Tracy Bond

Tracy Bond
Character from the James Bond franchise
Occupation	Countess
Relatives	Marc-Ange Draco (father) James Bond (husband) Count Giulio di Vicenzo (ex-husband, deceased)
Portrayed by	Diana Rigg

Teresa "Tracy" Bond (born Teresa "Tracy" Draco, and also known as the Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo) is a fictional character and the main Bond girl in the James Bond film and novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service. In the film version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Tracy was played by actress Diana Rigg.

Biography

Born Teresa Draco in 1943, she is the only child of Marc-Ange Draco, the head of "The Union Corse", a powerful international Mafia crime syndicate – not quite as large as SPECTRE, but with substantially larger "legal" operations, including Draco Construction. Teresa goes by "Tracy" because she feels "Teresa" does not suit her. (As she introduced herself to Bond, "Teresa is a saint; I'm known as Tracy.")

Tracy's mother died in 1955; her father then sent her to a boarding school in Switzerland. Deprived of a stable home life, Tracy joined the "international fast set", committing "one scandal after another"; when Draco cut off her allowance, Tracy committed "a greater folly" out of spite. She later married Italian Count Giulio di Vicenzo who, during their marriage, got hold of a large portion of her money before eventually leaving her; he subsequently died while driving a Maserati in the company of one of his mistresses. During this marriage, Tracy had a child, who later died of spinal meningitis.

Mr. and Mrs. Bond.

Desperate with grief for her child, Tracy attempted suicide by walking into the sea in Portugal, only to be saved by James Bond.^[1]

When her father meets Bond, he pleads with Bond to continue to see her, claiming that their relationship had changed her for the better. Bond initially refuses, but he changes his mind when Marc-Ange offers his resources for anything Bond desires. Since the events of Thunderball and the demise of SPECTRE, Bond had been hunting for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and at one point was willing to retire from MI6 because he felt the hunt was folly and that his services and abilities could be used better. Using Draco's resources, however, Bond is able to track Blofeld to Switzerland. In return, Bond continues to see Tracy and eventually falls in love with her. Tragedy strikes on their wedding day, however, when Blofeld and his henchwoman Irma Bunt kill Tracy in a drive-by shooting to get revenge on Bond.

In the film, Tracy drives a red 1969 model Mercury Cougar XR-7 convertible.^[2]

Legacy

In the novel chronology, Bond is a broken man after Tracy's death. In You Only Live Twice, he has begun drinking heavily, is compromised in his abilities as an agent and M is forced to acknowledge that he is no longer fit for service. However he decides to give Bond one last chance and assigns him to an intelligence-related diplomatic affair in Japan. This in turn leads to a duel to the death with Blofeld in the climax of the novel, and Bond is finally awarded his revenge. In the aftermath, however, he is left with amnesia.

In the film chronology, James Bond is tracking Blofeld in the pre-title credits sequence of Diamonds Are Forever, but it is only assumed Bond is doing so to avenge Tracy's murder, as she is never mentioned. Originally, it had been planned that On Her Majesty's Secret Service would end with Bond and Tracy driving away from their wedding. The scenes where she was shot were filmed at the same time with the intention that they would form the pre-title sequence of Diamonds Are Forever. This was rendered inviable, as it would have meant either having two actors play Bond in Diamonds Are Forever or re-filming Tracy's death with the new actor as Bond, so the scenes were added to the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.^{[citation needed]}

Subsequent films reference the fact that Bond was previously married, but only fleetingly:

• In The Spy Who Loved Me, when Bond meets Anya Amasova in the Mujaba Club bar, in Cairo, Egypt, she recites a few facts about his life, including that he had been married only once and that his wife was killed. Bond's eyes briefly glaze over and he then quickly changes the subject; Anya comments upon Bond's unexpected sensitivity regarding his marriage.

The tombstone of James Bond´s wife, Teresa, which Bond visits in For Your Eyes Only. Shown at a James Bond convention in 1992.

• In For Your Eyes Only, in the pre-titles sequence, Bond lays flowers at Tracy's grave (in an English churchyard) before boarding a helicopter which Blofeld has booby-trapped. It is in this sequence that Bond ultimately avenges his wife's murder, by lifting an uncredited Blofeld's wheelchair with one of the helicopter's skids and eventually dropping him (wheelchair and all) down a tall industrial chimney. The headstone clearly reads: "TERESA BOND, 1943–1969, Beloved Wife of JAMES BOND, We have all the time in the World" – referring to the final words in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the Louis Armstrong song.
• In Licence to Kill, after Felix Leiter's wedding, Felix's new wife Della throws her garter at Bond, teasing him, "the one who catches this is the next one to..." Bond looks visibly pained; when Della asks Felix about it, Felix makes a short, sad reference to Bond once having been married, "but that was a long time ago."
• In GoldenEye, Alec Trevelyan asks Bond if he has "found forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women for the dead ones you failed to protect?" Although the statement could refer to several women in Bond's past (including Aki or Corinne Dufour), Tracy is obviously the most prominent woman he has "failed to protect."
• In The World Is Not Enough, when Bond meets Elektra King at the construction site for the King Pipeline, she asks Bond "Tell me...Have you ever lost a loved one, Mr. Bond?", making a brief reference to the fact that she just lost her father (who was killed in the bomb's explosion at MI-6 headquarters). Bond again appears visibly pained, and changes the subject quickly.

References

1. ^ http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/girls/rigg.php3?t=ohmss&s=ohmss
2. ^ "1969 Mercury Cougar XR-7 in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1969"". IMCDb.org. http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_6081-Mercury-Cougar-1969.html. Retrieved 8 November 2011.