GRAHAM GREENE OUR MAN IN HAVANA

细节

GRAHAM GREENE OUR MAN IN HAVANA
A typescript letter, signed, [n.d.] on La Residence des Fleurs, Avenue Pasteur, 06600 Antibes headed paper stating This collection of miniature whisky bottles was made by me for amusement during the 1940s and 1950s. The collection gave me the idea of the drafts game in Our Man In Havana and I lent my bottles at the time to Carol Reed when he made the film, 1p; and Greene's corresponding collection of eighty-two miniature whisky bottles, various bottles include two autographed by Greene - Cranmer Fine Old Scotch Whisky and Liquer Scotch Whisky both signed on the front labels, other unsigned bottles include: Purple Heather Scotch Whisky; VAT 69 Finest Scotch Whisky, Dimple Old Blended Scotch Whisky; Red Hackle Liquer Scotch Whisky; Gilbey's Spey-Royal; Hunter's Liquer Scotch Whisky Haig Gold Label - four different bottles including three blends; Angus McKay Finest Selected Whisky; Highland Queen Grand Liquer Scotch Whisky; Golden Key; Glenkiltie Liquer Old Scotch Whiskyi and Queen Anne Rare Scotch Whisky; a book GREEN, Graham. Our Man In Havanna, London: Heinemann 1958 FIRST EDITION, original blue cloth, dust jacket by Donald Green (extremeties chipped, a little browned) and a still of the drafts game scene between Jim Wormold [Alec Guinness] and police chief Captain Segura [Ernie Kovacs] - 8 x 10in. (20.3 x 25.5cm.).

A complete list of all 82 bottles in the collection giving distillers details, levels etc. will be available on request and on the view.

出版

Film Quarterly, Vol 2, 1974, pp.352-358
Monthly Film Bulletin, Vol 27, No.312, January 1960, p.4

拍品专文

The draft game between James Wormold and Captain Segura is one of the key scenes in the 1959 Columbia film Our Man In Havana. The plot of the film revolves around James Wormold [Alec Guinness] manager of a vacuum-cleaner agency in Havana who in order to raise more funds so that he could gratify his daughter's ambitions to own a horse, allows himself to be persuaded to join the British Secret Service. Pressure to recruit agents results in Wormold inventing sub-agents and supplying apparently secret information taken from local newspapers. These deceptions culminate in the submission of drawings based on vacuum cleaner plans to represent new weapon installations in Cuba. He is watched by police chief Segura 'The Red Vulture' who is attracted to his daughter. The game became serious when one of the invented agents is killed, another escapes a shooting and Wormold himself narrowly escaped being poisoned. The murder of his closest friend Dr Hasselbacher causes him to kill Carter, the enemy spy, after securing Segura's gun by getting him drunk in a draft game played with miniature whisky bottles.

In Greene's novel the twenty-four draft pieces comprised twelve bottles of Bourbon and twelve of Scotch. The bottles mentioned in the book were Old Taylor, Old Forester, Cairngorm, Four Roses, Dimpled Haig, Hiram Walker, Harper's, Kentucky Tavern, Red Label, Dunosdale Cream, Lord Calvert, George 1V, Queen Anne, Highland Queen, Vat 69, Grant's Standfast and Old Argyll.