Ruby Bartlett was a fictional British patient and sleeper agent who attended Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s clinical allergy-research institute atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. An ally portrayed by British actress Angela Scoular, she appeared in the 1969 James Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and was based on the literary character Ruby Windsor, from Ian Fleming’s 1963 novel of the same name.
Biography
Ruby Bartlett was a poultry allergy sufferer from Morecambe Bay, Lancashire. With her condition interfering with life on her family’s poultry farm, Her specialist informed her of the Institut für Physiologische Forschung, ostensibly an allergy-research institute located atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. The institute’s director, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, offered the patients free treatment for being used as guinea pigs in his groundbreaking research. Through her agricultural connections, Blofeld intended to introduce his “virus omega,” a biological weapon designed to induce total infertility in plants and animals, destroying whole strains forever throughout an entire continent. She was one of eleven women selected for brainwashing into unwitting sleeper agents.
When Bond infiltrates Blofeld’s clinic under genealogist Sir Hillary Bray, Ruby is immediately attracted to him. Over dinner, she listens intently as Bond regales the girls with the history of the College of Arms in London. Bond offers to deliver a book on the subject to her room. Prevented from disclosing her room number by the matron, Irma Bunt, Ruby stealthily writes it on the inside of his kilted leg using her lipstick. Later that evening, Bond escapes his externally-locked room and visits Ruby to deliver the book and seduce her, presumably to see what happens to the patients when no one else is supposed to be around. After the pair make love, they are interrupted by a part of her treatment: a hypnotic recording accompanied by psychedelic lighting and disorienting music; designed to condition the girls via sleep-learning. The following morning, Bond arranges to meet Ruby at eight o’clock. However, when 007 enters her room a second time, he is met by Bunt, who catches him off guard long enough for Gunther to knock him unconscious. The spy eventually escapes captivity and eavesdrops on the girls receiving their final programming in the Alpine room. They are instructed to use their parting gifts in a hypnotic state – a small radio disguised as a cosmetic compact and an atomizer containing the “virus omega.” Ruby and the girls are told to secretly tune into the radio at midnight every night to receive instructions. She returns to England, where the authorities presumably approach her after 007 retrieves her information and destroys the clinic.
