Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a fictional character and a supervillain from the James Bond series of novels and films, who was created by Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory. An evil genius with aspirations of world domination, he is the archenemy of the British Secret Service agent James Bond. Blofeld is head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE and is commonly referred to as Number 1, an official numerical position given to members of SPECTRE.

Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice; and six James Bond films from Eon Productions: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and For Your Eyes Only (1981) (the pre-title sequence of which marks his final appearance and apparent death). He also appears in Never Say Never Again, the 1983 remake of Thunderball.

He was played on screen by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray and Max von Sydow, among others. It was initially a convention of the films not to show Blofeld's face, only a closeup of him stroking his white blue-eyed Turkish Angora.

Many of Blofeld's characteristics have become clichés of supervillains in popular fiction, representing the stock character of the evil genius. In many versions, even the stroking of his white cat has been retained as a parodic allusion to Blofeld's character, as seen in the Austin Powers film series with the character of Dr. Evil and his cat Mr. Bigglesworth.

Character
Fleming details Blofeld's background in the novel Thunderball, though none of his past is ever revealed in the Bond films. According to the novel, Blofeld was born on 28 May 1908 (which is also Ian Fleming's birthday) to a Polish father and a Greek mother in Gdynia, Poland (then Germany). After World War I, he became a Polish national. Blofeld attended the University of Warsaw where he studied economics and political history, and then the Warsaw University of Technology to study engineering and radionics. He then took a communication position at the Polish Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, and used his position for buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence then moved to Turkey, where he worked for Turkish radio and set up an intelligence organisation. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel, he decided to back the Allied war effort, and was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. Blofeld then temporarily moved to South America before founding SPECTRE.

In the John Gardner novel For Special Services, Blofeld is depicted as having had a daughter, Nena, with a French mistress.

It is commonly believed that the name Blofeld was inspired by the English cricket commentator Henry Blofeld's father, with whom Fleming went to school. The truth, however, is that he was named after Ernst Blofeld, the father of the author John Blofeld with whom Fleming was associated through club membership. Henry and John were cousins of some degree.

Novel Description and Appearances
Blofeld makes three appearances in the Ian Fleming novels. He first appears in a minor role as the leader of SPECTRE in the 1961 novel Thunderball. The plot that he formulates is carried out by his second-in-command Emilio Largo. Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, weighing roughly 20 st, has a black crew-cut hair, black eyes (similar to those of Benito Mussolini's), heavy eyelashes, a thin mouth and long pointed hands and feet. He has violet-scented breath from chewing flavoured cachous (breath mints). Blofeld's lifestyle is described in one chapter in Thunderball: "For the rest, he didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much."

Blofeld is absent from the next book, The Spy Who Loved Me, though its events take place while Bond is battling SPECTRE in North America. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) Bond learns that Blofeld has radically altered his appearance—he is now tall and thin; has reduced his weight to 12 st; sports long silver hair, an infection on his nose, and no earlobes; and wears dark green tinted contact lenses. He is hiding in Switzerland in the guise of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville, and Bond defeats his plans to destroy Britain's agricultural economy. In the final sequence of the novel, Blofeld gets revenge by murdering Bond's new wife, Tracy.

In You Only Live Twice published in 1964, Blofeld returns and is found by Bond to be in hiding in Japan under the alias Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. In this appearance rather than being just thin has gained some muscles, has a gold-capped tooth, a fully healed nose, and a drooping grey mustache. Bond describes Blofeld on their confrontation as being "a big man, perhaps six foot three (190 cm), and powerfully built". Bond strangles him to death at the end of the novel. In both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, he is aided in his schemes by Irma Bunt, who is clearly his lover in the latter and posing as Shatterhand's wife. Bond incapacitates her in their Japanese castle base before it blows up, killing Bunt. The final mention of Blofeld is in the beginning of the next book, The Man with the Golden Gun, published in 1965.

Films
In the film series Blofeld first appears in From Russia with Love, then in Thunderball. In these first two appearances, his face is not seen and only his lower body is visible as he strokes his trademark white cat.

In the third, fourth, and fifth appearances – You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds are Forever – he is the primary antagonist, meeting Bond face-to-face.

In the film version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he is not the actual killer of Tracy Bond. He drives the car from which Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) fires the fatal shots at Tracy, just hours after she marries Bond.

In the sixth and final appearance – in the pre-credit sequence of For Your Eyes Only – he is an anonymous, bald villain trying to kill Bond once again. Blofeld remains unnamed and unlisted in this film’s end credits. The only clues to his identity are the trademark white cat, similar clothes to his previous onscreen appearances, the dialogue indicating that he and Bond have met before, and the fact that the scene begins with Bond paying his respects to Tracy, often considered by the producers as a means of providing an "immediate continuity link" in the event of a new actor taking the part of Bond (although this was Roger Moore's fifth appearance as Bond). The anonymity of the villain was due to the legal dispute between Kevin McClory and Eon Productions over the Thunderball copyrights.

Blofeld’s appearance and personality change according to the personifying actor:

He has a full head of black hair in From Russia With Love and Thunderball; a facial dueling scar in You Only Live Twice; no scar or earlobes in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and silver-grey hair in Diamonds Are Forever. This metamorphosing matches Fleming’s literary portrayal of a master criminal who will go to great lengths to preserve his anonymity, including the use of radical plastic surgery. He often wears a jacket without lapels, based loosely either on the Nehru jacket or on the Mao suit, a feature which is used in spoofs like the Austin Powers series, though in his early two appearances on film he wore a black business suit.

Blofeld's last onscreen appearance outside the Eon Productions series was in Never Say Never Again, the 1983 remake of Thunderball. Here, Blofeld is tall, thin, and bearded, with a European accent more in keeping with the character as presented in From Russia With Love and Thunderball.

Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast by producer Harry Saltzman to play Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Upon arriving at the Pinewood set, both producer Albert R. Broccoli and director Lewis Gilbert felt that he was a bad choice, resembling a "poor, benevolent Santa Claus". Nonetheless, in an attempt to make the casting work, Gilbert continued filming. After five days, both Gilbert and Broccoli determined that Werich wasn't menacing enough, and recast Donald Pleasence in the role – the official excuse being that Werich was ill.

Unofficial henchmen/henchwomen

 * Max Largo
 * Fatima Blush
 * Jack Petachi
 * Count Lippe
 * Dr. Kovacs

Other appearances
Blofeld appears in the 2004 game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, this time with the likeness of Donald Pleasence, voiced by Gideon Emery.

Blofeld is a playable multiplayer character in the 2010 game GoldenEye 007 for the Wii, with the likeness of Charles Gray.

Blofeld will also appear in 007 Legends.

Cultural impact

 * Pleasence's incarnation as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice served as inspiration for Dr. Evil, the chief villain of the Austin Powers films, portrayed by Mike Myers, complete with facial scar, grey collarless suit and (hairless) cat.
 * Waldorf released a desktop synthesiser named Blofeld, after Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Waldorf has also released a software synthesiser named Largo, perhaps after Blofeld's henchman Emilio Largo.
 * The Inspector Gadget cartoon series features a character named Dr. Claw who was a parody of Blofeld, including signature shots of just the chair, and arms, similar to shots of Blofeld. Like Blofeld, who was head of SPECTRE, Claw was the head of a large criminal organisation, called MAD and had a cat ("Mad-Cat").
 * In the Evil Genius computer game, the character of Maximillian is based on Blofeld.
 * In the TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and TimeSplitters 2 computer games, the character of Khallos is based on Blofeld. Khallos in Future Perfect also appears with a robotic white pet cat named Strudel.
 * Additional parodies of Blofeld can be found in:
 * Police Squad! episode "Rendezvous at Big Gulch (Terror in the Neighborhood)".
 * The Teen Titans episode "Episode 257–494 aka Don't Touch That Dial".
 * In the video game Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4, Uzi Bazooka is shown on the video left in the office sitting in a big chair, head out of view, stroking The Cheat.
 * Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic The Hedgehog SatAm series owned a robotic chicken instead of a white cat.
 * In the Dragon Ball cartoon series, the Red Ribbon Army and his commander are loosely based in Blofeld and SPECTRE. In this fact, the Commander Red's face isn't seen in early episodes of the Red Ribbon Army Saga, and only shows his hands with a cat. Mission failures are punished with the execution, like SPECTRE, and his members are identified with colours instead the numbers on SPECTRE.
 * In the Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon, villain Mr. Han (Kien Shih) cradles a white Persian cat while showing Roper (John Saxon) around his museum of weaponry. The film has been referred to as "a low-rent James Bond thriller", a "remake of Doctor No" with elements of Fu Manchu.
 * In the Operation: Jet Fusion of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius TV series, a film starring Jet Fusion (a parody of James Bond) has two villains, one who resembles Blofeld and another who looks like Auric Goldfinger.
 * In the 1972 animated film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks, the main villain, Rastapopoulos, is based on the Blofeld character. In the first part of the film only his arms and his chair are visible, but later on his face appears.
 * In the Danger Mouse cartoon series, the main antagonist, Baron Greenback, is also based on Blofeld. In his scenes he appears stroking a white-haired caterpillar instead of a white angora cat.
 * The main villain of Charles Stross' novel The Jennifer Morgue patterns himself after Blofeld consciously, including the white cat, Nehru suit, and elaborate plan for world domination (using the Glomar Explorer to raise a Chthonian superweapon from the Caribbean sea floor). In the afterward of the novel, Stross discusses Blofeld's influences (Doctor Mabuse, Professor Moriarty, and Fantômas), as well as featuring a fictional interview between Stross and Blofeld. The 'real' Blofeld is currently serving as the Minister of Interior Investment of Transnistria and, as a follower of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, was attempting to restore liberty to Britain after he considered it taken over by communist agents such as Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.
 * In the Pokémon animated series, Giovanni is a reference to Blofeld, being the head of a criminal organisation, being rarely shown (often with just his lower body visible) while having a white Persian cat. This appearance only lasted until near the end of the first season.
 * The main villain of children's drama MI High (called the Grand Master) is very similar to Blofeld, except he strokes a rabbit instead of a cat.
 * The Simpsons animated series has briefly parodied Blofeld on several occasions, most elaborately in the 1992 episode Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie in which Bart Simpson amuses himself by melting a plastic figurine of James Bond in a microwave oven — "Stick around, Mister Bond. Things are really starting to ... cook!" — and laughing evilly while petting Snowball II, the family cat.
 * In the 1969 Monty Python episode "Owl-stretching time," the Big Cheese (the arch villain of that particular sketch) enters stroking a rabbit, although he quickly shoots it.
 * Larius Nefarious from Johnny Test episode "The Quantum of Johnny" is a parody of Blofeld as well as Emilio Largo from Thunderball esque the cat and the eyepatch. Also, in the episode "00 Johnny," there is a brief scene where Mr. Mittens's butler is stroking him and not showing his face, parodising Blofeld.
 * Writer/animator Bruce Timm has cited Blofeld as an influence on the way Lex Luthor was portrayed in Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League: "In my mind, I always saw Luthor as being like Telly Savalas in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one of my favourite James Bond movies, where he, in essence, portrayed Blofeld as a cultured thug. He was basically like this bruiser who wanted to be taken seriously and wanted to be treated like a baron and I thought that was like a good way to treat Luthor."