Shady Tree is a character from the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever. A stand-up comic performing at the Whyte House in Las Vegas, Tree operates as part of Ernst Stavro Blofeld's diamond smuggling pipeline. Shady Tree was performed by Leonard Barr, himself a standup comic.
His name comes from the character of Michael "Shady" Tree, a gangster in Ian Fleming's 1956 novel Diamonds Are Forever.
Biography[]
In the film, Shady Tree is an old stand-up comedian of vaudeville doing shows at the Willard Whyte hotel-casino with its starlets but at the same time is part of the organization that traffics diamonds to Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He appears with Morton Slumber saving the life of Bond, played passed out in a coffin in the crematorium of the cemetery when he discovers that diamonds delivered by him under a false identity, are false.
Shady Tree's corpse.
Bond later learns that he does a show at the hotel and goes to the show. He decides to make him a visit backstage to meet their role in the organization but the pair of Blofeld's assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd comes first and kills Shady, eliminated one of those who had any previous contact with the diamonds.
Bert Saxby walks into Tree's dressing room to find him dead. In a deleted scene, it is revealed that he was killed with a gun disguised as a toy gun that had a "bang" sign pop out. This scene can be found on the Ultimate Edition DVD.
- Saxby: "We need Tree alive."
- Kidd: "That is most annoying."
- ―Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd with Saxby[src]
References[]
- ↑ Lamont, Peter [2015] (1st Nov 2016). The Man with the Golden Eye: Designing the James Bond Films (in English). Signum Books, p.47. ISBN 0995519110. “Dr. Metz's security pass is dated 7/5/71.”