Tiffany Case is a character in the James Bond novel and film Diamonds Are Forever. She is portrayed by Jill St John. In the film it is stated that she was named after her (accidental) birthplace, Tiffany & Co, where her parents were going through a choice of wedding bands, to which Bond drily jokes that she was lucky that it had not happened at Van Cleef & Arpels.

Jill St John as Tiffany Case in ‘Diamonds Are Forever’.

Novel biography: In Ian Fleming’s novel, she is an American diamond smuggler working as a fence for The Spangled Mob, a ruthless American gang that is smuggling diamonds from Africa through an international pipeline. Bond contacts her in London using the identity of petty crook Peter Franks, using her professionally as a gateway into the pipeline even as he develops a personal interest in her. Felix Leiter, familiar with Tiffany’s background, acquaints Bond with the fact that she was gangraped as a teenager and, as a result, has developed a hatred of men. She is nevertheless attracted to Bond, and the two ultimately become lovers.

Tiffany turns against her former partners, and helps Bond escape from their clutches. In the novel, she is later abducted by Wint and Kidd on the Queen Elizabeth, but she is in turn rescued by Bond.

After this adventure, the two briefly live together, but, like many of Bond’s women, she is out of his life by the next novel, From Russia With Love. Fleming explains her departure therein. He says that Bond, by his own admission, is difficult to live with in a domestic setting, and that Tiffany returned to the United States with an American military officer, apparently intending to marry him. The explanation was somewhat unusual both because Fleming rarely even mentions Bond girls for more than one book and because Bond actually seemed emotionally affected at the dissolution of a relationship.

In the novel, in the scene where Tiffany is introduced, several Bond girls are mentioned, including two that had not yet appeared. When Bond is speculating what “T Case” stands for, two names that come to mind are Tilly and Teresa. Both names would later be used for Bond girls, Tilly Masterton and Teresa de Vicenzo.

Film biography: The 1971 film adaptation substantially revised the plot and, with it, Tiffany’s character. In the novel Tiffany is a vulnerable young woman with a sardonic exterior and an experience of the world beyond her years, similar in many ways to female characters in noir fiction. The cinematic Tiffany, however, while often wise-cracking, is also somewhat ditzy, slightly naive, and more money-grubbing. While she is still a diamond smuggler, she is now unwittingly working for Bond’s nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his terrorist organization, SPECTRE.

Bond arranges a partnership with her in disguise, but this time it is to investigate her role in Blofeld’s latest criminal scheme. She initially believes that she and “Franks” are going to make millions, but gets caught up in much more than she bargained for when the real Peter Franks arrives on her doorstep. From the moment she and Bond find Plenty O’Toole soaking in Tiffany’s swimming pool, drowned mistakenly instead of her, Tiffany helps Bond follow the path of the smuggled diamonds until the trail leads to Blofeld.

By the end of the film, Tiffany has helped Bond defeat Blofeld, and the two go on a romantic cruise together. They are briefly interrupted by an assassination attempt by Blofeld’s henchmen, Wint and Kidd, but Bond foils it, and the two sail off into the sunset.

See also:

• Bond girls