As we are in the 60th year of Bond movies, I thought I'd take a look back at my thoughts from 10 years ago. Originally published in Starburst Magazine, here we are:
THE SWINGING SIXTIES!
Fifty years of James Bond films. Wow! In this
celebratory year I thought I’d take the opportunity to reflect on five decades
of the EON produced 007 movies (not to mention the several oddities churned out
by rival companies during those years). Rather than write a straight-forward
account of the familiar facts and figures,
I’d like to share with you my personal experience of the Bond movies, as
I have been very fortunate indeed to have seen them all in order of production.
I was born in 1964 in Wigan; as far removed from the
glamorous world of Ian Fleming and his creation as it’s possible to get. Coming
from a very poor family, I never got to see the earliest Bonds on the big
screen, and so my first encounter with an EON epic came when ITV purchased the
rights to screen every 007 movie way back in the mid 1970s. The closest I came
to Bond was when my mum took the kids to the cinema on my birthday around 1970
to see Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm in ‘The Silencers’. I loved it.
The colour! The exotic locations! The funky 60s music! The trouble was that my
mum, Gawd bless her, had got the screening times wrong, and we actually walked
in around halfway through the film! We then proceeded to watch the first part
of the next screening (you were allowed to do that in 1970), and so my first
cinematic experience was a pretty confusing and bizarre one. Nevertheless, I
was blinded by the glamour, and it would be a few decades before I saw the film
again and realised just how awful it was when compared to the Bonds.
I was a big fan of the original Fleming novels, which
were passed around school along with the dog-eared dirty magazines that puzzled
many a pubescent youth with their explicit depictions of the female anatomy. I
remember well being totally confused by a full page photo of a lady’s
undercarriage. My friends and I thought it was a malformed gentleman, and would
only discover the truth many years later. But I digress. Back to the Bond
books. I loved them. Probably as much for the naughty bits as the salivating
descriptions of scrambled egg breakfasts and Beluga Caviar (whatever the heck
THAT was!). Fleming wrote fast-paced, gritty and imaginative novels about a man
with the outward charm of George Sanders, and the ice cold heart of a born
assassin. We all wanted to be Bond; suave, tough, ruthless, and with an
insatiable sexual appetite. So, by the time I saw my first Bond movie, I was
well steeped in the character’s literary origins.
I was always aware of the films, as they were
constantly in the newspapers, and there were the odd clips on 70s tv shows such
as ‘Screen Test’ and ‘Clapperboard’. Everybody knew the Bond theme, and the
songs were always on the radio. I remember my more affluent school chums
excitedly recounting their excursions to see Diamonds Are Forever in the
cinema; the closest I came was jealously pawing a toy Moon Buggy a mate brought
in to class one day. The films were like a forbidden fruit to me, and I began
to think I would never see one. Then ITV came to the rescue. With ‘The Man With
The Golden Gun’ in cinemas at the time, I couldn’t believe it when I read the
films were going to be shown on the telly. The telly!!
Riding on the bus to school on a damp morning in October 1975, I remember thinking that the streets would be empty that night when ‘Dr No’ (1962) was on. I was excited beyond belief, and it was all anybody was talking about at school. A James Bond film on the telly! Remember kids, those were dark days without the internet, Facebook, mobiles, etc. If you were living in a small Northern town back then you may as well be on a desert island. I’d read the novel, and I couldn’t wait to see it brought to life. Even though we only had a black and white tv, into which we had to put 10p in the slot at the back every couple of hours, I was entranced. Following the announcer’s introduction, the screen went black.
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Several small white dots paraded across, until one widened to become what appeared to be the view down the barrel of a gun. A man wearing a trilby hat and wearing a dark suit and tie walked into shot, he spun around and fired his own gun at us. Blood seemed to drip down the screen as our sight of the man wobbled. Blimey! I’d been shot dead by James Bond! The ‘gunbarrel sequence’ would become a classic Bond movie trademark, and here was I seeing it for the very first time. The opening credits with Maurice Binder’s dancing dots, enhanced by John Barry’s fabulous rendition of Monty Norman’s theme, blew me away. I’d seen nothing like it before. Brought up on a diet of the ITC action tv shows, and my personal favourite ‘The Saint’, this was a dream come true for me.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Sean Connery before, but he was everything Bond should be. His introductory scene was a masterclass of Hitchcockian style and suspense. We see only the back of his head as he plays a card game in a smokey casino. A beautiful lady sits opposite him, as he beats her effortlessly. Obviously losing heavily, she orders another small fortune in chips. Then we hear the voice: “I admire your courage, Miss...?”. Close up on actress Eunice Gayson , who gives the icy retort “Trench, Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr...”. and here we go. Lift off!! We cut to the man opposite as he slowly raises a lighter to the cigarette dangling from the lips of his cruel mouth, and purrs “Bond, James Bond”. What an introduction! Connery had it all. He looked like a man who would break your face if you looked at him the wrong way. He had the confidence of someone in possession of the world’s biggest and most powerful tool (I’m talking confidence here, so stop sniggering at the back there!), and in the words of Tony Christie, he walked like a panther. James Bond had arrived on the telly, and I’m guessing the viewing figures must have been around 20 million. 007 had stepped down from the rarefied atmosphere of the big screen and was now crashing into our front rooms. ‘Dr No’ was a cracking start, and a hugely successful adaptation of the Fleming novel. It was also pretty sadistic stuff with Bond shooting an unarmed man several times in the back, date raping an enemy agent, and ordering a colleague to break a young woman’s arm. And of course we had Ursula Andress as the first and most iconic of Bond girls, Honeychile Rider.
When she emerged from the sea in that white bikini, the
entire male population must have given out a collective sigh (as well as
readjusting their trousers). She looked stunning. Statuesque, dripping with
feral sensuality, and ready to knife any man in the heart if he tried getting
his hands on her cockles and mussels (and she carried a hell of a big knife!).
And there I was. A mere 10 years old, watching the first ever Bond movie on the
telly in a miserably cold maisonette in Wigan. We had no central heating, and
there was only the coal fire in the living room for warmth. But that night,
gathered on a winter’s evening in front of a flickering black and white tv set,
I was in heaven. In the years before video recorders, you had to pay close
attention. If you missed anything, you wouldn’t get a chance to see it again
for a very long time. In those days we focussed intently on every moment, even
to the extent of reading through the end credits while savouring that wonderful
theme music. And there, right at the end, was the teaser announcement – ‘The
end of ‘Dr No’, but James Bond will return in ‘From Russia With Love’. Wow!!!
From that point on I was obsessed with the Bond films,
and safe in the knowledge that I would get to see each and every one of them
over the coming years, in order (which IS a big deal!), kept me going as a shy,
poverty-stricken kid who was always next to last to be picked for the football
team during games lessons. I attended St Thomas More High School from 1975 to
1980, and believe me it was rough. We had the most sadistic P.E. teacher
imaginable in the form of short-arsed Mr McGuiness. A man who told everybody,
and with a straight face, that he been in the army, navy, air force, and the
SAS (whatever that was!). Wigan in the 1970s was pretty grim. I remember loving
‘The Persuaders’ on tv, and saving up for the annual I’d seen in the local
newsagents. I saved up a whole 15p, but when I took it to the shop I was told
that the price sticker said £1.50. I was devastated. I would eventually find
the book again a decade later in a second hand shop in Manchester, but it was
rubbish. Most annuals were back then. All they seemed to consist of were
terrible comic strips and dubious text stories, with vaguely connected articles
on associated subjects such as ‘crime over the centuries’, ‘fashion in the
70s’, and sparse ‘Fact Files’ on Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. My weekly pocket
money of 5p(FIVE PENCE!) enabled me to buy a Wagon Wheel and a small bottle of
Coke from the mobile shop, and I was lucky if I got the occasional Whizzer and
Chips comic book. Those were the days, eh?!
Around six months later I sat down to watch ‘From
Russia With Love’. I’d been impressed by how closely ‘Dr No’ had stuck to the
original novel, and I was to be delighted again by EON’s faithful adaptation of
President John F Kennedy’s favourite 007 book. Once again we got the fantastic
gunbarrel opening, and the first pre-credits ‘teaser’ sequence featuring Bond
being stalked by night through the grounds of
an impressive mansion (in reality the gardens of Pinewood Studios).
Actor Robert Shaw played the psychotic agent of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Donovan ‘Red’
Grant with an icy efficiency that would be the benchmark for all Bond henchmen
to come. He strangles Bond quite graphically with what looked like a cheese
wire drawn from his wristwatch, but the rug is pulled from under us when a mask
is peeled from the dead man’s face to reveal an imposter. It was all a test,
and a great teasing opening for the movie. John Barry had so impressed with his
rendition of the James Bond theme that he was brought back to score the whole
movie, replacing ‘Dr No’ composer Monty Norman. In the previous film, Barry had
taken a few written notes for Norman’s intended Bond theme, and produced a
barnstorming piece of music that would become famous the world over, and used
repeatedly in every Bond movie to come. When one listens to Norman’s theme
played during ‘Dr No’ it is pretty feeble when compared to Barry’s
interpretation. The fact that Norman gets a credit (and royalties) on every 007
movie has always annoyed the heck out of me. That Norman disappeared into
relative obscurity, while Barry became a 5 time Oscar-winning success with
eleven Bond scores in total says everything.
FRWL (1963) was another thrilling espionage adventure, with Connery cementing the role of the globe-hopping, ruthless, womanising British agent. This was an intricately plotted tale with Bond the target of the international crime organisation known as the Special Executive for Crime, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, headed by the mysterious figure referred to only as ‘Number One’. We only see this character’s hands as he sits stroking a white cat whilst giving out orders to kill Bond and ruin his reputation. This was all good stuff! Daniela Bianchi was a bit of a letdown as Bond’s leading lady, the Russian double agent Tanya Romanova though. Following the Amazonian goddess that was Ursula Andress was always going to be a tall order, and Ms Bianchi turned out to be a bit of a wet lettuce. Thankfully we had the exotic Martine Beswick as a fiery gypsy girl snarling and scratching her way into Bond’s affections.
In one of the best fist
fights ever seen on screen, Connery and Shaw battle it out aboard The Orient
Express in a brutal and bone-shattering encounter, the likes of which would
only be seen again decades later during Daniel Craig’s era. Interestingly,
Connery and Shaw would meet again on screen in 1976’s ‘Robin and Marian (scored
by John Barry), and indulge in an even more violent encounter on the
battlefield. Once again, I loved every minute. I was a little puzzled by Lotte
Lenya’s character as the evil SPECTRE agent, Rosa Klebb, who has obvious
designs on the innocent Tanya. I had no idea what a lesbian was back then, and
the usually attractive Lenya’s appearance as an ugly, military uniform attired
hag wearing huge black-rimmed glasses was certainly an unsavoury and highly
prejudiced depiction. Never mind, at least she got shot in the back at the end!
Goldfinger (1964) was next up, and here was the one we’d been waiting for. Shirley Bassey’s lung-busting performance of the theme song had been a huge hit, and everybody knew the tune. Then there was the gadget-filled Aston Martin, the gold-painted Shirley Eaton (seen virtually naked; hubba hubba!), and the wonderful bowler-hatted huge oriental henchman, ‘OddJob’. Plus of course the outrageously named ‘Pussy Galore’ (Honor Blackman)! This was the Bond movie I felt I’d already seen, such was the power of its iconic imagery.
A change in director – Guy Hamilton replacing Terence
Young – ushered in a more tongue-in-cheek approach which set the template for
future Bond movies (reaching its farcical nadir during the Roger Moore era, and
only being completely eradicated with the appearance of Daniel Craig’s ruthless
007 in 2006). Goldfinger was huge. The massive Fort Knox set, the car chase
around Goldfinger’s factory (in reality the alleyways of Pinewood Studios) with
Bond’s Aston Martin firing machine guns, emitting clouds of smoke, and spewing
nails and oil slicks at its pursuers, and the climactic hand-to-hand battle
with OddJob culminating in the man mountain’s electrocution by Bond. Hugely
entertaining, and leaving one thinking “Well, where do we go from here?”
Thunderball (1965) threw in everything but the kitchen sink, and was the first Bond movie to be co-produced by the infamous Kevin McClory. Back in the late 50s, Ian Fleming had written a script with McClory and Jack Whittingham for a pilot episode of a proposed tv series to be called ‘James Bond Of The Secret Service’. The series never materialised, and Fleming went on to adapt the script into a novel, renaming it ‘Thunderball’. McClory and Whittingham were a little upset when Fleming refused to acknowledge their contribution, but they eventually received recognition when credited on the new film. McClory demanded to be onboard as co-producer, alongside EON’s Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and was allowed the rights to produce his own film version after EON’s rights elapsed in ten years time. In hindsight, this can be seen as rather short-sighted by EON, but nobody ever expected the Bond movies to last more than a decade. A great pre-title sequence saw Bond duking it out with a SPECTRE agent at a funeral. The agent, dressed as the dead man’s widow battles furiously with Connery, throwing tables, chairs, and a plant pot at him before being strangled with a poker. The sight of Bond punching what appeared to be a woman in the face was a great shock, and the fight sequence borders on parody as agent 007 trades punches with a man in a frock. The brutal nature of the fight stifles any potential sniggering at stuntman Bob Simmons (who had also doubled as Bond in the opening gunbarrels) wearing a black skirt, heavy make-up, and high heels. Unfortunately we had another drippy leading lady in the shapely form of model Claudine Auger, but us schoolboys were amply compensated once again by the sultry Martine Beswick returning in a different guise as a fellow M.I.6 agent; in a bikini. We were doubly delighted by the kinky bad girl Fiona Volpe (played by Luciana Paluzzi) who nibbled at Connery’s ears in their bedroom scenes, and tried to kill him several times (once whilst riding a motorbike and dressed all in leather).
Adolfo Celi as Largo was a suitably sadistic, eye-patch wearing bad guy – yet another employee of SPECTRE, and we got another glimpse of ‘Number One’ (face in shadow, seen stroking his white cat once again). A long underwater battle had Bond flying through the water wearing a huge jet pack, and the action was aided enormously by John Barry’s atmospheric score. Tom Jones belted out the theme song, and was even reported to have fainted during recording, whilst screaming out the final lengthy note. Bond was massive now, and this movie was the biggest yet.
In the
shadow of Goldfinger, the film was an even bigger box office success but there
was a noticeable dip in quality. The pace was a little sluggish at times, and
Connery was beginning to look a little tired. In real life, Connery was growing
bored with the role, and despised the intrusions on his private life by an
insatiable world press. He was also getting pretty fed up with the larger than
life stories, and the increasing reliance on gadgetry and gimmicks to get Bond
out of trouble. Thunderball, like its predecessors, was a pretty faithful
adaptation of the source novel, but everything was about to change on the next
EON film.
I bloody loved the Bond films! I taped them all on to
audio cassette, and would be outraged if any of the family so much as coughed
or even breathed too loudly while recording was in progress. At nights, I’d lay
in bed listening to them through a single earphone, and remembering the images
I’d seen on tv. Only this time, I imagined them in full colour – particularly
Ursula’s blonde hair, Martine’s olive-skinned thighs, and Luciana’s luscious
red lipstick. What were these movies doing to me? I was only twelve! Apart from
the lovely ladies, exotic locations (I’d only ever left Wigan twice; to visit
Southport and Rhyl), fantastic villains, and marvellous fist fights, the thing
I was starting to love most about the films was the music. John Barry’s music.
Monty Norman’s score for ‘Dr No’ was the weakest of the series, and that man
was bloody lucky to have the hugely talented Mr Barry totally rip apart and
rebuild his James Bond theme into something beautiful, ageless, and totally
awe-inspiring. FRWL, Goldfinger, and Thunderball had superb theme songs,
atmospheric melodies, and nerve-jangling action cues. Apart from the sheer
energy, there was always an underlying melancholy that contrasted perfectly
with the epic sweep of the individual scores. Fleming’s Bond, despite his
expensive suits, exotic excursions, rich food, and devastatingly attractive
women, was actually a pretty sad individual at heart. His job had him putting
his life on the line regularly, killing people in cold blood, and enduring
hideous torture (In ‘Casino Royale’, the debut novel, Bond has his meat and two
veg pummelled by a sadistic Benzedrine-sniffing dwarf). In the novels, Fleming
had Bond regularly musing on the shallowness of his existence, and the pursuit
of instant gratification between his life-threatening missions. Barry seemed to
totally understand this, and his music gave Bond an inner life that was rarely
alluded to in the script (until, of course, Daniel Craig’s tenure). Rival film
companies had begun to jump on the ‘Bondwagon’, and the sixties saw a huge
increase in spy movies, most of which failed miserably to replicate the Bond
formula. James Coburn’s ‘Derek Flint’ was a hit, but was an obvious parody of
Bond. Flint was virtually superhuman, and ultimately cartoonish. Tom Adams’
Charles Vine in ‘Licensed To Kill’ tried to be 007 on a micro budget, and
wasn’t a bad try. But Connery was head and shoulders above them all. Sean
Connery’s Bond, EON’s production values, Fleming’s original stories, and John
Barry’s music were a winning formula not easily copied.
Bond was massive in Japan, which led to EON’s choice of the next film to be Fleming’s melancholic and death-obsessed novel ‘You Only Live Twice’.
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A sombre story finds 007 seeking vengeance for the death of his wife in the previous novel (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), and tracking down his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld – previously referred to only as ‘Number One’- to Japan. Fleming wanted to kill Bond off by this point, and the novel ends with Bond presumed killed in action, and an obituary published in The Times. Much of the novel could not be used in the film script for various reasons (the most obvious being the fact that Bond is a widower at the start), and so a completely new story was concocted by none other than Roald Dahl. Yes, ROALD DAHL. The author of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, The BFG. Yes, THAT Roald Dahl. There was also another new director onboard in the shape of Lewis Gilbert, and a reluctant Connery back for a fifth time as Bond, and now completely and utterly pissed off with playing second fiddle to increasingly preposterous plots and, more importantly, long shooting schedules and endless publicity jaunts. Filming in Japan would be the final straw for Connery, with Japanese photographers even reportedly following him into toilets. No surprise that the actor looks surly throughout, appears to be carrying a few extra pounds, and is mightily unconvincing when disguised as a Japanese fisherman. Thankfully, John Barry gave us another memorable theme song performed by Nancy Sinatra, who got the gig thanks to her recent hit ‘These boots were made for walking’. YOLT had a weak story which had 007 faking his own death in order to work more easily undercover in Japan (this is a ludicrous plot device, as when we first see him, post death, 007 is walking casually around the neon-lit streets of Tokyo, and attending public events such as a sumo wrestling match). We finally see ‘Number One’s face when he is revealed to be the aforementioned Blofeld, but it’s a little disappointing to see him played by the distinctly unthreatening Donald Pleasence (more usually cast as weasly, pathetic characters such as the short-sighted P.O.W. in ‘The Great Escape’).
It was the end (for now) of Sean
Connery as 007, but ‘James Bond will return in On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service’. Yep, the novel they SHOULD have filmed before YOLT. Thanks to the
bright idea of exploiting the Japanese market, EON had made a rare
miscalculation resulting in a missed opportunity of dovetailing OHMSS and YOLT,
and instead had managed to give us the first lacklustre Bond film, and annoy
their star actor into quitting. Was this the end for Bond? Did EON assume
they’d be able to lure Connery back for OHMSS? It was 1967. The Summer Of Love.
Was Bond now out of step with the times?
Some time around 1977 I sat down to watch ‘On Her
Majesty’s Secret Service’ (1969), the first non-Connery Bond movie. All I knew
about this one was that it starred “That George Lazenby bloke. Bloody idiot!”
Well, that was what my Dad used to say about it. Apparently they’d replaced the
irreplaceable Connery with a young Australian model who’d been ridiculed for
years as the guy who failed as Bond. Yikes! Had EON done it again? Misjudged
their audience and carried on the same crazy mistakes they’d made on YOLT? This
was going to be interesting.
The trailers on tv looked great. Diana Rigg, best known as the sexy-as-hell Mrs Peel in another of my favourite tv series, The Avengers was playing Countess Teresa, the girl who marries Bond. Then there was Telly Savalas as Blofeld, who certainly looked far more threatening than Donald Pleasence. Plus the fantastic theme music (the first Bond movie without an opening title song), and the awesome looking ski chase sequences. It was a shock to see Lazenby in action as 007, but I’d already seen lots of photos of him as Bond and he looked a pretty good substitute for Connery. Well, I sat down to watch OHMSS (in black and white, as usual), and was absolutely thrilled by the pre-titles scene. Here we had Bond driving his Aston Martin along a narrow road in the middle of the night, when he’s suddenly overtaken at speed by an attractive young woman in a sportscar. We see Bond’s hands on the wheel, his face in shadow, and the fact that he’s wearing a trilby. He’s wearing a hat while driving? Weird! Some superb fast-paced editing accompanies Bond as he rescues the girl from an attempted suicide by drowning, then battles a couple of thugs in a fabulously choreographed fight sequence , with an ace orchestral track by the ever-present and increasingly brilliant John Barry. This was fantastic! Then we came to the first shot of Mr Lazenby, and his first line to a groggy Diana Rigg; “Good morning, my name’s Bond. James Bond”. Well, this was different. Lazenby had a bright and breezy attitude, totally lacking Connery’s ruthless persona. Oh, dear. But he was good in a fight, and was obviously keen to be seen doing his own stunts. When Diana then leaves him alone on the beach, we have the first and only instance of the actor playing Bond breaking the ‘fourth wall’ as Lazenby looks out at us with a cheeky grin and utters the immortal words “This never happened to the other fella”. What? I’m sure I must have spluttered out my Horlicks at that moment. What did he just say? Even my dad laughed, and he only ever laughed at Benny Hill. The Bond movies were continuing to evolve, and OHMSS was the best yet, in my 13 year old opinion. I loved the whole atmosphere of the film, and with the only downbeat ending in a Bond movie (up until ‘Casino Royale’ in 2006, once again), it was certainly unique. Peter Hunt had been the brilliant editor on all the previous Bonds, and here he was promoted to full directing duties, and boy did he make a cracking job of it. Tightly choreographed fight scenes, stunning Alpine chase sequences, and a superb battle between Bond and Blofeld flying at (literally) breakneck speed down a treacherous bob sleigh run.
This one had it all, and has remained
my all-time favourite 007 movie. It also happened to be the longest Bond film,
but such was the frantic pace, that I hardly noticed the time. And as for
Lazenby? Well, I didn’t mind him at all; in fact it made the film all the more
realistic to have someone playing Bond who wasn’t the all conquering Connery.
Because I’d never seen Lazenby before (or much since), I found it quite
involving to watch an unknown play Bond. I was appalled to discover, several
years later, that it had been a relative failure at the box office (compared to
the previous five films), and that Peter Hunt never got to direct another. So
that was it for the 1960s. We’d had six Bond movies culminating in Bond sobbing
at the untimely death of his new bride on their wedding day. A bleak ending to
a fabulous decade of movies that redefined the action genre, gave us an
immortal screen hero, and created one Scottish superstar. But OHMSS was to see
the end of the (semi) serious Bond thriller. It was now the 1970s, and the
world was in need of a few laughs.
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“James
Bond will return...”
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