Focus Features

An iconic shot of Sean Connery and Shirley
Eaton in Goldfinger

Goldfinger is probably the most stylish and wittiest of the Bond films – and also one of the cruelest: I shudder when I remember Shirley Eaton's body smothered in gold paint.

Ken Adam – who was the production designer for seven of the early Bond movies – recalls his work on the film:

Ken Adam: "I think Goldfinger was the last really complete script based on Ian Fleming's book and it gave me a great opportunity to go further as a designer.  As we always do on Bond films, we researched. First we went to Kentucky to look at stud farms. Fort Knox was there, but we weren't allowed to look at it. In a way, I was delighted that we didn't get permission to go inside Fort Knox, because that triggered my idea of having this rather innocuous 1920s art deco building and inventing a completely imaginary interior for it.

I remember looking at the interiors of the gold vaults at the bank of England and finding them most uninteresting. In reality they were very low – a series of tunnels really – because gold is never stacked very high; it is so heavy. So I decided to use stylization.  I would give the audience a different form of reality.  I designed the set on one of the big stages at Pinewood with the actual vault about forty feet high.  I designed it like a prison with gold stacked up behind the bars and on the floor so that the camera was moving through gold all the time.

Christopher Frayling: It has the feel of a cathedral with bars; a golden cathedral built in steel and granite, with downlighting from a vaulted ceiling and full of stacks of gold which nobody could ever move or get to.  Of course, the public wanted to see lots of gold in Fort Knox.

Ken Adam on the set of a later
Bond movie, 1967's You Only
Live Twice

Ken Adam: That's the whole idea.  If you go to the biggest gold depository in the world, you expect to see gold towering up to the heavens.  In hindsight, I think Goldfinger was maybe the best example of a Bond film that I designed, where the settings accentuate the dramatic message of the film.  I had a completely free hand.

Christopher Frayling; You seem to love imagining places for us and making them larger than life.

Ken Adam: The fantasy is more acceptable and believable to the public than what Fort Knox probably looks like inside. I used a combination of stage and film design for the set.  A stage designer has to create a reality that is limited by the stage, the audience and other factors, whereas a film designer designs mainly for the camera.  But I felt I had to combine the theatricality of a stage design as well to create a reality which, as it turned out, the film audience accepted in the War Room in Dr. Strangelove and in Fort Knox.  When the film came out United Artists received 300 letters – mostly irate – asking how a British film unit and a British director were allowed to shoot in Fort Knox when even the American president is not allowed in. It was a great compliment."

Extract taken from Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design by Christopher Frayling (Faber & Faber, 2005).

Essential Viewing for Ken Adam's work: Dr. No, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Pennies From Heaven, The Madness of King George.

An iconic shot of Sean Connery and Shirley
Eaton in Goldfinger

Goldfinger is probably the most stylish and wittiest of the Bond films – and also one of the cruelest: I shudder when I remember Shirley Eaton's body smothered in gold paint.

Ken Adam – who was the production designer for seven of the early Bond movies – recalls his work on the film:

Ken Adam: "I think Goldfinger was the last really complete script based on Ian Fleming's book and it gave me a great opportunity to go further as a designer.  As we always do on Bond films, we researched. First we went to Kentucky to look at stud farms. Fort Knox was there, but we weren't allowed to look at it. In a way, I was delighted that we didn't get permission to go inside Fort Knox, because that triggered my idea of having this rather innocuous 1920s art deco building and inventing a completely imaginary interior for it.

I remember looking at the interiors of the gold vaults at the bank of England and finding them most uninteresting. In reality they were very low – a series of tunnels really – because gold is never stacked very high; it is so heavy. So I decided to use stylization.  I would give the audience a different form of reality.  I designed the set on one of the big stages at Pinewood with the actual vault about forty feet high.  I designed it like a prison with gold stacked up behind the bars and on the floor so that the camera was moving through gold all the time.

Christopher Frayling: It has the feel of a cathedral with bars; a golden cathedral built in steel and granite, with downlighting from a vaulted ceiling and full of stacks of gold which nobody could ever move or get to.  Of course, the public wanted to see lots of gold in Fort Knox.

Ken Adam on the set of a later
Bond movie, 1967's You Only
Live Twice

Ken Adam: That's the whole idea.  If you go to the biggest gold depository in the world, you expect to see gold towering up to the heavens.  In hindsight, I think Goldfinger was maybe the best example of a Bond film that I designed, where the settings accentuate the dramatic message of the film.  I had a completely free hand.

Christopher Frayling; You seem to love imagining places for us and making them larger than life.

Ken Adam: The fantasy is more acceptable and believable to the public than what Fort Knox probably looks like inside. I used a combination of stage and film design for the set.  A stage designer has to create a reality that is limited by the stage, the audience and other factors, whereas a film designer designs mainly for the camera.  But I felt I had to combine the theatricality of a stage design as well to create a reality which, as it turned out, the film audience accepted in the War Room in Dr. Strangelove and in Fort Knox.  When the film came out United Artists received 300 letters – mostly irate – asking how a British film unit and a British director were allowed to shoot in Fort Knox when even the American president is not allowed in. It was a great compliment."

Extract taken from Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design by Christopher Frayling (Faber & Faber, 2005).

Essential Viewing for Ken Adam's work: Dr. No, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Pennies From Heaven, The Madness of King George.