This article was first published in the Summer 1997 issue of The Ian Fleming Foundation's Goldeneye magazine, pp. 32–33. The text is reprinted here as it originally appeared, with only minor typographical changes.

The article's subtitle no longer rings true as I write this in 2026, since there are now four variant editions of Live and Let Die. Some of the changes made to the US edition described in this article were incorporated into the Vintage Classics hardcover printed in 2017, and further changes were made by Ian Fleming Publications (IFP) in 2023.

My original draft of this article was polished by the magazine's editor, who also added the characterization of the differences between the original UK and US editions as “ultimately minor” in the second paragraph. I remember bristling at that phrase upon seeing it in print the first time. The phrase now strikes me as amusing, given the amount of attention IFP's changes received in the press. Bond fans on social media now ask regularly about “censored” vs. “uncensored” copies.

“What Happened to Page 50?”
How Ian Fleming's ‘Live and Let Die’ Only Lived Twice

By Bryan Krofchok

When a book by a British author is published in the United States, certain minor changes to the original work are usually made before it hits the shelves: punctuation is moved inside of quotation marks, the u's are removed from quite a few words (including “colour” and “labour”), and British idioms are exchanged for their American counterparts.

What happens however, when that same book contains words, phrases, or passages that are deemed to be a bit “too hot to handle” by the author's American publisher? That was exactly the case for Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die, and the result is two books which contain a vast number of ultimately minor differences. Recently, I cataloged the changes between the novel's British and American editions.

The “N” Word

As the story is usually told, Macmillan, Fleming's publisher in the United States, was a bit put off by the title of Live and Let Die's fifth chapter. The offending title — Nigger Heaven — was a crude reference to New York City's Harlem area. Al Hart, Fleming's editor at Macmillan, came up with the much less controversial “Seventh Avenue.”

Andrew Lycett in his excellent biography gives only a few words to the changes made to Fleming's novel — “With a few changes for the local market, Live and Let Die was published in the United States in January (1955) to an unenthusiastic response.”

That is where the story always ended . . . that is, until now. The renaming of a single chapter title was not all that was changed.

While browsing through a British edition of Live and Let Die, I came across the words “Nigger Heaven” within the text of Chapter Five. In light of the controversy surrounding that chapter's title, I immediately wondered if the phrase had been changed in the American edition. A brief search through a Signet paperback turned up nothing. No phrase — not even a sentence matching the one that had contained it. Curiously, something else was missing: the whole next paragraph. And the one after that. And the one after that. And even the one after that! In fact, a good two-and-a-half pages of text found in the British edition (spanning pages 48 through 51) were simply not in the Signet paperback! A quick check with my Shaken, Not Stirred co-editor Russell MacKenzie revealed that the missing selection was not to be found in the Macmillan first edition either.

The passage, describing a conversation overheard by Bond between a black man and his girlfriend at a popular Harlem night spot, would probably be looked upon with disdain by many readers today. Although one could simply dismiss the passage as an experiment by Fleming in writing American-sounding dialogue using a specific dialect (Fleming was always interested in the way words sounded), thoughts of stereotyping are probably more likely.

Between the Lines

If two-and-a-half pages are missing from the American edition of Live and Let Die, an immediate question arises: are there any other significant differences? The answer is a resounding “Yes.” First, I compared various American editions which had many odd differences in punctuation. Aside from the punctuation, the American editions were all uniform. Then I pulled out a British edition published by Jonathan Cape, Ltd., Fleming's UK publisher. Next, I traveled to the University of Indiana's Lilly Library to examine Fleming's original typescript. During the research, I compiled a list of changes, alterations, and omissions.

Although the British Cape edition largely agrees with Fleming's original typescript, there were many changes made to the American Macmillan edition before its publication. The accompanying list provides a chapter-by-chapter description of just over forty significant changes that were discovered. There are others, but they seem rather ordinary when compared to the rest. A quick scan of the listing reveals that there are four main categories into which most of the changes can be grouped: deletions and revisions, corrections, tone changes, and curiosities.

In addition to the lengthy passage noted above, quite a few of Fleming's other racially oriented sentences have been reworded or removed entirely. A selection of comments by Bond and Felix Leiter that have been altered, for example, can be found in Chapters 2 and 4. Other deletions, of a non-racial nature, include Binswanger's comment in Chapter 4 (which will probably not come up very often in polite discussions of the Bond novels), and the missing lines in Chapter 17 that culminate in a description of Bond's nightmare while in Jamaica.

Other changes in the American edition seem to correct errors found in the British edition: the colors of the Seaboard Railroad in Chapter 10, the maker of ‘Vent Vert’ in Chapter 11, and the title of a book referred to by Mr. Big in Chapter 21. The most unexpected, however, involves Bond's hotel room at the St. Regis in Chapter 1, which changes from number 2100 to number 2000. To quickly head off what many are probably thinking — this is not just a simple typo. In addition to the number of times that the room number is mentioned in the text, it should be noted that the floor on which the room is said to be — the “twenty-first” in the British edition, and “twentieth” in the American — is spelled out in each case. There is a very good reason for the change. The veritable luxury hotel in the heart of Manhattan has only 20 floors. Today, the former “room 2000” is now known only as “The Penthouse” and is off-limits for guests to stay overnight. Instead, you can book Bonds literary hotel room for your next wedding or Bah Mitzvah. (I was amused to see that Fleming had briefly toyed with the idea of placing Bond on the hotel's thirteenth floor in his original typescript. It will be remembered that Fleming expounds upon Bond's anti-triskaidekaphobia in Chapter 13 — naturally — of From Russia, With Love.)

Yet another set of changes in the American edition reduce some of the harshness found in the British edition. A good example concerns the way in which Bond showers. Although the one he takes in New York is upgraded from merely “sizzling” to “stinging” cold, a later one in Chapter 14 is decidedly less masochistic. Other such changes include Solitaire's comments in Chapter 12 regarding old people who retire in Florida, and some of Bond's comments to Leiter in Chapter 13 — effectively removing the foreshadowing of the shark attack.

Ham Sandwich

A fourth and final set of changes are my personal favorites: those for which I can find no plausible explanation. These unusual changes abound between the two editions: the maker of the black sedan that Bond spies in Chapter 1, the removal of a reference noting which eyebrow Bond's comma of black hair rests over in Chapter 3, and the slogan of the Gloryfried Ham-N-Eggs restaurant in Chapter 4. The most unusual of all, however, deserves a place of honor in any reader's stock of Fleming trivia: While in Harlem, the British edition notes in Chapter 6 that Bond and Leiter dine on Scotch-and-sodas and chicken sandwiches. In the American edition, the Scotch-and-sodas are still there, but the sandwiches have mysteriously changed to ham.

Do such changes appear in the other Fleming works? Preliminary examinations of Casino Royale, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, and the short stories in Octopussy and The Living Daylights all turned up interesting differences between the British and American versions (including the curious substitution of the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor with Moussorgsky's Overture to Boris Godunov as the first piece played by the [women's] orchestra in The Living Daylights). However, the number of changes in each novel did not even approach the number found in Live and Let Die. Further lists of changes will be compiled as other Fleming books are examined in minute detail. In the meantime, I'll be waiting to hear your explanations for the ham sandwich substitution.

Alterations to Ian Fleming's ‘Live and Let Die’