…