{"id":811857,"date":"2026-07-19T09:08:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/811857\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T09:08:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:08:50","slug":"literary-hub-fun-fact-salvador-dali-designed-a-tarot-deck-for-the-film-live-and-let-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/811857\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Hub \u00bb Fun fact: Salvador Dal\u00ed designed a tarot deck for the film Live and Let Die."},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Salvador Dal\u00ed, El Mago, courtesy of Taschen, via Another Man<\/p>\n

In the early 1970s, the producer Albert R. Broccoli commissioned the artist Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/a> to make a tarot deck for the upcoming James Bond film Live and Let Die. Based on Ian Fleming\u2019s 1954 novel of the same name, Live and Let Die was released in 1973\u2014the eighth 007 film and the first to star Roger Moore. It a strange, mystical Bond movie, that\u2019s part an attempt at Blacksploitation and part about Harlem gangsters, Caribbean drug farming, and voodoo-practicing witch doctors. In one scene, a psychic named Solitaire (Jane Seymour), reads a tarot deck. This was to be Dal\u00ed\u2019s contribution to the film.<\/p>\n

Dal\u00ed began work on the deck, but it never made it into the film. Reportedly, Dal\u00ed\u2019s fee was ultimately too high<\/a>, so the producers went with another deck, The Tarot of the Witches, created by the artist Fergus Hall. But Dal\u00ed continued to work on his deck, anyway, eventually completing it more than a decade later. The Tarot was published in 1984 (less than five years before his death at age 84), and sold out in that original edition.<\/p>\n

Dal\u00ed\u2019s wife Gala was a tarot reader, so perhaps this is one of the reasons why he was drawn to the project even after the film commission didn\u2019t pan out. He includes her in the deck, as the Empress, while he paints himself as the Magician. (Apparently, he painted the previous James Bond<\/a>, Sean Connery, as the Emperor, in a joke about being fired from the Roger Moore production\u2026 looking at that card right now, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s entirely clear if it is Connery, but the idea is rather amusing.)<\/p>\n

The tarot is a full 78-card deck, with each card an original work of art, usually a composite of gouache painting and collage\/lithography. Dal\u00ed included references to major events in Western history; for example, the Ten of Swords card depicts the stabbing of Julius Caesar, while the Queen of Cups is a jokey vandalism of Fran\u00e7ois Clouet\u2019s portrait Elisabeth of Austria, Queen of France. Here are a few highlights:<\/p>\n

\"\" Gala Dal\u00ed as the \u201cEmpress\u201d Cartamundi, Turnhout Belgium\/Salvador Dali\u0301, Fundacio\u0301 Gala- Salvador Dali\u0301, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019; via Smithsonian Magazine<\/a>
\n\"\" \u201cLa Muerte,\u201d Courtesy of Taschen; via AnotherMan<\/a>
\n\"\" \u201cQueen of Cups,\u201d Courtesy of Taschen; via AnotherMan<\/a>
\n\"\" \u201cTen of Swords,\u201d Courtesy of Taschen; via AnotherMan<\/a><\/p>\n

Cards from one of the original Dal\u00ed printed decks are currently on display at the \u201cTarot!\u201d exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2019, Taschen released a special, multilingual edition of the Dal\u00ed Tarot<\/a>: the full 78-card deck along with an accompanying book written by tarot expert Johannes Fiebig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Salvador Dal\u00ed, El Mago, courtesy of Taschen, via Another Man In the early 1970s, the producer Albert R.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-811857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}