- Honey: "What are you doing here? Looking for shells?"
- Bond: "No. I'm just looking."
- ―Honey meets Bond for the first time.[src]
Honey Ryder is a fictional shell-diver and love interest of James Bond who appeared in EON Productions' 1962 James Bond film Dr. No. The character is a cinematic adaptation of the character Honeychile Rider, who first appeared in Ian Fleming's 1958 novel of the same name and was subsequently re-imagined for the 2015 mobile game James Bond: World of Espionage. The character was portrayed by Swiss actress Ursula Andress but was voiced by Nikki van der Zyl.
Biography
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Having drawn a link between the murder of British spy John Strangways and radioactive samples he had taken from an island named Crab Key (owned by the reclusive Dr. Julius No) James Bond convinces a reluctant Quarrel to take him there by boat. There Bond meets the beautiful Honey Ryder, dressed only in a white bikini, who is collecting shells and singing "Under the Mango Tree". She emerges from the sea and Bond finds her to be beautiful right away, scaring her by joining in singing. At first she is suspicious of Bond but soon decides to help him after No's guards destroy her boat. Honey shows Quarrel and Bond a way to evade the henchmen when caught. After they escape, she tells Bond how her father died when on Crab Key, after which she was raped by a local landlord. Honey relates how she got her revenge by putting a black widow spider in his mosquito net and causing his lingering death. This shows a very deadly side to her, though she maintains a look of innocence and naivety.
After nightfall they are attacked by the legendary "dragon" of Crab Key, which turns out to be an armoured tractor equipped with a flamethrower. In the resulting gun battle, Quarrel is incinerated whilst Bond and Ryder are taken prisoner. They are decontaminated, quartered in Dr. No's lair, and given drugged coffee to render them unconscious. They dress and meet Dr. No in his office, where he invites them to lunch. After dinner, Ryder is taken away and Bond is beaten by the guards. Later, after killing Dr. No and sabotaging the island's reactor, Bond rescues Honey from being slowly drowned. As the complex explodes, the pair escape by boat until they run out of gas in the middle of the sea, and start kissing.
Personality
Behind the scenes
As "The Original Bond Girl"
Honey Ryder emerges from the sea in the famous iconic scene from Dr. No (1962).
In the film series, Honey is widely regarded as the first Bond girl, although she is not the first woman in the film to be with Bond (that distinction belongs to Sylvia Trench, while Miss Taro was Bond's first mission-related "conquest"). Her entrance in the film, emerging from the ocean in a white bikini with hunting knife belt around her waist, striding barefoot over the wet beach sand, carrying large seashells whilst taking off her diving mask as while the sun shines on her wet blonde hair while she is singing "Underneath the Mango Tree", is considered a classic James Bond moment and is one of the most popular scenes in cinematic history. This scene was also only the second time an actress had worn a bikini on screen after and God created Woman, but this movie is given the credit for single-handedly making the bikini as popular as it is today. As a homage, costume designer Linda Hemming made a similar costume of a La Perla bikini and patterned Ghost sarong as an outfit for Izabella Scorupco's character Natalya Simonova in the 17th James Bond film GoldenEye and Halle Berry performed a similar scene to Ursula's in an orange bikini in the 20th James Bond film, Die Another Day. Mariah Carey also references this scene in the music video for her song "Honey".
The character was later mentioned by name in On Her Majesty's Secret Service as a "beautiful movie star." Andress is the first of only two entertainers that have actually starred in a Bond film to be mentioned by Fleming in his James Bond novels. The other is David Niven who co-starred as James Bond in the 1967 film adaptation of Casino Royale along with Andress.
The film changed quite a few points in the novel, one of which being Honey's outfit, or rather lack thereof. In the original novel, Honey emerges from the water naked, wearing only the belt. When she notices that Bond is watching her, she covers her face to hide her identity. Understandably Honey was given a bikini in the film, and isn't ashamed when she sees Bond. Due to the films taking place during the present day of the films and not the books, the bikini had been around long enough to include.
Omitted scenes
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Still photograph of the original crab torture scene in Dr. No.
The 1958 James Bond novel Dr. No by Ian Fleming, Crab Key is named after the thousands of large land crabs – what they call in Jamaica "black crabs" – which infest the island. The book features a scene where Dr. No plans to torture Honey to death by tying her naked to the ground in the path of the crabs' migration; mistakenly believing that the animals are carnivorous from the death of an earlier victim. A similar scene was initially replicated for the 1962 film with Honey being tortured by being tied to the ground along with crabs, but since the crabs were sent frozen from the Caribbean, they did not move much during filming, so the scene was altered to have Honey slowly drowning.[1]
Gallery
Screencaps
Honey: "I promise you, you won't either."
Promotional
Videos
Trivia
- Honey is revealed to sell sea shells in Miami when she reveals to Bond that one of the sea shells she found was worth $50 there.
- It is possible that she gave Bond the scar on his back that is seen in From Russia with Love, possibly to remember her by.
- In the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Ryder's knife is seen while Bond is cleaning out his desk. Possibly she gave it to Bond as a memento.
- Honey was at one point considered to return for Live and Let Die, though the idea was scrapped.
- Like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, Honey doesn't appear until half way through the film.
References
- ↑ (1999). Inside Dr. No Documentary [DVD]. Dr. No (Ultimate Edition, 2006): MGM Home Entertainment.