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2 unusual facts about Harry Palmer


Harry Palmer

Needing to name the previously-anonymous secret agent, the production team chose "Harry Palmer", because they wanted a dull, unglamorous name to distance him from Ian Fleming's James Bond, the stereotypical flamboyant, swashbuckling spy.

Peter Murton

Murton worked with producer Harry Saltzman on six films: three Bond films, the first two Harry Palmer films, and Saltzman's unmade pet project The Micronauts.


Bullet to Beijing

Bullet to Beijing is a 1995 made-for-television film that continues the adventures of the fictional spy Harry Palmer, who appeared in the 1960s films The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, and Billion Dollar Brain, based on books by author Len Deighton.


see also

Acoustic Kitty

Although it is not entirely clear on whether he is the originator of the concept, British author Len Deighton prefigured the concept of Acoustic Kitty in his novel, Billion Dollar Brain (1966), where the unnamed hero (Harry Palmer) notes that "Even the cats of East Berlin are wired" for sound recording.

Billion Dollar Brain

Harry Palmer (Michael Caine), who has left MI-5 to work as a private investigator, is told by a mechanical voice on the phone to take a package to Helsinki.

Eva Renzi

Born Evelyn Renziehausen in Berlin, Germany, she was introduced in the 1966 Harry Saltzman film Funeral in Berlin, sequel to The Ipcress File, second in the Len Deighton Harry Palmer trilogy, playing Mossad agent "Samantha Steel" opposite Michael Caine.