Oddjob

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 'massive' oak railing of a staircase with karate chops of his hand and a mantel with his foot.

Oddjob is described as being a squat man with arms like thighs and black teeth. In the contrast with the film where he is depicted as a man of short stature, the novel hints his height in the scene where he breaks the mantelpiece described as being 7 feet off the ground and 6 inches higher than the top of his bowler hat. This would place his height at 6 ft 6 inches (198 cm). He is also described as having black belt at 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 (1959). This 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 prejudice.

Oddjob is also an expert with a bow and arrow and can throw his razor-edged bowler hat with deadly accuracy. He has a cleft palate 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 (though not his golf caddy, as depicted in the film). He has a taste for cats as food, apparently acquired in Korea when food was in short supply. Bond frames Goldfinger's yellow cat for destruction of surveillance film, and as punishment, the cat is given to Oddjob 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 first seen only as a silhouette against a wall as he knocks Bond unconscious at the Fontainebleau Hotel, after which he or Goldfinger kills 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 (unlike in the novel, where he wore a bowler) with a sharpened steel rim, using it as a lethal weapon in the style of a chakram or a flying guillotine. It was shown to be very powerful, capable of cutting through steel and decapitating a stone statue. He later uses it to kill Tilly Masterson by breaking her neck.

Physically, Oddjob is extremely strong and durable, demonstrating his strength in a number of scenes, including one where he crushes a golf ball with one hand, as well as during the climactic fight scene with Bond in which he is struck in the chest by a gold bar thrown at him and struck in the head with a wooden object used as a club. He barely flinches after both these attacks and is otherwise invincible against Bond's futile hand-to-hand fight. However, he is never mentioned to be a karate expert. He is also shown to be 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. Most of the time he is seen to smile 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 his own hat against him. When thrown at him, however, Oddjob simply dodges the hat with ease, 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 on 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 top hat, sunglasses and hip-hop style clothes, revealing that the electrocution did not kill him, but knocked him unconscious for the Americans to arrest him before he escapes again in the series.

In the video game James Bond 007, Oddjob appears multiple times as a henchman for the game's main villain, General Golgov. The first time is when 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. Notably, in this game Oddjob actually speaks.

In the video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, 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 has appeared in the James Bond video games GoldenEye 007 and 007: Nightfire as a playable character for use in multiplayer modes. In the GoldenEye 007, Oddjob was mistakenly depicted as a midget. This error was possibly due to the programmers confusing him with another Bond henchman, Nick Nack. 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 for the Wii.

Oddjob's hat

The prop used in Goldfinger by Oddjob was made by British hat makers, Lock & Co. The bowler 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 Bond exhibition at the National Motor Museum.

The television show MythBusters tested out the capabilities of Oddjob's weaponized thrown 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.

Film

Television

Video games

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