I've been trying to learn more about the Alpine in the movie
"Dr. No". During my last two Sundays, my wife and I have
been visiting cafe/bookstores which have been amenable to
a little research. I've come up with a few bits of information.
Question: Why did the producers choose an Alpine for the
movie?
Answer: Ian Fleming chose an Alpine in the book. The book
was published in 1958 and describes Bond being picked up by
a Jamaican contact named Quarrel in a black Talbot-style
Alpine. In the book, the Alpine belongs to a British
secret service agent named Stangways who, along with his
female assistant, are gunned down at the beginning of the
story. The chase shown in the film never happens.
Instead, Bond has a double drive the car from Kingston
to the north side of the island. Bond later learns that
the Alpine crashes and its occupants are killed.
Question: Are the directions Bond is given in the movie
by the enemy-agent-babe legitimate? Do they describe
real Jamaican roads? If you remember from the movie list,
she tells Bond to leave Kingston by the Port Royal road,
then take the Windward Road, turn left at the cement
factory, drive two miles up the mountains, and then
continue on to Magenta Road.
Answer: While there is no Port Royal Road, there is a
road leading from Port Royal which Bond might have taken.
There is also a Port Royal St. in Kingston, although this
is a minor city street. The Windward road, on the other
hand, is real. It leads east out of Kingston and follows
the coast -- just as is shown in the film. And Bond
turning left and heading up the hills is more or less
correct, even though none of the travel guides and maps
I looked at show a suitable road. Turning left would
take Bond up into the Blue Mountains. I suspect that the
film makers made up the final directions to the house.
Magenta road does not seem to exist. Maybe they borrowed
scenery from the north side of the island near Ocho Rios,
the area that they used for some of the Crab Keys scenes.
(Remember the water falls on Crab Keys where Ursula
Andress appears? Those fall are called Dunn Falls and
are very near Ocho Rios).
Question: Where did the producers get their Alpine?
Guess: They rented it from a Sunbeam dealer in Kingston.
The population of Jamaica during the 1950's was about
1.2 million. There must have been quite a few dealers in
Kingston. In one of the tour guides I looked at, it showed
a front page of the Kingston newspaper from 1962 which
featured a large Vauxhil (sp) ad. Fleming, who lived on
Jamaica during the winters for 18 years, probably chose
a Sunbeam because he had seen them. Sunbeam clearly
exported Alpines to the Carribean -- if you remember from
the appendicies in Chris McGovern's Alpine book, he
mentions a "small bore engine for Bermuda" that Sunbeam
used to make. Given that Jamaica is the third largest
island in the Carribean, it doesn't seem unreasonable that
Sunbeam exported Alpines to at least a couple of the
islands. And the Alpine shown in the movie is a right
hand drive vehicle, which means that the producers
didn't go to the U.S. to import their car.
So why would they have rented an Alpine instead of buying
one? If you remember, the Alpine in the chase scene was
not damaged and was shown mainly in that one afternoon
scene. Also bear in mind that this was the first Bond
film, and producers were under budget constraints.
So is the car alive today? How could we find out?
If the car was rented, then maybe the license plate shown
in the movie was legit. Also, if the car did come from
a Kingston dealer, it should be possible to to find out
something about that dealer by looking at old ads
(assuming that such things can still be found on
microfiched newspapers).
Maybe one or more of the car clubs has a member or two
from Jamaica or Bermuda who might know something about
Carribean Sunbeams ...
Cheers,
Bill McCormack
B9205690
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