I watched all the UFO episodes a couple of years back and while I get the good looking angle, as a lead actor for me, he misses something, a little raw charisma perhaps. That's something Sean and Roger had in spades.
For those who are not aware, the original Windmill Theatre was famous for its nude models who had to stand perfectly still throughout the performance. It was home to many comedians who honed their acts there including Dick Emery, Bruce Forsyth, Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers.
It was also famous for the slogan “We never closed” referring to the fact that the theatre remained open during WW2, even during the Blitz. It closed in 1964 and since then has been a cinema, a revue show bar, a cabaret club and is currently an adult entertainment venue.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Barry McCann looks back at Warhead, the best 007 movie we never had, and one which may well have starred Richard Burton, Rod Taylor or Laurence Harvey as James Bond!
If there is one thing that fans of long running film franchises love more than discussing their favourite entries, it has to be speculating about the planned movies that didn’t make it. The James Bond series certainly has its share of casualties, including among others the Gerry Anderson-sponsored Moonraker proposal that was replaced by Diamonds Are Forever (1971), or Timothy Dalton’s Hong Kong based third adventure that may well have pitted him against Anthony Hopkins and Whoopi Goldberg!
But the most mourned near miss has to be the Kevin McClory project of the mid to late 1970s, a producer who was first at making a serious attempt to bring James Bond to the big screen only to see that ship sail with the EON flag flying from its mast. And if Cubby Broccoli had not got his way, 1977 would have seen The Spy Who Loved Me with Roger Moore up against Warhead… Starring Sean Connery!
“The Battle of the Bonds” became the much used headline during 1976 as newspapers and magazines enthusiastically reported on the prospect of not one but two new James Bond films being set up for release against each other, the latest entry in the legitimate EON series going head to head with a rival by Thunderball producer Kevin McClory. But the story of how that situation evolved starts back in 1959.
Kevin McClory was an independent Irish film producer who had just completed his debut feature, The Boy and the Bridge, and now looking for a follow up project. Meanwhile, Ian Fleming had been seeking to get his Bond novels filmed following the 1954 American TV version of Casino Royale. He subsequently sold its movie rights to Gregory Ratoff, with options on Live and Let Die to Alexander Korda and Moonraker to Rank, but none of these came to fruition.
McClory also recognised the screen potential of James Bond, but not necessarily the existing novels.
He approached Fleming with the proposition of composing an original 007 screenplay tailored more specifically to cinema audiences, and thus the project James Bond, Secret Agent was initiated.
Being a keen scuba diver, McClory suggested the story should involve underwater action and be set in the Bahamas where he planned to set up a film studio that could be rented out for other productions. He also wanted the plot to revolve around a stolen nuclear bomb hidden beneath the sea, Bond’s mission to recover it.
Ian Fleming’s American friend Ernest Cuneo was invited on board to compose a story memo in which Bond uncovers a plot by agents from behind the Iron Curtain to detonate a nuclear device on an American military base. The Bahamas would serve as the location of transfer for the bomb, and climax in an underwater battle between frogmen on both sides which really got McClory excited.
Fleming then worked this up into a fuller screen treatment for which he substituted the Mafia as the antagonists, arguing that in the two years it would take the film to be made, the world political stage may change and the Russians no longer the bad guys! He devised a Mafiosi head, Henrico Largo, who operates under the cover of his own nightclub outside Epping Forest where he plans to snatch an atomic bomb from a nearby airbase, and transfer it to Nassau using his 500 ton yacht ‘The Virginian.’
Fleming also gave Largo a mistress in the form of Domino Smith, with whom Bond ingratiates himself and persuades to help him undermine the gangster. Following the planned underwater battle, the story was to climax with Domino shooting Largo in the back with a spear gun as he is about to kill Bond.
Jack Whittingham expanded this into a script titled Longitude 78 West for which the villain was now Giovanni “Joe” Largo and Domino renamed Gaby. The other major departure was a more downbeat ending in which Largo escapes with the bomb on a plane, only for Gaby who is also on board to detonate the device once safely at sea and sacrificing her own life.
A HITCHCOCK BOND?
With a screen story more or less settled, the consortium of McClory, Whittingham and Fleming set about trying to raise studio interest only to encounter disinterest. Despite talking up the project with suggestions of Alfred Hitchcock directing and Richard Burton starring, McClory was not a major league producer and his The Boy and the Bridge debut feature had flopped. By the end of 1960, the three parted company and moved onto other projects.
For Fleming this was to be his next Bond novel for which he used much of the abandoned film’s plot and some characters including Largo and Domino, in addition to a new criminal organisation SPECTRE and its head, Ernst Stavros Blofeld, to replace the Mafia as villains. He even dedicated the book to Ernest Cuneo. Unfortunately, he neglected to clear all this with McClory and Whittingham, or acknowledge their input and ensure some sort of recompense for it. Upon seeing an advance copy of the 1961 Thunderball, McClory contacted his lawyer. In the meantime Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli secured the movie rights to all the Bond novels, except Casino Royale which Gregory Ratoff had leased long term and attempted to film in 1960 with Peter Finch. His untimely death later that year halted the project and his widow sold it onto Charles K. Feldman, but that is another story.
Saltzman and Broccoli selected Thunderball as their first adaptation, and had Richard Maibum produce a screenplay. However, when advised the novel had become the subject of a plagiarism charge and now a legal hot potato, it was tabled and they went with Dr. No instead.
The dispute finally came to trial in November 1963, a month after the release of EON’s second Bond film with Sean Connery, From Russia with Love. After just nine days McClory won damages of £35,000 plus £52,000 costs from Fleming, but more importantly he was awarded the exclusive movie rights to Thunderball.
McClory was now in the unique position of being only one of two producers outside EON who owned a Bond property and gleefully announced his intention to produce Thunderball as a rival to the official series, suggesting Richard Burton (again), Rod Taylor or Lawrence Harvey as James Bond. He even went so far as to announce Yugoslavian born Italian actress Sylva Koscina to play Domino.
Despite this outward display of confidence, McClory’s heart of hearts suspected that a Bond film without the already established Sean Connery or Monty Norman theme tune was going to be a difficult sell. And with word going around the industry that the upcoming Goldfinger promised to be even bigger than the first two, he decided to hang fire and see how it fared.
Sure enough, Goldfinger enjoyed a blockbuster opening in 1964 with queues around the block and cinemas booking extra performances to meet demand. It confirmed to McClory the game was up and within days of the première he invited Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli to his home in Dublin to find a mutual way forward.
A co-produced movie of Thunderball was agreed, the set up being McClory would produce it for EON as part of the official series. For Harry and Cubby it meant they finally got the very Bond epic they had wanted to do in the first place, and removed the threat of a rival made version. For McClory, it meant he got the vital ingredient of Sean Connery and the lasting friendship that forged between the two was to pay dividends later.
CHRISTMAS 007 TREAT
Thunderball enjoyed its UK première in late December 1965 and proved the Christmas present audiences were waiting for, even out performing Goldfinger in terms of admissions. Indeed, it still remains the most successful 007 film of all in real terms, inflation accounted figures estimating an equivalent gross of $1,330 billion.
The alliance of McClory and EON proved triumphant but was only ever going to be a one off partnership, and as part of the deal McClory agreed not to further exploit Thunderball for a ten year period following the film’s general release in 1966. EON evidently reasoned the Bond series would have ran its course by then, and they were very nearly right.
In fact, by 1976 the James Bond series was in crisis. Connery had long since departed and while Roger Moore made a successful debut in Live and Let Die (1973), his second outing The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) had underperformed. Not a financial flop by any means, but a downturn on the previous takings so serious as to question whether Moore was being accepted as 007 after all. Or, worse still, was Bond himself becoming old hat?
The situation was not helped by Harry Saltzman finding himself in debt thanks to misfired business investments against which he pledged his stock of EON, putting the company itself in trouble. In the end, the backing studio United Artists bought Saltzman out and put Broccoli in sole charge of the Bond films.
Having just the title of the Fleming novel The Spy Who Loved Me at his disposal (Fleming considered the book a failure and stipulated it should not be filmed), Cubby now had to find a wholly original screenplay that would prove a shot in the arm for the series. Then along came the announcement he must have been secretly dreading.
With the Thunderball film rights released back to McClory, he immediately announced his intention to update its concept as a breakaway Bond movie of his own. Cubby knew trying to stop him would be difficult as he did have a legal right, but things really heated up when Sean Connery’s name became attached to the proposal.
It had been five years since Connery had hung up his shoulder holster for the second time, during which he grumpily insisted he would not be taking it up again. However, McClory tantalised Connery with the prospect of co-writing a Bond screenplay with none other than Len Deighton.
McClory surmised that Connery’s experience of playing Bond gave him a unique understanding of the character, which would be valuable to the script. Connery also publically insisted that would be the extent of his involvement, though cheekily suggested he might play M to a new boy as 007.
Everyone knew this to be an obvious ploy by McClory in tempting Connery back to playing Bond himself, and he had the second Mrs. Connery to thank for the tactic working.
When Connery told his wife Michelle how rewarding the script writing was proving, she replied “Well, if it’s going so well why don’t you play the part?”
Now that the “Real James Bond” was headlining the project, Paramount agreed to bankroll it with a generous budget to ensure a big affair as demanded by the Connery/Deighton screenplay. So what exactly was their re-imagining of Thunderball about?
BERMUDA TRIANGLE
The story opens on board the mobile underwater base Arkos, where Largo and a scientist called Maslov use a jamming device to bring down a plane carrying the Secretary General of the United Nations into the Bermuda Triangle, crashing into its depths where a graveyard of other aircraft and ships lie on the seabed.
Elsewhere on the Arkos, Blofeld is chairing progress reports from his SPECTRE agents and suspects one of embezzlement. He activates a glass tube that rises around the agent before he descends and is flushed out to a watery grave. Blofeld plans to take control of the seas and the conference watch a monitor as Largo sends a diver in a pressure suit to retrieve the warheads from a recently sunken Russian submarine. However, they are interrupted by a recovery vessel sailing into the area and Largo leaves the diver to die as depth pressure penetrates the suit.
The action switches to Shrublands, no longer a health farm as in Thunderball but an aquatic training facility in the Bahamas where Bond is being given a massage by Justine Lovesit. Also in attendance are fellow agents Felix Leiter and Fatima Blush, along with CIA underwater expert Hellinger.
Bond and Leiter are briefed about the Secretary General’s lost plane and that the White House had received a warning minutes before it happened from Blofeld. Leiter also informs Bond that the Russians have just lost another submarine which had secret decoding equipment on board, and Hellinger is assigned to fly out to an American recovery vehicle to find it.
It turns out Fatima is a double agent with SPECTRE, she and fellow operative Bomba sneaking Petachi into Shrublands who has been surgically altered to double for Hellinger. Fatima distracts Bond while Petachi finds and kills the real Hellinger. Petachi then infiltrates the recovery vessel while carrying a jamming device which is remotely activated by Largo. SPECTRE divers recover the submarine’s nuclear warheads and Largo then activates the device’s self-destruct, destroying the vessel with Petachi in it.
Bond returns to his London home where a SPECTRE agent poses as his cleaning lady, Effie. She plants a bomb in his Aston Martin and attempts another one under his bed when Fatima arrives. Bond confronts Fatima with his suspicion that she is working for SPECTRE, just as another operative comes crashing through the skylight. As Bond fights him, Fatima attempts to escape in his Aston Martin which explodes.
Returning to Shrublands, Bond is informed SPECTRE have contacted the American President and confirmed they have the Russian warheads. Unless their demands are met, one will be used to destroy an unnamed major city, the other detonated under the Antarctic ice cap which will flood the world.
Suspicion turns to Shark Island, a facility owned by Largo supposedly for cancer research. Bond and Leiter infiltrate the place and meet Fatima’s twin sister, Domino, who agrees to help them as she has come to hate Largo.
The agents discover a laboratory containing mechanical enhanced sharks before being captured. M sends in the troops to rescue them, by which time Largo and Maslov are back on Arkos. They plan to have a mechanical hammerhead shark carry one of the bombs to its target, accompanied by heat seeking tiger sharks. Unknown to them, a strategically planted homing device Bond had given Domino reveals New York as the target.
A mass evacuation and search of the city is undertaken. SPECTRE has commandeered the Statue of Liberty as its base, while the sharks take the now-primed device into the sewers.
A race against time ensues as Bond enters the sewers to locate the bomb before it explodes. There he is confronted by Bomba and the two fight before Bond sends him falling into the water to be ripped apart by the tiger sharks. Bond finds the hammerhead and attempts to defuse the device without success, until Q suddenly appears and does it for him in an obvious reference to Goldfinger.
The army attack the Statue of Liberty and Arkos rises in the bay for Largo to escape. But Bond manages to follow him onboard and the craft goes out of control when a misfired gun damages its controls. A glass tube rises around Largo and he is ejected into the ocean depths.
Bond and Domino evacuate Arkos in a mini life sub just as the craft is destroyed. Safely on the surface, the pair make love as the subs floats off into the horizon to the strains of Rule Britannia.
The notable thing about the screenplay is how gadget and spectacle-laden it is, very much in terms of You Only Live Twice (1967). Certainly a million miles from the cold war spy thrillers Len Deighton is known for, but also surprising as these were the very aspects that drove Connery away from the EON series feeling they were eclipsing him as an actor. Also curious is that Bond’s treacherous cleaning lady, Effie, shares the same name with Connery’s own mother!
Continued…
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Bond fans worldwide were certainly excited at the prospect of the movie, particularly those not impressed with the overtly slapstick direction the EON films had taken. McClory promised it would be less comedic though still fun, while Connery would portray Bond as a middle-aged but fit agent to suit his appearance. Richard Attenborough was selected to direct. Other casting proposals included Orson Welles as Largo, Trevor Howard as M and Gabrielle Drake playing Miss Moneypenny. When asked in one press interview if he might borrow Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell and Desmond Llewellyn, McClory cryptically replied “An interesting point” but said no more, probably as not to antagonise Cubby Broccoli.
Nevertheless, EON quickly raised legal objection to the proposed rival’s working title, James Bond of the Secret Service, claiming it sounded too similar to 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. McClory immediately appeased them by retitling it Warhead, which he preferred as punchier anyway. However, when he saw EON’s tentative screenplay for The Spy Who Loved Me, it was his turn to get legal.
Firstly, he claimed plagiarism as the plot also featured villains operating from an underwater base and hijacking nuclear missiles. However, this was ruled to be simply a coincidence of ideas or, perhaps, fishing from the same pond as both parties had visited the Expo ‘75 exhibition in Okinawa, Japan, which featured an underwater marine facility from which they took inspiration.
His second objection was to EON’s proposed return of Blofeld and a new generation SPECTRE made up of former members of organisations like the Baader-Meinhof, Black September and the Red Brigade who simply want to destroy society, not blackmail it.
McClory argued as Blofeld and SPECTRE were specifically created for what became his Thunderball property then he automatically owned them. Rather than risk a protracted court proceeding, Cubby agreed to remove them and substitute a Blofeld like villain with his own paramilitary organisation.
It may seem like McClory had the upper hand, but Cubby was not going to accept defeat easily. Everything was riding on the upcoming third Roger Moore entry, United Artists even upping the budget. It was going to be make or break for the EON series and lawyers instigated further litigations to at least hold up the rival movie and avoid simultaneous release.
Warhead was indeed delayed beyond its planned production date and The Spy Who Loved Me released for the 1977 summer market. It proved the very breakthrough hoped for and was declared the biggest grossing Bond film of all, though in real terms it actually ranked about fifth highest with, ironically, Thunderball still remaining the biggest box office draw.
Either way, it not only established Roger Moore’s Bond and moved him out of Connery’s shadow but also refortified the EON series under the sole command of Cubby Broccoli.
TEMPTING FATE
If the movie had not been such a success, it may well have elevated McClory and Warhead into a stronger position, but EON’s renewed confidence also determined their resolve to thwart McClory at every turn.
By the beginning of the 1980s Warhead seemed dead in the water, both Connery and Paramount departing the project. Cubby gave it his middle finger by having Blofeld visually appear in the pre credit of For Your Eyes Only (1981) only to kill him off.
Perhaps that was tempting fate as Warhead promptly returned to haunt him. The script found its way to producer Jack Schwartzman and he did a deal with McClory to get the movie independently produced. Being shrewder in legal matters, Schwartzman realised that sticking within the confines of the Thunderball storyline would pull much of the rug from under EON’s lawyers. The Connery/Deighton proposal went beyond a remake and he decided it was best dropped, though Connery himself was hooked back in with the offer of a bigger hand in casting and production.
Never Say Never Again finally arrived in autumn 1983 some months after Octopussy with Roger Moore, its ironic title being something Michelle Connery is again to be thanked for. Of course both EON and the Fleming estate did their best to prevent its release virtually up to its première, but Schwartzman’s strategy paid off. He even offered to credit the picture “Albert R. Broccoli Presents” but Cubby was not interested.
As scripted by Lorenzo Semple Jnr with an uncredited rewrite by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who had performed the same service on 1979’s Moonraker), it did manage some variation on Thunderball in terms of incidents and characterisations. It even referenced Warhead with radio controlled sharks, a bomb under Bond’s bed and one of the hijacked nuclear bombs (now Cruise missiles) being hidden in the sewers below an American city, only this time Washington.
While the return of Sean Connery as James Bond was widely welcomed, for many the film didn’t quite live up to the expectation of a seven year wait and clearly not the movie promised back in 1976. Though box office takings came second to those of Octopussy, it was a big enough success to spur McClory on further.
He next declared an alternate series of Bond films based on the various scripts he worked on back in 1959, even though they all told basically the same story. Warhead 8 was proposed with Lewis Collins possibly playing 007 despite him having already been rejected by EON, but got no further. McClory later decided on a James Bond TV series with Liam Neeson until EON pointed out they owned the exclusive television rights under their agreement with the Fleming estate.
At the end of the 1990s, McClory brought in the big guns of Sony Pictures for Warhead 2000 A.D. which promised to reinstate Timothy Dalton as 007 with Sean Connery as Blofeld and George Lazenby as a SPECTRE assassin. Sony also backed his latest claim that the movie Bond was rightfully partly his and demanded a share of the billions the EON franchise was estimated to have earned. It was a gamble too far that backfired with the courts throwing the claim out and Sony having to settle with EON and MGM/UA.
Not only did Sony now have to relinquish any claim on James Bond, but also the film rights to Casino Royale which had come into their possession with acquired ownership of the 1967 spoof film version. Ironic that McClory’s action not only handed EON the one other 007 novel that had previously escaped them, but the basis on which they would come to reinvigorate their franchise in 2006 with Daniel Craig.
This proved the end of the road for McClory who retired to private life with all his cards now played, and he died on 20 November 2006 just four days after the release of Casino Royale. In 2013 MGM and Danjaq, the holding company owned by the Broccoli family, finally acquired McClory’s entire Bond interests through a deal with his estate. With all eggs now in one basket, they set about reintroducing Blofeld and his organisation for 2015’s SPECTRE.
Those who have actually read the Warhead script agree that, if made at the time, it would have been the most spectacular Bond movie to date. And with a few updates it could arguably be a viable storyline today in the tradition of the classic James Bond films. Given EON now own McClory’s stake in the screenplay, they could do worse than consider it for the next direction of the franchise.
END OF ARTICLE
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I didn’t realise that the plot of enemy agents attempting to detonate a nuke on an American airbase, as later used in Octopussy, came from the early ideas for Thunderball. A shame Fleming didn’t use it as I think it’s a bit stronger than the stolen bombs thing.
The article misses that Pierce Brosnan approached McClory to try and start his own rival Bond project, apparently sometime in the early 90s. I think that’s quite a surprising note.
And who knew that Thunderball made the equivalent of “$1,330 billion” - easily the highest grossing film of all time by about a thousand times! 😜
That synopsis does sound spectacular but maybe too much so. Yes, a few details that were used in NSNA are there but also some generic 60s spy stuff that would better fit a Matt Helm film (Justine Lovesit = Lovey Kravezit). Fatima and Domino being twins is a good idea though they seem to have ignored Bomba's partner, Thumpa.
The McClory saga went on and on, and it must have been a continued worry for Eon even long after the point when McClory could have realistically succeeded in making another film.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,918Chief of Staff
An excellent piece, CHB - thanks for sharing…the proposed McClory film Warhead changed many times, both in script and leading actor 👀
Thanks, CHB. 'Infinity''s articles are always a fascinating read, and lavishly illustrated. I've found before, though, that, in some of their content, details here and there need fact-checking.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Comments
That's true, though his case appears stronger than some.
Good article, enjoyed reading that.
I watched all the UFO episodes a couple of years back and while I get the good looking angle, as a lead actor for me, he misses something, a little raw charisma perhaps. That's something Sean and Roger had in spades.
Yes, I wonder 🤔
For those who are not aware, the original Windmill Theatre was famous for its nude models who had to stand perfectly still throughout the performance. It was home to many comedians who honed their acts there including Dick Emery, Bruce Forsyth, Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers.
It was also famous for the slogan “We never closed” referring to the fact that the theatre remained open during WW2, even during the Blitz. It closed in 1964 and since then has been a cinema, a revue show bar, a cabaret club and is currently an adult entertainment venue.
From INFINITY #78
LICENCE REVOKED!
Barry McCann looks back at Warhead, the best 007 movie we never had, and one which may well have starred Richard Burton, Rod Taylor or Laurence Harvey as James Bond!
If there is one thing that fans of long running film franchises love more than discussing their favourite entries, it has to be speculating about the planned movies that didn’t make it. The James Bond series certainly has its share of casualties, including among others the Gerry Anderson-sponsored Moonraker proposal that was replaced by Diamonds Are Forever (1971), or Timothy Dalton’s Hong Kong based third adventure that may well have pitted him against Anthony Hopkins and Whoopi Goldberg!
But the most mourned near miss has to be the Kevin McClory project of the mid to late 1970s, a producer who was first at making a serious attempt to bring James Bond to the big screen only to see that ship sail with the EON flag flying from its mast. And if Cubby Broccoli had not got his way, 1977 would have seen The Spy Who Loved Me with Roger Moore up against Warhead… Starring Sean Connery!
“The Battle of the Bonds” became the much used headline during 1976 as newspapers and magazines enthusiastically reported on the prospect of not one but two new James Bond films being set up for release against each other, the latest entry in the legitimate EON series going head to head with a rival by Thunderball producer Kevin McClory. But the story of how that situation evolved starts back in 1959.
Kevin McClory was an independent Irish film producer who had just completed his debut feature, The Boy and the Bridge, and now looking for a follow up project. Meanwhile, Ian Fleming had been seeking to get his Bond novels filmed following the 1954 American TV version of Casino Royale. He subsequently sold its movie rights to Gregory Ratoff, with options on Live and Let Die to Alexander Korda and Moonraker to Rank, but none of these came to fruition.
McClory also recognised the screen potential of James Bond, but not necessarily the existing novels.
He approached Fleming with the proposition of composing an original 007 screenplay tailored more specifically to cinema audiences, and thus the project James Bond, Secret Agent was initiated.
Being a keen scuba diver, McClory suggested the story should involve underwater action and be set in the Bahamas where he planned to set up a film studio that could be rented out for other productions. He also wanted the plot to revolve around a stolen nuclear bomb hidden beneath the sea, Bond’s mission to recover it.
Ian Fleming’s American friend Ernest Cuneo was invited on board to compose a story memo in which Bond uncovers a plot by agents from behind the Iron Curtain to detonate a nuclear device on an American military base. The Bahamas would serve as the location of transfer for the bomb, and climax in an underwater battle between frogmen on both sides which really got McClory excited.
Fleming then worked this up into a fuller screen treatment for which he substituted the Mafia as the antagonists, arguing that in the two years it would take the film to be made, the world political stage may change and the Russians no longer the bad guys! He devised a Mafiosi head, Henrico Largo, who operates under the cover of his own nightclub outside Epping Forest where he plans to snatch an atomic bomb from a nearby airbase, and transfer it to Nassau using his 500 ton yacht ‘The Virginian.’
Fleming also gave Largo a mistress in the form of Domino Smith, with whom Bond ingratiates himself and persuades to help him undermine the gangster. Following the planned underwater battle, the story was to climax with Domino shooting Largo in the back with a spear gun as he is about to kill Bond.
Jack Whittingham expanded this into a script titled Longitude 78 West for which the villain was now Giovanni “Joe” Largo and Domino renamed Gaby. The other major departure was a more downbeat ending in which Largo escapes with the bomb on a plane, only for Gaby who is also on board to detonate the device once safely at sea and sacrificing her own life.
A HITCHCOCK BOND?
With a screen story more or less settled, the consortium of McClory, Whittingham and Fleming set about trying to raise studio interest only to encounter disinterest. Despite talking up the project with suggestions of Alfred Hitchcock directing and Richard Burton starring, McClory was not a major league producer and his The Boy and the Bridge debut feature had flopped. By the end of 1960, the three parted company and moved onto other projects.
For Fleming this was to be his next Bond novel for which he used much of the abandoned film’s plot and some characters including Largo and Domino, in addition to a new criminal organisation SPECTRE and its head, Ernst Stavros Blofeld, to replace the Mafia as villains. He even dedicated the book to Ernest Cuneo. Unfortunately, he neglected to clear all this with McClory and Whittingham, or acknowledge their input and ensure some sort of recompense for it. Upon seeing an advance copy of the 1961 Thunderball, McClory contacted his lawyer. In the meantime Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli secured the movie rights to all the Bond novels, except Casino Royale which Gregory Ratoff had leased long term and attempted to film in 1960 with Peter Finch. His untimely death later that year halted the project and his widow sold it onto Charles K. Feldman, but that is another story.
Saltzman and Broccoli selected Thunderball as their first adaptation, and had Richard Maibum produce a screenplay. However, when advised the novel had become the subject of a plagiarism charge and now a legal hot potato, it was tabled and they went with Dr. No instead.
The dispute finally came to trial in November 1963, a month after the release of EON’s second Bond film with Sean Connery, From Russia with Love. After just nine days McClory won damages of £35,000 plus £52,000 costs from Fleming, but more importantly he was awarded the exclusive movie rights to Thunderball.
McClory was now in the unique position of being only one of two producers outside EON who owned a Bond property and gleefully announced his intention to produce Thunderball as a rival to the official series, suggesting Richard Burton (again), Rod Taylor or Lawrence Harvey as James Bond. He even went so far as to announce Yugoslavian born Italian actress Sylva Koscina to play Domino.
Despite this outward display of confidence, McClory’s heart of hearts suspected that a Bond film without the already established Sean Connery or Monty Norman theme tune was going to be a difficult sell. And with word going around the industry that the upcoming Goldfinger promised to be even bigger than the first two, he decided to hang fire and see how it fared.
Sure enough, Goldfinger enjoyed a blockbuster opening in 1964 with queues around the block and cinemas booking extra performances to meet demand. It confirmed to McClory the game was up and within days of the première he invited Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli to his home in Dublin to find a mutual way forward.
A co-produced movie of Thunderball was agreed, the set up being McClory would produce it for EON as part of the official series. For Harry and Cubby it meant they finally got the very Bond epic they had wanted to do in the first place, and removed the threat of a rival made version. For McClory, it meant he got the vital ingredient of Sean Connery and the lasting friendship that forged between the two was to pay dividends later.
CHRISTMAS 007 TREAT
Thunderball enjoyed its UK première in late December 1965 and proved the Christmas present audiences were waiting for, even out performing Goldfinger in terms of admissions. Indeed, it still remains the most successful 007 film of all in real terms, inflation accounted figures estimating an equivalent gross of $1,330 billion.
The alliance of McClory and EON proved triumphant but was only ever going to be a one off partnership, and as part of the deal McClory agreed not to further exploit Thunderball for a ten year period following the film’s general release in 1966. EON evidently reasoned the Bond series would have ran its course by then, and they were very nearly right.
In fact, by 1976 the James Bond series was in crisis. Connery had long since departed and while Roger Moore made a successful debut in Live and Let Die (1973), his second outing The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) had underperformed. Not a financial flop by any means, but a downturn on the previous takings so serious as to question whether Moore was being accepted as 007 after all. Or, worse still, was Bond himself becoming old hat?
The situation was not helped by Harry Saltzman finding himself in debt thanks to misfired business investments against which he pledged his stock of EON, putting the company itself in trouble. In the end, the backing studio United Artists bought Saltzman out and put Broccoli in sole charge of the Bond films.
Having just the title of the Fleming novel The Spy Who Loved Me at his disposal (Fleming considered the book a failure and stipulated it should not be filmed), Cubby now had to find a wholly original screenplay that would prove a shot in the arm for the series. Then along came the announcement he must have been secretly dreading.
With the Thunderball film rights released back to McClory, he immediately announced his intention to update its concept as a breakaway Bond movie of his own. Cubby knew trying to stop him would be difficult as he did have a legal right, but things really heated up when Sean Connery’s name became attached to the proposal.
It had been five years since Connery had hung up his shoulder holster for the second time, during which he grumpily insisted he would not be taking it up again. However, McClory tantalised Connery with the prospect of co-writing a Bond screenplay with none other than Len Deighton.
McClory surmised that Connery’s experience of playing Bond gave him a unique understanding of the character, which would be valuable to the script. Connery also publically insisted that would be the extent of his involvement, though cheekily suggested he might play M to a new boy as 007.
Everyone knew this to be an obvious ploy by McClory in tempting Connery back to playing Bond himself, and he had the second Mrs. Connery to thank for the tactic working.
When Connery told his wife Michelle how rewarding the script writing was proving, she replied “Well, if it’s going so well why don’t you play the part?”
Now that the “Real James Bond” was headlining the project, Paramount agreed to bankroll it with a generous budget to ensure a big affair as demanded by the Connery/Deighton screenplay. So what exactly was their re-imagining of Thunderball about?
BERMUDA TRIANGLE
The story opens on board the mobile underwater base Arkos, where Largo and a scientist called Maslov use a jamming device to bring down a plane carrying the Secretary General of the United Nations into the Bermuda Triangle, crashing into its depths where a graveyard of other aircraft and ships lie on the seabed.
Elsewhere on the Arkos, Blofeld is chairing progress reports from his SPECTRE agents and suspects one of embezzlement. He activates a glass tube that rises around the agent before he descends and is flushed out to a watery grave. Blofeld plans to take control of the seas and the conference watch a monitor as Largo sends a diver in a pressure suit to retrieve the warheads from a recently sunken Russian submarine. However, they are interrupted by a recovery vessel sailing into the area and Largo leaves the diver to die as depth pressure penetrates the suit.
The action switches to Shrublands, no longer a health farm as in Thunderball but an aquatic training facility in the Bahamas where Bond is being given a massage by Justine Lovesit. Also in attendance are fellow agents Felix Leiter and Fatima Blush, along with CIA underwater expert Hellinger.
Bond and Leiter are briefed about the Secretary General’s lost plane and that the White House had received a warning minutes before it happened from Blofeld. Leiter also informs Bond that the Russians have just lost another submarine which had secret decoding equipment on board, and Hellinger is assigned to fly out to an American recovery vehicle to find it.
It turns out Fatima is a double agent with SPECTRE, she and fellow operative Bomba sneaking Petachi into Shrublands who has been surgically altered to double for Hellinger. Fatima distracts Bond while Petachi finds and kills the real Hellinger. Petachi then infiltrates the recovery vessel while carrying a jamming device which is remotely activated by Largo. SPECTRE divers recover the submarine’s nuclear warheads and Largo then activates the device’s self-destruct, destroying the vessel with Petachi in it.
Bond returns to his London home where a SPECTRE agent poses as his cleaning lady, Effie. She plants a bomb in his Aston Martin and attempts another one under his bed when Fatima arrives. Bond confronts Fatima with his suspicion that she is working for SPECTRE, just as another operative comes crashing through the skylight. As Bond fights him, Fatima attempts to escape in his Aston Martin which explodes.
Returning to Shrublands, Bond is informed SPECTRE have contacted the American President and confirmed they have the Russian warheads. Unless their demands are met, one will be used to destroy an unnamed major city, the other detonated under the Antarctic ice cap which will flood the world.
Suspicion turns to Shark Island, a facility owned by Largo supposedly for cancer research. Bond and Leiter infiltrate the place and meet Fatima’s twin sister, Domino, who agrees to help them as she has come to hate Largo.
The agents discover a laboratory containing mechanical enhanced sharks before being captured. M sends in the troops to rescue them, by which time Largo and Maslov are back on Arkos. They plan to have a mechanical hammerhead shark carry one of the bombs to its target, accompanied by heat seeking tiger sharks. Unknown to them, a strategically planted homing device Bond had given Domino reveals New York as the target.
A mass evacuation and search of the city is undertaken. SPECTRE has commandeered the Statue of Liberty as its base, while the sharks take the now-primed device into the sewers.
A race against time ensues as Bond enters the sewers to locate the bomb before it explodes. There he is confronted by Bomba and the two fight before Bond sends him falling into the water to be ripped apart by the tiger sharks. Bond finds the hammerhead and attempts to defuse the device without success, until Q suddenly appears and does it for him in an obvious reference to Goldfinger.
The army attack the Statue of Liberty and Arkos rises in the bay for Largo to escape. But Bond manages to follow him onboard and the craft goes out of control when a misfired gun damages its controls. A glass tube rises around Largo and he is ejected into the ocean depths.
Bond and Domino evacuate Arkos in a mini life sub just as the craft is destroyed. Safely on the surface, the pair make love as the subs floats off into the horizon to the strains of Rule Britannia.
The notable thing about the screenplay is how gadget and spectacle-laden it is, very much in terms of You Only Live Twice (1967). Certainly a million miles from the cold war spy thrillers Len Deighton is known for, but also surprising as these were the very aspects that drove Connery away from the EON series feeling they were eclipsing him as an actor. Also curious is that Bond’s treacherous cleaning lady, Effie, shares the same name with Connery’s own mother!
Continued…
Continued…
EXCITING PROSPECT
Bond fans worldwide were certainly excited at the prospect of the movie, particularly those not impressed with the overtly slapstick direction the EON films had taken. McClory promised it would be less comedic though still fun, while Connery would portray Bond as a middle-aged but fit agent to suit his appearance. Richard Attenborough was selected to direct. Other casting proposals included Orson Welles as Largo, Trevor Howard as M and Gabrielle Drake playing Miss Moneypenny. When asked in one press interview if he might borrow Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell and Desmond Llewellyn, McClory cryptically replied “An interesting point” but said no more, probably as not to antagonise Cubby Broccoli.
Nevertheless, EON quickly raised legal objection to the proposed rival’s working title, James Bond of the Secret Service, claiming it sounded too similar to 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. McClory immediately appeased them by retitling it Warhead, which he preferred as punchier anyway. However, when he saw EON’s tentative screenplay for The Spy Who Loved Me, it was his turn to get legal.
Firstly, he claimed plagiarism as the plot also featured villains operating from an underwater base and hijacking nuclear missiles. However, this was ruled to be simply a coincidence of ideas or, perhaps, fishing from the same pond as both parties had visited the Expo ‘75 exhibition in Okinawa, Japan, which featured an underwater marine facility from which they took inspiration.
His second objection was to EON’s proposed return of Blofeld and a new generation SPECTRE made up of former members of organisations like the Baader-Meinhof, Black September and the Red Brigade who simply want to destroy society, not blackmail it.
McClory argued as Blofeld and SPECTRE were specifically created for what became his Thunderball property then he automatically owned them. Rather than risk a protracted court proceeding, Cubby agreed to remove them and substitute a Blofeld like villain with his own paramilitary organisation.
It may seem like McClory had the upper hand, but Cubby was not going to accept defeat easily. Everything was riding on the upcoming third Roger Moore entry, United Artists even upping the budget. It was going to be make or break for the EON series and lawyers instigated further litigations to at least hold up the rival movie and avoid simultaneous release.
Warhead was indeed delayed beyond its planned production date and The Spy Who Loved Me released for the 1977 summer market. It proved the very breakthrough hoped for and was declared the biggest grossing Bond film of all, though in real terms it actually ranked about fifth highest with, ironically, Thunderball still remaining the biggest box office draw.
Either way, it not only established Roger Moore’s Bond and moved him out of Connery’s shadow but also refortified the EON series under the sole command of Cubby Broccoli.
TEMPTING FATE
If the movie had not been such a success, it may well have elevated McClory and Warhead into a stronger position, but EON’s renewed confidence also determined their resolve to thwart McClory at every turn.
By the beginning of the 1980s Warhead seemed dead in the water, both Connery and Paramount departing the project. Cubby gave it his middle finger by having Blofeld visually appear in the pre credit of For Your Eyes Only (1981) only to kill him off.
Perhaps that was tempting fate as Warhead promptly returned to haunt him. The script found its way to producer Jack Schwartzman and he did a deal with McClory to get the movie independently produced. Being shrewder in legal matters, Schwartzman realised that sticking within the confines of the Thunderball storyline would pull much of the rug from under EON’s lawyers. The Connery/Deighton proposal went beyond a remake and he decided it was best dropped, though Connery himself was hooked back in with the offer of a bigger hand in casting and production.
Never Say Never Again finally arrived in autumn 1983 some months after Octopussy with Roger Moore, its ironic title being something Michelle Connery is again to be thanked for. Of course both EON and the Fleming estate did their best to prevent its release virtually up to its première, but Schwartzman’s strategy paid off. He even offered to credit the picture “Albert R. Broccoli Presents” but Cubby was not interested.
As scripted by Lorenzo Semple Jnr with an uncredited rewrite by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who had performed the same service on 1979’s Moonraker), it did manage some variation on Thunderball in terms of incidents and characterisations. It even referenced Warhead with radio controlled sharks, a bomb under Bond’s bed and one of the hijacked nuclear bombs (now Cruise missiles) being hidden in the sewers below an American city, only this time Washington.
While the return of Sean Connery as James Bond was widely welcomed, for many the film didn’t quite live up to the expectation of a seven year wait and clearly not the movie promised back in 1976. Though box office takings came second to those of Octopussy, it was a big enough success to spur McClory on further.
He next declared an alternate series of Bond films based on the various scripts he worked on back in 1959, even though they all told basically the same story. Warhead 8 was proposed with Lewis Collins possibly playing 007 despite him having already been rejected by EON, but got no further. McClory later decided on a James Bond TV series with Liam Neeson until EON pointed out they owned the exclusive television rights under their agreement with the Fleming estate.
At the end of the 1990s, McClory brought in the big guns of Sony Pictures for Warhead 2000 A.D. which promised to reinstate Timothy Dalton as 007 with Sean Connery as Blofeld and George Lazenby as a SPECTRE assassin. Sony also backed his latest claim that the movie Bond was rightfully partly his and demanded a share of the billions the EON franchise was estimated to have earned. It was a gamble too far that backfired with the courts throwing the claim out and Sony having to settle with EON and MGM/UA.
Not only did Sony now have to relinquish any claim on James Bond, but also the film rights to Casino Royale which had come into their possession with acquired ownership of the 1967 spoof film version. Ironic that McClory’s action not only handed EON the one other 007 novel that had previously escaped them, but the basis on which they would come to reinvigorate their franchise in 2006 with Daniel Craig.
This proved the end of the road for McClory who retired to private life with all his cards now played, and he died on 20 November 2006 just four days after the release of Casino Royale. In 2013 MGM and Danjaq, the holding company owned by the Broccoli family, finally acquired McClory’s entire Bond interests through a deal with his estate. With all eggs now in one basket, they set about reintroducing Blofeld and his organisation for 2015’s SPECTRE.
Those who have actually read the Warhead script agree that, if made at the time, it would have been the most spectacular Bond movie to date. And with a few updates it could arguably be a viable storyline today in the tradition of the classic James Bond films. Given EON now own McClory’s stake in the screenplay, they could do worse than consider it for the next direction of the franchise.
END OF ARTICLE
I didn’t realise that the plot of enemy agents attempting to detonate a nuke on an American airbase, as later used in Octopussy, came from the early ideas for Thunderball. A shame Fleming didn’t use it as I think it’s a bit stronger than the stolen bombs thing.
The article misses that Pierce Brosnan approached McClory to try and start his own rival Bond project, apparently sometime in the early 90s. I think that’s quite a surprising note.
And who knew that Thunderball made the equivalent of “$1,330 billion” - easily the highest grossing film of all time by about a thousand times! 😜
Thanks for that, CHB.
That synopsis does sound spectacular but maybe too much so. Yes, a few details that were used in NSNA are there but also some generic 60s spy stuff that would better fit a Matt Helm film (Justine Lovesit = Lovey Kravezit). Fatima and Domino being twins is a good idea though they seem to have ignored Bomba's partner, Thumpa.
The McClory saga went on and on, and it must have been a continued worry for Eon even long after the point when McClory could have realistically succeeded in making another film.
An excellent piece, CHB - thanks for sharing…the proposed McClory film Warhead changed many times, both in script and leading actor 👀
Thanks, CHB. 'Infinity''s articles are always a fascinating read, and lavishly illustrated. I've found before, though, that, in some of their content, details here and there need fact-checking.