This desk in seen in a key scene in the film, set in the office of the mysterious, Ernst Stavro Blofeld - SPECTRE's No.1. Blofeld calls top SPECTRE agents, Rosa Klebb [Lotte Lenya] and Kronsteen [Vladek Sheybal] before him to explain why SPECTRE assassin, Red Grant, has been found dead on a train, and they have failed to recover the Lektor decoding machine, which Blofeld has negotiated to sell back to the Russians. Although Kronsteen attempts to place the blame on Klebb, in a surprising twist in the story, it is he, rather than she, who has to pay the price for the failure, when Blofeld summons Morzeny [Walter Gotell], head of the SPECTRE training school, to execute him, in front of the desk, with an infamous SPECTRE device - a kick from a poison-tipped shoe.

In this film, the mystery of Ernst Stavro Blofeld aka No.1, is enhanced by the fact that all we see of Blofeld are his shouders and hands, the latter usually employed stroking a long-haired white cat. In this film, the uncredited actor playing the role was Anthony Dawson, whose voice was dubbed by Eric Pohlman.

According to the vendor, the desk in this lot was loaned to Eon for the duration of the filming, from the furniture emporium in London in which it was housed, when first spotted by the set decorator.