The villainous Plenty O'Toole
Plenty O’Toole (Lana Wood) was a gold digging waif who had a minor part in the 1971 James Bond film, “Diamonds Are Forever”. If you merely watched the film, you would not place Plenty in this category, but the part was originally a larger one. By reading the script, watching the deleted scenes, you get a better picture of what this character was intended to be, a jealous and thwarted lover who plotted revenge upon her rival. She got her comeuppance by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In addition to being one of Bond's most memorable names, she is also one of the series most remembered larger than life characters. It was a shame she did not fetch a larger role.
Plenty when first seen in the film is working the casino floor at the Whyte House Hotel. She is wearing a purple silk-jersey evening gown that plunges in the front, revealing her enormous talents. She has long black hair that is curled on the sides. She is wearing an elaborate gold choker necklace with a perfectly placed pendant that hangs down a good four inches, drawing the attention of those voluptuous charms. Her outfit and talents are the perfect scene-stealer for her small screen time, that outshone even that of the films Bond girl (Tiffany Case).
Plenty is latched onto a wealthy man named Max, hoping to pocket some of his winnings. However, when his luck begins to change, and he suggests they go back to his place, she quickly dismisses his advances and leaves the craps table. She tells him, “You’re and nice person Maxy, really you are. Why don’t you go take a nap, and I’ll see you next year”. We see her walking away when she overhears James Bond (Sean Connery), who is posing as Peter Franks, a diamond smuggler. Bond announces his intention to get a cash buy in of $10,000 to play at the crap table, despite having a $2,000 limit. Plenty is intrigued by the possibility of finding another mark.
We next see her leaning over the table as Bond grabs the dice. Her opening line is “Hi, I’m Plenty”. Bond takes a look at her ample cleavage hanging out of her dress, and responds, “But of course you are”. Plenty quickly adds, “Plenty O’Toole”. Bond then says, “Named after your father perhaps?”.
Plenty offers to help him with the dice, and proceeds to demonstrate her run of bad luck, losing him money on two straight rolls. However, Bond then takes over and quickly wins it back and much more. Plenty is quickly impressed with Bonds mastery of the lingo of the game, and makes the comment, “Say, you’ve played this before”. Bond responds by saying “just once”. Bond has won $50,000 and cashes out, and gives Plenty a $5,000 chip. Plenty is overjoyed with Bond’s generosity, and runs after him insisting that they should go for drinks.
In a deleted scene, we next see Bond and O’Toole seated at a restaurant. They are sampling the champagne, when she says hello to her girlfriend Marna, the scantily clad harp player who is floating on a nearby island in the middle of a pool. When Bond seems to be paying more attention to the harp player then her, she quickly offers to go somewhere where she can properly thank him. Back to the movie scenes, we see Bond and Plenty arrive at Bond’s hotel suite. They begin kissing in the hallway, and after he unzips her dress and it falls to the floor, we see Plenty dressed only in sheer panties. Plenty tells Bond she would like to go freshen up. She retreats to the bathroom and Bond grabs her dress throwing it on the couch. While turning on the lamp in the living room, he suddenly notices Shady Tree (Leonard Barr) and a bunch of the Slumber Inc’s gangster type goons all sitting in the living room. Bond makes the comment, that “I’m afraid you’ve caught me with more than my hands up”. One of them pushes Plenty out of the bathroom, and another of the goons helps him. At this point, Plenty is wearing nothing but panties, nylons, and purple high heels. She is not wearing a bra, but we do not see anything, since Plenty has her arms folded. Even so, it is amazing that she is able to contain the monsters without even a slip. The two goons pick her up and a third goon lifts her legs up so that they have her completely off the ground. She is protesting, saying “Hey, what the hell is this? A pervert’s convention or something?”. She continues, “Hey listen, you can’t do this to me! Stop that! I’ve got friends in this town! At that, the three goons carry her over to the open window and throw her out. She travels a good 15 floors or more and lands in the hotel swimming pool. Bond remarks about their accuracy saying it was an “exceptionally fine shot”. The lead goon responds that he “didn’t even know there was a pool down there”.
It is interesting that when the movie appeared on television in the 1970s and 80s, censors added a black bra and panties to hide the shear nearly transparent panties she is wearing.
We see Plenty eventually make it back to the surface of the pool and after looking up at the window from where she was thrown, begins to swim to the side of the pool.
Bond knocks out Shady, and is expecting to get in a fight with the rest of the goons. However, he is shocked to see them gather up the man and begin to back out of the room without a further encounter. Bond pulls out his gun and makes his way to his bedroom. On the nightstand he notices a white handbag, and without seeing her, he says “Good evening Miss Case”. Laying on his bed, is the lovely Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), wearing a black neglige. She remarks, “Sorry about your fulsome friend”, making a back handed comment referring to Plenty’s ample and generous upper proportions. She continues in a jealous tone, “I bet you really missed something”. Bond and Case go on to having a nice love making session.
In another deleted scene, Plenty returns to Bond’s room to retrieve her clothes. She is wearing only a white towel, covering herself, and is still soaking wet. She cautiously begins sneaking through the hotel room. After retrieving her purple dress, she overhears Bond and Case in the adjoining room. You can see Plenty both shocked and outraged at how quickly Bond has dismissed her and gone for the next thing around, in this case Miss Case. Especially, since Bond didn’t even have the decency to check and see that Plenty was alright after the high fall from the hotel window. She is about to leave, when she sees Tiffany’s purse lying on the dresser. She rummages through the purse and we see her find her home address in Las Vegas on her identification.
The next morning, Plenty arrived at Tiffany’s home, presumably to confront her rival for Bond’s affection. Although her motivation is unclear and not revealed in the film, it is still important to try to understand her intention of showing up at her house. Unfortunately for her, this leads to her demise. While there she encounters Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), who mistake her for Tiffany Case, who is a diamond smuggler. They promptly murder her by drowning Plenty in the swimming pool. This is either for as I said, they mistook her as Miss Case, or she got in the way, and wanted to silence her as a witness. Wint and Kidd, were sadistic assassins who were henchmen for the villain Ernst Starvro Blofeld (Charles Gray). Their assignment was to kill everyone in the diamond smuggling pipeline running from South Africa to the U.S. The pair take an unusual amount of pleasure in their work, and crack jokes about their craft.
007 and Tiffany find Plenty’s body floating at the bottom of the pool. She is wearing a white dress, with sheer covering, and her gold choker necklace still adorns her neck. Her feet have been tied down by a large cinder block.
Trivia[]
- Lana Wood appeared as Sheila "Vixen" O'Shaugnessy in the 1967 episode "The Night of the Firebrand" for the TV series "The Wild Wild West".
- Lana Wood was the younger sister of actress Natalie Wood, who tragically died at the age of 43 in 1981 when she mysteriously drowned under suspicious circumstances.
- While filming the drowning in the swimming pool, Wood had her feet loosely tied to the cement block. The pool sloped bottom made the block slip into deeper water after each take. Eventually, Lana was submerged and nearly drowned. Wood was able to remain calm, and after some struggling, was pulled to safety.
- It is interesting to learn, that the character of Plenty O’Toole was originally cast for the actress, Phyllis Davis.
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