


LONDON (AFP) - Over 50 years of cinematic success, James Bond has exercised his masculine charms on a string of women, although the role of the "Bond Girls" has subtly evolved over the years.
Bond author Ian Fleming gave the early women characters pastiche names - Pussy Galore (Goldfinger), Tiffany Case (Diamonds Are Forever) and Mary Goodnight (The Man With The Golden Gun).
"Maybe that's an indication that we are not meant to take those characters seriously," said James Chapman, historian at Leicester University in England and author of Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History Of The James Bond Films.
But the women playing opposite Bond have evolved with the times, he noted.