Oddjob


Oddjob is a fictional character in the espionage novels and films featuring James Bond. He is a henchman to the villain Auric Goldfinger in the 1959 James Bond novel Goldfinger and its 1964 film adaptation. In the film, he was played by the Japanese-American actor and professional wrestler Harold Sakata. Oddjob, who also appears in the James Bond animated series and in several video games, is one of the most popular characters in the Bond series.

Appearances

Novel

Oddjob's real name is unknown. He is named by Goldfinger to describe his duties to his employer. A Korean, like all of Goldfinger's staff, he is extremely strong, as shown in one sequence where he breaks the thick oak railing of a staircase with karate chops of his hand and shatters a mantel with his foot. When Bond expresses surprise at these feats, Goldfinger explains that Oddjob trains extensively to toughen the striking surfaces of his hands and feet, which have developed a tough callus which significantly increases his striking power.
Oddjob is described as being a "squat" man with "arms like thighs," black teeth, and a "sickly zoo-smell." In contrast with the film, where he is depicted as a man of average height, the novel describes his breaking of a mantelpiece that is seven feet off the ground and six inches above his head, placing his height at 6 ft 6 in. He is also described as having a black belt in karate, although, since he was Korean, this may well have been taekwondo, often inaccurately referred to as 'Korean karate' at the time that the novel was published. This discrepancy was later corrected by stating that he had received novice training in taekwondo and hapkido in his native Korea but had spent time in Japan where he learned karate and thus earned the black belt. The earlier novel tells of his hatred of being mistaken for Japanese, largely due to Korean anger at the Japanese occupation during the Second World War.. The revised novel keeps that facet, Oddjob's karate schooling in Japan apparently having done nothing to assuage his stance.
Oddjob's signature weapon is a razor-edged bowler hat, which he wears at all times and can throw with deadly accuracy. He is also a skilled archer, able to fire an arrow through a ring as it is held aloft. Due to a cleft palate, he has a speech defect that renders his speech unintelligible to everyone except Goldfinger. In addition to killing people who might cause trouble for Goldfinger, Oddjob functions as his personal guard, chauffeur, and manservant. He has a taste for cats as food, apparently acquired during a previous famine in Korea. When Bond frames Goldfinger's yellow cat for destruction of surveillance film, Goldfinger punishes it by letting Oddjob eat it for dinner.
He is killed when Bond uses a knife to shatter the window next to his seat on an aircraft, which depressurises the plane and blows Oddjob out of the window, a fate transferred to Auric Goldfinger in the film version.

Film

In the beginning of the film, Oddjob is seen only as a silhouette against a wall as he knocks Bond unconscious at the Fontainebleau Hotel, after which he or Goldfinger kills Bond girl Jill Masterson, with whom Bond had spent the night, through "skin suffocation" by painting her entire body with gold paint.
When Bond meets Goldfinger for a round of golf, Oddjob is seen in full for the first time. He is described by Goldfinger as "an admirable manservant but mute". He only has four lines of 'dialogue' throughout the film: in his first line, upon pretending to have found Goldfinger's missing golf ball, he exclaims "Aha!". The second time, after killing Tilly Masterson, he instructs his men to dispose of her body by merely pointing at them and saying "Ah! Ah!". The third time, he says "Ah!" to order Bond to put on a gas mask before entering Fort Knox. The fourth time, as Bond electrocutes him in Fort Knox, he yells out a final long, loud "Arrgh!".
Oddjob acts as Goldfinger's personal chauffeur, bodyguard and golf caddy. He wears a Sandringham hat with a sharpened steel rim, using it as a lethal weapon in the style of a chakram or a flying guillotine. It is very powerful, capable of cutting through steel and decapitating a stone statue. He uses it to kill Tilly Masterson by breaking her neck.
Physically, Oddjob is extremely strong and durable; he crushes a golf ball with one hand, and during the climactic fight scene with Bond, he is struck in the chest by a thrown gold bar and struck in the head with a wooden object used as a club. He barely flinches after both these attacks. However, he is never mentioned to be a karate expert. He is also fanatically loyal to Goldfinger and his plot, as he is apparently willing to die in the nuclear explosion in Fort Knox rather than allow the bomb's disarmament.
Oddjob's demeanour remains constant throughout the film. He smiles broadly whenever he encounters Bond, even during their fight scene. The only time he shows anything resembling fear or wariness is when Bond attempts to use Oddjob's own hat against him. Oddjob dodges the hat, causing it to get stuck between a pair of metal bars. When he goes to retrieve his hat and tries to pull it free, Bond grabs a sparking wire severed by the hat earlier and thrusts the open end onto the bars. The electric current transfers to the bars and then to the metal in the hat's rim, which electrocutes Oddjob.

Other appearances

Oddjob appears in the animated series James Bond Jr. with a miniature top hat, sunglasses and hip-hop style clothes, revealing that the electric shock did not kill him, but knocked him unconscious. The Americans arrest him, before he escapes again in the series. When not wearing his hat, his hair is now more flat-top. He rarely speaks, unlike his movie counterpart.
In the video game James Bond 007, Oddjob appears as a henchman for the main villain, General Golgov. Bond encounters Oddjob at his hotel room in Marrakesh. The two fight, and Bond is defeated and left stranded in a desert. Later on, Bond trails Oddjob to Tibet, only to be captured. Bond escapes confinement and obtains a shield to protect him from Oddjob's hats, which he uses to deflect back at him. In this game Oddjob actually speaks.
In the video game ', Oddjob is a henchman of Goldfinger, and initially a companion of GoldenEye. He is killed when GoldenEye tosses him over a rail into a pit inside the Hoover Dam after he turns on his employer and attacks GoldenEye.
Oddjob appears in the James Bond video games GoldenEye 007 and ' as a playable character for use in multiplayer modes. In Nightfire, he can use his hat as a unique throwing weapon that returns after 30 seconds. Oddjob is also a playable multiplayer character in the 2010 remake game GoldenEye 007.
In Dynamite Entertainment's ongoing comic book title James Bond 007, a new iteration of Oddjob is featured who is envisioned as a South Korean secret agent and a successor to another Oddjob, initially acting as a rival spy to Bond in a mutual assignment. His given name is John Lee.

Oddjob's hat

The prop used in Goldfinger by Oddjob was made by British hat makers, Lock & Co. The hat was then adapted by inserting a chakram into the brim. John Stears was responsible for making the hat fly.
After Goldfinger, the hat came into the possession of the James Bond Fan Club. In 1998, the hat was auctioned at Christie's in a sale of James Bond memorabilia. The hat sold for £62,000. In 2002, the hat was lent out for an exhibition at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the release of Dr. No. The hat was then auctioned again in 2006, when the final price was $36,000.
Replicas of the hat are sought after by collectors and replicas have been used as centrepieces for some exhibitions. In 2008, one replica joined the Bond exhibition at the National Motor Museum.
The television show MythBusters tested out the capabilities of Oddjob's hat, testing whether or not it would have been able to decapitate a stone statue. It failed to do so, and the Mythbusters ultimately labeled it 'Busted'.
Oddjob's lethal hat was ranked tenth in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll for the most popular movie weapon, which surveyed approximately 2,000 films fans.

Homages and parodies

Film