JAMES BOND Magazine Articles - Michael Billington
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From Infinity magazine by Barry McCann
Among that much celebrated pantheon of James Bond films planned but never made is one proposal that became particular legendary. Partly because it became lost for years and subjected to much speculation during that absence, but mainly due to one of its authors being none other than Gerry Anderson.
If made, it would have seen the king of the futuristic Supermarionation joining forces with the producers of the biggest action movie franchise of that decade, and many more since. Or so Anderson hoped at the time.
The unearthing of a long since buried screen treatment by Gerry Anderson and his regular co-writer Tony Barwick has shed new light on what had been intended as the seventh James Bond film that eventually became Diamonds Are Forever, but could well have been Sean Connery starring in Moonraker! And that was one of a fair few aborted movies of Ian Fleming’s 1955 James Bond novel.
In fact, Fleming had conceived of Moonraker becoming the basis of a film even before he wrote it. His 1953 first Bond novel, Casino Royale, had been adapted for American Television the following year and the movie rights then sold to Gregory Ratoff. Alexander Korda showed interest in Live and Let Die, though was not sure if it would translate well into a movie. Fleming informed him that his planned next Bond adventure would be more filmic.
Fleming actually began working on Moonraker as a Bond screenplay, having mulled over the plot of a nuclear rocket dropped on London ever since the war and the threat of the German V missiles. He then decided to adapt the scenario as his third 007 novel, though styled to have more potential as an exciting movie.
The plot concerns Sir Hugo Drax, a self-made multi-millionaire industrialist originally from Liverpool and who is developing a revolutionary nuclear missile for the Ministry of Defence called the Moonraker, an advanced rocket that can withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures produced by its engine and thus increasing its range.
In expanding his screenplay to fill the length of a novel, Fleming added a set up whereby Bond is assigned to investigate suspicions that Drax cheats at cards, which M finds curious for a man of his wealth. Bond takes on Sir Hugo at the card table and beats him at his own game, using his both his skill and a deck stacked in his favour.
Suspicion grows further when a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the Moonraker project in Kent is mysteriously shot dead. M sends Bond to replace him and there he discovers that Drax’s personal assistant, Gala Brand, is in fact a Special Branch police officer also working undercover.
As events dangerously unfold, it turns out Hugo Drax is in fact a stolen identity. The man is actually Graf Hugo von der Drache, the German commander of a Werewolf commando unit and not from Merseyside after all. His intention is to avenge the defeat of the Third Reich by fitting a Russian supplied nuclear warhead on the Moonraker for its planned test flight, but actually have it obliterate London. The story climaxes with Drax imprisoning Bond and Brand beneath the launch pad of the Moonraker to be incinerated by its blast off, while he and his henchmen flee the country in a Soviet submarine. However, the pair escape and redirect the rocket’s giros to fire into the sea, destroying the submarine and all on board.
Published in April 1955, Moonraker differs from other Bond narratives in being set entirely within England, much of the action taking place at Drax’s base located between Dover and Deal on the south east coast of England. In another departure, Bond does not get the girl in the end, Gala revealing after the completion of their mission that she is engaged to a fellow Special Brach officer and the novel closing with her walking away from our hero. But the potential for visual cinematic action was definitely present.
INTERESTING DEVIATIONS
American actor John Payne was the first to show interest in a Moonraker film, paying Fleming a monthly option of $1000, until learning the film rights for the previous two novels were not available. With little prospect of a series, he lost interest after nine months.
The Rank Organisation then bought the rights and Fleming tried to get things going by composing his own 150-page film treatment of the novel with some interesting deviations. Miss Moneypenny was dropped, Bond’s head of department is no longer called M and he now has an ally in cockney Special Branch officer, Tosh.
This did nothing to move Rank, who continued to sit on the property with little sign of moving forward. Fleming was still free to sell adaptation rights to other media, beginning in 1956 with an adaptation for South African radio starring Bob Holness as James Bond, then later it became a Daily Express comic strip which ran from 30 March to 8 August in 1959.
It was also during 1959 that Fleming retrieved the movie option back from Rank. By then, he was realising the benefits of pulling together the screen rights to all his Bond novels as a single package and forming a possible continuous film series, rather than one by one to different studios as Raymond Chandler had done with his Phillip Marlowe books. With Moonraker back in the fold, it became part of the deal made with Harry Saltzman in 1960, who then went into partnership with Albert R. Broccoli as EON productions.
Rather than follow the chronology of the novels, Broccoli and Saltzman selected each source text as and when it suited their purposes. As a result, Moonraker would find itself waiting its turn as later Bond titles were filmed first. In 1969, as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was completing production, the wait looked finally over.
SPACE-THEMED PLOT
The space race was on everyone’s mind by this point with the Apollo missions and their imminent moon landings, and EON thought it timely for Bond to revisit a space-themed plot as they had previously done so with the movie version of You Only Live Twice in 1967. Out of the remaining novels at their disposal, Moonraker offered the most promise in meeting the planned approach, but Saltzman felt somebody with more experience of producing high action science fiction with lots of futuristic hardware should be brought in.
Gerry Anderson was certainly the undisputed master of that particular genre in the British film and television industry at that time. His sci-fi Supermarionation shows including Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet increasingly broke new ground in model effects spectacle and exciting story telling. But no one was more excited than Anderson himself when he got the unexpected call.
“What happened was Harry Saltzman called me and said, ‘Can you come? I would like to see you’. I came and he said, ‘Gerry, I want you to produce the next Bond film, Moonraker; here is the book’. I almost took off and went into orbit!”
For Gerry Anderson this was opportunity knocks as he yearned to graduate into movies and real actors. He had produced and directed the low budget 1960 B picture Crossroads to Crime for Nat Cohen while trying to get Supercar off the ground, but was then back to puppets for the big screen Thunderbirds movies released in 1966 and 1968. It was in that latter year he made his first move into live action adult sci-fi with the movie Doppelgängeraka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, and this fostered the TV series UFO which was in production when Saltzman made the call.
Upon reading the Fleming novel he was being asked to adapt, Anderson felt it to be “terribly outdated” and “frankly not very exciting.” So he decided to bring in one of his most trusted writing collaborators, Tony Barwick, who had worked on all of Anderson’s television shows from Thunderbirds onwards. Together they contrived to rework Fleming’s plot into something more bang up to date with plenty of special effects action and delivered an 84 page screen treatment.
CLOSE TO ITS SOURCE
Despite Anderson’s feeling towards the novel, their storyline remained surprisingly close to its source, being set mainly in England, and Dover in particular, though with added pre credit scenes in Brazil and some later moments at Drax’s Caribbean based oil refinery. He also retained the novel’s main chase sequence where Bond is pursued by a black Mercedes on the roads of Dover and ends up releasing huge rolls of newspapers from a truck to force it off the road.
As in the Fleming text, Drax is described as having long red hair and mutton chops moustache, but now apparently in a wheelchair. He is developing the Moonraker for the British government, which also makes him a potential security risk when suspicions about cheating at cards prompt M to have Bond investigate. This initially results in a card game on the flashier location of Drax’s private jet rather than at Blades as in the novel.
This was the key to Anderson and Barwick’s adaptation. To track the original Fleming narrative while at the same time augment it with more ambition and spectacle. There would also be, of course, added gadgetry from Q branch including an exploding cigarette lighter, a watch that fires a tranquillising dart and a one-man submersible in which he is chased by dolphins armed with mines!
Bond’s investigation leads him to Drax’s base underneath the English Channel, where he joins forces with Gala Brand, who is actually referred to in the treatment as Gala Bond in what is presumably a typo. Either way, Bond discovers a radiation exposure system kept in Sir Hugo’s office, which points to something more going on with his Moonraker programme and suspicions are proved correct.
Drax’s actual intention is to orbit the rocket around the Moon and blackmail the world into multilateral disarmament. Once launched, the Moonraker will become self-automated and its sensors scanning the globe for any traces of nuclear missile activity. First sign of any nation initiating a nuclear attack and its warhead will automatically be fired back to Earth and destroy the entire world.
However, behind this Sword of Damocles threat is an even bigger ambition. With the nuclear powers held at bay, Drax intends to fire another atomic missile into space from inside a super tanker, its target being the Moonraker and resultant explosion strong enough to irradiate the Earth and wipe out its population. The only survivors would be Drax himself and a selected few who have regularly exposed themselves to radiation so their bodies have built up immunity to it. Not surprisingly, his chosen are physically perfect specimens to form a master race, confirming his credential as a Nazi interloper.
The final section of the movie would have taken place on board Drax’s quarter mile long super tanker and involve a motorcycle chase across its deck. Bond and Gala would end up trapped a watertight hold as the tanker’s stern is sunk in order to raise the bow section out of the water and some 90 degrees up in the air to launch the missile (like Skydiver in Anderson’s UFO). Bond tries using his shoe to bust the porthole without success, but then the door bursts open with the water pressure and the pair manage to escape.
With Drax’s plan defeated, the climax was to be back at his subterranean base where he reveals a fail-safe plan. He will detonate Moonraker’s warhead while it is still in programmed position and blast the moon out of orbit (sound familiar?). Suffice to say, Bond kills Drax by flooding his HQ and, unlike the closure of the novel, ends up in the passionate arms of Gala on board a ship. “Have you got a licence for this?” she says as he kisses her. “Yes. And for this too,” he replies as they clinch and the end titles roll.
HOLDING OUT FOR MORE
Gerry Anderson presented the written proposal to Harry Saltzman, who called him back later the same evening to say he thought it brilliant and must have Cubby read it. However, Anderson declined an offer of £20,000 to buy the treatment from him, deciding to hold out in the hope he would get to produce the film himself for EON, as Kevin McClory had done with Thunderball, or at least direct.
Presumably, Cubby did not share Saltzman’s enthusiasm for the proposal as Anderson never heard back from either of them. The final confirmation came with the release of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and its end credits declaring Diamonds Are Forever to be the next adventure, not Moonraker.
However, Diamonds would also feature the bad guy operating an orbiting weapon of mass destruction, while an earlier version of the screenplay had it located within a super tanker. And as with the Anderson/ Barwick treatment, the villain’s stated intention is to force nations into nuclear disarmament and establish world peace, but in fact has an ulterior motive. Presumably, Gerry considered these plot coincidences not substantive enough to be worth pursuing any legal action. Not yet, anyway.
Gerry Anderson got on with completing UFO and one of its stars, Michael Billington, became courted by EON as a possible future James Bond, maybe at Anderson’s own suggestion. This was followed by the international based crime series, The Protectors, the nearest Gerry would get to Bond territory. Then came Space:1999 for which he re-purposed his ‘moon blasted out of orbit’ idea as its central premise. However, that was not the only element of his Moonraker treatment to end up resurfacing.
Fast forward to 1976 with Cubby Broccoli now solely in charge of the Bond franchise and about to embark on a new 007 adventure but only having a title at his disposal.
Fleming had stipulated the text of his novel The Spy Who Loved Me should not be filmed as he considered the story a failure, but Cubby loved its title and got clearance for using it to headline a totally original screenplay. Writers were invited to submit potential scripts or treatments and it is with
some of these that the Gerry Anderson and Tony Barwick Moonraker scenario was to get confused over the years.
Firstly, there was a submission by comic book writer Carey Bates actually made a couple of years earlier when he was trying to break into screen-writing. He composed a Moonraker screenplay in which Hugo Drax steals a British nuclear submarine from its Clyde base and hides it in Loch Ness near his base at Urquhart Castle. Drax threatens to deploy its arsenal in destroying European cities if his ransom demands are not met, and is aided by a pair of twins as henchmen. One called Pluto, who is a heavy smoker, and his brother Plato, an alcoholic.
Bates also proposed the return of Tatiana Romanova, now a KGB agent who works with Bond on the case as Russia is also threatened, 007’s cover being hired as Drax’s chauffeur. Given that, in From Russia with Love, Tatiana had helped Bond steal a Soviet Lektor and defected to the West with him, one can only assume her assassination of the SMERSH traitor Rosa Klebb proved redeeming in the Kremlin’s eyes, whereas otherwise she would have been shot!
Continued…
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Continued…
Bates originally sent his treatment to Roald Dahl in the hope he would act as sponsor, being aware that EON did not entertain unsolicited scripts. An impressed Dahl recommended the proposal to Cubby and Harry who purchased it in 1974. It was not used, of course, but the hijack of a nuclear submarine scenario evidently struck a chord.
Then, Tony Barwick himself submitted a new scenario which seemingly elaborated Carey Bates’ ideas. In this a criminal mastermind called Zodiac develops a submarine tracking system, and threatens to destroy nuclear submarines with long-range torpedoes unless the countries they serve hand him their most valuable works of art. He goes one better than twin henchmen in employing villainous triplets Tic, Tac, and Toe, albinos from a KGB circus troupe who eliminate their victims using a human pyramid act!
In the end, Richard Maibaum produced a screenplay which incorporated elements of both these proposals, and revived the super tanker idea that has originally been planned for Diamonds Are Forever, only instead of housing a laser cannon it is used to swallow up submarines. Word of this reached Anderson’s ears who asked to see a copy of the proposed script.
“I read it and saw similarities with our treatment, so I started proceedings against Cubby Broccoli who at that time had become the sole producer of the Bond films.” The odds, however, were not on Gerry’s side. “My lawyers weren’t show-business lawyers, so I was really in a very weak position. I must confess I became very frightened, and after a few weeks decided to drop the matter.”
PARTICULARLY REGRETTABLE
Anderson and Broccoli came to an out of court settlement of £3,000 which essentially gave EON ownership of material in his proposal, and negated any future artistic claim on his part. Anderson felt he had no choice but to go along with this arrangement. “Part of the agreement was that I had to hand over the treatment to him and make sure that all copies were destroyed. I accepted.”
It most have been particularly regrettable for Gerry Anderson when EON’s eventual film of Moonraker (1979) milked his ideas further, not only using the dart-firing watch that Q issues Bond with, but also Drax’s plan to depopulate the world and replace it with his selected master race. Having signed away his right to protest, there was nothing he could do or say.
As it turned out, however, Gerry did quietly keep a copy of his treatment which only came to light after his death. His son, Jamie Anderson, was going through his father’s filing cabinet, where he turned up an unexpected find. “In there, was this lovely, very 1960s black-card-bound treatment.”
Jamie has done much to champion his father’s work over the years, writing, producing and directing Big Finish audios of Captain Scarlet and Terrahawks, and sponsoring a series of novels based on Gerry’s proposed but never made TV series Gemini Force One, written by M. G. Harris from notes and outlines by Anderson Senior himself.
The question now remains as to what Jamie will do with his father’s James Bond legacy, if he is able to do anything at all. Although he has talked enthusiastically about the content of the Moonraker treatment, a full synopsis or publication of the document has yet to follow. Jamie explained that the former custodians of EON, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, put up no obstacles, but things now may be different now Amazon owns the brand.
There was a BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Moonraker with Toby Stephens as 007 back in 2018, but surely that still leaves room for a Big Finish audio of the Anderson/Barwick version if the Fleming estate would authorise it. A novelisation maybe one too many, given Christopher Wood was permitted to novelise the 1979 Moonrakerscreenplay, but a graphic novel perhaps?
Though a huge success at the box office, the aforementioned EON Moonraker of 1979 continues to attract much derision from many critics and Bond fans for its excessive and comedic approach, so for them the Anderson/Barwick take may be just the antidote. One can only hope Jamie Anderson is allowed to deliver it, and bring his father’s lost cause of many years to a satisfactory completion.
END
Fascinating. There's always more to learn about the films that weren't made.
Great find! I love that two of the elements that I assume were seen as especially outlandish, namely the mine-delivering dolpins and the ship standing at 90 degrees, both happened in real life!
@CoolHandBond thank you for this…what a tremendous find that is…🍸
Jamie Anderson talked about this in detail on the very good Spyhards podcast a year or two back, I haven’t listened to it again but I remember it being very enjoyable to listen to at the time:
Great Post. Very interesting. I always love to read how Eon pinched ideas from speculative authors and reused them years later. Like squirrels searching for nuts.
Thanks very much for this CoolHand! Anderson's Moonraker sounds more interesting than one we actually got.
Thanks for sharing, @CoolHandBond, that was a great read.
Of interest, the exploding lighter would turn up in TND's pre-titles, while a tranquilizer dart-firing wristwatch would appear in the first TWINE video game. And just for fun, MAD magazine would feature a parody of the Brosnan 'politically correct' era, with Bond saving a bomb-strapped dolphin - not because of its intended target (a military base) - but because he was a member of Greenpeace.
Thank you all, much appreciated. I’ve found some more Bond articles so will post them at irregular intervals on this thread ( changing the thread title slightly)!
I caught the second half of an episode of Supercar this morning. This was Gerry Anderson's first sci-fi series and was transmitted in 1961 and 1962. It isn't very good. However, this story featured a foreign [read Eastern European / Russian] espionage agent kidnapping the car's creator Prof Popkiss. Mike Mercury tries to rescue him, but it falls to the chimpanzee Mitch to save the day. What interested me was the villain's trap door [activated by a button marked TRAP] which had an armchair descend into the floor, expelling its occupant vua a chute into the basement below. It isn't that original even for 1961-62, but I did have flashes of LALD and YOLT shooting through my mind. The scene where the Markene Dietrich inspired sexy secretary was frightened by Mitch, who she called a gorilla, was hilarious. Her screams were more like erotic giggles. Mitch had an expression of King Kong esque delight.
While on the topic, I hope everyone has seen Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's Gerry Anderson parody SuperThunderStingCar.
If not, enjoy: https://vimeo.com/1051784793
I liked Supercar when I was a young kid, it was certainly different to most kids programmes of the time. Looking back now it holds a certain warm feeling of nostalgia, but better things were to come from the Anderson stable.
The link doesn’t seem to work @Revelator
It worked for me - once I’d confirmed I wasn’t a spambot 👀
It IS very funny 😁
Very funny 😀 love a bit of Pete n Dud
Nope, still won’t work ☹️ I’m obviously dodgy 🤣
The legacy of Gerry Anderson is an oddity to me. I get the impression that Jamie and those immediately around him are shouting from the rooftops about his Father's ongoing legacy and what else can be explored...
But then there is nothing that grows from that? No new films, no new tv series, just a few audios and promo material and not much else?
(Looks confused.)
Considering the subsiquent successes Sylvia Anderson had through HBO, and Derek Meddings name has become legendary in UK film production and Special Effects circles, its all the more puzzling.
As to The House Of Eon, Producers are often ruthless, in order to protect their asset. Also reusing so many aspects from the Anderaon / Barwick treatment would cement them under EON's control and benchmark.
Alan Fennell, Denis Spooner and Alan Pattillo wrote the best episodes of Thunderbirds accross the series, and Martin Crump did a couple of Good ones too.
Barwick was not bad, but by Terrahawks his ideas got crazier and crazier. By the third season he ruined that show with his writing.
As promised, another Bond article from the pages of a 2022 issue of the wonderful magazine Infinity.
There’s not much new here, but it’s a decent article on the 60th anniversary of DN.
By Roger Crow.
007#01
DR. NO
AT 60
A Porthmadog cinema in August 1973, just down the road from where The Prisoner was filmed. It’s nine years to the day since writer Ian Fleming died, but most of the punters couldn’t care less. For one five-year-old celebrating his birthday, what unfolds is retina-searing magic.
Live and Let Die is terrifying, thrilling entertainment, and when it’s over the kid visits a local toy shop where he spies a model Moon buggy. The ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and 007 gun barrel logos are hints of what came before.
“So there are more James Bond films?” he thinks while playing with the new purchase, unaware that for the past 11 years, Bond has cast a similar cinematic spell for millions of fans. And that pattern has been repeated for decades, with different films, different locations around the world. And millions of viewers.
Chances are you know the whole story, but come with me anyway in Infinity’s spacious Aston Martin (don’t touch that red button). And for those wondering where we’re going, the answer is simple...
BACK IN TIME
When Ian Fleming wrote his first spy novel in the early 1950s, he had no idea Casino Royale would change his life, and the world. Secret service agent James Bond, who was supposed to look like a cross between US singer Hoagy Carmichael and Ian himself, captured the imaginations of many.
Bond was tailor-made for the big screen, and though forever on Her Majesty’s secret service, that scene where bad guy Le Chiffre whacked Bond’s crown jewels with a carpet beater might have put Casino Royale on the cinematic back burner. Fleming was a man on fire, hammering away at his typewriter like someone possessed. The larger-than-life characters and door-die adventures poured out of him like creative juices from some enormous cocktail shaker. Okay, rubbish analogy, but you get the idea. And then, in 1958, the sixth Bond novel would alter everything.
Bond could obviously reach a much wider audience on the big screen, and with producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman as driving forces, Dr. No became that template for every 007 offering that followed, not to mention hundreds of pale imitations and spoofs, including Austin Powers.
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND
With the benefit of hindsight, Dr. No looked like it couldn’t fail, but the gamble of a relatively unknown actor playing a beloved literary hero was huge. And finding the right person to helm the movie was crucial if bigscreen Bond had a future.
Guy Greene, Guy Hamilton and Ken Hughes were offered the director’s job, but all turned it down. Which was good news for Terence Young. He’d worked with Sean Connery on the 1957 movie Action of the Tiger. It was a morsel of a part, and Sean was ravenous. He asked if there was a role in Young’s next movie; Terence told the Scots thesp there wasn’t, but reassured him he’d remember Connery for a future role. No prizes for guessing what that feast of a part was.
“Terence was the director who set the sort of style of it,” remarked Connery once.
And the style was one of THE key selling points for Bond’s success.
SUITS YOU SIR SEAN
When it comes to analysing what made Bond look so good, nobody does it better than producer, writer, and fellow 007 aficionado Jonathan Sothcott. While putting the finishing touches to his new movie Renegades, I asked how and why James looked so good from the start.
“(Sean) Connery, a jobbing actor, was not exactly a snappy dresser and decidedly uncomfortable in a suit, so it fell to director Terence Young to take him to his own tailor -Anthony Sinclair on Conduit Street (London), shirt-maker, Turnbull & Asser and boot-maker John Lobb.” The ever-dapper Jonathan adds: “Legend has it that Young encouraged sleeping in the tailored clothes to feel completely comfortable in them, though the astute film-maker’s encouragement of such ungentlemanly behaviour feels decidedly apocryphal.”
But as the author of style bible The Jermyn Street Shirt explains, the film 007 was rather at odds to the author’s view of his hero.
“(Terence) Young’s vision of Bond was different to Fleming’s casual, almost lazy dresser – the James Bond the world met in Dr. No sports a sleek, monochromatic look – his immaculate dinner jacket, coat and hat feel like a throwback to the War, but once they come off his tailoring is modern and sporty. Connery’s rough edges show when he does up two buttons instead of one on his blazer, a rookie error the immaculate Roger Moore, for example, would not have made in the same period.”
As ZZ Top would later remind us, ‘Every girl’s crazy about a sharp-dressed man’, so little wonder one of Scotland’s best loved actors retained that sense of style in the follow-up films.
“Connery would be dressed in much the same way for the next four movies in the series, only veering from classicism to fashion when he came back for Diamonds Are Forever,” explains Jonathan. “Anthony Sinclair would fade into obscurity in the coming decades, but has recently relaunched via tailor David Mason as a heritage brand offering Bond-inspired clothes in testament to Dr. No’s lasting influence.”
So what of the Dr. No plot? Well, following Maurice Binder’s opening titles, featuring a mix of Monty Norman’s unforgettable theme interrupted with a calypso version of ‘Three Blind Mice’ we open with the murder of John Strangways, the Station Chief of MI6 in Jamaica. The trio of assassins also kill his secretary, so M, head of MI6, assigns Bond to investigate. Strangways was collaborating with the CIA on a case involving the disruption of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral by radio jamming, so James needs to find out more. He’s barely been in Jamaica half an hour before a chauffeur tries to kill him. Naturally Bond fends him off (else it would have been a very short movie), but a cyanide capsule ensures any secrets go with the assassin to his grave.
With the help of Strangways’ associate Quarrel, and CIA agent Felix Leiter, 007 heads to Crab Key and local geologist, Professor RJ Dent. Eventually Bond hooks up with alluring shell-diver Honey Ryder, and they are whisked to the eponymous antagonist’s lavish lair.
Let’s pause to consider the first Bond heroine of the movie franchise and arguably the greatest meet-cute in the saga’s history...
A STATE OF ANDRESS
Ursula Andress, it has to be said, was never hit with the ugly stick, though remarkably she was reluctant to appear in the movie, until Kirk Douglas talked her into it. Her bikini- clad heroine Honey emerging from the surf of course became one of the most iconic shots in film history.
Diana Coupland, who later found fame as Sid James’s wife in Bless This House, provided the vocals for Honey’s iconic Under the Mango Tree scene. Her husband at the time? Composer Monty Norman, who also penned said song and THAT Bond theme. Anyway, back to the plot...
A Chinese-German criminal scientist with prosthetic metal hands, Dr. No works for the covert organisation SPECTRE, and he thinks locking 007 in a cell will keep him from harm’s way. What a mistake to make. Naturally Bond escapes, rescues the girl and wreaks havoc, before opting to stay adrift with Honey, while Felix Leiter and a Naval crew think a) Lucky sod and b) What an idiot.
So yes, like the contents of beloved aircraft ‘Little Nelly’ a few years later, a lot of plot to unpack, but like that autogyro, those key elements would slot together beautifully and help the franchise take off. The pre-credits scene was yet to really develop, as were the titles, and gadgets, but the briefing, with obligatory exposition between (a usually exasperated) M and Bond; the mission, involving exotic locations; the beautiful women; the sidekicks, and the nefarious villain, usually culminating in an epic showdown were all there. Formulaic now, maybe, but in 1962, movie-goers, especially in a usually rain-lashed Blighty, had never seen anything like it. And they did like it. A lot.
In a movie market dominated by American heroes, a Brit spy with a wit as sharp as his bespoke suits was a breath of fresh air.
Men wanted to be him; women wanted to be with him, while film and TV makers fell over themselves to repeat that winning formula.
A NOVEL IDEA
Obviously novels are one thing and movies are a very different beast, so how does the film version of Dr. No compare to the source text? Tony Greenway, one of Her Majesty’s finest Bond experts, breaks down the comparisons between page and screen.
“Does the film version of Dr. No stick closely to the original Ian Fleming novel? Well, kind of. They certainly share the same ‘flavour’. The story is set in Jamaica, Bond does battle with a rockettoppling megalomaniac, is aided by the doomed Quarrel, and falls for Venus-like shell-collector, Honey. Oh, and the character of Strangways is offed in the opening scenes by three hitmen posing as blind beggars, while M swaps Bond’s beloved pistol for the iconic Walther PPK. So far, so very Fleming.
Yet there are some noticeable differences. Four significant characters in the film -Sylvia Trench, Felix Leiter, baddie chauffeur Mr Jones and the duplicitous Professor Dent - don’t appear in the novel; while movie femme fatale Miss Taro only has a cough and a spit in Fleming’s story.
Fleming depicts Honeychile Rider — ‘Honey Ryder’ in the movie — as a flawed beauty with a broken nose, and ensured that she makes her first appearance stark naked (of course he did), save for her belt and knife; whereas the flawless Andress wades out of the sea wearing that famous white bikini. Audiences in 1962 might have dropped their popcorn, otherwise. And while the Dr. No of the movie (Doctor Julius No in the book) is sharply tailored, Fleming presents him as a Fu Manchu-like character, describing him as “a giant venomous worm wrapped in grey tin-foil.”
Rather than drowning him in a reactor pool (as the film does), he buries him under several tonnes of - wait for it - bird sh*t. Other changes are cosmetic.
For instance, in the book, it’s a centipede that shares Bond’s bed, rather than a tarantula. But the biggest difference of all is, thankfully, what the movie-makers left out. In the novel’s finale, Bond battles a giant squid with a spear fashioned from wire. Even with today’s special effects, that would be a step too far for the movie Bond...”
DEBRIEFING
007 #1 set the gold standard for action adventures. Sean Connery may have had little faith in his abilities as James, but moulded by Terence Young, and a small army of genius craftspeople, a star was born.
Sixty years on, Dr. No is still a lean, yet polished slice of escapism which looks better than ever after an excellent spot of restoration. Those colours really pop, but it’s the film itself that’s more than the sum of its parts. Yes, the back-screen projection looks dated, and the arch villain is a tad vanilla compared to some of the later scenery-chewing antagonists that followed, but who cares?
As someone who survived the 2021 lockdown with the aid of a 007 marathon, I’d forgotten how good Dr. No is, and how much I’d recommend a similar binge watch. However, if you don’t want to commit that much of your life and are just in need of a tonic after another day of horrific news, then James Bond’s inaugural adventure is just what the Doctor ordered.
*Thanks to Special Intelligence Agents T (Greenway) and J (Sothcott) for their help with this feature.
TRIV AND LET DIE!
Dr. No Trivia
• Stuntman Bob Simmons rather than Sean Connery is featured in the opening gun barrel sequence.
• Future 007 composer John Barry is credited as arranger and, with his guitarist Vic Flick, gave the theme its twangy sound.
• The weird-sounding ‘bleeps and bloops’ over the opening gun barrel scene were part of a soundscape piece called ‘Atoms in Space’ by electronic music pioneer, Daphne Oram. Oram’s work is echoed again with strange sounds in the scenes when Bond is crawling through the pipe in Dr. No’s lair.
• Have a guess how many minutes it takes before we first see James Bond. (00)7 of course.
• Cliff Richard and Susan Hampshire recreated the ‘Bond meets Honey on the beach’ scene in the 1964 movie, Wonderful Life.
• Halle Berry paid tribute to Ursula coming out of the waves in 2002 Bond movie, Die Another Day.
• 10CC reference the movie in their song, ‘I’m Mandy, Fly Me.’
• Dr. No’s location scout and production assistant Chris Blackwell was recommended by Ian Fleming. Chris, who can be seen 31 minutes in during a dancing scene, eventually purchased Fleming’s Jamaican home, GoldenEye. Blackwell later formed Island Records, which helped turn Bob Marley and future Bond collaborators Bono, The Edge and Grace Jones into stars. (The U2 guys sort of wrote a song about Blackwell’s house).
• The budget for Dr. No was approximately a million dollars.
• Apre-Hawaii Five-O Jack Lord was the first big-screen Felix Leiter.
• The lyrics for the first (adopted) Bond song are arguably the oldest. Thomas Ravenscroft penned Three Blind Mice in 1609.
• Cinematographer Ted Moore went on to work on six more 007 films, and won an Oscar for A Man For All Seasons.
• Zena Marshall played the alluring Miss Taro. Her white dressing gown actually belonged to the director. Zena liked it so much she asked if she could keep it.
• Ursula Andress later played Vesper Lynd in the 1967 misfire version of Casino Royale.
• Ian Fleming’s cousin Christopher Lee, Noel Coward and Max von Sydow were all in the running to play Dr. No before Joseph Wiseman landed the part. And yes, Lee and von Sydow did go on to play Bond villains in The Man with the Golden Gun, and Never Say Never Again respectively
Thanks for sharing that @CoolHandBond - good stuff 🍸
Wonderful, many thanks CHB.
Roger Crow celebrates Bond movies released in years ending with the number 3 in Infinity magazine.
Four 007 films over three decades: from Cold War sixties to Blaxploitation-era seventies, and an eighties faceoff which saw Roger Moore vs Sean Connery in a Bond battle for box office domination. And oh, they haunted us so. Now pay attention as we reflect on Ian Fleming’s MI6 maverick in three incredible eras. Cue the gun barrel-iris shot, and let’s begin in the place formerly known as Constantinople. Over the years, like many fans of a certain secret agent, I’ve travelled the world to learn how much the 007 movies shaped our surroundings. Take Istanbul for example. It’s spring, 2022 and the underground bus depot looks like something from a Bond epic; a vast subterranean lair which ferries holidaymakers to and from their cruise ship via coaches. You half expect one of those important tannoy announcements, like: “Moonraker 6 to launch pad.”
Sixty years earlier the cast and crew of From Russia With Love arrived in this location to make the second James Bond film; I bet they had an easier job getting into the iconic Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, which is filled with tourists on this rain-lashed day. Though that’s easier to get into than other 007 location, the Blue Mosque, which is largely under repair, and even more hectic.
I’ve no idea what the city was like back then, and whether that underground bus/ship terminal looked like a Ken Adam set, but that’s the Bond effect for you; 60-plus years of influence on this everchanging world in which we’re livin’.
Not far away is the labyrinthine Grand Bazaar, which provided a key location for Skyfall in 2012, but that’s a story for another day. Because for now, we’re raising a cheeky glass to...
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE AT 60
The early 1960s, and in an age when A-list movie sequels were few and far between, the idea of a blockbusting spy saga was unheard of. However, when Dr No took cinemas by storm in 1962, a follow-up was inevitable. Director Terence Young proved his worth with film one, so little wonder he was snapped up again, though the movie almost claimed his life as you’ll see later.
So, for newcomers and those who haven’t seen From Russia with Love in years, here’s the lowdown...
The plot: Following the death of Dr No in Jamaica, evil organisation SPECTRE seek revenge against 007. And naturally to drive the story, most Bond movies need...
The McGuffin: A Lektor cryptography device which Rosa Klebb wants to get her fiendish hands on. And yes, she is played by Lotte Lenya, as immortalised by the song ‘Mack the Knife.’ Talking of which... Her gadget? A retractable blade in her shoe tip. Rosa was definitely not a contender for (a pre-Strictly) Come Dancing, which was around in 1963. Bond’s gadget? Exploding suitcase. What’s that you say? Attaché? Yes, and bless you!
The henchman: Irish assassin Donald “Red” Grant, played by Robert Shaw, a dozen years before Jaws - the film rather than Richard Kiel’s 007 ‘bad’ guy.
The Bond woman: Tatiana, portrayed by Daniela Bianchi and dubbed by Barbara Jefford.
Look out for: Desmond Llewelyn in his series debut as Boothroyd, better known as gadgets master Q. The theme song: a belter with lyrics by Lionel (Oliver!) Bart, music by John Barry, and performed by Matt Monro. (On days like these, it’s well worth another listen).
Does it still stand up? As a strippeddown, nuts-and-bolts adventure, it’s still terrific six decades on. Little wonder it was one of Sean Connery’s favourite Bond movies.
How close is Fleming’s novel to the film? 007 expert Tony Greenway has the intel. “From Russia with Love the movie sticks pleasingly close to From Russia with Love the novel: both feature allies Tatiana Romanova and Kerim Bey (Darko Kerim in the book), and villains Rosa Klebb and Donald Grant (Donovan ‘Red’ Grant in the novel); and both include a trick attaché case, a fight at a gypsy camp and Bond squaring up to Grant on the Orient Express. Plus, Rosa goes all mad and stabby with knives in her shoes - although she mainly uses poisoned knitting needles in Fleming’s original tale.”
So what’s the biggest difference between book and screen? “It’s that villainous organisation SPECTRE, which doesn’t appear in the novel. Which is why the book’s main plot McGuffin - adecoding machine called ‘the Spektor’ - had its name changed to ‘the Lektor’ for the movie. Clear? (SPECTRE, Spektor, Lektor. Do keep up.)
“Also, the film suggests that Klebb is merely attracted to Tatiana. In the book, however, Rosa suddenly appears in a semitransparent nightgown with a face “now thick with mascara and rouge and lipstick” and makes a full-on pass at her.”
FROM RUSSIA WITH TRIV
• In the novel, Bond doesn’t turn up until 99 pages in. He takes his time in the movie, too, only appearing after 18 minutes (you can’t count the pre-credits scene because that’s a SPECTRE assassin in a Bond mask).
• In the book, a killer emerges from a window located in the middle of a massive movie poster of Marilyn Monroe. In the film, the poster is changed to the Anita Ekberg comedy, Call Me Bwana - which was produced by Bond team Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli. Coincidence? No.
• Director Terence Young nearly died during production when his helicopter crashed into a lake. He was back behind the camera later the same day.
• In the film, Bond avoids being kicked by Klebb’s poisoned shoes. He’s not so lucky in the novel. Fleming, who was reportedly jaded with his hero at this point, deliberately made it unclear if 007 li ves or dies.
• The garden scene with Klebb and Grant was shot at Pinewood. Later 007 Roger Moore could see the view from his office window.
• Walter Gotell made his 007 debut in FRWL as Morzeny. He eventually became a regular as Russian VIP General Gogol, appearing in several Bond movies, from The Spy Who Loved Me to The Living Daylights.
• Ted Moore won a 1964 BAFTA Film Award for Best British Cinematography (Colour).
• Cash tills rang to the tune of more than $78million. Not bad for a $2million budget. Little wonder Goldfinger was rushed into production soon after.
• Stepping in for eventual series regular Maurice Binder, who crafted the minimal titles for Dr No, designer Robert Brownjohn projected the FRWL opening credits onto female dancers. It began a long tradition of using scantily clad models for those memorable titles.
• Avideo game based on the movie was released in 2005. It gave Sean Connery one more chance to play Bond, albeit just in vocal terms. “As an artist, I see this as another way to explore the creative process,” Sean explained in one interview.
To be continued…
Great find, CHB - looking forward to more 😁
Yes, same here. Thanks!
Part Two…
New Orleans, Louisiana, October 1972, and fresh from TV favourite The Persuaders! (Infinity 54*), Roger Moore had hung up Brett Sinclair’s fancy suits and opted for something more subdued as he first stepped in front of a camera as James Bond.
Keen to get away from previous 007 cliches, he smoked cigars (*thanks to Tony Curtis curbing his cigarette interest); wielded a Dirty Harry-style Magnum rather than a Walther PPK, and we even glimpsed his apartment in a scene reminiscent of a West End farce.
Oh, and made during the Blaxploitation era, LALD attempted to surf the wave of genre classics such as Shaft and Superfly, with different degrees of success.
The plot: Following the death of three MI6 agents, no prizes for guessing who is called in to investigate. A mission that takes 007 to the roughest parts of New York, and sees him cross paths with the mysterious Mr Big (Yaphet Kotto).
The McGuffin: There’s no coveted gadget/ artefact driving this story forward. Just Bond cracking a drug ring.
The henchmen: Steel-clawed Tee Hee (Julius Harris); salad-dodging Whisper (Earl Jolly Brown), and best of all, the iconic Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder).
The gadget: A magnetic watch. Handy for unzipping dresses and attracting explosive pellets for that finale. Not powerful enough to free a tied-up boat, which was almost good news for some hungry crocs.
The Bond women: Jane Seymour as virginal fortune-teller Solitaire; Gloria Hendry added glamour as agent/sacrificial pawn Rosie Carver, and Maddy Smith is also a delight as the first of many notches on new Bond’s assorted bedposts.
Look out for: the 007 logo on the back of Solitaire’s cards. And who could miss Clifton James as Sheriff JW Pepper, a part he reprised in The Man With the Golden Gun, and (in all but name) for Superman II? The linking factor between films? Writer Tom Mankiewicz - abit of a genius, but then his dad Joseph did craft All About Eve, and uncle Herman co-wrote Citizen Kane.
The theme song: a masterpiece courtesy of Paul McCartney, Wings and producer George Martin. As a side note, producer Harry Saltzman didn’t think Wings should perform it. Macca was smart enough to have it written into the contract that it was either Wings on the opening titles or the film had to use a different song. No prizes for guessing who won that argument.
Does it still stand up? Absolutely. Roger Moore is at the peak of his powers, and looks terrific in that all-black outfit with shoulder holster during the finale.
Jane Seymour is a delight; future Alien star Yaphet Kotto is a great bad guy, as are his cohorts; that epic boat chase is extraordinary, and the title theme over Maurice Binder’s opening titles is like an audio defibrillator.
Book-to-screen comparisons?
Over to you Agent Greenway. “The beginning of Live and Let Die the movie shares similarities to Ian Fleming’s worryingly racist 1954 novel. Bond jets off to New York; meets up with old CIA pal Felix Leiter; gets caught up in the activities of a voodoo-loving black gangster called Mr Big, and meets tarot card-reader Solitaire, and henchmen Tee Hee (hook- handed in the film, but not in the book). Plus, Bond gets captured when his nightclub table descends beneath the floor and is threatened with having his little finger snipped off by Tee Hee (who breaks it in the book).
“But then the movie veers off at a mad tangent. Mr Big pulls his own (prosthetic) face off to reveal that he is actually the villainous Dr Kananga; Bond escapes from a crocodile-infested lake in an implausibly entertaining fashion; there’s a bus chase and a mammoth speed boat chase; the introduction of redneck sheriff JW Pepper, and a climactic fight with Tee Hee on a train. None of this is in the novel. Also, the main bad guy doesn’t die by inflating - and then bursting - like a balloon. Instead, he’s attacked by barracudas and eaten by a shark. Shame.”
CARRY ON CABBY
No, not a tribute to another 60-year-old classic, like From Russia With Love, but a brief look at the taxi troubles cast and crew had on LALD, and one unsung heroine...
Arnold Williams’ wise-cracking ‘Cab Driver 1’ left me delighted with his patter when I was five and watching LALD for the first time on my birthday. However, Roger Moore wasn’t happy with Arnold’s stand-in on day 79 of the shoot. “This man could not have driven through Arsenal’s goalposts on a sunny day,” remarked Roger in his book, The 007 Diaries. When Arnold was free the next day for the scene, traffic control in New York proved tricky for the Bond crew. Thankfully, as Moore recalls, a little old lady did a terrific job of helping the film makers get their shots in the can.
“She marched into the middle of the road and started waving her arms while yelling, ‘Hold it right there buster!’ And ‘Move it, you mothers!’, much to everyone’s amusement.” Traffic started moving, and the scene was filmed, but sadly the OAP assisant remains a mystery to this day.
TRIV AND LET DIE
• Anumber of scenes in the LaLD novel turn up in other Bond films: a shoot-out in a warehouse full of fish tanks; Felix Leiter being maimed by a shark and left for dead with a note reading ‘He disagreed with something that ate him’, and Bond dispatching a villain down a trap door and into a shark pool (all used in 1989’s Licence to Kill). Plus, Bond and the heroine are keel-hauled over a coral reef, which is used in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only.
• Villain Dr Kananga was named after Ross Kananga, owner of the crocodile farm featured in the film. Ross performed the stunt which involved jumping over the backs of the crocs
• Made for an estimated $7million, it went on to gross more than $35 million.
• Because the 007 books were filmed out of order, Bond’s ally in the novel, Quarrel (played by John Kitzmiller), had already been killed on screen in 1962’s Dr No. However, the filmmakers wanted to bring a version of him back - so they created Quarrel Jr, played by Roy Stewart.
• Make-up legend Rick Baker honed his uncredited skills on this movie before working on Star Wars (A New Hope), and An American Werewolf in London.
To be continued…
Fascinating…
Didn’t the story about Saltzman asking who was going to sing the song turn out to be about who was going to sing it in the nightclub scene in the film (they got B. J. Arnau), and George Martin got his wires crossed?
I didn’t know about Rick Baker, that’s interesting. If he did the Mr Big mask, he certainly improved!
Great reading, looking forward to more.
Excellent article. Not much new, but well written and slyly humorous. I want the 1983 excerpt. 😃
And here it is @chrisno1
After the gloriously OTT Moonraker in 1979, For Your Eyes Only had felt like it was shot on a package deal to Greece in 1981. Even the obligatory car chase, in a 2CV, felt low rent. If Bond was to survive in the eighties, when home video was threatening cinema-going, the movies needed to be a grander affair.
Octopussy was not so much an All Time High, as Rita Coolidge’s theme song suggested, but an okay adventure that lost its way with dodgy audio and visual gags. (The less said about Bond’s Russ Meyerstyle video camera skills the better, though obviously there were times when 007 felt more like a Confessions movie than a spy saga; screenwriter Christopher Wood’s work on both franchises in the late 1970s underlined the fact).
The 13th official 007 movie may have proved unlucky for some. However, a fun pre-credits sequence involving Bond and a mini plane dodging missiles was a good start. (It was supposed to be Cuba, but was mostly shot at Northolt Airport in west London).
The plot: A fake Fabergé egg, a dead MI6 agent (009) and an international jewel-smuggling operation are some of the ‘breadcrumbs’ leading Bond to the eponymous circus boss and a potential nuclear attack on NATO forces.
Here’s “Greenway, Tony Greenway” with those book-to-screen comparisons...
“Are you about to read Ian Fleming’s 1966 short story Octopussy for the first time? (It was published posthumously I should add here, since Fleming died in 1964, Ed). Looking forward to the bit where Bond flies an Acrostar jet through an aircraft hangar while being chased by a heat-seeking missile? Or when he’s hunted through the jungle by an Afghan prince?
Or the part where 007 defuses an atomic bomb on a US airbase dressed as a clown? Yes, well. Absolutely none of that happens, thankfully. In fact, Bond doesn’t even appear in the story very much. Instead its low-key narrative concerns a murderous ex-army major called Dexter Smythe, who is only briefly referenced in the movie.
“Another Fleming short story, The Property of a Lady, provides the basis for the film’s auction scene featuring tomfoolery with a Fabergé egg - but otherwise the OTT screenplay bears no relation to anything Fleming wrote. Oh, and the Octopussy of the title isn’t a beautiful circus owner, either. It’s actually, er, Smythe’s nickname for an octopus. Which is disappointing.”
OCTOTRIVIA (Eight non-Faberge Easter Eggs)
• James Brolin was considered for the 007 role, but obviously Roger was brought back for more.
• Tennis star Vijay Amitraj plays a tennis-loving agent called Vijay (much to the chagrin of Equity, apparently, as he wasn’t an actor). Basically he’s playing a secret agent version of himself, except his character ‘dies’. Mind you, Roger Moore played a guy passing himself off as Roger Moore in The Cannonball Run, so maybe not so weird.
• The cyclist who whips through the tuk-tuk chase was unplanned. The rider had no idea a movie was being made.
• Ascenery-chewing Steven Berkoff (Orlov) had worked on The Saint in 1969 with Moore and 1981’s Outland with Connery. He later added menace to Beverly Hills Cop, and Rambo: First Blood -Part Two.
• Michaela Clavell - daughter of novelist James Clavell - was cast as Miss Moneypenny’s assistant for this film only.
• Oberhauser, the name of a character from the Octopussy short story, is borrowed for the 2015 Bond movie, Spectre.
• Yes, Maud Adams had appeared in The Man With the Golden Gun. But did you also know Spaced and Friday NightDinner star Mark Heap plays a circus performer?
• Cinematographer Alan Hume also lensed 1983’s other big movie, Return of the Jedi.
A few months after Octopussy left cash tills ringing, Moore’s fellow fiftysomething Sean Connery had been lured out of retirement for a remake of an earlier 007 classic.
Ah 1983, the rise of video games, VHS aerobics workouts, a returning Jedi and MTV-friendly movie confections like Flashdance. So where did Sean Connery’s 007 fit into this brave ‘new’ world?
Could a remake of 1960s classic Thunderball appeal to a 1980s audience? Well, Bond, in whatever incarnation, was still a huge international sell, so financially it made sense. And obviously that mix of spying shenanigans, gadgets, femme fatales and sociopaths keen on world domination had worked for 20-plus years beforehand, so if it ain’t broke...
The plot: while 007 goes for a detox at a health farm, SPECTRE stooge Jack Petachi, a heroin-addicted United States Air Force pilot, steals nuclear missiles for crime lord Blofeld. Jack is also the brother of Domino Petachi, trophy girlfriend of the villainous Maximilian Largo. Naturally 007 attempts to bed any attractive woman with a pulse and defeat the bad guy, at one point by playing a literally shocking video game.
The Bond women: aside from Kim Basinger (in her first big movie as Domino), NSNA also boasts The Spy Who Loved Me’s Valerie Leon in a bit part, and Barbara Carrera as alluring nutcase Fatima Blush.
Does it still stand up? Helmed by The Empire Strikes Back’s Irvin Kershner, Never Say Never Again got a lot right, including the casting. Klaus Maria Brandauer’s Largo is one of the saga’s best villains, and Alec (Frenzy) McCowen is a terrific Q. Alas, Lani Hall’s opening theme song is weak (though these days it would probably win an Oscar); Rowan Atkinson’s MI6 agent Small-Fawcett is cringe-worthy, and the third act feels muddled, especially the last few minutes which wraps things up with breakneck speed. Yes, it’s fun, but like Octopussy, both Bond movies combined struggled to match the freshness of classics like Goldfinger.
Crime of fashion: Sean in that denim dungaree outfit may rank as the worst movie attire of his career. And that includes the mankini and the wedding dress in Zardoz nine years earlier.
NEVER SAY TRIVIA AGAIN
• Sean re-uses Fletch’s one-liner from the first ep of sitcom classic Porridge, about a urine sample and filling a container from some distance away. The gag later pays off when Bond throws it in the face of a bad guy (Pat Roach).
• Pamela Salem (Moneypenny) previously worked on Connery’s The First Great Train Robbery, though for many she will always be the witchy antagonist of teatime fantasy drama Into the Labyrinth.
• It was the last Bond movie to use the Spectre name until, er, Spectre in 2015.
• There was no animosity between Sean and Roger during filming their respective Bonds. They used to have dinner together and compared notes on how much they’d shot each day, as well as discussing the stunts.
• Like George Lazenby’s (first and) last Bond turn On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Sean breaks the fourth wall (at the end) with a sly smile to camera, just in case he did come back for more Bond. From Russia with Love video game aside, sadly he didn’t.
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And that ends the article…the next one features George Lazenby from a 2023 issue.