What Would Bond Do?
Sir Thomas John Woodward, known to many by his stage name, Tom Jones, was a strong contender for the role of James Bond, but was nixed because he was “too famous for the part” in the 1960s and 1970s.
Jones, who is three-quarters English and not Welsh as many previously thought, recently said it was his Continue reading “Tom Jones As Bond?”
Now that the ink is almost dry on Spyglass Studios take over of MGM this year in November and rumors that Indian movie conglomerate, Sahara India Pariwar were bidding to take over MGM with a $2 billion bid was just a stock ploy, EON Productions, presently under MGM, can now concentrate on the next few Bond Continue reading “James Bond Rebooted”
Originally meant as the first James Bond film, Thunderball is, to date, the most financially successful movie of the series, and, adjusting for inflation, made the equivalent of $966.4 million in 2008 currency.
Broccoli’s original choice for the role of Domino Derval was Julie Christie following her performance in Billy Liar in 1963. Upon meeting her personally, however, he was disappointed that she did not have the full figure he was looking for and turned his attentions towards Raquel Welch and signed her after seeing her on the cover of the October 1964 issue of Life magazine. 20th Century Fox was not happy.
“Next thing, the studio called me on a Saturday,” she said. “Now in Hollywood, nobody calls anybody from the studio on a Saturday Continue reading “Raquel Welch In Thunderball”
From Saint To Playboy
The Persuaders was the most ambitious and expensive television action/adventure series ever produced. Starring future James Bond, Roger Moore as Lord Brett Sinclair and American counterpart Tony Curtis as Danny Wilde, two international playboys.
Much of the humor of the show derived from playful observations about the differences between British and American customs. The show ended after one season, in consequence of failing to make an impact on US TV, thereby releasing Roger Moore to star in the popular Bond films.
The Persuaders! are two equally-matched men from different backgrounds who reluctantly team together to Continue reading “The Persuaders”
Or should I say The Vesper Martini?
Connery and James Bond helped inspire researchers to investigate the antioxidant properties of martinis.
Believe it or not, this is actually something that has been studied scientifically and has an interesting answer!
In 1999, researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada decided to investigate the antioxidant properties of martinis and how they are affected by Continue reading “The Bond Martini”
For years we’ve all have read articles proclaiming how James Bond would make a horrible spy in the real world. A man who stands out in a crowd would make an instant target to counter-intelligence agents and even peak the interest of local police. Suave and personable, James Bond was considered useless as an undercover agent to many critics of the franchise over the past five decades.
What these critics fail to realize is that there are different types of espionage personnel that international intelligence agencies use for all sorts of missions. In fact, there are forms of James Bond (and Jane Bond) throughout the intelligence community.
Yes, James Bond character starts off in every movie as a Hard Target (a person who maintains a low profile, or is hard to place on surveillance) but as it always happens in every adventure, he gets caught because of his high profile swagger. In reality most services would use Bond’s playboy antics to flush out Continue reading “Real World James Bond?”
Before he became an international star playing prominent roles in movies like Eastern Promises and The International, Armin Mueller-Stahl was a successful film and stage actor in East Germany, starring in films such The Third and Jacob, the Liar. On East-German TV, he also played the main character of the popular series Das unsichtbare Visier (english translation) The Invisible Target from 1973-1979, a spy thriller program designed, in co-operation with the Stasi, as an East Bloc counterpart to the James Bond franchise. Continue reading “East Germany’s James Bond”
In 1957, five years before the first Bond film, the London Daily Express approached Ian Fleming with offers to publish a serial strip based on his world famous secret agent, James Bond. Fleming was initially reluctant to accept the generous offer because he was afraid of the quality of the writing and did not want to see his new creation cheapen in value when he was still writing more novels. Even though he had worked as a journalist for the Daily Express, he desired to keep his hero as secret as possible. He wrote at the time: “The Express are desperately anxious to turn James Bond into a strip cartoon. I have grave doubts about the desirability of this… Unless the standard of these books is maintained they will lose their point and I think there I am in grave danger Continue reading “Creating The James Bond Image”
James Mason was once considered to play James Bond in a 1958 TV adaptation of From Russia with Love, which was ultimately never produced. Despite being in his fifties, he was still under consideration to play Bond in Dr. No before Sean Connery was cast. He was also approached to appear as Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker, however, he turned this down despite his renowned tendency to take any job offered him.
Mason’s distinctive voice enabled him to play a menacing villain as greatly as his good looks assisted him as a leading man. His roles include the declining actor in the 1954 version of A Star Is Born, a mortally wounded Irish revolutionary in Odd Man Out, Brutus in Julius Caesar, General Erwin Rommel twice—in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, and in The Desert Rats—Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a small town school teacher driven insane by the effects of Cortisone in Bigger Th
an Life, a suave master spy in North by Northwest, a determined explorer in Journey to the Center of the Earth, Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, a hired assassin sent to kill Peter O’Toole’s character in Lord Jim, the vampire’s servant, Richard Straker, in Salem’s Lot, and a surreal pirate captain in Yellowbeard. One of his last roles, that of corrupt lawyer Ed Concannon in The Verdict, earned him his third and final Oscar nomination.
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During the 1988-1994 production gap of James Bond films, between Timothy Dalton’s License to Kill and Pierce Brosnan’s GoldenEye, there was still some “new” James Bond material to be screened in 2 made-for-TV movies:
Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming – the Real James Bond (1989)
Taking its title from Ian Fleming’s home in Jamaica [also used for the 1995 Brosnan film], the film stars Charles Dance (who also appeared in For Your Eyes Only) as Fleming, and begins with him giving an interview recounting some of his real-life exploits. The film manages to include the origins of the name James Bond, “007” and Continue reading “The Other GoldenEye”
