ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (4)
By:
July 16, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
AURIC GOLDFINGER
“This is gold, Mr. Bond. All my life I’ve been in love with its color… its brilliance, its divine heaviness.”
Auric Goldfinger — a man in love, weighed down by a divina heaviness, much like Dante Alighieri was weighed down by his unrequited love for Beatrice.
As my editor Heather said when I pitched this character, “He has his own theme song!” That he does, and it constantly reminds us that he loves gold. Only gold.
Specifically, his gold. You see, like Dante dedicating his Commedia to Beatrice, this man dedicates his entire life to “Operation Grand Slam” — his plan to irradiate the Fort Knox gold supply so his gold will increase in value, leaving the world economy in shambles and thousands in Kentucky dead. Love will make you do crazy things.
It famously makes him cover his card-cheating accomplice, Jill Masterson, head-to-toe in gold. Earlier, when Bond asks why she helps Goldfinger, she says that he pays her to be seen with him. “Just seen?” Bond asks. “Just seen,” she confirms. Now she can be seen in just the way Goldfinger would want, beatified in gold for all eternity.
When Goldfinger explains Operation Grand Slam to a room of American gangsters, complete with Fort Knox model that emerges from the floor, he provides this justification: “Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He’s fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor… except crime!”
And then he floods the room with poisonous gas. Why would he go through this dog-and-pony show if he were just going to kill them anyway? Well, aside from pure showmanship, amor.
If Dante had encountered Goldfinger in Inferno, you’d imagine that it might’ve been in circle four, with the souls of the greedy. Makes sense, though with the gassing of the gangsters and the gilding of Jill Masterson, that could drag him down three levels lower to circle seven, where dwell the violent, to be punished for all eternity. Divine heaviness, indeed.
ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Kathy Biehl on DR. FRANK-N-FURTER | Catherine Christman on ALEXIS CARRINGTON | Crockett Doob on M3GAN | Nick Rumacyzk on AURIC GOLDFINGER | Mariane Cara on MIRANDA PRIESTLY | Trav SD on PROFESSOR HINKLE | Alex Brook Lynn on TOM POWERS | Lynn Peril on ENDORA | Adam McGovern on EDDIE HASKELL | Mimi Lipson on SUE ANN NIVENS | Heather Quinlan on HAROLD SHAND | Tom Nealon on SKELETOR | Matthew Hodge on BARRY LYNDON | Josh Glenn on JOEL CAIRO | Dan Reines on WALTER PECK | Mark Kingwell on HARRY LIME | James Scott Maloy on CLARENCE BODDICKER | Nikhil Singh on LOCUTUS | Carolyn Campbell on CARSON DYLE | Tony Pacitti on DENNIS NEDRY | Gordon Dahlquist on WALKER | Colin Campbell on RUTH LYTTON | Marc Weidenbaum on THE XENOMORPHS | Alycia Chillemi on TBD | Mandy Keifetz on MACHEATH.
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