Francisco Scaramanga

Francisco Scaramanga
James Bond character
Christopher Lee as Scaramanga
Created by	Ian Fleming
Portrayed by	Christopher Lee
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Assassin, hit man
Affiliation	KGB (novel) Self-employed (film)
Classification	Villain
Henchmen	Nick Nack Kra Andrea Anders

Francisco Scaramanga is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond novel and film versions of The Man with the Golden Gun. Scaramanga's signature weapon is a golden gun. In the novel, the character is nicknamed "Pistols" Scaramanga and is also called "Paco" (a Spanish diminutive of Francisco). In the film, the character was played by Christopher Lee (the real-life step-cousin of James Bond creator Ian Fleming).

Francisco Scaramanga, of Catalan origin, became a trick shot and performed in acts in a circus owned by his father Enrico while a youngster. He also cared for one of the circus elephants, which he stated was his only real friend. When the elephant went on a rampage during the circus visit to Trieste, Scaramanga witnessed a policeman kill him. The enraged boy, who was 16 at the time, retaliated by killing the policeman with a single shot through the eye. He then made his way to the United States from Naples, where he found employment as an enforcer for the Spangled Mob, an outfit that plays a role in two other Bond novels: Diamonds Are Forever (where they were the main foe of Agent 007) and Goldfinger as an accomplice to Auric Goldfinger's Operation Grandslam. He posed as a pitboy at the casino of Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, while in fact he was executioner of cheats and other transgressors within and outside the gang. In 1958 he was forced to emigrate from the U.S because of his gun duel with Ramon "The Rod" Rodriguez, his opposite from the Detroit Purple Gang, also featured in the novel Goldfinger, in which he killed Ramon, earning $100,000 for it. He spent some time travelling the Caribbean as a representative of Las Vegas interests in real-estate and plantation dealing, later switching to Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Batista of Cuba where he settled in 1959, in Havana. While remaining a Batista supporter, he started an undercover work for Fidel Castro's party, becoming an "enforcer" for DSS after the revolution.