JC cadet owns belt in iconic bikini worn in ‘Dr No’ - Tagged at US$300,000-500,000 in auction
Published:Wednesday | November 11, 2020 | 12:13 AMYasmine Peru/Senior Gleaner Writer
As Profiles in History, the world’s largest auctioneer of Hollywood memorabilia, prepares for a two-day auction of James Bond souvenirs on Thursday and Friday, many 007 fans across the globe are taking strolls down memory lane. Among them are a group of boys – now men – from Jamaica College (JC), an all-boys high school in St Andrew, who inadvertently played a vital role in the creation of the most iconic bikini on planet Earth. The ivory, two-piece, belted ensemble worn by temptress Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress in the 1962 James Bond film Dr No, is not only ranked as the most famous bikini of all time, but it also claims the top prize as an “iconic moment in cinematic and fashion history”.
The then teenage JC boys, members of their school’s cadet band, just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and were able to secure their place in history, in a blockbuster movie filmed in Jamaica.
“The belt that Ursula Andress wore in that iconic bikini actually belongs to me,” Garth White, a member of the JC Drum Corps in 1962, shared with The Gleaner.
White and his friends, including Geoffrey Messado and Errol Bennet, all recounted the same story in separate interviews with The Gleaner. While being members of the cadet band, they were all at a camp at Roaring River, also called Laughing Waters, in March 1962, when the very first Bond flick, Dr No, was being filmed on the beach. Bennett, now a doctor, said that the band would have their practice sessions in the days and that caused a problem with the producers.
INVITED TO SET
“In the evenings, the film crew would go to the Cove theatre and listen back to their day’s work. They could hear us practising in the background because the sound would travel, and then they would have to reshoot the scene. So they came [and] asked us if we could avoid playing the next day and we said yes. And we were also invited on set to watch the filming,” both Bennett and Messado told The Gleaner.
One of the scenes was the iconic one when a bikini-clad Andress, as Honey Ryder, emerges from the water and walks on to the beach. For teenage boys with hormones kicking all over the place, that was an eye-opening moment that they remember vividly to this day.
“Two-piece bathing suits were fashionable at that time, and also there was none of the flesh-baring that is so commonplace now. So, you can imagine how we were fascinated. We hadn’t even seen a Playboy magazine yet, because it was a year later that one of the boarders brought one to JC,” Bennett recalled.
The first bikini was worn at a Paris fashion show in 1946, but it was still seen as taboo. Historians say that “Andress’ bikini arrived at a key moment in the history of women’s fashion, coming at the birth of the sexual revolution in the 1960s”.
However, that bikini scene had a behind-the-scene complexity. Andress had a dagger in the side of her bikini because she had been diving for conch. The dagger kept pulling it down, and that was when the JC boys were catapulted into history. One of the crew members asked the uniformed cadets for a belt.
“The white belt that we wore was restricted to the Cadet Drum Corps, and it would match the bikini that Ursula Andress was wearing,” White related. “Since I was one of the not-so-big cadets, it was felt that mine would have been the best fit. So we gave it to our housemaster who had accompanied us, and he gave it to them. It fit her snugly.”
They all recall that the belt was never returned.
It is a story that all have told and retold in the past decades, with Messado confessing with a laugh, “I always tell people that it was my belt.”
And, for Dr Bennett, there is also another treasured memory – the moment Andress was washing off the sand from her upper body in a pond in front of where the boys were sitting, and she flashed them.
That iconic bikini, designed by a Jamaican actress and designer, Tessa Prendergast, will be auctioned on November 12 and 13, at the Profiles in History auction in Los Angeles. Christie’s auction description states, “The two-piece costume consists of a top, constructed from Andress’ own under-wired brassière, covered in ivory cotton, the cups decorated with a dart detail, gathered at the centre and decorated with a bow detail, the bikini briefs, cut across the grain, gathered at the hips and embellished with decorative straps, fastening at the left-hand side and lined in cotton.”
The bikini, Lot 253 in the Profiles In History auction, is now expected to fetch between US$300,000 - $500,000.