As with our previous 007 article, The Bits celebrates the occasion with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities. The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

Okay, let’s (alphabetically) meet the participants…

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012; and recently issued in paperback with an updated Skyfall chapter). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label.

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). Based in Washington, DC, he practices antitrust and commercial litigation and has published numerous law review articles in leading academic journals. Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (which was quoted in Sir Roger Moore’s memoir, Bond on Bond) is his first book. He is working on a follow-up book and can be reached via Facebook (www.Facebook.com/bondgirlbook) and Twitter (@bondgirlbook).

James Chapman is a Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (Tauris, 2007). His other books include Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who—A Cultural History (Tauris, 2006), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (Tauris, 2002), and (with Nicholas J. Cull) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (Tauris, 2009). Chapman is also a Council member of the International Association for Media and History and is Editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is now touring festivals.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012); and updated for Kindle which includes a chapter on Skyfall and exclusive interview with Sam Mendes). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies, a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Charles Helfenstein is the author of The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Spies, 2009) and The Making of The Living Daylights (Spies, 2012).

Mark O’Connell is a punditeer (his word) and the grandson of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli’s chauffeur. With a Prelude by Barbara Broccoli and Foreword by Mark Gatiss, his book Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books, 2012) is a gilded, unique account of growing up as a Bond fan. He is working on his second book and can be found online here.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Steven Jay Rubin is the author of The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History (Random House, 1981) and The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia (McGraw-Hill, 2002). He also wrote Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010 (McFarland, 2011) and has written for Cinefantastique magazine.

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and the forthcoming Dracula FAQ. As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He teaches screenwriting, film production and cinema history and theory at The Illinois Institute of Art–Chicago and Columbia College.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest cueing up the Goldfinger soundtrack album and preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course), and then enjoy this conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Goldfinger worthy of celebration on its 50th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: I have always agreed with composer John Barry that Goldfinger is the Bond film “where it all came together”: the style, the song, the score. I think From Russia with Love and Goldfinger mark the high points of 60s Bond, with Goldfinger lightening the mood just a bit, finding the right balance between suspense, danger, fascinating characters and humor. Gert Frobe and Honor Blackman played worthy adversaries for Sean Connery’s 007, and John Barry’s bold, brassy score tied it all together. It’s hard to imagine a more entertaining, satisfying 007 adventure.

Robert A. Caplen: The third film in Eon Productions’ franchise, Goldfinger marked a conscious effort by Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to tailor James Bond to American audiences. The first James Bond film to be classified as a box office blockbuster, Goldfinger is noteworthy for redefining cinematic success: it became the fastest-grossing film for its time. It also was groundbreaking for its special effects. Goldfinger became the first film to showcase a laser as part of the plot. And no other image has become as recognizable as Shirley Eaton’s “golden girl,” which offered audiences a new aesthetic for fetishizes sex objects. 

There is no question that Goldfinger is deserving of celebration fifty years after its release. The film is equally entertaining today as it was in 1964, and the commentary it offers of social mores—and the portrayals of women—remains highly relevant. 

James Chapman: While Goldfinger wasn’t the first James Bond movie, it was the one that really marked the breakthrough for Bond as a cultural phenomenon and ensured the longevity of the series. The first two films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, had been big hits in Britain and Europe, but Goldfinger was the first really to score big at the US box office as well. This might be attributed to the film’s predominantly US setting (though a lot of the locations, including the attack on Fort Knox, were shot at Pinewood Studios in England) and the fact that the conspiracy is directed against the United States.

It was also the success of Goldfinger that kick-started the spy craze of the 1960s. There hadn’t been many Bond imitations following the first two movies—the only one I can think of is the spoof Carry On Spying—but after Goldfinger the floodgates opened with the Derek Flint and Matt Helm films and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, I Spy and Mission: Impossible on television, not to mention the revamp of The Avengers (which began in 1961 and had starred a pre-Pussy Galore Honor Blackman) which became more fantasy-oriented with its fourth series. So it was Goldfinger that really got the whole Sixties spy/secret agent cycle under way.

John Cork: Goldfinger is always worth celebrating! It doesn’t matter if it is the 3rd anniversary or the 150th. The film rocks. There are many great villains, but I would argue that there is no greater criminal villain in film than Goldfinger. Henchmen? Would anyone even want to claim that there is a better henchman than Oddjob? Nah. And it is not too much to say that no female character in cinema history had ever confounded more teachers and parents than Pussy Galore. Best car in a movie? The Aston Martin DB5, hands down. It is a brilliant, funny, sexy, clever and satisfying film on every level.

Bill Desowitz: Goldfinger was the game-changer for Bond and the first modern tent-pole. It was an instant blockbuster and influenced pop culture, spawning Bond mania and then spy mania. Everything was grander, more lavish and elevated, from the action to the humor to the greater physicality of Bond to the pacing to the self-reverential attitude of Bond. Plus there was Ken Adam’s fantastical design, the greedy super villain and his deadly henchman, Oddjob; the sexy and powerful Bond girl, Pussy Galore; the stunning John Barry score and Shirley Bassey’s wild title song; and the introduction of the best gadget of them all, the tricked out Aston Martin DB5. The new director, Guy Hamilton, made it more a Bond movie than a spy movie, in which we follow his POV with one obstacle course after another for Bond to get out of. This became the Bond template.

Charles Helfenstein: It is the perfect encapsulation of what makes James Bond so great. The film has everything you can want in a Bond film: a great teaser sequence, iconic imagery with girls painted in gold, an ambitious villain, an indestructible henchman, a tricked out car, an incredible soundtrack, and in the middle of all this is Sean Connery, playing Bond with a casual, bemused cool that personifies the old Etonian ethos of “Effortless Superiority.” 

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Mark O’Connell: Goldfinger is most worthy of a golden celebration. It is the film that changed the Bond series and marked the point when Bond changed mainstream cinema. It is not just Sean Connery who emerges from the shadows at the beginning of the film. The modern blockbuster does too. Goldfinger marks the serendipitous moment when the 1960s finally aligned with Bond to create a cultural fusion that the series is still dominated by to this day (check out the deliberate classicism and nods to the Bond of old in Skyfall). Dr. No and From Russia with Love were still part of the tail-end of the 1950s—with a certain degree of stiff upper Britishness and hemlines. They are part of that small window I call the “Kennedy Sixties” where it looked like America would continue dominating popular culture in the way it did throughout the 1950s. But things were to change. Suddenly Britain, the Beatles, Biba and Bond were to take center stage. Goldfinger is the stylish overture to that where all these creatives suddenly conspired together (accidentally more than anything) to craft a sharp thriller of a 007 blockbuster. And after the male dominated shenanigans of the first two Bond films, Goldfinger marks a possible entry point for the women in the audience. It certainly is the moment when Bond allows the kids of the audience into its world. From Russia with Love and Dr. No are great, but arguably very cerebral cat and mouse thrillers. Goldfinger has great movement—its camerawork, music, direction, editing and story. It inhabits a very visual world (Bond on a laser table, Bond and the car, Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus, the fake duck on the diving cap). These are all great for kids…and global audiences not immediately savvy with the Cold War politics.

Lee Pfeiffer: Goldfinger, more than any other Bond film, influenced the trends in pop culture during the 1960s. The previous two films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, were sizable hits but it was with Goldfinger that the series found the formula that would define the series for decades to come. Director Guy Hamilton emphasized the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the humor moreso than the first two films had done, yet he was careful not to go “over-the-top” into slapstick. (Ironically, Hamilton would be guilty of doing just that on his three later Bond films: Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun.) It was Goldfinger that primarily launched the spy craze of the mid-to-late 1960s and the introduction of the gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5 was largely responsible for this. The vehicle proved to be such a hit that Bond was still driving the car fifty years later in Skyfall. Goldfinger influenced pop culture on an international level and proved that Bond was not a provincial hero but, rather, a character that people in vastly different cultures could relate to. 

Steven Jay Rubin: Goldfinger was the film that catapulted 007 from a first rate action series to a true international film phenomenon. It was so successful that it was the first movie screened in a movie theater 24 hours a day (in New York City) and probably made money faster than any film since Gone with the Wind. Creatively, it was the film that perfectly balanced Sean Connery’s coolness, throwaway humor and pure sexiness with some terrifically dramatic action scenes. Although there are, arguably, better James Bond movies, Goldfinger is still the launching vehicle for the series, a film that never loses its freshness and remains the 007 adventure that is the most pure fun, without getting silly or stupid. It also features the best prop in the series—the truly ultimate driving machine—the Aston Martin DB5 with modifications.

Bruce Scivally: Goldfinger is the Bond film that really set the formula the films would follow over the next five decades: a megalomaniacal villain, exotic locations, beautiful women (usually three, including the villainess, the sacrificial lamb and the one Bond ends up with), and cutting-edge gadgetry. Dr. No didn’t have any gadgets to speak of (unless you include the Geiger counter) and From Russia with Love had only the trick briefcase, but Goldfinger had the tricked-out Aston Martin, which raised the bar considerably. From this film onward, outrageous gadgetry would become an integral part of the Bond films. Goldfinger is also the film where the tone of the film was perfected, with just the right blend of humor, action and suspense; the first two Bond films leaned more towards straight-ahead spy thrillers. And for me, Goldfinger is the film where Sean Connery really came into his own and took ownership of the role, with a relaxed confidence and swagger only hinted at in the first two films.

Coate: When did you first see Goldfinger and what was your reaction?

Burlingame: It was a long time ago, so I’m not certain. I didn’t see it in its initial run; I suspect it was on a double bill with another Bond film at a drive-in in the late 1960s. Everyone was talking about Bond movies and I finally got the chance to catch up with the early films in second-run exhibition.

Caplen: I first watched Goldfinger on VHS at a young age, perhaps too young to appreciate, let alone understand, the film’s innuendos. I believe Goldfinger was the first James Bond film I viewed, and it piqued my interest in the franchise. I could never image then that I would be writing about Goldfinger and James Bond many years later.

Chapman: I saw it on ITV in Britain in the late 1970s. It was on a Sunday evening, I was about eight, I think, and it was a school day the next day, so I was on my best behavior all weekend to be allowed to stay up and watch it. Everyone was talking about it the next day. As kids I think we particularly liked Oddjob and his hat, and Bond’s Aston Martin with his gadgets and ejector seat. A few years later when it was shown again on Christmas Day, I would have noticed the girls too!

Cork: I first saw Goldfinger on ABC on September 17, 1972. At the time, I liked James Bond, but I wasn’t any kind of serious fan. I was only ten years old. While I was loving the film (despite it being cropped, cut and filled with commercials), it was a typical Sunday night. We had dinner and then most of my family went to bed as the movie ran. My uncle (who was fresh out of college) came over with a friend and made fun of the film as I was watching it. Then, just as Bond was handcuffed to the bomb in Fort Knox, the local ABC station went off the air. It was 1972, and this kind of thing happened regularly. I begged my uncle to tell me how the film ended. Very convincingly, he told me that the bomb went off in Fort Knox, and that it killed Oddjob, but turned James Bond into “a pulsating blue superhuman.” I have to tell you that at age ten, it seemed like a really cool ending for the movie!  When the local station came back on, Bond was on the plane flying to meet the president, and my uncle informed me that I was an idiot for believing him. The first time I saw Goldfinger uncut was when HBO played the Bonds in May/June of 1980. In the fall of 1980, I finally saw Goldfinger on the big screen at the Nuart in Los Angeles. The audience was filled with Bond fans, and it was a great experience. Robert Short, the effects man who worked on many great films, had his DB5 parked out front, and the theater put out a display of Bond memorabilia. It couldn’t have been more fun.

Desowitz: I remember it well. It my introduction to Bond in ‘65 and I was about eight and my parents took me to the La Reina Theater in Sherman Oaks in L.A. on Ventura Blvd., and afterward we had ice cream at Wil Wright’s. I remember asking if that was Bond in the scuba suit in the opening scene and when he fought Oddjob, I whispered that he should grab the electrical wire. It was a distinctive moviegoing thrill and set me on my path to becoming a lifelong fan.

Helfenstein: Unfortunately my first viewing of Goldfinger didn’t quite do it justice—I first saw a butchered, pan-and-scan version of it on ABC in the late 70s. Despite those drawbacks, the film greatly impressed me—especially the tuxedo under the wetsuit, the car, Bond’s fight with Oddjob…and the cornucopia of blondes.

O’Connell: I first saw Goldfinger in January 1987. It was on ITV midweek. It was not the first or even the third Bond movie I had seen but already its mark and stature in the Bond canon was known to me. Like a Greatest Hits album its key beats—the car, the song, the artwork, the gold, the music, and the henchman—were familiar way before I saw it for the first time. It is one of the Bond movies whose reputation precedes itself at every turn.

Pfeiffer: I first saw the film at age eight at the Loew’s Theatre in Jersey City, New Jersey. It’s a peculiarity of “Baby Boomer Generation” males that we seem to have such trivia as where we saw a movie and with whom emblazoned in our minds. Nevertheless, my dad, who had taken me to see the previous Bond film, escorted me to this one. I was blown away by it. I don’t think today’s movies ever have that kind of impact on audiences, who are now rather blasé about special effects and action sequences. But seeing that DB5 in action, the audience howling at the use of the gadgets and finally the “innovative” introduction of a laser beam proved to be unforgettable elements in my mind. On a more crass level, when we returned home, my dad was raving about the film to my mom and I remember him saying, “There’s a woman in it named Pussy Galore!” I didn’t understand why they thought this was so amusing because I equated the name with the benign Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke. Nevertheless, we all trotted back to the theater to see the film again the next night because my mom had to see it for herself. I later went again on my own—the first time I had seen a movie unaccompanied. Mr. Bond has provided many such pleasant memories to countless millions of movie fans around the globe.

Rubin: I saw Goldfinger at Christmas 1964 at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It was wonderful. As a junior high school student in Los Angeles, I had read the book before I saw the movie, which was only the second time I had done that (the first was Paul Brickhill’s book that became The Great Escape). Bond was a big event that year—like a Harry Potter or a Star Wars film today.

Scivally: I believe I first saw Goldfinger on television in 1972, when it first aired on ABC. I know it was the first 007 film I saw, and at that young age (I was 11), I was most impressed by the Aston Martin. I continued watching the Bond films whenever they came on television (there was no home video in those days, at least not in rural north Alabama), and when puberty kicked in I began to appreciate them for more than just the spy thrills and gadgets. Coming of age in a very remote, agrarian region, the sophisticated, world-traveling, authority-defying, sexually potent James Bond was a powerful fantasy figure. I was hooked.

Coate: Where do you think Goldfinger ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: Certainly near, or at, the very top. If I had to choose the five best Bonds, I think Goldfinger would be either #1 or #2.

Caplen: It is very difficult to rank the James Bond films, and it depends upon what criteria are utilized. In terms of story line, success, and cinematography, Goldfinger should rank among the top films in the franchise. [In my book] I have focused upon the presentation of women in the franchise, and in that regard, Goldfinger would not receive a high rating from feminists. Regardless, and as I have written, the manner in which the Bond Girls are presented in Goldfinger reinforced an archetype that defined the cinematic franchise. In that regard, Goldfinger cannot be underestimated. 

Chapman: It tends to be seen as the one that really established the Bond formula: megalomaniac criminal mastermind with a grand conspiracy; a strong, silent henchman; and the gadgets that Bond uses. The previous film, From Russia with Love, had been a more realistic spy thriller, quite old-fashioned in some ways, with its Orient Express scenes and a plot revolving around a stolen cypher machine. With Goldfinger the Bond series moved, decisively as it happens, towards techno-hardware and fantasy (e.g. the laser and Bond’s car).

Looked at today the film still seems fresh and hasn’t dated. Sean Connery is relaxed and commanding in the role (though there are tense moments such as the scene where he is spread-eagled before the laser beam) and the casting of the supporting parts such as Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson and Harold Sakata as Oddjob is spot-on.

Cork: For years, I’ve always said you could just take the first four Bond films and put them on a loop for me. I love them, and like a true fan, I even love them for their faults. I can amuse myself by enjoying the anti-logic of Goldfinger explaining his plan to a bunch of guys he plans to kill, or even having gone to the trouble to have strange flashing lights that go on and off for no reason when poison gas is spraying the hoods’ convention. One can argue that Casino Royale and Skyfall are more engaging to someone who is only now being introduced to Bond, but, I’ll tell you, only Sean Connery in 1964 could pull off wearing a baby-blue terrycloth onesie and still make every woman in the audience breathe a little more deeply and every man want to be him. Goldfinger isn’t only one of the most entertaining Bond films, it is one of the most important films of the Sixties, one of the most essential films ever made. Everyone with a pulse sees that movie and understands the appeal of James Bond.

Desowitz: I think it’s in the top three, still the best for many. I won’t argue with Connery about From Russia with Love being the best.

Helfenstein: If we are ranking the films in the series by how influential they are, then Goldfinger occupies the #1 spot without question. If one were to pick a single film to represent what is great about the James Bond series and what makes it popular, then Goldfinger would be the obvious choice. But if we are choosing a film that is artistically the best film, I would have to edge out Goldfinger just slightly and give that award to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

O’Connell: It is not the best Bond movie (007 spends a lot of the film passively overhearing and not actively investigating) but it is the one where as I say in Catching Bullets the designer alloys of Ken Adam, John Barry, Peter Hunt, Guy Hamilton, Eon Productions and Sean Connery all come together to gilded effect. I wonder if Goldfinger had not happened in the way it did we would be privy to a continued 007 franchise now. Possibly not. The Bond phenomenon was obviously growing on the success of the first two films and the explosion of interest via Fleming’s books. But it was not a phenomenon at all until Goldfinger gave enough creative and financial confidence to Eon Productions, Cubby and Harry to really go for it with the real box office game-changer: Thunderball.

Pfeiffer: Most people consider Goldfinger the best of the series, though I would argue that valid cases can be made for From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Casino Royale and Skyfall, the latter two because they so drastically and successfully reinvented the series. 

Rubin: I rank Goldfinger just below the Daniel Craig Casino Royale. So that would be #2. Casino Royale is so good and Craig is such a revelation as Bond, I have to place it #1. However, since Goldfinger was the first 007 adventure I ever say, it remains my favorite. It’s also my favorite script with the best lines of dialogue in the series. It also gets the biggest laugh in the series—not because it’s stupid or inane, but because it’s just funny. And that’s the introduction to Pussy Galore.

Scivally: In my estimation, Goldfinger is still hands-down the most entertaining of all the Bond films. If I wanted to introduce someone who’d never seen a 007 film to Bond, but could only show them one film, I’d choose Goldfinger. To me, it’s simply the distilled essence of Bond. However, that said, it ranks #2 on my list of personal favorite; From Russia with Love is #1, because I enjoy the cat-and-mouse game between SPECTRE and Bond, and 007 operating with almost no gadgets.

Coate: In what way was Auric Goldfinger a memorable villain?

Burlingame: He was among the best ever: truly mad, yet insane in a thoughtful, calculating way! The plot of the movie has one of the greatest twists in Bond: Goldfinger doesn’t need to own the gold in Fort Knox; he just wants to blow it up so that his own stash will be worth even more! How great is that? And Gert Frobe is completely believable in this mad role.

Caplen: Goldfinger, the mastermind of Operation Grand Slam, is, in some respects, more plausible than other over-the-top villains in the franchise, namely Dr. No, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Stromberg, and Hugo Drax. Goldfinger is, in essence, a crooked businessman: a gold smuggler whose obsession leads to him scheme a way of penetrating Fort Knox in order to radiate the American gold supply and increase the value of his own holdings. Thus, his motives are intriguing and extend beyond the prototypical lust for world domination. Goldfinger is memorable because he is essentially the first James Bond villain to out-maneuver the Americans, requiring James Bond’s services to spare Fort Knox and restore order. As one scholar argued, Ian Fleming created James Bond as a vehicle through which to capture some nostalgia for the pre-World War Two supremacy of the British Empire. Defeating Goldfinger on American soil comports with that theory.

Chapman: Goldfinger has some of the best lines (e.g. “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” in response to Bond’s “Do you expect me to talk?”) and Gert Frobe has a commanding presence on screen. The scene where he explains how he intends to “knock off” Fort Knox works because he seems to believe it. For my money Dr. No and Goldfinger were the most memorable of the early villains. Several of the early Bonds revolved around the villain Blofeld, who became a bit of a stooge with his pet cat, but Goldfinger just seems a slightly better-realized character—by the standards of diabolical master criminals that is.

Cork: A great villain needs to get more powerful, seemingly smarter during the course of a story. The film starts with Bond busting Goldfinger as he cheats at cards, then Bond steals Goldfinger’s paid companion. But Goldfinger exacts a brutal price for this. Bond then beats Goldfinger at golf, but all-too-soon Bond finds himself strapped down with a laser pointed between his legs, his car destroyed. This is the halfway point of the film. Hero and villain have traded blows almost as equals. But when we enter the laser room, it is like we have passed through the looking glass. Goldfinger isn’t a rich gold smuggler, but an obsessed man who is on the verge of destabilizing the global economy. Even late in the film, when Bond points out the absurdity of trying to tote the gold out of Fort Knox, Goldfinger is one step ahead. When he discovers that Bond has been able to foil much of the plan, he whips off that overcoat and no one in the audience ever saw his escape coming. Most actors who have played Bond villains gradually allow 007 to get under their skin, to unnerve them as the story progresses. Not Gert Frobe’s Goldfinger. He snaps that pencil early on, and that’s it. He gets calmer and smarter as the film progresses. I love that. He is, for me, the perfect villain.

Desowitz: Goldfinger was the first freelance villain not associated with SPECTRE and is even more larger than life than Dr. No. His obsession with gold and winning at all costs is very personal.

Helfenstein: Goldfinger sticks out as a memorable villain for so many reasons. Compared to Dr. No and Grant, the two previous villains, his personality is so much bigger. While his predecessors were almost robotic, Goldfinger is having a good time because he enjoys being a villain. He toys with Bond and laughs at him. Frobe hit the sweet spot of what makes a villain great.

When I was researching my first book, I was stunned to uncover the fact that screenwriter Richard Maibaum kept trying to bring Gert Frobe back to the series so many times—not just for Thunderball, but also for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds are Forever, and even as late as Octopussy!

O’Connell: He is pitched as this nearly gauche Toad of Toad Hall figure, the first societal duel Bond has with a villain. He is also the first Bond villain to hold that certain quality that all the great Bond villains (Scaramanga, Silva, Kananga and Largo) have and that is that he is just a bad Bond, or 007 gone wrong.

Pfeiffer: Auric Goldfinger is one of cinema’s most enduring and classic villains, thanks in no small part to the brilliance of casting Gert Frobe in what would become his signature role. Frobe not only fit the bill physically, he was an accomplished actor, as well. What many people don’t know is that he barely spoke a word of English. He spoke his dialogue phonetically and British actor Michael Collins dubbed him in the final cut. 

Rubin: Auric Goldfinger is still the best villain in the series because he’s simultaneously larger than life, but still a real believable person. Like Bond, he never becomes a caricature and he has some truly chilling moments—particularly when he’s about to fry 007’s privates with a laser beam, or lecture a bunch of doomed henchmen on his scheme, or getting 007 to understand the true nature of his plan. He also plays a wicked game of golf, cheating as usual. 

Scivally: As embodied by Gert Frobe and voiced by Michael Collins, Goldfinger was the quintessence of Bond villainy: physically imposing, charming, calculating, ruthless and quite mad. And he had some of the best dialogue of any Bond villain, including his priceless response to Bond’s “Do you expect me to talk?”—”No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE!”

Coate: In what way was Pussy Galore a memorable Bond Girl?

Burlingame: Honor Blackman could not improve on this performance. Tough yet tender, beautiful, resourceful, yet vulnerable at the right moments. Maybe one of the two or three best Bond women.

Caplen: I have written extensively about Pussy Galore in my book, Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond. Honor Blackman’s portrayal of this unique character is exceptional. I believe that Pussy Galore is one of the most important Bond Girl characters in what I have termed the Golden Era of the Bond Girl. On the surface, Pussy Galore seems imbued with attributes that would brand her a modern-day feminist. But all that glitters is not gold. I argue that Pussy Galore represents something very different: she actually reinforces a much more traditional archetype addressing women’s appropriate role in society. Pussy Galore is therefore both groundbreaking and reactionary, and no discussion of the Bond Girl evolution can be complete without considering her contributions to the development of the Bond Girl archetype I believe the James Bond franchise developed and continues to refine today.

Chapman: Well, there’s her name for one thing! She was the first of the girls—at least the first of the main girls—who was more than just eye candy but could give Bond as good as she got in return. In the book she’s a lesbian, and her conversion to heterosexuality to help Bond out isn’t very plausible. In the film, though, the lesbianism is downplayed—it’s hinted at but not overtly. And, of course, the characterization was influenced by the casting of Honor Blackman, who brought the association of her role as Cathy Gale in The Avengers. The scene where Pussy shows off her judo prowess seems to have been written specifically for Honor Blackman.

Cork: Two words: “pussy galore.” I mean, come on. That’s a name that makes the right people smile and everyone else’s mouths go dry. But Pussy Galore is also the right character at just the right moment in history. Homosexuality was just wiggling its toe into popular culture. Some Like It Hot was five years earlier, and The Children’s Hour came out in 1961, but both those films play only with the existence of homosexuality without really indulging in it as anything attractive. In Britain, there were a slew of films dealing with male homosexuality: The Victim (a very good, but depressing film with Dirk Bogarde), and, of course, the two Oscar Wilde films (that both played such strange roles in Bond history). From Russia with Love had a very unattractive lesbian with Rosa Klebb, which was more of the standard portrayal in popular culture.

Pussy Galore in Goldfinger was different. Her lesbianism (never explicitly mentioned, but clear to adult viewers) is accompanied by confidence, not self-loathing. It is not portrayed so much as a perversion, but rather a sexually legitimate lifestyle. Viewers are attracted to Pussy Galore, even before she comes over to Bond’s side. She is strong, attractive, alluring and such a refreshing change from the way women were often portrayed in escapist films of the day. Of course, we can wince now at the rather distasteful “rape conversion therapy” that Bond employs to win her over. And younger audiences do roll their eyes, shake their heads and groan when the forced kiss turns into a warm embrace. But the same thing can be said of Rhett Butler carrying Scarlet O’Hara up the stairs in Gone with the Wind, and John Wayne’s Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man pulling Mary Kate into the doorway, twisting her arm up behind her and kissing her. But Pussy Galore in so many ways is a remarkable character. She is a sexually liberated, confident lesbian and audiences loved her. That just didn’t happen in mainstream movies before 1964.

Part of the great success of the character came from a brilliant idea that the filmmakers had (and I can’t tell you if it was one of the screenwriters or Guy Hamilton or someone else), but they took their cue for Pussy Galore from a real person: Barbara “Joe” Carstairs. Carstairs used her family fortune to race boats and later bought a private island in the Bahamas and went “back to nature.” Because the filmmakers had a model they could use beyond the character in the novel, and because there was a great actress in the role (Honor Blackman), the character came to life in ways that might have otherwise been squandered. In her own way, Pussy Galore feels real on some level. Blackman had strength and a swagger in the role that convinced us that she could be the leader of a real flying circus. She was just butch enough and just sexy enough to be something that moviegoers had never encountered.

Desowitz: Pussy Galore is memorable because of the name and getting it by the censors, the fact that she’s a lesbian and resists Bond at first, and is able to share Judo flips with him, and because Bond has to work so hard to seduce her.

Helfenstein: Besides her suggestive name, Pussy Galore is memorable for her homosexuality, greatly toned down in the film compared to the book. Bond’s “conversion” of her would probably not play well with today’s audiences. That scene aside, what makes her so memorable is that she is Bond’s equal. While the two previous girls, Honey and Tanya, were essentially innocents caught up in Bond’s world, Pussy is an operator in the criminal underworld and even has her own team. Her decision to switch sides saves the day.

Actress wise, Blackman shows off her physical skills learned during her time during The Avengers, and was different in the fact that she was older than Connery. That older female to younger male casting age difference has only happened one other time in the series, when they chose Rigg, also an Avengers veteran, for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

O’Connell: Honor Blackman’s Galore is memorable for being the first Bond girl that stands up to Bond. And she was doing it way before the series felt it had to appease any naïve notions of sexism.

Pfeiffer: Although the character of Pussy Galore was watered down for the film version (she’s an overt lesbian in the novel), the character still broke new ground in terms of female empowerment—even if she does fall under Bond’s spell after one kiss. Here was a tough, kick-ass woman who was adept at defending herself and who is every bit as resourceful as Bond or Goldfinger. There are veiled hints about her sexuality (all of her pilots are gorgeous females and she initially tells Bond she is “immune” to his charm), but in retrospect, this was a rather unique female hero to bring to cinema screens in 1964. As with Gert Frobe, so much of the credit must go to the actor, in this case Honor Blackman, who was letter-perfect in the role. 

Rubin: Pussy Galore is memorable because she’s so sexy and cool and has the greatest name ever invented for a fictional character in the history of writing. Honor Blackman has made her a true legend in the series. 

Scivally: Pussy Galore was the first “Bond woman” who seemed to be almost his equal: intelligent, self-assured, capable, an ace at judo and “a damned good pilot.” She wasn’t just a wilting damsel waiting to be rescued; she gave as good as she got.

Coate: What is the legacy of Goldfinger?

Burlingame: I am especially fond of the Goldfinger score as quintessential, top-of-the-line John Barry. After making a hit of the James Bond Theme on Dr. No and crafting a suspenseful, effective score for From Russia with Love, Broccoli and Saltzman gave Barry the opportunity to write both song and score on Goldfinger and Barry didn’t disappoint. From the thrilling opening song (with those diabolical Bricusse & Newley lyrics) belted by Shirley Bassey to the intricacies of his orchestral score, including the brilliant Dawn Raid on Fort Knox variations on the theme, John Barry helped to define the sound of Bond—and indeed, create a new subgenre of film music in his combination of pop, jazz and symphonic music—for all time with this score. I hope that, in all the celebrations of Goldfinger, that accomplishment is not forgotten.

Caplen: Goldfinger opened the American market to James Bond. That fact, by itself, is perhaps Goldfinger’s true legacy. The James Bond franchise would not be as successful today had Goldfinger not had such an important impact upon American audiences. Goldfinger also presented to the world one of Ian Fleming’s greatest “name as sex” jokes, beginning a long legacy that will always be associated with the James Bond franchise and has been parodied by others (such as the Austin Powers trilogy) ever since. 

Chapman: It’s still a classic Bond movie—classic both in the sense of being a favorite with fans and being a representative example of the style and format of the films. I think that when most boys (and men!) fantasize about being Bond, it’s the Bond of Goldfinger—whether for the Aston Martin, the Anthony Sinclair three-piece suit, or simply the opportunity to dally with girls called Pussy.

Cork: I think the biggest legacy of Goldfinger is very different than most folks would imagine. If you look at the top-grossing films of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, there are very few that one could categorize as part of a franchise. There were franchises, but they were Tarzan, Frankenstein, Francis the Talking Mule and Ma and Pa Kettle films. These films made lots of money, but the following entries were generally B-movie fare—filler for the masses that were not nearly as important to a studio as an “event film” based on an “important” best-selling novel. Bond changed that. The Bond films became the first “tent-pole” films—movies that could virtually be guaranteed blockbuster status just because of the presence of the main character. The folks who grew up on Bond are running studios now. Look at the films the studios bank on in recent years: Harry Potter, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Batman, Transformers (and, yes, Star Wars and Indiana Jones). Huge budgets…no expense spared…but they are selling an endless stream of films, not just one film. Even the failures of recent years like The Lone Ranger and John Carter were attempts to create a franchise. And franchises are where the money comes from. The studios know that they can sell Transformers packages on iTunes or to Netflix or Amazon or in endless rotation on cable networks for decades to come, just as has happened with the Bond packages. And Goldfinger, more than any other single film, is the movie that proved a series could be made like A-films and do the box office of A-films, even out-grossing the films that came before in the series. Every time another big-budget tent-pole franchise film comes out and makes a fortune, I think that those filmmakers should give a tip of the hat to Goldfinger.

Desowitz: The legacy is clear enough with the audience cheering at the DB5’s appearance in Skyfall for the 50th anniversary and then how its destruction elicited the biggest emotional response from Bond in the entire film. Goldfinger made Bond and the franchise a pop culture phenomenon and it was a fitting tribute.

Helfenstein: I think the legacy of Goldfinger is that it moved the series from the smaller-scale, cold war thriller to the wide open grander scale of agent vs super villain. While Terence Young’s two films set the template for Bond’s elegance and panache, Guy Hamilton updated that recipe with a stronger dose of the fantastic, and a larger dose of humor.

When Alfred Hitchcock saw the film, he only had one comment to the director. It wasn’t about the glorious Ken Adam sets, the incredible car, or the blaring soundtrack—he complemented Hamilton on the little old lady that waddles out of the checkpoint with a machine gun.

Bond screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz stated that the instant Connery pressed the red eject button on the Aston Martin, the series changed forever. Anything was possible from then on. Years later the producers would try to transfer some of Goldfinger’s cool to Brosnan and Craig by giving them the Goldfinger Aston Martin, and in Skyfall Craig’s Bond even threatens to deploy the ejector seat with that famous red button, 48 years after the gadget debuted.

Half a century later, Goldfinger’s influence still resonates both in and outside the James Bond series.

O’Connell: The fact that a film known only as Bond 24 is in pre-production. That is its legacy. Goldfinger sealed the deal. It raised Bond onscreen from just being a literary adaptation of a successful run of books to being a franchise at the pinnacle of contemporary music and film scoring, film editing, production design, and marketing. I don’t think the Bond series was a franchise until Goldfinger fired up the enthusiasm of Eon Productions and the world and melted the box office norms by creating a delicious, sexy, dangerous, sadistically sketched narrative and production template for 007. It is not the only template for Bond, but it is the one that the series has been guided by ever since.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of Goldfinger is illustrated by the fact you are still writing about the film fifty years later. It has a timeless quality and presents a moment in time when the Sixties were still kind of fun, at least in more privileged parts of the world. The dissention of the protest movements, high profile assassinations and the heightening of Cold War tensions would all threaten to make Bond look like a relic at least for a period of years. However, Goldfinger represents master filmmaking craftsmanship, from the performances to every aspect of the production. It’s also the last time Sean Connery appeared to be having a genuinely good time playing 007.

Rubin: One hundred years from now, film aficionados will still admire the film for its pure adrenaline rush, its colorful locations and set pieces, witty script, wonderful performances by a great cast and a perfect musical score by John Barry. I believe Goldfinger defined movie cool in the 60s, on a par with the Steve McQueen film Bullitt. Put those two films together and you see all that was cool in the era. Interestingly, Connery and McQueen, born the same year, had similar career trajectories—at least initially, although Sean has had the far more lengthy career.

Scivally: The success of Goldfinger propelled 007 into the popular consciousness, making Bond one of the three most memorable B’s of the 1960s (the other two being the Beatles and Batman). Its success also set off a slew of imitators both in cinemas and on television, sparking the mid-1960s spy craze, and set the style for a series that continues to evolve and attract a massive audience five decades later. It truly was a film with a Midas touch.

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts on Goldfinger.

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The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering Thunderball on its 50th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

As with our previous 007 articles (available here and here), The Bits celebrates the occasion with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities who discuss the virtues and shortcomings of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and why the passage of time has been particularly kind to this film more than any other in the long-running series. The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

Okay, let’s (alphabetically) meet the participants….

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012; and recently issued in paperback with an updated Skyfall chapter). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment-industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label.

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). Based in Washington, DC, he practices antitrust and commercial litigation and has published numerous law review articles in leading academic journals. Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (which was quoted in Sir Roger Moore’s memoir, Bond on Bond) is his first book. He is working on a follow-up book and can be reached via Facebook (www.Facebook.com/bondgirlbook) and Twitter (@bondgirlbook).

James Chapman is a Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (Tauris, 2007). His other books include Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who—A Cultural History (Tauris, 2006), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (Tauris, 2002), and (with Nicholas J. Cull) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (Tauris, 2009). Chapman is also a Council member of the International Association for Media and History and is Editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is now touring festivals.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012; www.jamesbondunmasked.com; and updated for Kindle which includes a chapter on Skyfall and exclusive interview with Sam Mendes). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies (www.billdesowitz.com), a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Charles Helfenstein is the author of The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Spies, 2009) and The Making of The Living Daylights (Spies, 2012).

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.” 

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and the forthcoming Dracula FAQ. As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He teaches screenwriting, film production and cinema history and theory at The Illinois Institute of Art–Chicago and Columbia College.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest cueing up the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service soundtrack album and preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course), and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service worthy of celebration on its 45th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is without a doubt one of the all-time great Bond films. It’s been fashionable for a long time to complain about it because of George Lazenby’s one-shot take on 007, but that ignores the impressive accomplishments of the movie in every other respect, from script to direction to locations to music. It’s still a masterpiece.

Robert A. Caplen: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is worthy of praise for imbuing the series with a more humanistic approach, depicting the vulnerability of James Bond as he falls in love with and mourns the death of Tracy di Vicenzo. While the film has garnered significant criticism, it endures and remains entertaining. And, with SPECTRE on the horizon in 2015, there is a possibility, unless I read too much into the SPECTRE teaser art, that OHMSS could experience a renaissance.

James Chapman: All Bond movies are worth celebrating, though On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a special case as it’s unique in the Bond series. I think for a long time it was the black sheep of the Bond family, the one film in the series that was supposedly a failure. Let’s put that one to bed straight away. OHMSS was a failure only in so far as it was less successful at the box-office than the previous four Bond movies; it was still one of the biggest-grossing films of 1970 and was the top box-office attraction in Britain. And when I looked at the critical reception when I was researching my book on the Bond movies, I found that, while the reception was mixed, it was no more mixed than the response to Dr. No—in fact, some critics thought it was an improvement on Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.

This is a cliché, but it’s a film that improves every time I watch it. It’s the closest of all the films to the source, and, while I don’t think that fidelity to Fleming is necessary for a great Bond movie (viz. The Spy Who Loved Me or Skyfall), I think that a lot of the qualities I like in OHMSS are from the book. I’m glad they kept the ending, for example. In fact, I think it’s the downbeat ending that was probably responsible for the film’s lesser performance at the box-office than George Lazenby, who became something of a whipping boy after the event and carried the can for its supposed “failure.” It’s an old film industry adage that a happy ending doubles the box-office. As Molly Haskell said in her review of the film for Village Voice: “If you like your Bonds with a happy ending, don’t go.”

John Cork: Majesty’s holds an almost magical significance for many Bond fans, particularly the fans of my generation. The cinematic Bond has always tread this fine line between absurdist spectacle, nearly mythic storytelling and this sense that there is something a bit more human going on at the heart of Bond than meets the eye. We can love Bond battling Dr. No in a nuclear reactor as fuel rods are melting down, but that is balanced by the cold resignation of Bond shooting Professor Dent and listening to Honey describe murdering the man who raped her. But just four and a half years later with You Only Live Twice, the human element had all but evaporated. Did we really care if Aki is killed? Sure, YOLT is a fun film—great score, lovely locations—but it lacks any of the soul of literary 007. Majesty’s was a big, strange bet on Ian Fleming’s Bond, and in so many ways (and fans will hate that I say this) it failed. It almost killed the Bond franchise. Yet, I would argue it stands shoulder to shoulder with Goldfinger as the most influential Bond film in the series. How this happened is a remarkable story.

After OHMSS aired on ABC, fans were outraged at the way the film had been re-cut for the two-night run, with voice-over from an actor who was clearly not George Lazenby. Those who remembered the film well were very vocal in defending the movie. Richard Schenkman, president of the James Bond Fan Club in the US confronted Cubby Broccoli about it personally in 1977. Cubby was again questioned about it publically at a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979. There were soon two drumbeats that became constant in the fan community: one was about Kevin McClory’s attempt to remake Thunderball, and the other was about how OHMSS was the forgotten, underrated Bond film, and how the things that made it great were the very things missing in the Roger Moore Bond movies of the 70s.

After the success of Moonraker, Michael G. Wilson became a much more important creative partner in the series, and he tried to bring the Bond series back to Fleming and very much to setting the clock back to 1970. If you think of For Your Eyes Only almost as a sequel to OHMSS, you will get the idea. There’s Bond at Tracy’s grave. There’s Blofeld wearing the neck brace. The film is grounded in reality. Looking beyond that, we see the action scenes remind us of OHMSS—the skiing, the bobsled, the fight on a beach, the mountaintop lair. Before John Glen was tapped to direct the film, Eon reached out to Terence Young, who said no, and to Peter Hunt, the director of OHMSS. Hunt had other commitments and grave misgivings about going back to Bond at that point.

And after For Your Eyes Only, there is this continual battle over how much of the Fleming Bond is going to be present in the cinematic Bond, and, even more importantly, how that will be portrayed. The tone of Majesty’s is a strong and direct influence on Licence to Kill. It played a big role in the development of The World Is Not Enough. The shadow of Majesty’s permeates every bit of the Daniel Craig Bond films, and Eon’s buy-out of McClory’s rights ensures that the filmmakers can work with that part of Bond’s literary history again.

Bill Desowitz: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a landmark Bond movie in so many ways: the first without Sean Connery; the sole appearance by newbie actor George Lazenby; the first and only directorial effort of editor Peter Hunt; the most faithful Fleming adaptation; a return to the lean, mean espionage of From Russia with Love; the first movie centered on Bond and falling in love with Tracy, played engagingly by Diana Rigg (who left The Avengers); the best action in the snow in franchise history; the most haunting score by John Barry; and the most devastatingly tragic finale with the murder of Tracy by Blofeld and his assistant, Irma Bunt.

Charles Helfenstein: It is the crown jewel of the James Bond series. Somewhat ignored and dismissed after its initial release, the film has enjoyed a well-deserved renaissance. It is a masterpiece, and those who ignore it just because of George Lazenby are missing out on something incredibly special…Ian Fleming’s world perfectly captured on film.

Lee Pfeiffer: The stature of OHMSS among critics and the public has risen appreciably since the film was released in 1969. At the time, virtually any film that followed the Connery era would have been met with derision. The film was not judged fairly, though hardcore Bond fans seemed to like it. The fact that the film grossed far less than the Connery Bonds also added to the mistaken notion that it was a dud. Lazenby did himself no favors by announcing he was quitting the role after one film, so critics could be excused for predicting that the Bond era was over. Yet, it’s precisely because of the oddball, one-off nature of the film that it resonates as one of the best entries in the series. Most of the credit has to go to Peter Hunt, who had edited the early Bond films. This was his directorial debut and it must have been a very sobering challenge for him to undertake a big-budget film with such high expectations. Hunt was determined to revitalize the series by thinking outside of the box. He correctly presumed that the series could not go any further into gadgetry and spectacle, especially in the wake of You Only Live Twice, which is a marvelous film but one that finally soured Connery completely in regard to playing 007. His criticism was well-founded: Bond was becoming a less interesting character and simply a catalyst for big action sequences. Hunt once told me that he felt by this point, Bond was simply a guy who presses a few buttons to utilize gadgets to get out of a jam. Hunt wanted to go back to the essence of Fleming’s novels, and he succeeded admirably. OHMSS is a thinking man’s Bond flick in the way that From Russia with Love was. There was a lot of tension during the making of the film. Hunt and Lazenby barely spoke. The producers, Broccoli and Saltzman, not only had troubles between themselves, but they were understandably upset that their new investment—George Lazenby—would not be doing another film. (It’s the only movie where “James Bond 007” gets above-the-title billing instead of the lead actor. Why promote someone who was moving on from the role?) There was also controversy about the running time of the movie with some of the “suits” arguing that it needed to be cut. But Peter Hunt stood his ground. The film was still successful financially but not nearly as much as its predecessors. Yet, its qualities have only grown with time and people have taken a much more mature attitude evaluating its merits.

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Bruce Scivally: Why is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service worthy of celebration? Because it is a James Bond film like no other. It has an emotional resonance lacking in the earlier films, innovative editing, less reliance on gadgetry than almost any other film in the series, top-flight action scenes, an epic scope, beautiful cinematography, and one of the best scores in the series. It’s the bridge between the “classic” Bond of Sean Connery and the lighter, breezier Bond films of the 1970s. It was an attempt to return Bond away from the cartoon extravagance of You Only Live Twice and back to the Bond of Ian Fleming. It has the best screenplay of the series. And the biggest reason it’s worth of celebrating: Diana Rigg.

Coate: When did you first see On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and what was your reaction?

Burlingame: OHMSS was the first Bond I actually saw in a movie theater during its initial run, just after Christmas 1969 in upstate New York. I was “wowed” and it hooked me not only on Ian Fleming’s hero but on all things Bond, from novels to films to (of course) soundtrack albums.

Caplen: I recall watching OHMSS for the first time as a teenager and thought it was unique among the Bond films. The Louis Armstrong-crooning love scenes and the concept of a brainwashing a group of women as Blofeld’s angels of death were striking. The humor peppered throughout the film contrasted the final scene, which I thought was jarring and unsettling. Ultimately, I think that George Lazenby’s 007, despite all the negative criticism, fits the part in OHMSS quite well, and I view the film as a perfect bridge as the franchise moved into the 1970s.

Chapman: It would have been the occasion of its first TV screening on ITV (around about 1979 or 1980?). I have to confess that at the time I was rather underwhelmed. I was disappointed that it wasn’t the same as Goldfinger or You Only Live Twice and that it didn’t have Sean Connery in it. I’ve changed my mind since!

Cork: I first saw OHMSS at the Martin Twin theaters in Montgomery, Alabama, on its original release. I was just barely eight years old, and frankly, I had few concrete memories. My favorite moment was the snow plow, of course. And in a brutally honest confession, I didn’t understand Tracy’s fate at the end until my grandfather explained it to me.

Folks talk about the “downer ending,” but this was the era of Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Planet of the Apes, all huge hits, all with downer endings, and three of them involved key characters dying in a hail of bullets. Regardless, eight-year-old me thought Tracy just might have been taking a rest. I mean, that’s what James Bond was telling me.

Desowitz: I saw it first run at a new theater [in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles] called the Valley Circle across from the Motion Picture Retirement Home. I saw it two weeks in a row because I enjoyed it so much. It had such rare emotional impact for a Bond movie. I missed Connery, but this was the most exciting and riveting for me.

Helfenstein: I first saw it on TV in the late 70s, and although it was a butchered, pan-and-scan version courtesy of ABC, Majesty’s is so brilliant that those presentation flaws didn’t matter—I was blown away. The hyper-kinetic fight scenes, Diana Rigg’s breath-taking beauty, the gorgeous cinematography, John Barry’s score, the final assault on Piz Gloria—it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Pfeiffer: I don’t know why, but men always seem to remember exactly where they saw virtually every movie they’ve ever experienced. I saw OHMSS at the State Theater in my home town of Jersey City, New Jersey. The fact that the studio didn’t have much confidence in it was illustrated by the fact that it was the first Bond movie in years to open with a second feature attached (Guns of the Magnificent Seven). Ordinarily, Bond films never played on double features because the theaters could make far more money by simply playing the latest 007 flick back-to-back. I recall being optimistic but wary. I was 13 years old and my mom and dad accompanied me. My mom was hooked on Connery and she hated the film. She thought Lazenby was a poor successor to him. She also said the film was far too loud and seemed endless. 

Scivally: I first saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service when it was broadcast on ABC-TV on February 16 and February 23, 1976. In that notorious broadcast, the film had been chopped in half to accommodate two 90-minute time slots over two evenings, and to pad it out to the requisite length, the ski chase scene was put at the beginning, with an actor who sounded nothing like George Lazenby doing a lame voice-over as 007. It then “flash-backed” to the actual beginning of the film...for a bit. Then it was the car rally scene. Then Bond’s meeting with Draco. In short, the re-edit bowdlerized the film, making it incomprehensible. After about half an hour of this travesty, I turned it off. When ABC ran the film again sometime later, I was a more dedicated James Bond fan, and determined that I would watch the film all the way to the end, no matter how horrible, so I could truthfully say I’d seen all the films in the series. This time, the network ran the film in a 3-hour slot (with commercials), and without any goofy re-editing. It was a revelation. By the time it was over, I was sure I’d seen one of the very best films of the series; it was as though the Connery films were the “Hollywood version” of the exploits of the “real” James Bond presented in Majesty’s.

Coate: Where do you think On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: Within the top five, unquestionably. I’d place one or two of the Connery films ahead of it and maybe the Daniel Craig Casino Royale. But it’s near the top, for sure. One of the reasons it’s so great is John Barry’s extraordinary score. Barry knew going in that the music, as much as any element of OHMSS, would have to reinforce the idea that this new fellow was 007 just as much as his predecessor. So the score is strong and memorable at every turn: the stylish main theme, the beautiful love theme (We Have All the Time in the World, sung so memorably by Louis Armstrong), the cutting-edge use of the Moog synthesizer, and thrilling music for the action sequences, all contributing to one of the greatest Bond scores of all time.

Caplen: I struggle ranking the films as I enjoy them all for different reasons. For me, OHMSS deserves its own category because it has a different feel than the other films. Given my focus on the franchise’s portrayal of women, I cannot say that OHMSS departs in any meaningful way from the films immediately preceding and postdating it. As I have written, OHMSS perpetuates the Bond Girl archetype by introducing a harem theme and the easy manipulation of women for pecuniary or other gain.

Chapman: For me it’s in the top three along with From Russia with Love and The Spy Who Loved Me. (My Bond tastes encompass both the traditional spy-type Bond pictures and the big spectacular action-adventure Bond pictures!)

Cork: This really depends. For me—and some folks will hate me for this—it personally ranks in the middle. There is so much I love about the film, but I think Michael Reed and Peter Hunt played with the look of the 60s Bond films a bit too much. I think it could be shorter. I wish some of the editing was bit less abstract. The scene where Draco talks about Tracy after kidnapping Bond seems to go on for weeks. Norman Wanstall’s sound editing is sorely missed, and the sub-standard sound effects and looping in places are a real distraction for me. Ultimately, the lack of on-screen chemistry between Tracy and Bond hobbles the film for me.

On the other hand, there is so much going for it, so much of the mood of Fleming’s writing, so much spectacle that is mind-blowingly wonderful. Barry’s score is among the best of his career. I think one of the things that I find frustrating about the film is just how close it came to being the movie that truly re-defined Bond for audiences when it came out. But it didn’t. It would take filmmakers who so loved Majesty’s to find a way to do that with Casino Royale and Skyfall.

Finally, in many ways, I can judge the film differently. Not by how successful it was at doing what it set out to do, but by what it aimed for, by travelling the path less taken, by aspiring to give Bond back his soul.

Desowitz: In the Top 10. For me it’s my personal favorite. It’s a meta-Bond; unappreciated in its day but beloved by many fans today. It has stood the test of time really well and served as the template for Casino Royale in many ways. Chris Nolan even paid homage to it in Inception.

Helfenstein: Artistically it is the best film in the series. It excels in four key areas. (1) The script. It is hands-down the most faithful adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel. (2) The visuals. Director Peter Hunt’s vision, cinematographer Michael Reed’s lighting and camera work, combined with the lush, dense sets created by production designer Syd Cain make a striking cinematic environment that simply hasn’t been topped since. To quote director Steven Soderbergh: “Shot to shot, this movie is beautiful in a way none of the other Bond films are—the anamorphic compositions are relentlessly arresting.” (3) The action. While Bond films are always on the cutting edge in the action department, stunt personnel that I’ve interviewed said OHMSS was about a decade ahead of its time with the fight scenes and stunts. (4) The love story. Hunt was astonishingly able to combine a technically brilliant action film with a heart-tugging, tragic love story.

Pfeiffer: I would rank the film alongside Goldfinger as my favorites of the series. It has aged very well, unlike some of the Bond flicks of the 1970s. It’s got a strong script and the type of exotic production values we’ve come to associate with the series. If I have any gripe about the films made since For Your Eyes Only, it’s that they lack the kind of spectacular endings that the Bond films were once known for. It seems like every film has Bond and the villain going mano-a-mano at the end. I’m second to none in my admiration for Daniel Craig and the great work he’s done in revitalizing the franchise. However, I would like to see something like the finale of OHMSS, with Bond leading an assault force against the bad guys. 

Scivally: When I went to Los Angeles to go to USC, I would go to James Bond double- and triple-features at the “revival house” movie theaters, and it was there that I saw the film on the big screen, in wide-screen, sans commercials. After seeing all the other Bond films at the revival houses, I decided that the best of all of them was From Russia with Love, and the next best was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, followed by Goldfinger. Those films remain my top three favorites. The thing I find most appealing about From Russia and Majesty’s is that both of those films present 007 as a character who must use his brains to get out of dangerous situations, rather than, say, pushing a button on his wristwatch. There’s a very good example in Majesty’s, where Bond is imprisoned in the wheelhouse of the cable car, and with no gadgets, and no winter gear, he rips the pockets out of his slacks to use as makeshift gloves. That shows Bond to be clever, to be a little smarter than the average bear. Pressing a button on a gadget to get out of a bad situation—heck, I could do that.

Coate: Charles, what was the objective with your On Her Majesty’s Secret Service making-of book?

Helfenstein: My primary goal was to document not only the technical details (exact dates and times, locations, finances, challenges overcome, equipment used, etc.) but to uncover the influences of the key personnel. Not just the “how” it was filmed, but “why” the creative decisions were made. I started at the beginning, with the source material for the novel, in author Ian Fleming’s archives. Then I plumbed the depths of screenwriter Richard Maibaum’s archives, for the fascinating five years of work he did on the screenplay, including alternate drafts when Connery was still attached to the project, as well as ones with strange tangents including plastic surgery, and ones where Bond befriends a chimpanzee!

Film fans aren’t just interested in what made it to the screen, they want to know about what didn’t, so not only did I uncover the unused material from the early drafts, I also acquired storyboards from scenes cut including a large chase sequence through London and in the postal subway system, as well as a strange scene with a train full of corpses.

A large number of the call sheets, production memos, correspondence and 600-plus photographs in the book came directly from the OHMSS production archive of director Peter Hunt, which I acquired after he passed away in 2002. All told, the book took me about 10 years to put together, and judging from the tremendous response of both James Bond fans and the OHMSS cast and crew, my efforts paid off.

Coate: Compare and contrast George Lazenby’s turn as Agent 007….

Burlingame: Coming after Connery’s five films, it was impossible for Lazenby to measure up. I sometimes wonder whether we would have thought him more “acceptable” had there not been a Connery before him. Every actor has made his own mark on 007, from the more lighthearted Moore to the more serious Dalton, the somewhere-in-between Brosnan and now the modern-day Craig. But Lazenby did a creditable job. Had he stayed around to do Diamonds Are Forever, would he have grown into the role and be less “dismissed” today? One wonders.

Caplen: George Lazenby was tasked with the unenviable role of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond. Of course, no one can truly replace an original, so Lazenby was severely handicapped. To add insult to injury, Lazenby never seemed to win the full support of the producers, who continued to search for a replacement even after he was cast. Film reviews were particularly unforgiving. I recall one likened Lazenby to exuding the expressiveness of an Easter Island statue. Each time I watch the film, though, I am reminded that ”the other fellow” arguably would not have been able to deliver the James Bond required for OHMSS. It’s difficult to analyze Lazenby in the one-film vacuum, but I find that his portrayal of 007 has an energy and pace that is missing from Connery’s return in Diamonds Are Forever.

Chapman: Lazenby gets better in my eyes every time I watch the film. First—he looks good and moves well, nearly as well as Connery and Craig. Second—he’s superb in the action scenes. I think that of all the Bonds, Lazenby was the best at staging the fisticuffs. And the action scenes in OHMSS are some of the best in the whole series. And third—he proves himself a perfectly competent actor. Granted, he doesn’t have Connery’s confidence, and there are one or two scenes where he doesn’t get it right, notably the meeting with Draco. But I think he nails the final scene pretty well. In a sense, the fact that Lazenby wasn’t an experienced actor works in the film’s favor. His Bond reveals a degree of vulnerability, that’s there in the novel but not in the other films, at least until Casino Royale. For me Lazenby’s best scene is at the ice rink where he’s being hunted by Blofeld’s men after the ski chase. He looks frightened—note his reaction when he knocks into the person in the giant bear costume. This is psychologically plausible: he’s just skied down the mountain and fought off the two heavies in the bell-room so he must be exhausted. In the book Fleming writes that Bond was at the end of his tether and there wasn’t any stuffing left in him for another fight. The scene in the film has the same feeling.

Again, when I read the contemporary reviews, I found that the response to Lazenby was mixed. About half the reviews I read compared him unfavorably with Connery, but the other half thought he brought a freshness and new vitality to a series that some thought was starting to become stale after five movies. And, to be fair, the critical response to Connery in Dr. No was also mixed—some critics thought he was too thuggish and brutal (compare to the reaction to Daniel Craig), while others thought he fitted the role like a Savile Row suit. Connery’s performance in Dr. No is edgy: he really came into his own in From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. I do think that he was sleep-walking through the part by the time of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, and in that sense it was time for a change.

Cork: It is almost unfair to talk about Lazenby. He is so honest when he talks about his own turn in the role. There is that great Sondre Lerche song, Like Lazenby, which was inspired by Lazenby’s interviews on the special features I helped produce for the DVD / Blu-ray releases of the film. The opening line is, “It’s a travesty, where do I begin…” That says a lot. George Lazenby is a fantastic guy. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time with him, and had lunch with him earlier this year. He’s a great person, owns the room when he enters. But Bond was not kind to him. Peter Hunt believed he could edit a great performance out of him. Harry Saltzman advised him to act like a star and let no one push him around. And the press was brutal to him long before the film came out. It was a very harsh spotlight. For audiences, there was a real problem with what happened with Lazenby. For a significant portion of the film, he is impersonating someone else, a reasonably openly gay man. That was a tough burden for your typical James Bond audiences to stay within 1969/70. It wasn’t that they were offended, but one of the great appeals of Bond was his overt heterosexuality. But even worse, Lazenby is dubbed during this section of the film, robbing audiences of a key part of his performance. But, ultimately, he needed a stronger director, one that really knew how to draw a performance out of an actor rather than one who believed he could edit that performance into being. The result are some key scenes where Lazenby looks slightly lost. He is too often looking around like, “What the hell is going on?” There is a YouTube video intercutting the Bond casino scenes to make it appear that all the Bonds are playing against one another. In it, you can see how lost Lazenby looks compared to the others. It is a director’s job to make sure that Bond’s inner confidence can be seen throughout. I was friends with Peter Hunt. I think in so many ways he was vital to the success of Bond, a brilliant editor, but not an actor’s director. He did Lazenby no favors by under-directing him.

Desowitz: By all logic, Lazenby should’ve been a total disaster. And yet he was wonderful. He was handsome and had raw power and handled the action well. He was too young for this movie and had never acted before and it showed dramatically. Yet he was like a cipher without any previous baggage and I accepted him from the outset. (I think the opening line about “This never happened to the other fella” was a great icebreaker.) He was physically capable and unafraid of being vulnerable. We believed he was devastated at the end. He was a new kind of Bond, and it’s a shame he couldn’t be even more of himself instead of being directed in the mold of Connery.

Helfenstein: His massive physicality is evident from the pre-credits sequence onwards. The viewer has no trouble believing that this man is paid to kill people. Lazenby is without a doubt the Bond with the greatest amount of swagger. Those are his two greatest strengths. He’s certainly believable in the love scenes. Where he falls flat is the expository dialog scenes, especially the ones as Sir Hilary Bray, where he was dubbed. Those were the first scenes shot, and rather than bog down with getting the accent right, Hunt built Lazenby’s confidence by accepting takes he knew he would fix later in post-production. I think Lazenby’s overall confidence and happiness work very well in the film, and that positive outlook makes the gut-punch ending that much more powerful. Is George Lazenby the greatest “Actor” with a capital A to ever play James Bond? Of course not. But is he absolutely perfect for the part in OHMSS? Indubitably!

Pfeiffer: Lazenby was wise not to take the obvious route by trying to blatantly imitate Connery. Whether you like his interpretation of Bond or not, he did play the role in his own unique style and brought his own unique qualities to the role. 

Scivally: George Lazenby is the weakest link in the cast of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He lacks the sheer animal charisma and seductive voice of Sean Connery, but he has a great physique, is classically handsome, and performs most of his scenes with assuredness; his initial encounter with Marc-Ange Draco (Gabrielle Ferzetti) is his least accomplished bit, but he’s quite good in his scenes with Telly Savalas’s Blofeld, and shows real tenderness and sincerity in his scenes with Diana Rigg. He manages to invest Bond with an air of vulnerability missing in Sean Connery’s portrayal, and his worst moments are no worse than some of the leaden scenes played by Connery in You Only Live Twice. By the end of the film, when he seems more polished, it’s easy to buy him as James Bond. It has always seemed to me that with every actor who played the role, it takes three films for them to fully grow into it. I think it’s a shame that Lazenby didn’t get three chances to perfect his Bond persona. It would have been interesting to see him in Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die.

Coate: In what way was Telly Savalas’s Blofeld a memorable villain?

Burlingame: Savalas might just be the best of the Blofelds. (It’s either him or Pleasence.) He’s not at all to be taken lightly, and he and Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt make a formidable duo. He was so good that I had a lot of trouble thinking of him as a good guy when he took the Kojak role a few years later.

Caplen: The Blofeld we see in OHMSS is devious, maniacal, and cunning. But he is also somewhat more plausible than his prior iteration on You Only Live Twice. His facial scar replaced with no earlobes, the OHMSS Blofeld is a character that is more amenable to anonymity and disappearing without much fanfare. He can also be taken seriously, which cannot describe his campy successor in Diamonds Are Forever. Casting Telly Savalas (and Diana Rigg) around newcomer George Lazenby undoubtedly strengthened the film’s acting credentials. 

Chapman: “Okay, we’ll head them off at the precipice!” The first time I saw the film, I was surprised to see Blofeld taking such an active role in the ski chase, as in the other films he’s presented as a hands-off supremo who leaves the physical work to his henchmen. But in YOLT (novel) he has a sword fight with Bond. So in that sense Savalas’s more active Blofeld is consistent with the books. I like it when the villain represents a physical threat to Bond regardless of whether he has a big henchman, so for that reason I prefer Savalas to the other Blofelds. Donald Pleasence with his scarred eye looks great in YOLT but his stature and delivery are nothing like the silhouetted Blofeld we’ve seen in previous films. And while I think Charles Gray is a marvelous actor, the less said about his Noel Coward turn as Blofeld in DAF the better.

Cork: Savalas was this great figure. I encountered him twice, and each time he had that same easy Greek smile that confounded you as to whether he was about to invite you to have dinner or simply slice off your head and show it to his friends. That is a great quality, and Savalas was a very skilled actor. Savalas dominates virtually every scene he’s in, but I do wonder what his performance could have been with just a bit more direction. During the ski chase and the final chase, where so much could have been done with his close-ups and his lines, so little is. In particular, I think of his reaction shot to Piz Gloria blowing up or him dropping the grenade in the bobsled or the shot of him driving at the very end of the film. He seems weak. Those are moments where a director and actor can lift something up, infuse a standard reaction with something that brings the character into focus. Think of Goldfinger’s little glance around when he’s briefly in the vault in Fort Knox. You just know this guy wants to have sex with that gold. Or think of Rosa Klebb’s reactions in From Russia with Love. Savalas is also saddled with the scene where he’s smitten with Tracy and trying to convince her to become his mistress, and that scene works for her, but not for him. He seems smarmy, clownish and awkward. Again, a strong director working with an actor of his caliber could have made that scene work, built up a real dangerous sense of sexual tension, and had the audience in the palm of their hand.

Yet, all my nitpicking aside, Savalas is always fun to watch, and one of the things he does best is chew up the scenery. He knows how to speak with this marvelous imperious tone. But those who know his body of work also know what he was capable of doing.

Desowitz: Savalas, like Lazenby, was miscast on the surface but was the best Blofeld: urbane, physically fit, witty, serious, pretentious—not at all like the thugs he usually played. In fact, The Assassination Bureau (which co-starred both Rigg and Savalas) was like a warm up for him. You almost felt sorry for him when he witnesses Piz Gloria going to pieces at the end. The bobsled climax was thrilling too.

Helfenstein: When Salavas was first interviewed in 1968 about what sets Blofeld apart from other Bond villains, he answered “Flair,” and I think that answer can apply to Savalas himself. While some people complain that Savalas seems a bit thuggish to be a criminal mastermind, I think he fits the part like a glove. Hunt did not want to re-hire the previous Blofeld, Donald Pleasance, because he was simply too slight, and he “waddled rather than walked.” He would not have worked with such a physical movie like OHMSS. Savalas has a commanding presence, an authoritarian voice, and he’s quite believable as the head of SPECTRE. You can picture him working his way up the ladder, taking out rivals with his bare hands if need be. My favorite Savalas moment is the demented cackle he makes after his grenade explodes—sending Bond hurdling out of the bobsleigh. You can tell this guy enjoys being evil!

Pfeiffer: There are plenty of fans who think that Savalas was poorly cast as Blofeld. It’s true that Savalas was primarily known for playing earthy tough guys and had recently come off playing two such characters in The Dirty Dozen and The Scalphunters. The main complaint against him is that he was out of place playing an aristocratic villain and intellectual. There is some validity in this. He lacks the sophistication that someone like George Sanders would have brought to the role, and certainly Donald Pleasence cast a larger shadow as Blofeld, bringing nuance and mystery to the character. However, there is no way Pleasence could have played Blofeld in OHMSS, given the requirements of the script which mandated that this time around, Blofeld had to pose a physical challenge to Bond. It wouldn’t have thrilled audiences very much to see George Lazenby tossing around a slightly built, much older man like Pleasence. So count me among those who feel that Savalas acquitted himself quite well in the role, not only in terms of the physical demands, but also in terms of interpreting the character. What he may have lacked in sophistication, he made up for in the area of wit and humor. 

Scivally: Telly Savalas is a menacing presence, and is believable as an athletic, physically capable adversary of Bond. One can’t easily imagine Donald Pleasance or Charles Gray in the ski chase. But while Pleasance gave Blofeld a slightly Germanic accent, Savalas plays it with his own Garden City, New York, American accent, making his more of a Bronx Blofeld. With Savalas, the polished veneer of civility really does seem like just a veneer—you sense that he’s a tough SOB underneath, whom you don’t want to cross. Charles Gray, by comparison, is so charming and civilized that it’s difficult to believe he would do the nasty things Blofeld is supposed to do. And while Pleasance has an oily, evil presence, he lacked the physical stature to make a credible physical adversary to Bond; he would never have seemed like a threat in the hand-to-hand fighting of the bobsled scene. With Savalas, you can believe that he might just get the best of 007.

Coate: In what way was Tracy (Diana Rigg) a memorable Bond Girl?

Burlingame: Really, do you even have to ask? Diana Rigg is one of the great actresses of our time, from Shakespeare to The Avengers, and coming off the role of Emma Peel, she was simply ideal casting. If there is a problem with Lazenby in the role, it’s simply the fact that he just couldn’t match Rigg as Tracy and they had very little chemistry together. It was such a great part—the woman who finally won James Bond’s heart—and she still melts mine. I think Diana Rigg may just be the greatest “Bond girl” of all.

Caplen: I discuss Tracy di Vicenzo at length in Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond. She is a significant female character in the franchise. Flawed, rebellious, and “untamed,” she must be repositioned by James Bond, the man who saves her from suicide at the beginning of the film but cannot shield her from Blofeld’s bullets at its conclusion. OHMSS shows the audience, through Tracy, what befalls a woman who challenges the role reserved for her in a patriarchal society. 

Chapman: “Her price is far above rubies—or even your million dollars.” I’m biased because I’ve had a major crush on Diana Rigg ever since I first saw The Avengers! But I think she was the first of the Bond “girls” with any real depth of characterization—partly due to the writing and partly to the performance. Most of the early Bond women are beautiful to look at but at best are two-dimensional characters. Even Pussy Galore isn’t all that well fleshed out, though Honor Blackman is superb in the role. But Pussy, having been set up as an independent woman resistant to Bond’s charms, succumbs pretty easily in the end. Tracy is different. I think Diana Rigg captures both the vulnerability and the bravado of the character. And for once the woman is seen acting independently—she saves Bond when she turns up at the ice rink. In fact I’d say she’s my favorite heroine in the whole series. A shame that she had to be killed off at the end, but there again, that’s what makes this film distinctive and provides a degree of emotional investment that we don’t really get in the other films.

Cork: Diana Rigg is beyond a doubt the greatest thing in the film. She owns the screen. The character of Tracy is, internally, the most complex Bond woman. Sure, Vesper is tormented, but more because of external factors. Tracy is a troubled mess who doesn’t know if life is worth living, and it is the loss of her life that becomes one of the most powerful moments in any Bond film. Bond saves her as a stranger, and loses her as the love of his life. I get great joy from the action and many other things about OHMSS, but it is Tracy’s story and Rigg’s performance that makes the film one I can watch over and over.

Desowitz: Tracy is the best Bond Girl because she’s the first that won his heart. Rigg evoked Emma Peel with her spunk and sense of fun and adventure. Tracy is such a sad soul who has nothing to live for in the beginning but is given a new lease on life after the wedding, only to have it taken away from her. She could hold her own in a fight and could match wits with 007. The proposal scene is touching and romantic, the car rally is good fun, and the closing sight of her corpse is unforgettable.

Helfenstein: The typical method of casting Bond girls involved finding unknowns, except for Goldfinger, and they decided to follow that alternate recipe exactly by hiring another Avengers veteran, and thank God they did. The role required a real range of emotions, not just window dressing. Rigg plays Tracy with an incredible mix of sophistication and elegance, emotional vulnerability, and independent spirit. Her physical abilities, honed by her years on The Avengers, caused the filmmakers to rewrite the climax so she would have a fight scene to show off her talents. It is difficult to imagine any Bond girl of any era coming close to the full package Rigg brought to OHMSS. There is only one woman on the planet that can get 007 to give up his bachelorhood, and her name is Diana Rigg.

Pfeiffer: Until Diana Rigg appeared in OHMSS, most Bond women were (unjustifiably) written off as beautiful airheads. That really isn’t true. Most of the airhead characters came after this film (those played by Jill St. John, Britt Ekland and Tanya Roberts being the most egregious examples). It can be said that Bond women represented liberated female characters. Sure, they may have swooned in Bond’s presence, but they were generally courageous, self-reliant women who were getting along just fine before Bond entered their lives. With the character of Tracy in OHMSS, there was much more of an overt attempt to present her as a modern, liberated woman. This was, after all, a film made in the burgeoning days of the Women’s Lib movement. Tracy was also Bond’s intellectual equal and was presented as a daring risk-taker. It didn’t hurt that she was portrayed by an actress of exceptional skill. This seemed to be the first time critics gave some grudging respect to a leading female character in a Bond film. 

Scivally: Long before I saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I was in love with Diana Rigg. She was my idea of the ideal woman—beautiful, brainy and able to kick butt. I was a big fan of The Avengers, and wanted to grow up to be Mr. Steed so I could run around with Emma Peel. So, I was already pre-disposed to like Rigg before I saw the film. But her portrayal of Tracy di Vicenzo differs from her role of Mrs. Peel. Tracy has an inner melancholy that, when we first see her, is driving her to attempt suicide, and afterwards seems to be just under the surface. When she helps Bond escape from Mürren, the excitement of the situation—and his proposal—lifts her spirits and brings her to life; for the first time in her life, she’s really happy, and that makes her untimely death all the more tragic. Rigg, being an immensely skilled actress, makes us feel for Tracy from the first frame she’s in to the last.

Coate: What is the legacy of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service?

Burlingame: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service demonstrated (conclusively, even at the time) that a tight, Fleming-based script; direction by the guy who had so brilliantly edited the previous five films; a genuinely inspired music score; great actors including Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas; superb production design; well-chosen locations and eye-popping action sequences; could ensure that a top-notch Bond film was possible even without Sean Connery. To this day OHMSS ranks as one of the finest 007 films ever made.

Caplen: OHMSS serves as proof that the character of James Bond transcends the actor cast for the role. Sean Connery’s departure ultimately had little impact on the franchise and paved the way for continuity with different actors portraying our favorite protagonist. Whatever your opinion of George Lazenby may be, he served a greater function than merely portraying James Bond in one film, and that aspect is often overlooked.

Chapman: I think there are both short-term and longer-term legacies. Its perceived “failure” at the box-office meant that the producers changed direction for the next film. So in the short term the legacy of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was Diamonds Are Forever: Connery back, gadgets back, more or less a remake of Goldfinger but even more excessive in its bizarre situations and visuals. I know that some fans maintain that the Roger Moore films ruined the Bond series. I don’t. And the style of the 1970s Bonds was set by Diamonds, which has more silliness and more camp than any of Roger’s films. Blofeld was never meant to be a realistic character, but the moment he appeared in drag ruined him as a plausible villain for me. Diamonds was back up at the box-office, though, suggesting that’s the style that audiences at the time preferred. But it meant the Bond movies steered away from any attempt at psychological or emotional realism, and instead embraced spectacle, visual excess and campy humor.

In the longer term, though, I think the influence of OHMSS can be seen in the modern Bond movies. With Casino Royale we had a vulnerable Bond again, grieving over the death of a woman he has fallen in love with. And with Daniel Craig, the Bond films have again explored Bond’s sense of duty and loyalty, most obviously in Skyfall, but it’s also there in the other two. The action set pieces in the recent films are also influenced by Majesty’s, I think: big and spectacular—and in the case of the pre-title sequence of Skyfall extended like the ski chase in OHMSS—but not silly or entirely impossible. I’ve been used to saying in recent times that I thought, in hindsight, Licence to Kill was the first Daniel Craig Bond movie—albeit without Daniel Craig. But perhaps, I might suggest, OHMSS was the first Daniel Craig Bond movie?

Cork: I answered this one way back in the first question. I’ll answer a different way now. I’ve talked about how Majesty’s influenced Bond films that echo its tone and style, but there is a counterpoint to that. When Majesty’s came out and did not become a breakout success on the scale UA hoped for, it changed the Bond films. UA made it very clear to Cubby and Harry that there were no more blank checks, that the studio would be heavily involved in the future Bonds, and David Picker personally became a major influence on Diamonds Are Forever. He got Connery back. He selected Tom Mankiewicz to do re-writes on the script. He almost succeeded in getting the film made in Hollywood where studio supervision would have been even more apparent. Most of all, Picker declared that what he wanted, and what he believed audiences wanted, was more Goldfinger and more humor. Until the end of the Brosnan era (with the exception of Licence to Kill), we are looking at a tone for Bond that is very heavily influenced by Picker’s creative input on Diamonds Are Forever. That’s an unexpected legacy, but it comes straight from OHMSS’s lack of box-office success.

Another legacy has to do with the way the producers and studios approached the job of directing Bond. I can’t speak for them, but we can look at their actions. Cubby’s big advice to Michael and Barbara was always not to let others screw up Bond. When you hire a director, it is a big leap of faith. Although Cubby later approached Peter Hunt for For Your Eyes Only, he was not pleased with Majesty’s. Peter was not someone he could relate to on a personal level. Terence Young, Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert were directors who were brilliant, but never pulled the “artiste” card. John Glen was a craftsman. And Cubby saw them all as problem-solvers. Peter as a director on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was not seen as a problem solver. He was seen as a bit of an artiste. It would be twenty-five years before the filmmakers would hire a director with whom they did not already have a working relationship. Now, with Mendes—who was brought in at Daniel Craig’s suggestion—there is again the kind of creative trust with a director that Peter Hunt was given because of his history with the series.

There is one last legacy I want to mention that Majesty’s instilled in the series. For many years, the legacy was “stick to the formula, and don’t go stray or the audience will punish you.” But you can read in the interviews with Michael and Barbara that the films in the series that they keep talking about are Goldfinger and Majesty’s. They keep coming back to Majesty’s. Like me, I believe that they felt in a way that it was so close, so wonderful, but it wasn’t quite there. With the casting of Daniel Craig, it is clear they finally felt they had the right actor to take the kinds of creative chances that Majesty’s took, and to learn from the places where Majesty’s didn’t win over audiences. Bond films used to be very safe creatively. Now, they aren’t. Now they are taking chances like they did in 1969 with Majesty’s. But no longer is it one first-time director trying to steer the Bond juggernaut back to Fleming with the producers and the studio simply believing that Bond would never slide at the box-office. Now, it is the entire creative team encouraged by Michael and Barbara to take risks, to dig into the character of Bond, to challenge our expectations. And, in that sense, the legacy of Majesty’s is the continued success of the Bond films today.

Desowitz: The legacy is that it gave the franchise permission to be dark and tragic, and every now and then the franchise returns to the tone of this special movie, most recently with Craig’s trio of films. It also proved that the franchise could last without Connery, even though it would’ve been great to see Connery make this tender story as his Bond finale.

Helfenstein: It’s a legacy of risk-taking and a legacy of influence. While producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were known gamblers, both in casinos and in the movie business, they gambled to the extreme with OHMSS. Peter Hunt was a first time director. George Lazenby had never acted before. Think about that. They were replacing the world’s best known movie star with an absolute novice. They also took a risk by keeping Fleming’s tragic ending, and keeping the lengthy run time.

From an artistic standpoint the gamble paid off beautifully, with a masterpiece of a film. Financially however, the film did not make as much as some of its predecessors, and so it caused the pendulum to swing away from serious films to more light hearted ones.

The legacy of OHMSS influence has been demonstrated by nods and homages in every subsequent Bond actor era from Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig. The most prolific James Bond film director, with five entries under his belt, John Glen, is a huge fan of OHMSS, and that love for the film is seen throughout his work.

Marc Forster, the director of Daniel Craig’s second Bond film, states that his favorite Bond film is OHMSS, and when asked about his favorite Bond girl, Craig answers that it is Diana Rigg. Forty-five years later, Craig is currently filming SPECTRE, where he will face a villain named Blofeld, and a henchwoman named Irma.

But OHMSS’s influence reaches far outside the Bond series as well. A-list directors like Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh profess their love for the film, and the climax of Nolan’s Inception is a direct nod to OHMSS. OHMSS’s influence isn’t limited to just cinematic film makers. The plot of the second season premiere of the BBC’s wildly successful Sherlock TV series, A Scandal in Belgravia, was influenced by the unused “death train” scene from OHMSS. Series co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss discuss the influence of OHMSS, as well as my making-of book, in the audio commentary of the episode.

Forty-five years later, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is no longer seen as the failed experiment, but as the cinematic triumph it truly is.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of OHMSS is that the Bond producers are generally rewarded, at least in the artistic sense, when they are willing to take risks. They did so with Roger Moore, who was the antithesis of Connery but was undeniably the popular choice during the years he played 007. The Dalton films could have been a major turning point in the series but only half-measures were taken and he never really got the opportunity he deserved to introduce an entirely new incarnation of Bond. They got it right with Brosnan, who was pivotal in bringing the series back from a six-year hiatus and proved Bond was relevant in the post-Cold War period. The producers’ big gamble with Daniel Craig has also paid off big time, and it illustrates the most daring gamble they ever took in terms of rebooting the entire series. But we shouldn’t forget that the first ballsy move in that regard occurred with OHMSS. The film was a painful experience for most of those involved due to infighting and bad press, but its legacy is that it holds up as being far superior to most of the CGI-filled monstrosities that pass for thrillers in the modern cinema. 

Scivally: After the gadgetry of Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice threatened to make technology the real star of the 007 films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service returned the focus to James Bond, making him a more human character. For many years after its release, pundits said it was a shame that it did not star Sean Connery, salivating over the prospects of a Connery-Diana Rigg pairing when both were at the height of their sex appeal. But had Connery agreed to make the film, it would have been a very different movie. First of all, there would have been no need to have a stronger actress be the “Bond woman,” since Rigg was hired precisely because Lazenby was an inexperienced unknown. Secondly, Connery’s 007 was a much more callous lady-killer; Lazenby’s Bond showed more sensitivity. One can believe that Lazenby’s Bond would fall in love, and be shattered when his wife is murdered. In the prior film, You Only Live Twice, Bond seems to be falling for Aki, yet when she is killed, he immediately begins speaking to Tanaka about the mission, as if Aki’s death is merely a nuisance, like, say, a hangnail. Furthermore, it was because a new actor was taking on the role that director Peter Hunt felt emboldened to reinvent the series by taking it back to a tone closer to Ian Fleming’s source material and away from the jokey gadget-fests the Bond movies had become. Sadly, the film stumbled at the box-office (though its reputation has grown over the years), and the subsequent 007 films veered away from the more reality-based spy thriller mold of Majesty’s and back to the fun-filled romp model, beginning with Connery’s return in Diamonds Are Forever. James Bond would never be so serious again until Casino Royale. Lastly, the lasting impact of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is that it showed that a James Bond film could be made without Sean Connery in the lead role. The producers maintained that audiences came to the films to see James Bond, not necessarily the actor playing him. Majesty’s helped prove that point.

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on the occasion of its 45th anniversary.

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The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering A View to a Kill on its 30th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

I’m personally really looking forward to this. Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is my all-time favorite Ghibli film. It’s absolutely stunning animation from a master at the top of his game. As you should already know, Miyazaki’s first animated film, Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro, will be released on Collector’s Edition Blu-ray here in the States for the first time on 6/23 from Discotek Media. We’ve also confirmed that GKids and Universal will be releasing Studio Ghibli’s latest film, When Marnie Was There, on Blu-ray and DVD later this year.

Speaking of Universal, the studio has set Parks and Recreation: Season Seven – The Farewell Season and Parks and Recreation: The Complete Series for DVD only release on 6/2.

Meanwhile, Troma is releasing The Toxic Avenger, Part II on Blu-ray/DVD Combo on 4/14 (SRP $24.95), along with Class of Nuke ‘Em High 2 on Blu-ray/DVD Combo that same day.

Ketchup Entertainment is releasing Harlock: Space Pirate on DVD on 3/31.

Also, PBS Distribution has set Dancing on the Edge for Blu-ray and DVD release on 5/5, followed by Masterpiece Mystery!: Grantchester on both formats on 4/7.

Finally today, are there any Bond fans in the house? In about two hours, the official 007 website is going to debut the first teaser trailer for Bond 24, a.k.a. SPECTRE. Click the link for that and enjoy.

Here’s a look at all three of the Ghibli Blu-ray titles listed above. Click on the cover art to support The Bits by pre-ordering them on Amazon.com…

That’s all for now. Gave a great weekend and we’ll see you on Monday!

- Bill Hunt

As with our previous 007 articles (available here and here and here), The Bits continues the series with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities who discuss the virtues and shortcomings of A View to a Kill and analyze whether or not the passage of time has been kind to the film. The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

Okay, let’s (alphabetically) meet the participants…

Robert A. Caplen is the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). An attorney based in Washington, DC, he practices antitrust and commercial litigation and has published numerous law review articles in leading academic journals. Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (which was quoted in Sir Roger Moore’s memoir, Bond on Bond) is his first book. He is working on a follow-up book and can be reached via Facebook (www.Facebook.com/bondgirlbook) and Twitter (@bondgirlbook).

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is available on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012; www.jamesbondunmasked.com; and updated for Kindle which includes a chapter on Skyfall and exclusive interview with Sam Mendes). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies (www.billdesowitz.com), a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Andrew McNess is the author of A Close Look at ‘A View to a Kill’ (Xlibris, 2011; and updated in 2015). Based in Melbourne, Australia, Andrew works for a not-for-profit organization that supports bereaved families. He has a doctorate in sociology and has published scholarly work in subject areas such as youth bereavement, peer support and health promotion. He greatly enjoys combining his writing interests with a lifelong interest in film, and continues to do so via a site of Bond-related commentary, A View on Bond: www.aviewonbond.com.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and the forthcoming Dracula FAQ, due to be published in October. As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is the Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to A View to a Kill, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is A View to a Kill worthy of celebration on its 30th anniversary?

Robert A. Caplen: A View to a Kill is certainly an interesting film. It concludes the Sir Roger Moore era, which brought the franchise to new heights while at the same time deviated significantly from the James Bond that audiences discovered through Sir Sean Connery…. The film has been characterized as the worst James Bond mission, in part due to Moore’s age at the time. Indeed, Bond seems more like a mentor to young Stacey Sutton than her suitor. But AVTAK should not be dismissed so quickly. Moore’s long tenure as James Bond provided necessary stability to the franchise after Connery’s two departures; the perceived failure of George Lazenby as 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; and a decade of shifting attitudes about race, gender, and Cold War politics. The franchise simply would not be healthy today if AVTAK did not exist…. East-West relations certainly remain at odds in AVTAK, but the tone is quite different from Octopussy and its 1987 successor. Microchips and horse racing seem much less dire than the detonation of a nuclear bomb in West Berlin or combat against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Perhaps AVTAK sought to distract mid-1980s audiences from real-world uncertainties presented by the “evil empire” after the deaths of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, and the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev…. In this regard, the gimmicks AVTAK employs are classic 1985. A year after the successful (but Soviet boycotted) 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the fictitious Max Zorin dreams of crippling Silicon Valley from aboard a menacing blimp (of all things) that stalks the San Francisco skies. He fuses technology with the old sport of cheating, using microchips to operate a successful horse-racing doping scheme. If only Ben Johnson had been so clever at the 1988 Olympic games! And the usual spy-related gadgetry produced by Q Branch is replaced by a remote control robot dog that is more impressive for its superfluity than anything else. 1985 was apparently the year of the cinematic robot, as Rocky IV later confirmed.

John Cork: The further we get away from A View to a Kill, the less likely it seems that it will come back from the dead and haunt us…. A View to a Kill is a tough movie to love. It contains some of the worst performances in the Bond series. It has that 1980s look that may not ever come back into fashion, liberally peppered with lots of ungainly, unmotivated zoom shots. Unlike most of the Bond films, it lacks the sense of cleverness that is so instrumental to the success of 007…. It is a film where everyone was working a bit too quickly, where the inherent tone of a Bond film was in short supply, the Bond film that feels the most like an expensive TV movie. It is the Bond film that should have gotten the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. It is generally the least-loved Bond film of the Eon series…. Yet, Bond fans should celebrate it. As much as anything, we should celebrate those who actually do love the film. Every Bond film has fans that became aware of 007 by sitting in a cinema and being swept away. I love those who came to Bond through A View to a Kill and staunchly defend it. I have my films that everyone else hates. Everyone needs those films. And the lovers of those films like A View to a Kill, they see the blood, sweat and tears that went into making it. They are the ones who are thrilled when Achille Aubergine creepily suggests he and Bond add the butterfly performer to their “collection.” Lord only knows what they found plastered up in the walls of that guy’s basement after his death. Those AVTAK-lovers can still look at it with the eyes of a wonder-struck kid. Every film needs those fans. They make everyone else step back and say, “Hold on, let me give this another viewing.”…. When you watch the film again, you can marvel at the early snowboarding stunts, the audacity of the reveal of the 007 logo as Duran Duran’s title song kicks in, the amazing BASE jump off the Eiffel Tower, the fantastic car stunts, the great dynamic between Moore and the always-lovely Patrick Macnee. You can hear the echoes of greatness in Barry’s score, enjoy Christopher Walken chewing up the scenery as Zorin, and appreciate the vamping of Grace Jones.

Bill Desowitz: It’s the last of the Roger Moore Bonds, who’s had the longest tenure. He was 57 and starting to show his age. So it made sense for Bond to struggle a bit but still manage to demonstrate skill, luck and assistance. And they made it very ‘80s hip by surrounding him with Christopher Walken, Grace Jones and Tanya Roberts. However, it was also nice to see Bond paired with Patrick Macnee of The Avengers.

Andrew McNess: In celebrating the 30th anniversary of A View to a Kill we are acknowledging the success and the legitimacy of the Roger Moore era. More specifically, we are celebrating a film that showcases a very interesting take on the super-villain template and features some of the series’ strongest stylistic debts to Alfred Hitchcock, particularly through the creative use of famous landmarks. Within its escapist canvas, the film has a genuine dramatic heft, and it features some of the most intriguingly subtle plays with the Bondian formula. The film travelled a rocky road both critically and financially—the zeitgeist, as such, was not particularly tolerant of James Bond during the Eighties, particular with the ascension of the blue-collar hero and the tendency of commentators to negatively correlate Moore’s aged visage with the series’ vitality—and yet it offers so many details and moments of interest. We are also celebrating a film that, in its darker passages, ushered in the tone of the Timothy Dalton years—although we didn’t know that one at the time.

Lee Pfeiffer: Any Bond film is worthy of an anniversary celebration. Even the weakest entries in the series—and A View to a Kill certainly qualifies for that label—are revered by Bond fans, who debate the merits, or lack thereof, for decades to come. Additionally, even the worst Bond films have elements to them that are highly enjoyable. View has that terrific title theme by Duran Duran and a fine score by John Barry. There are also the usual glamorous sets and Peter Lamont’s impressive production design. So sub-level 007 is generally a notch above most other action movies. 

Bruce Scivally: I’m not sure that it is worthy of celebration. It is a milestone film in that it is Roger Moore’s last outing as 007, but it is such a weak entry that there’s simply not much to recommend it. 

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Coate: What was your reaction to the first time you saw A View to a Kill?

Caplen: I first watched A View to a Kill on VHS in the early 1990s and enjoyed the film despite emerging with a feeling many critics expressed: had the Bond franchise reached its nadir? But I am a product of the 1980s, so I have nostalgia for the era and for the film, even though it does not rank among my most favorite in the series.

Cork: I was one of those who bought tickets to the World Premiere at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. I went with a platonic female friend who always said I needed to take her to a movie premiere. It was a great evening…. The audience was not filled with James Bond fans. Teenaged girls and their mothers packed the place because two of the members of Duran Duran were in attendance. A girl sitting next to us got into an ugly verbal fight with a girl behind us over something to do with the band. I never figured out what it was about, but all I could think was, “Never thought this would be how it would go down at a James Bond premiere.” The place went nuts when the Duran Duran members walked out on stage…. After that, there was applause when the title song came on and when Duran Duran’s credit came up. Beyond that, the theater was chillingly quiet for a movie premiere until the song was reprised at the end…. That night, the star was not Roger Moore or James Bond. The star was Duran Duran. I think the event was more akin to what it would have been like had they sold charity tickets to the premiere of a Twilight film. But it was a great night…. Reaction to the film: First, I had read the script in advance, so I knew the story. When the film didn’t open with the gun barrel, I was deeply disappointed. I hated seeing a legal disclaimer at the top of the movie. Like the vast majority of Bond fans, the pre-credit sequence had me hooked…until the cover version of California Girls started playing. For a second I wondered if someone had hit the wrong button in the projection booth. It was probably the single most disconcerting moment ever in a Bond film for me…. The film for me never really recovered from that moment. When a fan sees a new Bond film for the first time, you want to be swept away. As a fan, you are invested in the success. Eon and Roger Moore had beaten back Never Say Never Again, making the more successful (and in my opinion) better film with Octopussy. A View to a Kill was teed up to capitalize off of that success. The California Girls moment killed those hopes…. Trivia question for everyone: A View to a Kill’s title song hit number 1 for two weeks in the US in the summer of 1985. Although it is a sound-alike version in the film, did the Beach Boys’ California Girls out-perform or under perform on the Billboard US charts? Answer later!.... There were many highlights, but the film just never fully clicked for me. I now know so many who worked on the film, and each and every one is talented and highly skilled. There is so much great hard work that went into the film, but it never played. I really enjoy Octopussy and The Living Daylights, so this is no knock on John Glen. Sometimes it just works out that way.         

Desowitz: I saw it at a press screening at the Academy in Beverly Hills. My reaction was that the franchise seemed tired and it was time for Moore to retire as 007. At the same time, Walken seemed under-utilized.

McNess: I first saw A View to a Kill at the local cinema of the Australian town I grew up in (Portland, Victoria). Not in 1985, mind you, but 1986—it took new releases an inordinately long time to reach us! I liked the film in spite of myself—Indiana Jones was the bee’s knees for me back then. But I also found A View to a Kill intriguing: it wasn’t as action-focused as many other Bonds, instead drawing its energy as much from a quiet sense of foreboding. I also felt that Christopher Walken and Grace Jones gave the film a distinct flavor. I remember the odd beauty of the airship floating over San Francisco Bay, with Zorin anticipating Bond’s demise. And I remember people muttering outside the theater afterward about how “horrible a man” Zorin was.

Pfeiffer: I first saw the film at an advanced critics screening in New York. My reaction was the same as when I saw both The Man with the Golden Gun and Moonraker: “The Bond series is over!” I loved the previous film, Octopussy, because I thought it had the right balance of thrills and humor. But the Moore films were highly erratic in terms of their tone. Most of the true believers in the franchise judged each of Moore’s entries by the amount of embarrassing slapstick humor the movies contained. Thus, Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy were generally regarded as not having gone “over the top,” although each of those movies do contain some cringe-inducing jokes. However, they did not overwhelm the overall experience. With A View to a Kill, however, the overall perception from fans was one of despair. The silly humor is strewn throughout the movie, culminating in that awful Keystone Cops-like fire truck chase. The film regains its mojo in the last section, but by then the damage is done. But every time I was ready to write the series off, the producers managed to rally and reinvent 007 as a relevant action hero.

Scivally: I saw A View to a Kill at the Cary Grant Theater at MGM in Culver City (now the Sony lot), at a press screening a few days, or maybe a week, before the film opened…. The first few minutes of AVTAK are great. The John Barry music is fantastic, Bond finding the dead agent in the snow is macabre, and the action that immediately follows is exciting and well-paced. And then, three and a half minutes in, we get a cover-band version of California Girls as Bond improvises a snowboard. That scene in itself isn’t so bad; try watching it with the sound off. It’s the music that kills it, instantly destroying the tension that’s built up for the sake of a cheap laugh. And that, in a nutshell, is my biggest beef with John Glen as a director. He’s a very nice man and a great raconteur, but he never understood the difference between “wit” and “vulgar humor.” Once the Beach Boys song starts, the rest of the pre-credits scene devolves into silliness, including the Union Jack on the inside of the iceberg-camouflaged submarine…. Then we’re into the title song by Duran Duran. The song’s lyrics don’t make a lick of sense, but the song itself is catchy and has the bombastic feel of a 007 theme. Maurice Binder’s title visuals, however, are among his worst. Personally, I don’t find women in garish blacklight paint pretending to ski terribly sexy or alluring…. It is fun to see Patrick Macnee in the film. For those like myself who grew up watching reruns of The Avengers on television, it was a treat to see John Steed on-screen with another 60s TV icon, The Saint. Moore and Macnee had appeared together before—Macnee was Dr. Watson to Moore’s Sherlock Holmes for the 1976 TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York. On-screen, the two have an easy rapport, and superb comic timing, that is a joy to watch. It’s a pity that Macnee’s character, Tibbett, is killed off halfway through the film (though one has to admit he’s not much of a spy if he gets into his car without at least a glance at the tall woman hiding in the back seat)…. It has the weakest fight scene of the series, with Moore and Macnee taking on a guy who looks like Kenny Rogers and another Zorin thug in the secret lab beneath the stables. The fight is oddly choreographed and poorly edited; after Bond punches Kenny Rogers, it looks like Kenny lays himself down on the crate-banding treadmill. And the blue tracksuit Bond wears in the scene looks a size too big, unlike the nicely-tailored suit Moore wears in the previous scene…. The violence of the mine scene, with Zorin laughing gleefully as he machine-guns his men, was more barbaric than anything that had been seen in any previous Bond film. Previous 007s had traded in cartoon violence; this scene has a nastiness to it that is unsettling. In a sense, that scene marked the end of the “old Bond.” Just three films later, with GoldenEye, it would be Pierce Brosnan as 007 doing the machine-gunning of dozens at a time. I guess that’s progress.

Coate: Where do you think A View to a Kill ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Caplen: A View to a Kill should be judged within the Moore era, not against the films of any other actor portraying James Bond. It is simply impossible to give AVTAK the same weight as Goldfinger or Skyfall; the films’ objectives—and audience expectations—are completely different. As a Moore film, AVTAK is entertaining, but it ultimately lacks the excitement and urgency of The Spy Who Loved Me or Octopussy. In my view, the grand triumph of Bond’s rescue of Stacey Sutton and descent from the burning city hall building seems more climactic than Max Zorin’s defeat atop the Golden Gate Bridge. Like Zorin’s blimp, much of the film seems a bit deflated, but it remains a spy thriller complete with East-West tensions, a maniacal villain, an enigmatic henchwoman, and an innocent geologist who gets caught up in a scheme far more complex than a hostile corporate takeover of her family’s oil company. It has the classic elements of a Bond film.

Cork: Really? You are asking that about A View to a Kill? That’s cruel. Some film has to hold the distinction of sitting in last place for me. A View to a Kill holds that honor. Wow, I hate saying that.

Desowitz: I still believe it’s the weakest of the Moore Bonds, but I’ve come to appreciate his willingness to show his age more. It’s also fitting that old school chums Moore and Lois Maxwell bid goodbye to the franchise together. And for once it was nice seeing Bond sneak into a lady’s bed to surprise Jones’ May Day and mix pleasure and pain.

McNess: It is often ranked as one of the lesser Bond films, a position I simply cannot support. While I recognize the details that a number of critics and fans typically take issue with—Bond too far past the late thirties prime, Zorin too odd, a reduced action quota, henchwoman turns good, horse racing episode not sufficiently related to central conspiracy, and so on—I believe the film plays superbly. The inclination to break a genre film down to its constituent parts in order to grade it is understandable, but shouldn’t the grading relate more to how those elements interact? I rank A View to a Kill as one of the best.

Pfeiffer: I would rank A View to a Kill pretty much near the bottom of the Bond barrel. I think only The Man with the Golden Gun and Die Another Day are less rewarding experiences because they didn’t even have memorable title songs. Having said that, there are still plenty of things in any Bond movie that I like, this one included. 

Scivally: A View to a Kill, to me, marks the nadir of the series. It has all the ingredients you expect of a Bond film—the gun barrel opening, John Barry score, great theme song, exciting action set pieces, exotic locations, a megalomaniacal villain, and a beautiful damsel-in-distress. Yet, unlike the quiche Bond prepares for Stacey, it’s all gooey and undercooked, using ingredients that are too far past their shelf life.

Coate: Did Roger Moore deliver a good performance in this, his final outing as Agent 007?

Caplen: Absolutely. Moore’s portrayal of Bond has been consistent throughout his tenure. Although Moore may have eclipsed himself as Bond by 1985, he remained Agent 007 until it was time for him to say never again.

Cork: I love Roger. He is a relaxed, confident actor. He can win you over with a glance. I think he did a fine job with a script that probably needed another few months of work. In A View to a Kill, Roger’s performance reminds me of that line in Elton John’s Candle in the Wind: “You had the grace to hold yourself while those around you crawled.” Roger was always a class act on screen, and his performance in A View to a Kill just confirmed his professionalism.

Desowitz: I like the way he acts like a protective father figure to Roberts. It’s lovely watching him cook quiche for dinner and fall asleep in a chair with a shotgun in his arms, watching over her like a gallant knight.

McNess: It’s not the performance that typifies his reign, but it’s a good one. One of earlier quips in the film—”There’s a fly in his soup”—is delivered by Moore at a lower pitch than we’re generally accustomed to, and it sets up the tone of his performance beautifully. The characteristic lightness of touch is, at times, discernibly strained; there are moments of grimness and fatalism threaded through his cool, collected seventh essay of the 007 character. And a quality I find especially engaging in Moore’s performances, particularly in the John Glen films, is how genuinely Moore communicates worry and concern. His Bond also seems quite repelled and unsettled by Zorin, which is an unexpected but welcome detail.

Pfeiffer: Roger Moore has the most self-deprecating sense of humor of any actor I’ve ever known. He doesn’t have a trace of ego. I was interviewing him once on stage at The Players club in New York and I asked him what his best performance was. He said, “None!” The audience lapped it up because it’s so refreshing to find someone who is a show business icon who isn’t full of self-importance. He elaborated by saying his limits are raising either one or both eyebrows to show emotion. I challenged him on that and he conceded he felt he gave one fine performance, in the little-seen 1970 thriller The Man Who Haunted Himself. Of course, that’s all nonsense. If Moore never gave a performance that cried out for an Oscar, he never gave a bad one, either. You know what you’re getting with Moore—and people like his on-screen persona. In the weakest of the Bond films, A View to a Kill included, Moore carries the show and often overrides the elements of the films that don’t work. In real life, he’s one of the funniest people you will ever meet, and that comes across on screen in all of his movies. In View, Moore seems to be having a good time, especially in scenes with his old pal Patrick Macnee. Moore is fun to watch even in a sub-par entry like this. 

Scivally: I can’t really fault Roger Moore’s performance in A View to a Kill. As in all his latter Bond films, he seems to find a good balance between the light moments and the ones that require more gravitas. His appearance is another matter. Though it was made only two years after Octopussy, Moore looks a decade older. It is hard to reconcile the deep lines of his face with the athletic heroics of stunt doubles skiing off precipices, jumping atop Eifel Tower elevators, and fighting hand-to-hand atop the Golden Gate Bridge. Mind you, I say this realizing that Moore, in this film, is only four years older than I am presently, and he’s much more handsome at 57 than I am at 53, but he’s not playing Roger Moore. He’s playing James Bloody Bond, a character one usually pictures as being about 35, with the grace of a panther, not the measured moves of an elderly lion. This becomes particularly problematic in the scenes where Bond is trading sexual innuendo with Jenny Flex, making love to May Day, sharing a hot tub with Pola Ivanova, and, in the finale, showering with Stacey Sutton. Bond comes off not as a suave seducer, but as, at best, a dirty-old-man and, at worst, a sexual predator…. It was, I believe, one Bond too many for Moore; it would have been better had his last 007 film been Octopussy. Even he has admitted that by this point he was definitely too old for the role. But if I were offered $5 million plus 5% of the US profits (resulting in a final payday of $7.5 million), I wouldn’t turn the part down on principle, either.

Coate: In what way was Christopher Walken’s Max Zorin a memorable villain?

Caplen: Christopher Walken is a talented actor who imbued Zorin with the necessary maniacal and sinister mannerisms that make him a classic, deranged villain. Can another actor bring to life the personality of a botched Nazi medical experiment in the same way? Likely not…. Zorin, though, is very predictable and unremarkable. It is May Day who is the more memorable villain. We know little about her other than she serves Zorin both professionally and romantically. But is she a product of Zorin’s doping experimentation? Like other villains before her, May Day is impervious to Bond’s charm. But her epiphany occurs out of pure self-interest and self-preservation, which begs the question why she would be so devoted to Zorin in the first place. She thought he loved her. Despite her brawn, May Day is quite naïve and vulnerable.

Cork: Christopher Walken is one of the great American actors of our era. He has been in some of the best and worst films ever made, and in each one, he’s so much fun to watch. From his dark comic turn in Annie Hall, to his amazing performance in The Deer Hunter, to his great tap-dance striptease in Pennies from Heaven, to Pulp Fiction to Catch Me If You Can to Jersey Boys (a film I liked more than almost anyone else). And he’s gotta have more cowbell. Walken is always interesting. You can always see that hint of madness in his eyes…. Zorin himself is a great character, in his own way he reminds me of DuPont in Foxcatcher, a man slipping the bonds of sanity, but so rich no one will stop him. I think there was much more that could have been done with Zorin. Roger Moore hated the massacre in the mine sequence, this film’s version of Goldfinger’s gassing of the hoods, but when I see Walken play that moment, see him live out that bloodlust for the sake of bloodlust, I can see the film that might have been, I can see the shadow of the Joker from The Dark Knight.

Desowitz: The bleach blond hair was a nice throwback to Red Grant, and he was a petulant, spoiled brat. His Scarface-inspired machine gun rampage also took Bond villainy into the ‘80s.

McNess: Walken’s Zorin provides a memorable spin on the patented Bond super-villain. There’s the off-hand joviality; the world’s an amusing playground for Zorin. But he’s also dead-eyed—there’s a disconnect that is actually genuinely sinister. His plans don’t even seem informed by a set of ethics, however debased. It’s monopoly for the sheer hell of it. In terms of Bondian villains we have seen over the decades, he epitomizes the scarily entitled individualist—a prevalent beast in 1980s culture, with no signs of abating in intervening years.

Pfeiffer: Christopher Walken’s presence in the film was quite a coup for the producers. He had won the Oscar for The Deer Hunter a few years before so it gave some real credibility to the film to have an Oscar-winner on board. Of course, since then, numerous people who appeared in the series have won Oscars: Sean Connery, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Halle Berry. I might be missing some…oh, yes, John Barry, who technically “acts” in The Living Daylights. Back to Walken…he jumped at the chance because he grew up on Bond flicks and loves them. I thought he did a good job as Zorin. Unfortunately, the character wasn’t very memorable, but he has that wry wit and charm that all the great Bond villains must possess, and his dialogue with Moore is sharp and funny. I also love his last seconds on screen, when he’s about to plunge to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge. He appreciates the irony of having been bested and smiles a bit before falling. It may be the best moment in the film. 

Scivally: Christopher Walken is a fine actor, with eccentric phrasing that makes the most banal lines interesting. And his villain, Max Zorin, is not your run-of-the-mill megalomaniac. We’re told he’s the result of Nazi experiments in steroids (along with May Day, we presume) conducted by Dr. Karl Mortner (Willoughby Gray, channeling his inner Josef Mengele). But he’s also part greedy Gordon Gekko, and part Lex Luthor. Like Gene Hackman’s Luthor in 1978’s Superman, Zorin plans to set off an explosion to cause an earthquake that will alter the California landscape. We’re also told Zorin is psychotic, and Walken makes us believe that with the massacre of his own men in the mine, and the nervous giggle he gives before dropping to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge. Unlike some of the other performers, Walken makes interesting choices and strikes all the right notes as Zorin.

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Coate: In what way was Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) a memorable Bond Girl?

Caplen: Stacey Sutton is, in many ways, another iteration of Jane Seymour’s Solitaire: an innocent woman who finds herself the unwitting participant in the villain’s scheme. But Stacey is neither a possession nor a pushover (thought she is gullible enough to believe Bond is reporter James Stock of the London Financial Times). She has a family legacy (and business) to protect, mounts a persistent legal battle against Zorin, and pursued a degree in geology so that she could take the helm of her family’s oil company. Stacey is career-driven and resolute: she refuses Zorin’s efforts to buy her silence and obtain dismissal of her lawsuit. Unlike Melina Havelock, revenge is not her motivation. She stands for principles. Unfortunately, Stacey has very little chemistry with Bond, leaving audiences with the impression that this career woman is cold, detached, and devoid of sexuality.

Cork: The absolute best moment in the film for Tanya Roberts is, for me, an ad-libbed reaction. When they were shooting Bond and Stacey arriving at the mine, they had her pull on miner’s overalls. Well, someone decided that Stacey would naturally be wearing over-sized men’s overalls. It is a natural assumption, but this is a Bond film. Stacey finding form-fitting miner’s overalls is no more absurd than Bond wearing a bone-dry white dinner jacket and bowtie beneath his waterproof suit in the opening of Goldfinger…. So the story goes that when presented with her costume, Roberts basically said, “you gotta be kidding me. No way am I going to be dressed like a sack of potatoes for a big hunk of this film.” I’m on Tanya’s side on this. She’s a Bond woman. She should not look like a moppet playing dress up. Of course, this happens the day they are shooting. Everything comes to a halt because Tanya does not want to wear the overalls. So they tailor up overalls for Tanya right there on location. Roger is not an actor who likes to wait around. He has little patience for actors who gum up the works. So they get the overalls snug in all the right places and come to shoot the moment when Bond walks out of the office with Tanya in her overalls. Cameras roll. Roger holds the door to the mining office open for her and in his most wicked tone simply says, “Pity you couldn’t find one that fits.” Tanya Roberts walks into the shot looking smoking hot, but she throws Roger this little glance that is so real and so honestly pissed off that my heart skips a beat every time I see it. That moment is like this little window into the Bond film I wanted to see…. Stacey is a piece of work. She was born rich, well-educated, has a good job, she’s beautiful, lives in a grand house, yet she’s single and fast going broke. Hands down, she wins my vote for “Bond woman most likely to end up as a crazy cat-lady.” She even has the only “get off my lawn” moment in a Bond film…. Somehow I feel like even after Zorin’s death, Stacey will lose it all, wandering the streets of San Francisco in faded glory like Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. In films, there can be a perverse joy in seeing the pretty rich girl get screwed out of her unearned inheritance, which does not help us love Stacey…. But there is one more observation about Stacey. She has Blofeld’s cat. I was always entertained by the idea of a different version of the film where that was the tip-off that she was really the villain, that maybe Ernst Stavro was her grandfather who owned the oil company, that by acting dumb and obstinate, she had driven Zorin insane, that she was the one who wanted to destroy a city in some quest. Now, all this was just the fever dream of a Bond fan who thinks about these films way too much. I certainly never shared that thought with anyone at Eon. Then, lo and behold, we get The World Is Not Enough…about an oil heiress who, on a quest to get vengeance for something to do with her family’s oil fortune manipulates a disturbed man that is introduced as the villain into helping her attempt to destroy a city! Elektra King is the Stacey Sutton I always wanted!

Desowitz: The way she’s treated more paternally by Bond than a lover because there’s no sexual chemistry. It’s notable that they end the movie in a shower than in bed together.

McNess: With Zorin and Grace Jones’ May Day presenting such a vivid and offbeat portrayal of amorality, Stacey—in her genuineness and principled behavior—almost operates as a tonal balance. She’s obviously too timid and straightforwardly virtuous a character for some, but there is a strong element of decency and warmth in Tanya Robert’s performance that is welcome and memorable in the wider context of the film. The same goes for Patrick Macnee’s Tibbett in the film’s first half…. Stacey has often been admonished for failing to notice an airship sneaking up behind her, but this wasn’t an issue for me: deafened, dazed and confused from the previous blast, not to mention delighted and overcome by the sight of a man she thought surely dead, Stacey’s lapse certainly struck me as very reasonable! The action actually has a terrifically fun operatic quality: the lovers running towards each other while the airship steadily descends, with John Barry underscoring it all beautifully with a dramatic rendition of the romantic theme…. Interestingly, what also makes Stacey a memorable character is how Moore’s Bond responds to her. Moore is excellent; he brings a gently paternal quality to the fore (not an unwise decision given Moore’s advancing years) without ever slipping into the realm of patronizing. It’s a very fine line that Moore traverses with the greatest of ease. For instance, there’s a line where he’s lifting Stacey to safety—”Good girl, you’re nearly there”—a line that’s almost impossible to deliver without an air of condescension. But Moore never slips towards it.

Pfeiffer: I hate to be cruel, but Tanya Roberts is memorable only because she gave what is the worst performance of any Bond actress. It might have passed muster if she had been cast as an airhead, but a geologist??? I remember watching the advance screening and the audience would erupt in laughter every time she opened her mouth, especially when she’d cry out, “JAMES!” Cubby Broccoli’s usually infallible judgment in casting failed him this time. However, Tanya Roberts is a very nice person in real life. A few years after the film came out, I was on Geraldo Rivera with her and some of the other Bond girls. She was very sweet and likable. 

Scivally: I really like Tanya Roberts. When we interviewed her for the Special Edition DVDs, she couldn’t have been nicer. That said, I think she gives a terrible performance in A View to a Kill. But I can’t put all the blame on her; in John Glen’s Bond films, you often have very accomplished actors giving the worst performances of their careers. Poor Tanya isn’t given much to work with. The first time we see her, she’s supposed to be despondent from selling out to Zorin. First impressions are important; it’s hard to bounce back from despondency—a note she’s still playing when we next see her—to sexiness, which is what we expect from a Bond woman. Once Bond shows up at her mansion, even he seems to realize that he’s too old, and she’s too emotionally fragile, for him to have a tryst with her. He sits up beside her bed, instead of climbing into it with her (admittedly, we have seen Bond in bed with May Day by this point, but in a lovemaking scene in which she immediately assumes the dominant position, effectively emasculating him). Stacey begins to cheer up by the film’s end, when she and Bond infiltrate Zorin’s mine, but then poor Ms. Roberts is saddled with some extraordinarily clunky exposition that there’s simply no good way to deliver, further undermining her performance. It’s an underwritten part to begin with, and with John Glen’s direction, or lack thereof, an under-acted one as well. Roberts deserved better.

Coate: Andrew, what was the objective with your book, A Close Look at ‘A View to a Kill’?

McNess: The principal objective was to focus on how the film plays with the series’ formulaic elements in a range of understated yet absorbing ways. Usually the variations on the formula in any given Bond film are clear-cut and apparent; A View to a Kill, by contrast, often achieves its effects in more elusive ways. Straight up, the film is blatantly formulaic—another madman intent on controlling a market—but in its finer details, it’s something else. I couldn’t always put my finger on the various appeals of A View to a Kill. This book constitutes the subsequent investigation! Implicitly, of course, the book also celebrates the cinematic James Bond formula—and implicit with that, its literary foundations.

Coate: What is the legacy of A View to a Kill?

Caplen: A View to a Kill certainly whets audiences’ appetites for the gravitas Timothy Dalton brought to the role of James Bond. But the film is more than a bridge between Octopussy and The Living Daylights—it offers respectful closure to the Moore chapter, which, we must remember, began with no less absurdity. (Moore’s first mission as James Bond involved the taking of a tarot card reader’s virginity in voodoo land.)

Cork: I think its greatest claim to fame is as being Roger Moore’s last turn as Bond and as the Bond film with one of the most successful title songs in the series. The BASE jump off the Eiffel Tower will always be iconic, as will the fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge…. There’s an interesting legacy to the title song. It marked the end of Duran Duran. They were the biggest group going. The song went number 1 in the US on July 13th, 1985, the same day Duran Duran performed it at Live Aid. Not that anyone cared, but Simon Le Bon hit a memorably bad note during the performance that haunted him for years. That concert would mark the last time the original members of the group would perform together for over fifteen years…. Trivia question answer: Considering the iconic nature of California Girls, Bond beat the Beach Boys (or Gidea Park, the band heard in the film). In 1965, the original California Girls only hit number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart…. The film itself, mostly, I think, serves as a warning sign for the filmmakers. No one wants to make a Bond film less-loved than A View to a Kill. It is the Bond film that feels most complacent, most like no one really broke a sweat while making it. That’s completely untrue, of course. It was a very difficult film to make in many regards. Yet, I think most involved would look back on it and regard it as a project that never quite jelled. I think when anyone is working on a new Bond film and the creative juices are not flowing, the hour is late, the bones are tired, one of the reasons they keep going, pushing themselves to do better is because A View to a Kill is there to remind them that when it comes to Bond, only the extraordinary will do.

Desowitz: Again, the legacy is Moore’s final outing, full of grace if awkwardly looking out of place tangling with Walken and Jones.

McNess: It’s the ultimate Eighties rendering of the James Bond universe, what with its corporate super-villain, insanely strong henchwoman, Duran Duran song, tougher edge to the action, Cold War complexity, and so on. And yet its qualities are not trapped within the decade. Furthermore, A View to a Kill demonstrated that a foreboding, nihilistic edge could be threaded through a Bondian romp. It reinforced, also, how some especially creative casting of the villainy could supply a formula flick with an unexpectedly distinct flavor. Last but not least, the film reminds us—I think better than any other Bond film to date—that rewarding variations on the formula need not always be especially obvious.

Pfeiffer: If A View to a Kill has a legacy, it’s that it was Roger Moore’s final Bond film. By all accounts, he probably went one movie too far. I know Roger agrees with that. He felt the age difference between him and Roberts was too distracting. He had originally quit after Octopussy and negotiations between him and Broccoli, who he liked immensely, became strained. I think Roger would have preferred to have left well enough alone with Octopussy. Yet, A View to a Kill obviously has a major following even today. One of Cinema Retro’s writers, Hank Reineke, recently covered a rare big screen showing of the movie at the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn. He was astonished that it had sold out quickly and that the audience was so appreciative of the movie. (Click here to read coverage.) So vintage Bond flicks seem to have a great shelf life—even the weakest ones. 

Scivally: Seeing what happens to Tibbett and Chuck Lee, the lesson of A View to a Kill is: always look in the back seat before getting into your damn vehicle! Seriously, what is the film’s legacy? I think it will be remembered as the last Bond film for Roger Moore, Lois Maxwell and stuntman Bob Simmons, and for the Duran Duran title song, and little else.

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts about A View to a Kill on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “GoldenEye” on its 20th Anniversary.

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SPECIAL THANKS:

John Hazelton, Vince Young.

- Michael Coate

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

The participants…

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). 

James Chapman is a Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (Tauris, 2007). His other books include Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who—A Cultural History (Tauris, 2006), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (Tauris, 2002), and (with Nicholas J. Cull) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (Tauris, 2009). Chapman is also a Council member of the International Association for Media and History and is Editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is available on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies, a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Lisa Funnell is the editor of For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond (Wallflower, 2015). She is Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Affiliate Faculty, Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma. Her other books include Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star (State University of New York, 2015) and (with Philippa Gates) Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange (Routledge, 2011).

Mark O’Connell is a punditeer, the grandson of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli’s chauffeur, and the author of Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books, 2012).

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is the Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to GoldenEye, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is GoldenEye worthy of celebration on its 20th anniversary?

Robert A. Caplen: Has it really been twenty years since Pierce Brosnan ended the Bond franchise’s longest hiatus?! Timothy Dalton’s last film, Licence to Kill, was released in June 1989; the Berlin Wall came down five months later. GoldenEye, with its lavish title sequence that depicts the toppling of the Soviet Union and global geopolitical changes, ushered in a new era by introducing Bond and audiences to the post-Cold War era. It marked the appearance of Dame Judy Dench as M, who pulls no punches and criticizes Bond’s cavalier, sexist, and misogynist attitude as a “relic of the Cold War.” Restoring the luxury, glamour, and peccadilloes of Agent 007 in a manner that is reminiscent of the Sean Connery era while simultaneously placing James Bond under the supervision of a female authority figure, GoldenEye is undoubtedly an important installment in the James Bond oeuvre and, arguably, Pierce Brosnan’s most successful mission.

James Chapman: GoldenEye might not be the best Bond movie ever but it is one of the most important in the series’ history as it was the film that revived the franchise after the hiatus of the early 1990s. The reasons for that have been well documented and perhaps we needn’t go over them again here. The legal disputes between Eon/Danjaq and MGM were part of it, but I think a more fundamental issue was the feeling that Bond had lost ground to other action-adventure franchises: Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Speed, the Schwarzenegger and Stallone films. Licence to Kill was down at the box-office and did very poorly in the US market (about $35 million—way below Lethal Weapon 2 and Batman that summer). It’s hard to credit it now, but there was a lot of speculation in the early 1990s that Bond was finished—some very respected film critics and industry figures were suggesting that Bond was a relic of the past. And the longer the hiatus went on, the more plausible that view seemed…. GoldenEye did very good box-office—over $100 million in the US market, which by then had become the benchmark for a major success, and around $331 million worldwide—and proved the naysayers wrong. I think its importance was that it proved there was still a market for a Bond movie. One of the things I like most about it is that it addresses the charges that had been made against Bond—that he was an outmoded and chauvinistic heroic archetype—by voicing them itself through the agency of a female authority figure (i.e. Judi Dench’s “sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War” line).

John Cork: GoldenEye saved James Bond and MGM. 007’s darkest days were from 1989 until November 1995. In 1990, MGM (which owned United Artists) collapsed in on itself. Raped of much of its library by Ted Turner earlier in the decade and bought through a questionable process of future profit dismemberment by Giancarlo Parretti, Cubby Broccoli and Michael Wilson found Bond trapped at a studio that could no longer operate as a viable business. The trades were filled with stories of the Bond franchise being put up for sale and even predictions that—after the disappointing grosses of Licence to Kill and the fall of the Soviet Empire—007 was dead. After Parretti and his studio team lead by Alan Ladd Jr. left, MGM was owned by the bank Crédit Lyonnais and run by Frank Mancuso Jr. and John Calley. The plan was simple: prove to potential buyers that MGM’s assets were of much greater value than MGM’s debts, and that it was well-positioned to make new hit movies. The industry had serious doubts. In 1993, the studio had failed to revive the Pink Panther series with Son of the Pink Panther, and available cash to produce new films was limited. As far as James Bond went, the studio had no faith in Timothy Dalton’s ability to reprise his role as Bond, forcing him to retire from the role. This meant casting a new Bond, investing heavily in a new film and finding a workable relationship with Cubby Broccoli, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. It was no secret at the time that some inside MGM wanted to push Danjaq out of the way, hire a producer like Joel Silver, and control the film internally. The studio decided to position the film as a summer blockbuster for 1995, the launch for what the studio hoped would be a series of hit films in the second half of 1995 that would relaunch MGM as a valuable property that could be sold for a very high price. After the success of Fox’s True Lies in 1994, MGM concluded that GoldenEye needed a tighter script, bigger action and more time. Now, instead of launching MGM’s season of hits, it would come in the middle. Mancuso and Calley had bet everything on the fall of 1995. The studio would release six films from September to December, and literally everything was on the line. Three of the films were bombs: Hackers, Showgirls and Cutthroat Island. Both Get Shorty and Leaving Las Vegas made money for the studio. As far as the industry was concerned, only one film mattered: GoldenEye. The fate of the studio rested in the hands of James Bond, and GoldenEye’s success would not only confidently state that there was profit to be wrung from future 007 films, but it would drive up the value of the Bond catalog. GoldenEye proved all the doubters wrong. Bond’s continued relevance, it turned out, had little to do with Cold War politics or studio equity. It had everything to do with quality. Everyone involved in making GoldenEye was hungry, and it shows. The film is also the introduction of Barbara Broccoli as a key creative voice in the Bond team, the launch of Pierce Bronsan’s career as Bond, and the best evidence that the creative team could take 007 beyond the decades that defined him.

Bill Desowitz: GoldenEye is significant as a turning point with the introduction of Pierce Brosnan and a popular return to a more classic Bond. After a six-year hiatus (the longest in franchise history), fans craved Bond and Brosnan delivered a back to basics approach after the dramatic extreme of Timothy Dalton’s Licence to Kill. With Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli taking over as producers, there was a celebration of the familiar Bond trappings with a renewed sense of action, style and humor, and Brosnan was happy to oblige. At the same time, they successfully answered the question: How did Bond fit in a post-Cold War world? And new director Martin Campbell made it fast-paced and fun. Although Brosnan was initially supposed to succeed Roger Moore, his delay worked out for the best and he was a better Bond.

Lisa Funnell: GoldenEye is an important film because it helped to (re)ignite popular interest in the franchise after a six-year hiatus. The film not only marks the return of the iconic hero to the silver screen but also more pointedly asks if the world still needs James Bond. GoldenEye relays the impression that the world around Bond has changed particularly in terms of its gender politics. This is most evident in the casting of Dame Judi Dench in the role of M, Bond’s boss, as well as the comments she makes to Bond such as: “I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms, though lost on me, obviously appealed to that young girl I sent out to evaluate you…If you think I don’t have the balls to send a man out to die, your instincts are dead wrong. I’ve no compunction about sending you to your death. But I won’t do it on a whim.” In this (drop-the-mic) speech, M also draws attention to changes in the geopolitical landscape with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. It draws attention to the threat of individual actors/cells rather than sovereign nations to the safety of Britain and the world. And so the film answers its own question by demonstrating that we still need James Bond to save the day—a hero who is defined by instincts, touch, and interpersonal relationships. This question has been raised again twenty years later in SPECTRE and broadly applied to the 00 program in light of the digital turn and advances in surveillance technologies like drones.

Mark O’Connell: It marked the official changing of the guard at Eon Headquarters with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson officially taking the producer reins, a new actor as Bond and a much needed cinematic Vodka martini after a long, long Bond film drought. It also was the cherry bursting moment for a vital new wave of Bond fans and general audiences. To a lot of people GoldenEye is their Dr. No or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And if that is their entry point they are not wrong. Too much elitist shepherding happens in Bond fandom. Whilst reworking that recognizable Bond film template, GoldenEye thankfully shatters the templates of what a Bond fan should like and not like.

Lee Pfeiffer: GoldenEye is the film that rescued Bond from the brink of cinematic extinction. At the time producer Cubby Broccoli was at odds with the management team of United Artists, who he blamed for the relatively light domestic grosses for Licence to Kill in 1989. Broccoli swore he would not make another Bond film until a new management team took over. Ultimately, a new team headed by Alan Ladd Jr. and Frank Mancuso took the reins of the struggling studio which was on the brink of bankruptcy. They backed Cubby’s desire to bring Bond back even though the smart money said 007 was an outdated relic of the Cold War. I went to dinner in New York with Cubby and his wife Dana around the time they were preparing for the new film. Cubby said that he was bowing out of the day-to-day production duties and relegating the franchise to the care of “the kids,” meaning his daughter Barbara and stepson Michael G. Wilson. Both of them had long experience working on the franchise and Cubby and Dana felt confident that they could make Bond work again with a new generation of moviegoers. He also rattled off a top secret list of actors that had been screen tested for the role before stating the obvious: the vast majority of people wanted Pierce Brosnan. Actually, Brosnan had been signed for the role in 1986 when Roger Moore retired but NBC did him dirty by renewing his TV series Remington Steele, thus taking him out of the running for the part. Timothy Dalton had replaced him but after a gap of five years off screen, Dalton bowed out and Brosnan finally got his chance. GoldenEye, although modestly budgeted by today’s standards, was still considered a major risk. However, when the teaser trailer was screened months ahead of the opening, confidence was built based on wildly enthusiastic audience reactions. The film opened in New York City at Radio City Music Hall for a gala premiere one week before the British premiere. At the UK premiere, I rather cautiously broached the subject of the U.S. grosses with Michael Wilson. In those days, news traveled slowly so I didn’t know how the film was performing in the States. Wilson smiled broadly and said that the grosses were of blockbuster status. The rest of the world followed suit and proved that there was room indeed for a post-Cold War 007.

Bruce Scivally: GoldenEye is worthy of celebration for being the Bond film that brought 007 into the modern era. Licence to Kill seemed like a glorified TV episode, like Miami Vice on steroids, with an aesthetic more befitting the ’70s than the late 80s. GoldenEye, with a much bigger budget, managed to keep all the elements audiences expected from Bond and make them seem fresh—no small feat for a series then entering its 33rd year. On top of that, the film introduced Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. That alone is cause for celebration. The film also ushered in a new wave of spy mania, with spy films hitting movie screens and spy-themed shows on television in a quantity last seen thirty years earlier, when the one-two punch of Goldfinger and Thunderball made spies the coolest anti-heroes of the 1960s.

Coate: When did you first see GoldenEye and what was your reaction?

Caplen: I was in high school when GoldenEye was released and remember thoroughly enjoying the film. For me, GoldenEye had the feel of a Sean Connery film that was refreshing and exciting. I also remember the television infomercials for the VHS collector’s edition of the films that were linked to the film’s release. I ultimately had at my fingertips a personal library of 007 films, helping pave the way to my becoming a 007 scholar. 

Chapman: The Odeon cinema in Sheffield when it was released in 1995. My first thought was simply to be thankful that there was a new Bond movie after six and a half years. And then to be thankful that it was a pretty decent Bond movie—recognizable as a Bond movie and not going down the Lethal Weapon/Die Hard route. I thought the jury might be out on Pierce Brosnan—I’d liked Timothy Dalton’s interpretation of Bond—though I warmed to him. I didn’t think GoldenEye was as good an introduction for Pierce as The Living Daylights had been for Tim. I thought it took a while to get going and that the first half was quite loosely structured. But it really picked up with the St. Petersburg scenes from the Statue Park through to the tank chase…. I have a “theory” (that might be putting it too strongly) that the pre-title sequence of GoldenEye was in a sense writing Dalton’s Bond out of the series’ history, just as Connery’s return in Diamonds seemed to be concerned to erase the memory of Lazenby and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Hence the pre-title of GoldenEye is set in 1986—the year that Brosnan nearly became Bond but was thwarted at the eleventh hour by his Remington Steele contract. It’s as if the film is saying that Brosnan should have been Bond all along.

Cork: I first saw about 40 minutes of cut footage from GoldenEye at Leavesden in the summer of 1995 when I was working on the behind-the-scenes documentaries for the Goldfinger and Thunderball LaserDisc releases. Lee Pfeiffer and I got asked if we wanted to see the assembled footage so far and we jumped at the chance. The first time I saw the entire film was at a sneak screening in Hollywood that was quasi-open to the public. I think I saw it three more times at press screenings before I went to New York for the premiere at Radio City Music Hall! As some know, I had been working with the producers on another project during the development of GoldenEye. I would see Michael France in the office occasionally. After I had finished my work, I would still see Barbara and Michael in Los Angeles when something would bring me into the Danjaq offices, and I would get little updates on what was happening. I got to know Bruce Feirstein during his tenure working on the film, and he, like the late Michael France, is a writer I admired. So, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with GoldenEye, I felt personally invested in it. I had seen the hard work, the nerves, and witnessed some of the normal tug of war with the studio over the development process. So I was really rooting for the film. My reaction was not only that of a fan, but it was like I was watching a friend’s child in a competition: I was rooting for every scene, loved what I was seeing, but constantly on edge about any aspect that I thought could be better. It really took me about six viewings before I could watch the film and completely enjoy it just as a film. 

Desowitz: I saw it opening night in Westwood and couldn’t have been more pleased. Brosnan proved that Bond was still relevant with a sense of pride and joy.

Funnell: I first watched GoldenEye at home with my dad. The film was his Christmas gift and we watched it soon after it was unwrapped. Although I cannot recall my exact reaction, two things have always resonated with me. The first is how perfectly suited (pun intended!) Pierce Brosnan was for the role; he looks and feels like James Bond unlike actor Timothy Dalton before him. The second is how differently women are depicted in the film. I love the casting of Dame Judi Dench for the role as M and her questioning of the sexual politics of the franchise. Her critique is supported through the characterization of Natalya Simonova who demands a lot from Bond. With this film, I felt that something had changed in the gender politics of the franchise and I liked this new turn.

O’Connell: I first saw GoldenEye the week it came out and loved it. The atmosphere in the cinema was like a circus—with cheers, chat and a lot of clapping at the right times. That interaction is normally my idea of movie-watching hell, but the crowd were behind the film from those two white dots onwards. I loved that it was a Bond film again—not for the stunts or the music or the big budget caper of it all, but the ridiculous things like that Binder credit font was back, big set British production work was back, the branding of Bond was back (that black and white teaser and the Tina Turner track), film heroes in almost anachronistic shirt and ties were back, society launch parties gone wrong were back and expert model work and remote control helicopters were back!

Pfeiffer: I first saw [the completed] GoldenEye at the Radio City Music Hall premiere. I must confess, I was not enamored with it. Neither were most of the die-hard Bond scholars who were with me that night. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I thought the overall story line was somewhat smaller-than-life. The villain wants to create chaos in the worldwide financial communities. I thought that was a rather bland concept, although it did prove to be somewhat prophetic. Today, that threat would seem more unnerving as the world is far more linked by on-line transactions. I also thought the musical score by Eric Serra was bland and boring, and that the character of Boris—played by young up-and-comer Alan Cumming, was badly used in the script—particularly his absurd death sequence. However, I’ve seen it a couple of times since it opened in 1995 and it’s grown on me. The good elements play better and the weak elements don’t seem so bad today. I can see why it appealed to a younger generation at the time and I always felt that Pierce did a sensational job in the role of Bond. 

Scivally: My first viewing of GoldenEye was at the AMC Century 14 in Century City, California. I remember being somewhat put-off by the techno-pop music under the gunbarrel, and also a little disappointed that the big pre-credits stunt sequence relied on CGI instead of, as with previous Bond films, a dangerous stunt done “for real” by life-risking stuntmen. But I loved the theme song and Daniel Kleinman’s title sequence, and enjoyed the “times have changed, but Bond hasn’t” concept of the film. It certainly looked much more lavish than the previous 007 film, had a good script, taut direction by Martin Campbell, and Pierce Brosnan quickly won me over as the new James Bond. But that music... This film ranks with Never Say Never Again for 007 movies almost totally undone by horrible scores. But by the time the film ended, bad music notwithstanding, I enjoyed it, and so did the opening-night audience. I went back to see it, if memory serves right, two more times in the theater.

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Coate: Where do you think GoldenEye ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Caplen: In my view, GoldenEye is Pierce Brosnan’s best performance as James Bond. It has a lighter tone than the Timothy Dalton missions that preceded it but eschews the gimmickry of the Roger Moore era. It’s arguably the best 007 film from the 1985-2002 period.

Chapman: On balance I’d say it’s a fair-to-middling entry in the series. Not one of my absolute favorites but not one of my least favorites either. Mid-table respectability…. From a scripting point of view I think it’s the best of Brosnan’s four Bonds, though now I prefer Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough (the first half of it at least) over GoldenEye despite their flaws. They’d had plenty of time to polish the script for GoldenEye. Tomorrow Never Dies in contrast was a mess, but the action sequences seemed more exciting than GoldenEye.

Cork: It is very, very hard for me to divorce myself from what I think the film means to the series and just focus on the film itself. That said, back in 2012, my son and I watched all the Bond films in order as part of a Skyfall marathon. I actually ranked GoldenEye at 10th on that list. But if I had to make a list of the absolutely essential Bond films to watch, GoldenEye would be on the short-list. It is a film that defines Bond for the 1990s. It is a film that took Bond to an entirely new level. I have lots of little quibbles with the film, but the scenes with M, the joy of watching Famke Janssen, and the feeling that Pierce Brosnan was born to play Bond and play him well, all of that lifts the film up. So take my mid-level ranking knowing that it is conflicted. The film plays like gangbusters. Everyone should see GoldenEye.

Desowitz: I would rank it as the best of the Brosnans and somewhere in the middle of the pack overall. It was straight ahead with none of the glib or fantastical excesses that would hamper the later Brosnan films.

Funnell: I think that GoldenEye has stood the test of time and remains one of the most exciting films of the series. The film was directed by Martin Campbell who also directed Casino Royale. Campbell seems to have the “Midas touch” when it comes to successfully reintroducing a new actor in the role of James Bond and re-visioning the series. If the producers decide to replace Daniel Craig in the next Bond film, I hope they consider hiring Campbell as the director.

O’Connell: Like a lot of Bond movies—The Spy Who Loved Me, Live and Let Die, The Living Daylights, Casino Royale and, to a degree, SPECTRE—it was a crossroads 007 film that allowed the series to continue. Every now and then a Bond movie puts its neck on the line to justify 007’s very existence. GoldenEye is a prime example, if not THE prime example. GoldenEye is still part of that John Glen era of 007 movie making—with the older Bond guard (Syd Cain, Derek Meddings, John Richardson, Remy Julienne) meeting the (then) new bearers of the production flame (Chris Corbould, Danny Kleinman, Andrew Noakes and Lindy Hemming). I always say that the subsequent Tomorrow Never Dies is Brosnan’s best Bond film (and one of my personal top entries), but GoldenEye is an unabashed 007 movie with the recipe book of Bond open for all to see. Twenty years later one its successes is how it utterly relishes being a Bond movie.

Pfeiffer: I would place GoldenEye probably in the middle of the pack, certainly below the Connery/Lazenby films and some of the Moores. I also favor both Dalton movies over it, but it’s better than some of Pierce’s later efforts and certainly superior to The Man with the Golden Gun and A View to a Kill. 

Scivally: For me, GoldenEye ranks in the Top Ten Bond films, but not the Top Five. Although there’s much of Tomorrow Never Dies to recommend it, I felt the ending of that one was unsatisfying. GoldenEye—aside from that damn music—holds together from beginning to end better, and is my favorite of the Pierce Brosnan Bonds. And as a bonus, it has Famke Janssen as one of the sexiest henchwomen ever.

Coate: Compare and contrast Pierce Brosnan’s inaugural performance as Agent 007 with that of the other actors who have portrayed the character?

Caplen: Pierce Brosnan seems to balance the seriousness with which Timothy Dalton approached the role of James Bond with the energetic charm and sexual charisma that Sean Connery imbued in the character. But Brosnan’s performance in GoldenEye has, in my view, a different tone than his subsequent missions, which seem less inspiring as they struggle to define James Bond in the post-Cold War era.

Chapman: Watching it now, I’m struck my how young he looks. In the later films, as he bulked out a bit and his temples started to show flecks of grey, I think he had more gravitas. In fact I think Pierce got better as the films went on, even if the films themselves didn’t. In GoldenEye I don’t think he’s as assured as in the later films. He’s perfectly good in the running, jumping and shooting scenes but some of the dramatic scenes are less confident and—although many regard him as a lighter Bond in the tradition of Roger Moore—I didn’t feel that his delivery of the one-liners was that good. There again he didn’t have any great one-liners: in fact, I’m struggling to think of one!

Cork: For me, Brosnan’s performance is perfect for the film, but it is a tense performance. Brosnan seems so much more relaxed and at ease in Tomorrow Never Dies than he does in GoldenEye. Yet in GoldenEye, Brosnan’s tension works for the film. It is like there is the mission on screen and then there is this other mission: can Brosnan save Bond? And he does. You can tell he is an actor in awe of the part, an actor who all his adult life has been told he should play James Bond, and now here he is. And to his great credit, he pulls it off. 

Desowitz: It was an auspicious start for Brosnan. His goal was to recapture the spirit of Connery and he carried himself off well with a good combination of intensity and playfulness. He demonstrated that there was still a place for Bond’s confidence and resourcefulness and the script didn’t make too many demands of him.

Funnell: For me, Pierce Brosnan’s Bond in GoldenEye embodies some of the best qualities from previous fan favorites Sean Connery and Roger Moore. Like Connery, he is incredibly handsome (especially in a tuxedo), alluring, and charismatic. And like Moore, he is both charming and witty. I personally prefer Bonds who are wittier as this increases my enjoyment of the film; the darker tones of the Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig films (with the exception of Casino Royale) render them more serious and less adventurous. But at the same time, Brosnan’s Bond is far more action-oriented than Connery’s or Moore’s and his character does treat (some) women in a more positive way.

O’Connell: Brosnan’s best Bond performance is in Tomorrow Never Dies. He is merely stretching his muscles in GoldenEye—including learning how to run, pause and twist. But Bond is not just about his physical dexterity. It is about how he enters a room, leaves a room, talks to the ladies and leaves during the night without warning. In GoldenEye—like all the best Bond debuts—Brosnan makes it look like we have missed two of his films already. There is a great momentum to how he plays those early scenes. Pierce is a great casting bequeath from Cubby Broccoli who thankfully got to see one his Bond hunches take on the baton with all his family at the helm. Brosnan is great in those now iconic scenes with M/Judi Dench. He also never once is out-acted by Dench. Not in any of his Bond films. And that is no mean feat. If anything, Brosnan knows how to pitch the tone and timbre of the role whilst others around him—Sean Bean especially—flounder a tiny bit amidst the Bond tick list ephemera. The classic teaser of Brosnan pausing and walking up to ask the audience if they “were expecting someone else?” was all the reassurances the world needed as a new Bond was on the horizon. It is testament too to how Cubby and Michael were right back in 1986, but the fates had other plans.

Pfeiffer: I thought Brosnan was the right actor at the right time for Bond. He was more serious than Roger Moore and had a lighter touch than Timothy Dalton. The producers have always had an uncanny knack of knowing what actor plays best in certain eras and Brosnan was indeed the best choice at the time, as evidenced by the box-office results. All of his films did spectacularly well. Even when the scripts were weak, Brosnan came out of the film looking good. It’s rather strange because nowadays, Bond fans want an entirely different character on screen—the ultra-realistic, less humorous 007 embodied by Daniel Craig. Doubtless, the pendulum will ultimately swing back again someday. However, during his tenure as Bond, Pierce was an enormous success—and he’s a good actor, to boot. 

Scivally: When I first heard that Pierce Brosnan had been cast for the new Bond film, my reaction was severely negative. Although I thought he was good as the Soviet assassin in The Fourth Protocol, I felt he was nonetheless too lightweight for Bond (and I must admit, I never watched Remington Steele). Around that time, some critic—it may have been Gene Siskel or Rex Reed—was quoted as saying that Pierce Brosnan wasn’t a James Bond, but rather the kind of guy you’d cast in an Arrow shirt ad. I felt that about summed it up. Plus, I wanted to see Timothy Dalton get another shot at the role, since it seemed to me that it took Connery and Moore about three films before they really owned the part. But my trepidation about Brosnan lasted only about twenty minutes into watching GoldenEye. By that point, I was won over. When the film ended, I felt Brosnan’s was the best Bond since Connery, with just the right mix of charm and lethalness.

Coate: In what way was Sean Bean’s Alec Trevelyan/Janus a memorable villain?

Caplen: Sean Bean portrays a complex villain whose facial disfigurement is reminiscent of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Unlike Blofeld, Trevelyan’s background is less mysterious. A former Double-O agent himself, Trevelyan descends from Cossacks, a family history that remained hidden from MI6. The name of his crime syndicate, Janus, alludes to his betrayal of his adopted country and agenda to seek revenge against Her Majesty’s government, which he blames for his parents’ death…. Trevelyan seems, in some ways, like a reincarnation of Dr. No: an emotionless recluse, motivated to crime and global chaos by a personal vendetta. Trevelyan hides behind the shadows of Janus as he orchestrates an implausible scheme to rob the Bank of London. But Trevelyan seems to lack the omnipresence of Dr. No and other villains in the franchise, perhaps an implicit recognition that post-Cold War villainy is decentralized and operating among the shadows. He lacks the gravitas of other villains like Auric Goldfinger, Emilio Largo, Blofeld, and even Karl Stromberg.

Chapman: It was good to have a main villain who posed a real, plausible physical threat to Bond, rather than the supervillain/henchman division that we’d had so often in the past. Sean Bean was in great physical shape back then and you felt that he’s be a match for Bond. In that sense I was reminded of Robert Shaw’s Red Grant in From Russia with Love. The big fight between Bond and Trevelyan is also somewhat reminiscent of Russia…. I liked the historical background for Trevelyan—the idea that his parents had been betrayed by the British to the Soviets at the end of the Second World War so there was a personal as well as a political vendetta—and that the threat was directed at London.

Cork: First, let me say, I love Sean Bean. I think he’s a great actor who continues to do fantastic work. That said, the world can hate me, but I never bought into the idea of 006 as an intimidating villain. Trevelyan says, “I was always better.” Really? No other secret agent is anywhere close to Bond. That’s why we watch Bond films. Originally, Trevelyan was supposed to be Bond’s mentor, and the part was offered to Anthony Hopkins who turned it down. It was then decided to make the character Bond’s peer. Bean has the unenviable task of acting between Famke Janssen (who is just brilliant in the film) and Alan Cumming (who cannot be taken seriously). As a result, his reality-based character is diminished. Trevelyan is not larger than life, which, when one is in scenes with others who are, is a very tough place for an actor. Of course, he has one of the best Bond villain lines out there: “I might as well ask you if all those vodka martinis ever silence the screams of all the men you’ve killed? Or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women for all the dead ones you failed to protect.” That was a Michael France line, and originally it was this somewhat catty exchange when Bond randomly met Trevelyan on the street in Russia, stunned to find him still alive. Everyone who read the line knew it was brilliant, and draft after draft, it stayed in the script until it found the place it deserved, the point where it looked like all was lost and the villain had Bond defeated. Bean delivers it perfectly. So, despite my quibbles, Bean does a great job with the role. Let me also offer up a huge amount of praise for Famke Janssen in GoldenEye. She is a major key to the success of that film. She serves up all that demented, oversized, sexualized evil that one wants in a Bond villain. She owns the part of Xenia. 

Desowitz: Bean’s two-faced baddie wound up being one of the best in years and provided a sense of gravitas. He’s Bond’s mentor turned bad and revealed the dark side of spying and what happens when you don’t survive the Cold War. It was personal and a trial by fire for this Bond.

Funnell: Alec Trevelyan is such a memorable villain because he is the first to be a former 00 agent turned British traitor. Long before Raoul Silva embarked on his mission of revenge in Skyfall, Trevelyan had an axe to grind that led him to enact a plot designed to financially incapacitate, if not ruin, Britain. Importantly, Trevelyan is given a tragic backstory, which helps to humanize him as a character and enhance the torment experienced by Bond as he goes up against a surrogate brother. Sean Bean plays the part to perfection and offers a compelling villain.

O’Connell: Sean Bean is one of the miscasts of the series. Not so much his [younger] age. It is forever jarring to have a very known Northern actor trying to sound like an English spy marinated in that Eton-educated, bespoke world when all he clearly wants is a pint down the local with the lads. In a film series that strays from accents and colloquialisms, I would have had Bean keep his Yorkshire accent. It would have marked him out as different to Bond, which the script wants. I also find the performance sees Bean playing someone trying to play a Bond villain. There is no reality to it and—like a lot of the later Brosnan Bond movie dialogue—he speaks in knowing, moustache twirling italics. The villain’s backstory is interesting (the Lienz Cossacks and their betrayals and bungled repatriations) but it is ultimately a human cost and character damage the Craig films eventually did a lot better. Trevelyan also underlines how some of the Brosnan villains suffer for being most interesting in their past rather than the here and now of their fore-story. But the idea of a bad Double O agent is great. It sets up that MI6 world and its relevance to the new world order. I just wonder what the likes of Anthony Hopkins (one of the reported early casting hopes) would have done with it.

Pfeiffer: Sean Bean was well cast in the role of Trevelyan and he had very good on-screen chemistry with Brosnan. The problem from my point of view is that the Bond villains became less memorable. They lacked the grandiose egos and personalities of Goldfinger, Dr. No, Blofeld, Largo, etc. There seemed to be a conscious effort to make them more believable, but to me having a larger-than-life villain is an essential element of the Bond franchise. There have been some wonderful actors playing Bond baddies since GoldenEye, but few of the characters resonate the way the earlier films did. I would say Jonathan Pryce in Tomorrow Never Dies and certainly Javier Bardem in Skyfall came the closet to having the mojo of the classic villains. I think the producers are now able to get “A” list actors for the villains. In the past, there was still somewhat of a stigma about being in a Bond film, as though an actor could not be taken seriously. However, in recent years, they have had some great actors playing interesting characters. I am very enthused to see Christoph Waltz in SPECTRE. It’s a real casting coup. I think we might be going into another “Golden Age” of Bond films.

Scivally: Sean Bean, a contender for the 007 role, did a great job of playing a Judas character, one that our hero initially trusts but who turns out to be the baddie. He delivered the dialogue—and Trevelyan had some of the best villain’s lines in years—with aplomb and, in the final half of the film, a real sense of menace beneath the charming exterior. The flaw in his character is that he starts out as a fellow 00 agent, and once we figure out that he’s the bad guy, we don’t think he’ll pose any real threat to James Bond, because, hey, they make movies about the best British secret agent, not the second best, so we know 006 isn’t going to able to get the best of 007 long before we reach the inevitable climax. That said, the fight scene between Trevelyan and Bond almost rivals the one between Bond and Grant in From Russia with Love; it was fun to have a villain who was evenly matched with Bond from a physical standpoint, which is more than one can say about, oh, you know, Karl Stromberg.

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Coate: In what way was Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco) a memorable Bond Girl?

Caplen: Natalya is an important addition to what I term the Post-Feminist Bond Woman Era in my book Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond. A computer programmer by profession, she appears self-sufficient, independent, and competent in her field. She’s a survivor, emerging from the rubble after General Ouromov and Xenia Onatopp destroy the Severnaya facility. She’s also resourceful, assisting James Bond in his mission by utilizing technological acumen that he lacks. Although Natalya succumbs to James Bond’s charm (perhaps to M’s chagrin), she ultimately challenges male chauvinism generally (“Boys with toys!”) and Bond’s lifestyle specifically (“You think I’m impressed? All of your guns, your killing, your death, for what? So you can be a hero?”). Her comments offer a refreshing sanity check, reinforcing earlier sarcasm from M and Miss Moneypenny, and revealing a shifting gender dynamic in the film. 

Chapman: The publicity materials were telling us that this was a different kind of Bond girl: modern, independent, not easily going to fall for Bond’s charms, and taking a crucial role in the narrative rather than being just eye-candy. Well, they’ve been saying that ever since The Spy Who Loved Me! I don’t think she was a particularly memorable character or that the performance is anything special. And I wasn’t a fan of the “boys with toys” line, which a lot of others seemed to like.

Cork: Natalya’s amazingly beautiful, even in that pitiful outfit she’s stuck in for most of the film. Oh, that sounds harsh. I like Natalya as a character. I like her strength. I like that she’s a survivor. When she walks to Bond on the beach in that bikini, every man in the audience is cursing the clothes in the first two-thirds of the film. I also have my reservations about Natalya. She has some kind of crush on Boris? Or just a sisterly affection for him? Seriously? That one is tough for me. When we meet Boris, sure, he has skills writing code, but he’s an absurdly annoying character, completely charmless, misanthropic and misogynistic. Natalya’s emotional connection to him never plays well for me. Her introduction to Bond—screaming her head off—and her continual nagging at him for the scenes that follow do nothing to make me believe that she should be a part of Bond’s world, or that Bond wants to be part of hers. Further, she becomes a character reliant on the cinematic “modern action woman” shorthand when she unexpectedly takes Bond’s Walther, pops the magazine in and out and then cocks it. That business had gotten old and tired even before GoldenEye and in the past twenty years even more of a cliché (I’m looking at you, Madeleine Swann). But Scorupco has charm and holds a scene with her presence. Like Trevelyan, Natalya doesn’t bring that exotic intrigue I so enjoy in Bond women. That is not Scorupco’s fault. It is just one of my nit-picks with the story. 

Desowitz: Simonova represents another reflection of post-Cold War survival. The computer programmer also has to overcome her disillusionment with the help of Bond and become more empowered.

Funnell: Natalya Simonova is notable for being one of the most active and integral Bond Girls in a film. She is unintentionally drawn into the conflict when she survives the attack on her Siberian outpost by Xenia Onatopp; she outsmarts the henchwoman by covering her tracks when she hides in the break room. Her intelligence in addition to her computer programming abilities render her a high value asset. More importantly, she is positioned as a partner (rather than sidekick) to Bond—she is the brains while he is the brawn—and only by working together can they bring down the Janus syndicate. And at times, she even takes the lead such as during the train sequence when she commands Bond to find them a way out while she narrows down the location of Trevelyan’s operation. In fact, she speaks up often and demands the best from Bond, pushing him to perform at his capacity. Overall, Simonova is a Bond Girl who plays a vital role in GoldenEye and this does not always happen in other films in the series.

O’Connell: In a Bond film that not only had to methodically lay out its 007 credentials and aim large spotlights at them, it was savvy to take away the vamp and bombast of the main female lead. That is partly because Xenia Onatopp has enough vamp and bombast for everyone, but it leaves Natalya as an almost anti-Bond girl. She is not helpless, but she is also not trying to be “the match for Bond” either. Scorupco was also a classic Bond casting find—unknown, beautiful and a real ambassador for a film which could have easily gone for a name to bolster its relaunch profile, but thankfully didn’t. Most importantly, Natalya is the audience’s way into the picture—and inadvertently a whole new Bond era. The first half of GoldenEye spends more time cutting back to her story and how it illuminates the plot for the audience than it does Bond himself.

Pfeiffer: Izabella Scorupco gave a fine performance in GoldenEye, but I don’t think the character was used very creatively. As I recall, the role was largely humorless and she was griping quite a bit to Bond about this and that. I know they were trying to bring a more realistic and feminist attitude to the traditional role of a “Bond Woman,” but I thought she was overshadowed by Famke Janssen, who had the flashier and more memorable role. I remember at the time griping that they didn’t even give Izabella much in the way of attractive outfits to wear. She seemed to be clad in a dowdy sweater throughout much of the film. Not her fault, mind you... but the “bad girl” tends to always be more memorable in a Bond film.

Scivally: In the classic Bond films, the “Bond women” are often “angels with one wing down,” women who have been, or are being, taken advantage of by unscrupulous men. Natalya Simonova was more in line with what the filmmakers began with Pam Bouvier in the previous film—smart, independent, and able to hold her own with Bond. What makes Natalya memorable is that, by the end of the second act, she’s able to penetrate his hard exterior and touch him on a human level, as we see in the beautifully photographed beach scene. By the final act, she’s transcended from being a Bond woman to becoming virtually a Bond in her own right, helping 007 infiltrate the control station, using guns, fighting, flying a helicopter... one almost expects her to reappear in a later film as 006, having taken over that now vacant position.

Coate: What is the legacy of GoldenEye?

Caplen: Licence to Kill marked the end of John Glen’s directorial tenure with the franchise. Its successor, GoldenEye, reaffirmed James Bond’s relevance after the fall of the Berlin Wall and did so while introducing a new actor as Agent 007. Pierce Brosnan responded with aplomb, revitalizing the series and redefining gender roles for 1990s audiences…. Outside of the film itself, GoldenEye became a significant edition within the gaming community. The game for the Nintendo 64 console was one of the original—and most celebrated—first-person shooter adventures that paved the way for current popular titles. The game received numerous accolades and effectively introduced James Bond to an even wider audience, expanding the James Bond footprint into interactive media.

Chapman: Put simply it’s the film that repositioned Bond at the forefront of popular action cinema. If GoldenEye had failed, there might have been one more but that would have been it. Instead it proved that Bond could compete in a crowded market for action adventure movies. In hindsight it’s a more traditional Bond than, say, Casino Royale, which Martin Campbell also directed. But without the success of the Brosnan Bonds, we might not ever have had the Daniel Craig Bonds…. It was also the first post-Cold War Bond movie—a motif brilliantly employed in Daniel Kleinman’s title sequence. The Bond movies had always responded to shifting geopolitical conditions, and GoldenEye demonstrated that the end of the Cold War didn’t have to mean the end of shifty heavily-accented Russian villains! General Ourumov’s ambition to be “Russia’s next iron man” might uncannily have anticipated the rise of one Vladimir Putin?

Cork: The legacy of GoldenEye is James Bond’s continued survival. My previous comments can’t properly reflect just how good the film is, how well the film plays, how spot-on the pacing is, how tight the dialogue is, or how well Bond is portrayed and defined in the film. Had GoldenEye failed, that would have been it for 007. The stakes with the film were incredibly high. A huge amount of credit needs to go to Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Martin Campbell’s tight direction and eye for spectacle lifts the film up. Each writer involved brought great additions to the movie. What exoticness is missing for me in the characters of Trevelyan and Natalya is right there in Peter Lamont’s production design, in Derek Meddings’ miniatures, in the amazing stunt work, and in the great supporting performances. Most of all, the film belongs to Pierce Brosnan. He not only had to carry the burden of filling some very large shoes, he had to convince the world that James Bond still mattered. He did that. All my nitpicks aside, from that first look around a corner in the pre-credit sequence to the unflustered flinch as a bullet ricochets next to his head near the climax, Brosnan is Bond.

Desowitz: The popularity of GoldenEye was a franchise game changer, returning a sense of equilibrium to Bond after the extremes of Moore and Dalton. It reaffirmed the strengths of the franchise were and what fans desired. It served as a template for Wilson and Broccoli and the success that it leveraged throughout the Brosnan era enabled them to take a chance with Daniel Craig and Casino Royale as an origin story.

Funnell: GoldenEye should be remembered as the film that resurrected the franchise after a six-year hiatus, adjusted the gender politics and geopolitics of the series, and revitalized James Bond and re-introduced the iconic hero to a new generation of filmgoers. The film also inspired the development of one of the best first-person shooter videogames, GoldenEye 007.

O’Connell: It drew in a massive new demographic of Bond fans who were just too young to catch the film’s predecessors at theaters. It forms an accomplished tick list of everything Bond onscreen is about and there is no better way to appeal to new fans and audiences than laying the DNA of 007 so bare and accessible as GoldenEye does. Also, Martin Campbell. In hindsight I find the direction of GoldenEye effective but maybe not as creatively fluid as what Mendes is now treating audiences to. Bond ’95 put Campbell on the 007 map which ultimately led to 2006’s glittering Casino Royale—which is a far better directed movie and of course the beginning of a second golden age of Bond. Just like The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, GoldenEye was a vital Broccoli/Eon gambit that paid off. It proved massively successful for Eon Productions, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson and no doubt got the studios reassessing what they thought of the longevity of the Bond franchise after its six year sabbatical. It offers the first inkling of Barbara Broccoli’s long-term project to pepper the Bond films with top-end talent (Robbie Coltrane and of course Judi Dench). It is worth noting too that the massive impact and importance of the Nintendo 64 GoldenEye game should not be underestimated. Not only is it held up as one of the important notches in the history of gaming, it—like the film itself—enabled a massive swathe of new fans into the Bond world.

Pfeiffer: GoldenEye made Bond relevant for a new generation. It also spawned an amazingly successful computer game that did much to make Bond cool with younger fans. Until then, the demographics were not on the side of the franchise. The primary people going to see Bond were those of us aging baby boomers who grew up on the films of the 1960s. So you have to give credit to the producers for not only bringing Bond back in a big way but also making the franchise more popular than ever. That’s quite an achievement for a 53 year old. 

Scivally: GoldenEye will be remembered as the first Pierce Brosnan Bond film, and the one that brought Bond squarely up-to-date with the modern era, repositioning a Cold War character in a post-Cold War world. It also signaled a willingness on the part of the studio(s) to invest more in the budget so that the film could provide bigger, more spectacular thrills. And, beginning with this film, Michael G. Wilson, who had scripted some of the earlier films, stepped back and brought on board younger writers to usher Bond into the new millennium. All the gambles paid off, and after a six year absence from movie screens, GoldenEye attracted a whole new audience of James Bond fans, ensuring that the series would continue into the 2000s (and by that, I don’t mean the year, but the number of films they’ll probably end up making before they run out of steam).

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts about GoldenEye on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

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IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, United Artists Corporation, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. 

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Thunderball” on its 50th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

As with our previous 007 articles (available here, here, here, here, and here), The Bits and History, Legacy & Showmanship continue the series with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities who discuss the virtues and shortcomings of Thunderball. The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

The participants…

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford, 2012; and recently issued in paperback with an updated Skyfall chapter). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). He recently was featured in a segment on SPECTRE for an episode of the BBC World News’ Talking Movies.

James Chapman is a professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (Tauris, 2007). His other books include Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who—A Cultural History (Tauris, 2006), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (Tauris, 2002), and (with Nicholas J. Cull) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (Tauris, 2009). Chapman is also a Council member of the International Association for Media and History and is editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is available on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms. 

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Steven Jay Rubin is the author of The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History (Random House, 1981) and The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia (McGraw-Hill, 2002). He also wrote Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010 (McFarland, 2011) and has written for Cinefantastique magazine.

Graham Rye is the editor, designer and publisher of 007 Magazine and the author of The James Bond Girls (Boxtree, 1989).

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is the Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Thunderball, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Thunderball worthy of celebration on its 50th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: Where to begin? With Goldfinger, the Bond series really hit its stride in terms of style; the mix of action, suspense and humor; Connery’s performance as 007; and, my special interest, music. Thunderball took it one step farther, and by setting so much of the action underwater, lent a new and intriguing “depth” (sorry) to the screen saga of Britain’s greatest secret agent. I loved the story, in particular; this brought back SPECTRE in a fascinating way—and now here we are, 50 years later, talking about SPECTRE in a new Bond film! Who could have guessed?!

Robert A. Caplen: Thunderball is one of the most intriguing Bond films and novels, complete with the drama of a legal dispute. In the early 1960s, Kevin McClory claimed that the novel infringed upon an earlier screenplay on which he and Jack Whittingham collaborated with Ian Fleming. In light of the pending litigation, Danjaq opted to introduce audiences to James Bond through Dr. No. That decision forever changed the trajectory of the franchise…. When Ian Fleming eventually conceded that his novel reproduced a substantial part of the Fleming/McClory/Whittingham screenplay, a settlement was reached, and Fleming assigned some of his rights in the novel to McClory. McClory then granted Danjaq a license to produce a film version of Thunderball. McClory was given credit as the film’s producer, and the rest is apparently history…. Fast-forward 50 years: the legal issues surrounding Thunderball, once again, reemerged as ownership of SPECTRE and related characters again was the subject of dispute. A recent settlement between McClory’s estate and Danjaq finally resolved the issue once and for all, and paved the way for development and release of the latest Eon Productions installment, SPECTRE. Thunderball is a fantastic film that is more than deserving of renewed celebration during its golden anniversary. But its influence is far-reaching. Thunderball, perhaps more so than other films, plays a central part in an even larger, complex story that enables us to continue enjoying James Bond today.

James Chapman: Thunderball is a major landmark for the James Bond film series. It was the most successful Bond movie of all when the box-office is adjusted for inflation. It was released at the height of Bondmania and the associated spy craze of the 1960s. It was the fourth Bond movie but also marked several “firsts” for the series. It was the first shot in widescreen (Panavision) and the first with a more or less simultaneous release in Britain and the United States. In a sense it was the first really epic (in the sense of “Big”) Bond movie and to that extent the prototype for other “Big” Bonds such as You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker and SPECTRE…. As all Bond fans know, Thunderball started out as a screen treatment by Ian Fleming, Jack Whittingham and Kevin McClory in 1959. This was a couple of years before Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli teamed up to produce the Bond film series. Fleming used material from the screen treatment for the novel. In that sense Thunderball is a very cinematic novel. It was to have been the first film, but due to the court case between Fleming and McClory, and perhaps also because Thunderball would have been expensive to produce, it was decided to make Dr. No as the first film instead…. Kevin McClory is a controversial figure in Bond history, of course. I think that McClory himself probably overstated his role in the origin of the cinematic Bond while Saltzman and Broccoli tended to downplay his role. But McClory deserves credit for recognizing the cinematic potential of Bond. And ultimately Thunderball isn’t very far different from the final version of the Whittingham-McClory treatment. He became rather obsessive over his alleged or perceived “rights” to Bond later in life, but McClory should not be written out of the history of cinematic Bond. Robert Sellers’ fine book The Battle for Bond is the best account of the McClory episode, and he untangles the various contributions of Fleming, McClory and Whittingham to the development of the ultimately aborted project.

John Cork: “It’s the biggest.” Thunderball sold more tickets than any other Bond film. It marks the apex of success of the 007 franchise, the point where Bond was the complete focus on popular culture, the absolutely height of spymania. Thunderball is also the film that would come to define how Bond films would be made even to this day. Using multiple crews shooting major sequences simultaneously, building set-pieces around single “gags” like the Bell-Textron Rocket Belt or the Skyhook rescue system, massive product placement deals, coordinating the release with tie-in advertising and cross-promotions: all of these elements of the Bond series began with Thunderball…. Thunderball is also a very good film, but like so many Bond films, a beautiful mess. Where Goldfinger feels like a film where every shot was planned perfectly, Thunderball plays like live jazz. The fan magazine (and now website) for Led Zeppelin is named Tight but Loose, and that describes Thunderball for me. Just when you think the film is about to go completely off the rails, it pulls it back together. If you can go with the film, it’s like a great Led Zeppelin concert: over-the-top, outrageous, a bit silly, but at times absolutely brilliant, and it even has a drum solo. For me, the film remains one of my favorite Bond viewing experiences. It is also the Bond film with the most amazing behind-the-scenes stories, tales that begin with a famed former aid to a New York City mayor in 1958 and echo through to the release of SPECTRE. In the world of Bond, it all comes back to Thunderball. 

Lee Pfeiffer: Thunderball was a blockbuster in every sense of the word and the film that launched Bondmania into the stratosphere. The degree of success of Goldfinger took the producers and the studio by surprise. There were few merchandising opportunities. It’s hard to believe but no one had the foresight to even capitalize on the Aston Martin DB5 when Goldfinger was released in September 1964. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman weren’t going to let the next opportunity go by. They geared up for probably the biggest merchandise tie-in program since the Disney Davy Crockett craze a decade earlier. Bond toys and merchandise flooded the international market with predictable results. Thunderball was the peak of the Bond boom in the 1960s. It played to packed houses in an era when films didn’t open “wide” in early engagements. Instead, select theaters in big cities got the movie first. You had to wait in long lines to get a ticket. In New York, the Paramount Theater found that even round-the-clock shows couldn’t accommodate the crowds. The film was probably the biggest action-oriented blockbuster ever released. Critics were less impressed than they had been by the previous Bond films, correctly pointing out that with Thunderball, the emphasis was increasingly on gadgetry as opposed to fully fleshed-out characters. However, the movie did have its defenders. It’s the only Bond film to date to make The New York Times list of Ten Best Films of the Year. In any event, audiences loved the movie and a casualty of that success is that the series did become increasingly preoccupied with special effects and hi-tech equipment. This was a gripe of Sean Connery as well. It was probably with this film that he began to lose his enthusiasm for playing 007. Another critic of the movie was its director Terence Young, who felt the film suffered from the abundance of underwater scenes that, by necessity, slowed the action. Fans tended to disagree. Peter Hunt’s editing and John Barry’s superb score went a long way in keeping the final battle sequence exciting. 

Steven Jay Rubin: For me personally, Thunderball was the high water mark of the series in the 1960s. After the success of Goldfinger, the appreciation level for anything Bondian blasted off the roof—and Thunderball was its culmination. For my money, it was Connery’s last truly great Bond role. It’s also the most romantic Bond because Bond is matched with arguably the most beautiful woman in the series, lovely French actress Claudine Auger. It has the biggest story, plays on the biggest canvas, and just kicks ass all up and down the line.

Graham Rye: Thunderball was the biggest Bond of all, and nothing that followed ever really matched its overall success, especially for a child of the ‘60s. Ken Adam’s SPECTRE boardroom (far more visually impressive, eerie and effective than its equivalent in 2015’s SPECTRE) and Whitehall Conference Room sets, together with the design of Largo’s yacht/hydrofoil (the Disco Volante) and the visual richness of the film once again immediately told the cinemagoer in 1965 they were unmistakably watching an Eon Productions James Bond film—and to underline that fact, John Barry’s score perfectly complemented the grandeur, action, and intimacy of every aspect of the story—and his composition Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang aptly captured Sean Connery’s confident swagger better than anything else Barry ever wrote. Nobody really understood James Bond like director Terence Young, and in Thunderball it shows in spades. Young undoubtedly molded the young Connery into the Bond role in Dr. No (1962) and in From Russia with Love (1963), in Thunderball his pupil “graduated.”

Bruce Scivally: Thunderball is Bond writ large. From fairly modest beginnings with Dr. No and From Russia with Love to the gadget-filled romp that was Goldfinger, each 007 film had upped the ante from the last. With Thunderball, the film went epic: more gadgets, bigger stunts, and, for the first time, wide screen. After the roaring success of Goldfinger, Thunderball was the film that took James Bond over the top to becoming a phenomenon. The success of those two movies changed cinema and television for the next decade, as spy characters began popping up all over, from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to Flint to Matt Helm and beyond. But Bond was the king spy of all of them. The Bond films set a bar that, in the 1960s, no other spy adventures would surpass.

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Coate: When did you first see Thunderball and what did you think?

Burlingame: It wasn’t on first release; I can’t recall exactly when, but it was certainly at a drive-in in upstate New York, where I grew up, paired with another Connery, possibly From Russia with Love or You Only Live Twice. I had seen one or two other Bonds at that point and my reaction was, wow, I’ve got to see all of these!

Caplen: I remember watching Thunderball as a youth and enjoying the film. The underwater fight scenes and the rocket belt left indelible images upon my impressionable mind. As I’ve revisited the film over the years, I can’t help but laugh each time Bond has his initial exchange with Domino and admires her (swimming) form.

Chapman: I first saw it when it came on British TV in the late 1970s. I’d have been about eight or nine. I particularly liked the pre-title sequence with the jet pack. And I remember liking the underwater scenes too. Some critics feel that these slow down the film, but I don’t see that. Yes, the movement is slower; of course it is, but in fact most of the underwater scenes are quite short, while the big battle at the end is edited at such a furious pace that it doesn’t seem slow.

Cork: The evening of September 22nd, 1974. I had started reading the Bond novels that summer and had completed Thunderball sometime in August. I was 13, and if you asked any of my friends they would have told you I was already a huge James Bond fan. Live and Let Die made me a Bond fan, but Thunderball was the first Bond film I saw once I had become a fan. Even with the ads and the cuts for television, it was an electrifying experience for me. Every time I see the film, I’m transported back to being 13 and completely captivated by the film…. By the way, long before I saw the film, a friend of mine found the soundtrack in his family’s record collection. We used to choreograph slow motion fights in his living room to the music. 

Pfeiffer: I saw Thunderball opening week. I was nine years old. Like Goldfinger, it simply blew me away. I think today’s young audiences are so used to seeing amazing effects that there isn’t much left to thrill them visually. But with Thunderball, the effects were truly impressive for audience members—and they were done by real people in the pre-CGI era. I went virtually every day with my friends to see it during the Christmas break from school. Finally, my dad—who was a big Bond fan, by the way—said, “Enough! I’m not going to give you another 75 cents to see Thunderball for the seventh time.” Instead, I told him I wanted to see Battle of the Bulge, so he relented and gave me the money. On the way to the theater, however, I ran into the gang from my neighborhood and they talked me into going with them to see Thunderball again. A few nights later I had forgotten my deception and asked my dad to take me to see Battle of the Bulge. I remember him calling me out on my lie and saying, “You went to see Thunderball again, didn’t you?” I confessed to my crime. He found it amusing and ended up taking me to see Battle of the Bulge. Another personal memory relates to my bringing the souvenir program to my school. The principal saw it. She was a puritanical old maid and went ballistic over the abundance of scantily clad women. She tore up my precious program in front of the class, dismissing it as “filth”! My mom and dad were outraged. They felt it was none of her business, so they bought me another program, which I still have to this day. In terms of their views on social issues, they were pretty liberal for the day, so I benefited from that. I also went repeatedly to see Thunderball on its re-releases as part of those marvelous old Bond double-features, so the film has a special place in my childhood memories. 

Rubin: I saw Thunderball at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. when the film opened in December 1965. I loved it, for all the right reasons. It was a unique action film with a lot of things going on in and under the water, and that was very unique for its day. Yes, we had a television series with Lloyd Bridges called Sea Hunt, but it was very low key, nothing like Thunderball. But to see an underwater battle scene, and hear that great John Barry music was pretty cool. 

Rye: My earliest recollection of the film Thunderball is visiting the Odeon Hammersmith, London, in early January 1966, in the days when it was still the best cinema screen just short of London’s West End, and certainly a better venue to watch the first Bond film shot in the widescreen format of Panavision than either the London Pavilion or the Rialto in Piccadilly, where the film had been premiered simultaneously on December 29th, 1965…. I arrived late (not unusual for me!), and Sean Connery was just diving off Martine Beswick’s boat into the Bahamian sea to join Claudine Auger in her speedboat. From then on in I was mesmerized. As soon as the film had finished I sat through the whole thing again without leaving my seat (something you were able to do in UK cinemas in the ‘60s without anyone seeming to mind), and marveled at everything once more. I enjoyed the film so much that I returned to the cinema twice the next week and sat through it twice again on each occasion—such was my fanaticism and enthusiasm as a 14-year-old schoolboy! I have long since lost track of how many times I’ve seen Thunderball, but still retain the wonderment for it of a schoolboy—and as I did when I hosted the 25th anniversary screening of Thunderball in 1990 at the National Film Theatre in London with various Bond alumni in attendance, and with its director, Terence Young, sitting next to me in the auditorium imparting his own personal commentary throughout the film—an unforgettable experience!

Scivally: I first saw Thunderball on television, back in the 1970s when ABC was running the Bond films. At that age (my early teens), I was besotted with James Bond, and I’m sure my reaction was enthusiastic, but I can’t remember much beyond that. When I moved to California, where “revival house” theaters in the early 1980s would show double and triple features of James Bond films, I finally saw Thunderball on the big screen. Seeing the films as they were meant to be seen—on a big screen, uncut, with an audience—was an eye-opening experience. The more episodic films held up better on television, where the frequent commercial interruptions weren’t as disruptive to their storylines. The films that had more cogent plots, like From Russia with Love, seemed rather boring on TV, but when I finally saw it in a theater, it became (and remains) my favorite. Thunderball, on the other hand, I liked on TV, but seeing it uncut, I found it overlong and rather dull.

Coate: Where do you think Thunderball ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: For me, just behind Goldfinger and From Russia with Love in terms of the Connery series. I am not a big fan of the climax, although I love just about everything else. And in terms of John Barry’s score, it’s really phenomenal, although he wound up working very late in the post-production process, all through September and October 1965—a period that saw the unexpected rejection of his original song, Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (with its wonderful Leslie Bricusse lyrics and Dionne Warwick vocal) and the hasty creation of a new title song (with equally great Don Black lyrics and a powerful Tom Jones vocal). But the addition of a new song, and the necessary interpolation of it instrumentally in the score, gives a complex feel to the musical aspects of the film, as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the entire foundation of the score and Thunderball is dropped in—not unlike the instrumental addition of the Adele song in the Skyfall score nearly 50 years later!

Caplen: Thunderball is, in my view, certainly one of the best James Bond films. By the time he suited up for his fourth mission as James Bond, Sean Connery was very accomplished as Agent 007, and it shows. I think the film still ranks within the top 5 in the franchise, even as Skyfall and SPECTRE continue to challenge the older installments for higher places on the list.

Chapman: Thunderball was the first genuinely “big” Bond movie—even more so than Goldfinger—in terms of budget, production values and visual spectacle. When you look at the budgets of the first three films—$950,000 for Dr. No, $1.9 million for From Russia with Love, about $3 million for Goldfinger—they weren’t all that expensive by the standards of the 1960s…. There’s a view that Thunderball was the film where the Bond series started to become a bit formulaic, reliant on set pieces rather than strong narratives. This point was made in a number of the contemporary reviews. And to be fair the middle part of the film from Bond’s arrival in the Bahamas to the departure of the Disco Volante is a bit episodic. But the whole point of the Bond films is that they’re formula films, and Thunderball was still early enough in the series to have new variations on action and pursuit scenes…. For me, it’s probably somewhere at the top of the bottom half of my top ten Bond movies (if that makes sense!), let’s say sixth or seventh overall.

Cork: It is in the top five for me. For years, I proclaimed it my favorite Bond film. I do recognize that parts are slow, that some scenes are a complete mess, that unless you are very forgiving the out-of-control hydrofoil looks absurd, that the back projection does some scenes no favors, that one can plant, grow and harvest crops during the sinking and camouflaging of the Vulcan and the stealing of the bombs, that Bond wears a magic color-changing diver’s mask, and one would get very drunk in a game based on the number of times Bond’s watch changes from his Rolex to the Breitling TopTime and back. But I love the film just the same. It has some of the most fun dialog of the series (”You swim like a man.” “So do you.” “Well, I’ve had quite a bit of practice.”), some of the sexiest Bond women moments (Fiona Volpe asking Bond to give her something to wear), some great moments of villainy (”This for heat; these for cold—applied scientifically and slowly, very, very slowly…”) and brilliant action. 

Pfeiffer: There are a lot of people who think Thunderball is a rather boring film. My wife and daughter each saw it once and never wanted to watch it again. I disagree entirely. There are some rather slow-moving scenes, but they only appear to be a bit boring to me after having seen the film dozens of times. I don’t recall thinking it was slow when I first saw it, but then again, “boring” is in the eye of the beholder. I would say it still holds up as great entertainment. I would rank it in the top five Bond films. 

Rubin: I would place it in 5th position—behind Goldfinger, Casino Royale, From Russia with Love, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Some people have complained over the years that its first third is very slow, but I disagree.

Rye: On my personal list of the Top 10 Bond Films Thunderball is placed at Number 3, after From Russia with Love and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The first three James Bond films had been undoubtedly great entertainment, but Thunderball was indeed the biggest Bond of all! Regardless what you might have read anywhere else in the last 50 years, Thunderball is the highest-grossing Bond film of the series—more people saw that film in a cinema than any other Bond film! Simply, nothing could top it! Every successful fad had its time—and 1965 and Thunderball was James Bond’s zenith year. The film was released at the height of Bondmania and everyone couldn’t get enough of Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as the Italians had nicknamed him, which the filmmakers neatly used as an in-joke in one of the film’s cutest set pieces…. Sean Connery’s performance in Thunderball must rank as his best as Bond, as he glides effortlessly through the narrative dispensing lust and death in equal dispassionate measure. Richard Maibaum’s and John Hopkins’ script sparkles with style and panache as Bond plays cat and mouse with Emilio Largo and Fiona Volpe, SPECTRE’s agents of doom in The Bahamas—and the Blofeld and SPECTRE organization in this 1965 film seem a far more tangible, impressive and dangerous threat than in 2015’s woefully cartoonish SPECTRE.

Scivally: Many of the “old guard” Bond fans—which is to say, those of us over 50 who were first introduced to the character through the films of Sean Connery—place Thunderball in the Top 3 films of the series, if not the number one film. My top 3 are From Russia with Love, Goldfinger and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I’m not sure Thunderball would even be in the Top 5 for me, but it would make the Top 10. For me, it’s a bit of an uneven mix; it has a fantastic pre-credits fight, ending with the jetpack escape, and the scene in SPECTRE headquarters is cool, but then the pace starts to flag as we’re off to Shrublands, and then into the theft of the Vulcan bomber, a sequence that drags on far too long and kills the film’s forward momentum. After that, we finally get to the Bahamas, where the tension gradually increases as Bond taunts Largo and courts Domino and puts the pieces together, all capped off by the climactic large-scale underwater battle. But even that is undercut by the comically under-cranked footage in Bond’s fight with Largo on the Disco Volante, and—for my money—it’s in this film that Sean Connery begins exhibiting the boredom with the role of Bond that also undercut You Only Live Twice.

Coate: In what way was Adolfo Celi’s Largo a memorable villain?

Burlingame: He’s so dark, so serious, so dangerous, so malevolent. I still freeze up a little when I see him on screen. It was great casting. And by 1965, we were four films into the series and Bond had been well-established as a hero for the ages, someone whose skill and good luck was unbeatable. So establishing a villain who was formidable enough to take on the seemingly indestructible 007 became a much bigger challenge. Celi’s Largo met the standard.

Caplen: I find it curious that the omnipotent, omnipresent “guardian” of Domino Derval wears an eye patch. That aside, Largo appears relatively calm throughout the film, which is quite the contrast to the fiery Fiona Volpe he employs. I think she is the much more memorable villain insofar as what she represents and contributes to the Bond Girl archetype. I fully deconstruct Fiona Volpe in Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond and demonstrate how her seeming independence and assertiveness are mere facades.

Chapman: He’s one of the best villains in the series, in my opinion. He’s a plausible megalomaniac—more so than Goldfinger, as marvelous as Gert Frobe is—and provides an excellent antagonist for Connery’s Bond. Adolfo Celi has great physical presence and (thanks to Robert Rietty’s dubbing) a superb vocal delivery. His manner and physical appearance are also close to the character in Fleming’s book: Thunderball was made pretty close to the book and the early films were much closer to Fleming than they became later. Largo is clever but also represents a physical threat, and has a good fight with Bond at the end of the film. I prefer those sorts of villains to the Drax/Stromberg type who have to rely on their henchmen to do the physical stuff. Thunderball also brings out the way in which Largo manipulates/controls Domino who is unable to escape from him. It’s not really until Sanchez and Lupe in Licence to Kill that another Bond film considered the dynamic between villain and mistress.

Cork: Largo is one of the greatest Bond villains, but his performance is equal parts Robert Rietty and Adolfo Celi. Rietty’s voice work with Largo lifts that character up and beyond what any single actor could do. It is a shame that voice-actors in the Bond films do not get more credit. That said, Celi holds every scene he is in. His glance up when his fellow SPECTRE member is electrocuted, his ability to move from genial grin to withering stare is perfect. He is a pirate, so he has an eye patch, but it is never played for laughs. Like the best of the Bond villains, he seems to get smarter as the film continues. He gets frustrated with Bond, but his confidence is never shaken, his certainty never wavering, his evil intent never in doubt. I love that the film has a solid logic for Largo and Bond’s interactions. Largo knows Bond is working for British Intelligence, but it serves his purpose to be polite to 007 so that the authorities do not try to arrest him. For Bond, he knows Largo is involved, but he cannot try to do anything to Largo until the bombs are recovered. So they play this charade that I quite enjoy. He’s an active villain, physically able to dole out punishment and to take it. Even in death, he tries to seal 007’s fate. Largo rules. 

Pfeiffer: Adolfo Celi was an inspired choice as Largo. He’s a fine actor and every bit as dashing and handsome as Bond. He had the requisite self-confidence to stand up to Sean Connery on screen and not be overshadowed, which is quite a feat. He also did justice to the stylish clothing he wore. (I wonder why only Italian men look natural by draping their coats over their shoulders!) Celi was already a well-regarded character actor and 1965 was a good year for him. In addition to appearing in Thunderball, he also had major roles in two other high profile movies: The Agony and the Ecstasy and Von Ryan’s Express. My only regret is that editor Peter Hunt had a mania for dubbing many key actors in the films even if they spoke English perfectly well, as Celi did. I would have preferred that his own voice be heard in the film. Incidentally, he technically made another movie with Sean Connery: the political thriller The Next Man in 1976, but unfortunately they never shared the screen together. As for the character of Largo, he was actually not the top dog at SPECTRE, which might have diminished him a bit in terms of stature. He still had to take orders from and report to Blofeld. Nevertheless, the character was sufficiently intriguing to rank among the more memorable Bond villains. Any screen villain is better if he isn’t presented as a mustache-twirling, one-note depiction of evil. In the case of Largo, he is charming, polite and quite the lady’s man, which reminds us that the great real life villains often have the same qualities.

Rubin: Adolfo Celi was solid, commanding, suave, ruthless and worthy as a Bond opponent. He’s more an international businessman than a megalomaniac, but I liked him, and his demise from Domino’s spear was very effective, given the fact that the last time he was seen, he was torturing her. 

Rye: Although Adolfo Celi’s voice was dubbed in its entirety in Thunderball by the late Robert Rietty, Celi’s performance and physical presence makes Largo an adversary worthy of Connery’s Bond, and he makes a memorable villain in the classic style; the scene at the Cafe Martinique casino between Bond and Largo, where 007 drops pointed remarks about SPECTRE into the conversation, taunting Largo across the gaming table, remains among the very best Bond/villain meetings in the series—and Connery and Celi/Rietty play it for all it’s worth!

Scivally: Honestly, I never thought Adolfo Celi’s Emilio Largo was a particularly memorable villain. Admittedly, any villain who came after Gert Frobe’s charismatic Goldfinger was bound to suffer by comparison, but Celi is so cool and reserved he almost ceases to exist. He’s such a charmless, cruel character that one wonders what Domino, or any woman, could ever have seen in him. For me, Celi’s is a one-note performance.

Coate: In what way was Claudine Auger’s Domino a memorable Bond Girl?

Caplen: Many women, including Faye Dunaway and Raquel Welch, competed for the part of Domino, which was described at the time as the most complex and demanding of any female lead in the series. This is, of course, a curious description. In my complete analysis of Domino, I explore the extent to which she is a kept woman who finds herself frequently overpowered by men. Largo, as her supposed “guardian,” carefully monitors Domino’s activities and controls her actions. Then Domino meets Bond, who inundates her with questions, takes complete control of their dynamic from the moment they meet, and manipulates her as he sees fit…. Indeed, Domino is memorable and an important addition to the Bond Girl continuum because she is weak. Domino is a foil to Fiona Volpe, whose hypersexuality, villainy, and unwillingness to succumb to Bond’s sexual prowess offer a striking image of perceived independence and authority. Domino, on the other hand, is purely a submissive instrument through which Bond can obtain sexual gratification and complete his mission. He places her in harm’s way to advance his interests and seems to care little about her ultimate fate. Perhaps it is his insouciance that leads to a few interesting plot twists at the conclusion of the film.

Chapman: To be honest, I prefer Kim Basinger as Domino in Never Say Never Again (McClory’s 1983 remake of Thunderball), if it’s not sacrilege to say so! Claudine Auger has all the necessary physical attributes of a Bond girl, and looks athletic, as Fleming’s character is described, though she has the wrong color hair (come to think of it most of the early Bond girls have different color hair from the books). But I find her performance just a little bland, not as memorable as Ursula Andress, Daniela Bianchi or Honor Blackman in the preceding three films. For me the really memorable Bond girl in Thunderball is Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi)—the first major “bad girl” role in a Bond movie and the archetype of the sexy, confident villainess, a forerunner of Helga Brandt, Xenia Onatopp and the rest…. The difference beyond Domino and Fiona is summed up in their reactions after sleeping with Bond. “So that’s why you make love to me,” Domino whimpers after Bond tells her that her brother is dead and Largo killed him: she meekly acquiesces to Bond and doesn’t seem to get angry that he’s apparently seduced her in order to get her onto his side. Contrast that to Fiona who throws Bond’s “arrogance” back in his face and proudly asserts that she can’t be converted to the side of goodness and right.

Cork: Claudine Auger is certainly one of the most physically beautiful women in the world. She has a sultry, confident sexuality about her, but she gives the role of Domino real vulnerability. She, too, was completely dubbed for the film. Nikki van der Zyl, who provided the voice, did momentous work on the Bond films from Dr. No through to The Man with the Golden Gun. Her voice work is utterly charming, just perfect for the part. Also interesting to me is that our introduction to Domino is while she is swimming underwater, and that lovely woman is not Claudine Auger. It is Evelyne Boren, the wife of the underwater cinematographer, Lamar Boren. Evelyne is a very talented artist…. Domino is a fantastic character. I like that she can be her own person with her own story. There is no need for her to be Bond’s equivalent when it comes to action, but she can be his superior when it comes to humanity. She is world-weary, but never naive, longing, but never needy. In the end, though, through her relationship with Bond, she finds the strength to seal Largo’s fate. I find Domino absolutely compelling as a character. The scene where Bond gives her the watch and dog tags was shot both on Love Beach on New Providence Island and back in the studio at Pinewood, and the scene like so many others is a mess. Bond says he can’t tell her what it’s all about, but moments later he is telling her what it is all about. Yet, the human element of the scene is wonderfully done. Auger and van der Zyl’s performances are consistent and heartfelt. It is one of the few moments in the series where I feel Connery is out-acted in a scene. That combination of strength, confidence, sexuality and vulnerability, makes Domino one of my favorites of the series.

Pfeiffer: The early Bond girls were often victims of tragic circumstances. Honey Ryder was an orphan who had to fend for herself after suffering sexual abuse. Tania in From Russia with Love is ordered by her superiors to sleep with an enemy agent she has never met. Tilly Masterson in Goldfinger is out to avenge the murder of her sister. Domino is also a somewhat tragic figure. She is a very young woman who has let the lure of a charismatic man and the trappings of luxury lure her into a life she can no longer escape. She clearly is unhappy being Largo’s “kept woman” but there is no easy way out. Her situation grows even more tragic when she learns that her lover, Largo, has murdered her brother. I do wish the script had provided more background on the character of Domino, as she could have been presented in a far more interesting and fleshed-out manner. Still, she remains sufficiently interesting to engage the viewer in her dilemma of having to risk her life to avenge her brother. As for Claudine Auger, she certainly fits the part physically, but like so many actors from the early films, it’s difficult to fully evaluate her performance because she was dubbed.

Rubin: I just can’t say enough about Claudine Auger. She was a stunner, and she had all the accessories necessary for a great Bond girl, times ten. Loved her wardrobe, or lack thereof. Looks great in a bikini, or an evening dress, and her scenes with Bond are very romantic. Other than Diana Rigg’s Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I would say she’s the most compatible Bond girl for 007. He could do much worse. 

Rye: Thunderball boasts the most impressive quartet of female flesh of any of the Bond films; while Claudine Auger’s Domino is a physically impressive looking woman, especially in her black & white bikini (Domino—geddit!), it’s her voice, dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, that really carries off the performance of a vulnerable young woman who has drifted into shady company and been seduced by Largo’s “good life,” becoming a powerful and dangerous criminal’s plaything; a “kept woman,” as she tells Bond…. But the stand out Bond Girl in Thunderball, expertly played by Luciana Paluzzi, is Fiona Volpe, who remains the strongest written female character in the entire Bond series, with her dialogue bristling in every scene in which she appears. Sadly, Thunderball loses much of its tension, urgency and bite after Fiona exits the narrative, courtesy of a SPECTRE bullet meant for Bond.

Scivally: Domino is one of the “angel with one wing down” Bond girls, a poor victim of circumstances who is a “kept woman” because her brother has been swept up in Largo’s scheme. Like almost every character in this movie except Fiona Volpe, she is aloof and, consequently, hard to sympathize with, or feel sympathy for. Fiona, on the other hand, is almost like a female Bond, a lethal assassin with a healthy sexual appetite, and is played with genuine spark by Lucianna Paluzzi. Paluzzi injects a sense of fun into her scenes that is missing from much of the rest of the film, and consequently, is more memorable than Claudine Auger, who looks stunning but is otherwise pretty vapid.

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Coate: Thunderball was the first 007 movie produced in ’Scope. How did this change in photography and projection style affect the movie (and series)?

Chapman: Yes, Thunderball was the first Bond movie produced in widescreen: Panavision, which had more or less become the industry standard for anamorphic ’scope cinematography in the early to mid-1960s. In a sense it’s something of a mystery why the previous films were not shot in widescreen. It can’t have been a budgetary factor as widescreen wasn’t so expensive by this time and many films with a lower budget than Dr. No used it. So it must have been an aesthetic choice not to use it in the early films, maybe down to cinematographer Ted Moore…. I don’t have any firm evidence to support this theory, but it may have been that the decision to use Panavision for Thunderball had something to do with Kevin McClory. The trade press announcement for the unmade James Bond of the Secret Service in October 1959 said that it was to be shot in Todd-AO—what might be called a “super” or “special” widescreen process developed by Mike Todd reserved for a handful of big-ticket films. (McClory had worked as a location manager for Todd’s production of Around the World in Eighty Days.) So McClory had always envisioned the film being in widescreen…. It may also have had something to do with the amount of underwater shooting. The wider frame allows more visual interest in the shot, which is important when the movement is slower…. How does Panavision affect the “look” of the film? On one level it’s part of the upscaling of production values: Thunderball was promoted as a “big” film (”Here Comes the Biggest Bond of All”). On another level it allows the staging of sequences like the Junkanoo parade which made full use of the width of the screen. And scenes such as the US SEALs parachuting into the sea look pretty impressive too. A downside is that when the film is shown on television it’s usually in a pan-and-scan version which can miss out key details. When I first recorded Thunderball off air before the films were available in letterbox, the night scene at Shrublands where Bond finds Derval’s body and knocks out Lippe never made sense as the scan cut off Lippe hiding at the edge of the frame.

Cork: One of the major contributions of Kevin McClory to the look and style of Thunderball was that he insisted it be shot anamorphic (technically Panavision’s process, not 20th Century Fox’s CinemaScope). McClory had been close to Michael Todd, who, after the success of Cinerama, bankrolled his own innovative widescreen format—Todd-AO. McClory was keenly aware that two of the early CinemaScope successes had featured lengthy underwater sequences: Beneath the 12-Mile Reef and, a year later, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They helped inspire McClory’s vision for Thunderball when the script was in development. When McClory made the deal to work with Broccoli and Saltzman, he argued to United Artists that the original screenplays envisioned Thunderball as an event film, shot in anamorphic, and, if he had his way, presented as a roadshow…. No doubt about it, anamorphic changed James Bond. McClory’s insistence did make Bond feel bigger, made his world seem even larger and more epic. There is something about the 2.35:1 (and wider) ratio(s) that works for epic storytelling and visuals. With Bond, this can be most clearly seen in Maurice Binder’s titles which really use the space beautifully. In contrast, in the body of the film, shots that took full advantage of the ratio were rare. Filmmakers knew that in many international markets (and a good portion of domestic markets, too), projectionists would simply let the sides of a ’scope film play off the screen and on the curtain (or even mask the frame). They also knew that networks were paying big money for color feature films as part of their push to transition to all-color broadcasts in the US. This, too, helped limit the innovative compositions during the mid-60s. So while Thunderball is a great-looking film, like most anamorphic films of the era, the extremes of the frame are often completely empty, with most of the action taking place in the 1.33:1 TV safe area, and I’d guess that in 95% of the remaining shots, nothing of importance is out of the 1:85:1 lines…. I love that Bond embraced anamorphic with Thunderball. McClory was right that it was the proper choice for this story, and it is a tradition carried on to this day. When you look at those shots of the Day of the Dead parade in SPECTRE, there is more than one reason it reminds one of the epic feel of Thunderball, and that is a good thing. Bond’s world should always feel larger, wider and more epic than ours, and that, for me, is one thing anamorphic helps bring to life. 

Pfeiffer: The decision to film Thunderball in a widescreen process illustrates why it would have been inappropriate to have gone with this as the first film in the series. There is no way the producers could have done justice to the epic scale of the movie’s climax if it had been shot in a flat format. By the time Thunderball went into production, United Artists knew they didn’t have a “flash in the pan” success and that the series had real legs. Thus, there was no hesitation to provide the considerable budget it took to give the film a far richer looker than its predecessors enjoyed. The widescreen format works superbly for this particular Bond film and adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of watching it repeatedly. 

Rubin: I’m not a real techie when it comes to projection formats, but I can say that Thunderball was a truly spectacular Bond film from start to finish, and it needed the widescreen presentation—especially when you consider such spectacular set pieces as the jet pack teaser, the Junkanoo, the helicopter search for the downed bomber, and, of course, the climactic underwater battle. Even the meeting in the giant conference room benefitted from a bigger format. This is one of my favorite Bond films because of the spectacle—a realistic spectacle.

Rye: The switch to the Panavision widescreen format (2.35:1) with Thunderball enabled the Bond series to break out of the restrictive confines of the Academy ratio format (1.37:1) that the first three films in the series—Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964)—were shot in, and create stunning vistas on location and show off the magnificent set designs of Ken Adam even more marvelously. (The early films were shot in the Academy format but not screened that way, so the compositions were not square but rectangular in the cinema. In the UK they were matted to 1:66:1 and 1:85:1 in the USA.) Bond really became BIG in this format, and when the filmmakers decided to return to the Academy format with Live And Let Die (1973) and The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), the films suffered in their sense of importance and lost their grandiose scale, which is why after the less than wonderful critical reception that greeted Golden Gun it was decided to return to Panavision again for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)—and it paid off on every level possible, with Roger Moore’s third (and arguably most popular) appearance in his seven-film tenure as agent 007 breaking box-office records around the world.

Scivally: The decision to film Thunderball in ’scope gave Terence Young a broader, wider palette in which to present his film, showing off not only Ken Adam’s fine sets to full advantage but also giving greater impact to the islands and ocean setting. But it also had an impact beyond the aesthetic; filming in ’scope was an announcement that Bond was now epic, on a level with roadshow films and blockbusters like Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia. Dr. No, by comparison, looks like a programmer, a 1940s detective thriller with the added benefit of color. But after the phenomenal success of Goldfinger, the 007 films became multimedia events, with lavish budgets and huge promotional campaigns, and this is reflected in the widescreen formats of Thunderball and the next three Bond films (they returned to standard ratio for Roger Moore’s first two outings, after the declining box-office of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever, but went all-in again with the spectacular The Spy Who Loved Me, remaining widescreen ever since). Of course, the switch to ’scope meant that Thunderball couldn’t re-use any footage from previous films, so the famous gunbarrel opening had to be reshot. As a result, for the first time in the series, we see Sean Connery as 007 doing the walk, spin and shoot, instead of stuntman Bob Simmons.

Coate: What is the legacy of Thunderball?

Caplen: Thunderball had a hard act to follow given the success of Goldfinger. And yet, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman outdid themselves and ultimately produced a film that, despite some harsh critiques at the time, set box-office records, won an Oscar, became the most successful 007 film of the 1960s, and remains one of the highest rated James Bond adventures. That Thunderball could surpass Goldfinger, a feat that seemed improbable at the time, demonstrates not only the quality of Thunderball as a film but the true vitality of the franchise…. It has been written that Thunderball transformed James Bond into a cultural phenomenon, and that is quite an apt observation. Thunderball provided the necessary momentum that has kept the series fresh and exciting five decades later. As I explain in my academic study of the women in the James Bond franchise, Thunderball’s various representations of female characters—Patricia Fearing, Paula Caplan, Fiona Volpe, and Domino Derval—helped reinforce the franchise’s presentation of an archetype of the “ideal” woman, an image subsequent films could develop, perpetuate, and refine for over a decade.

Chapman: Put simply, I think Thunderball sums up the 1960s Bond better than any of the films, even Goldfinger. It’s the most successful at the box-office in real terms and is likely to remain so.

Cork: No Bond film has left a larger shadow than Thunderball. By early 1964, Kevin McClory and Charles K. Feldman both had the rights make films from James Bond novels, and the grosses of From Russia with Love in the UK (where it became the highest-grossing film ever) proved that these were valuable properties. For Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, the idea of competing with rival Bond films was a nightmare. The last thing they wanted was another partner. They decided they could weather one rival Bond film but not two. Cubby had a good relationship with Feldman, and Feldman had a deal at United Artists, so they quickly tried to negotiate with Feldman to make Casino Royale as the follow up to Goldfinger or possibly On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the title originally slated to follow Goldfinger). Feldman, though, would not budge on his share of the profits. UA made concessions, but their deal would have left Cubby and Harry with just 20% of the profits rather than their usual 60%. Cubby and Harry were stuck, and Feldman knew it. They could not make a deal with Kevin McClory without severely damaging their relationship with Ian Fleming. Then in August, 1964, Ian Fleming died. Suddenly, Charles K. Feldman found himself out of a deal and an agreement with McClory was struck shortly after the UK release of Goldfinger (early prints of Goldfinger announce On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as the next Bond). That agreement with McClory and all the legal fallout from it shapes the Bond franchise in more ways than one would expect. It is the reason Blofeld disappears from the franchise, the reason The Spy Who Loved Me was re-written extensively, the reason Sean Connery returns as Bond in 1983, the reason the Bond producers and MGM now own Never Say Never Again and the CBS television version of Casino Royale and were able to purchase Columbia’s interest in the 1967 feature film of Casino Royale. Without that agreement, Casino Royale likely becomes a 1960s Sean Connery Bond film. Without that agreement, SPECTRE never gets made…. Thunderball was an incredibly difficult film to make. All the key persons involved had bitter feelings about the film, despite its success. On a location scouting trip, Kevin McClory, tired of being treated as a second-class partner, arranged to have himself breeze through customs in Nassau while Cubby was stopped and his luggage searched. Cubby threatened to move the film to Jamaica. Cubby was upset at Harry’s other film projects, and Harry felt his creative voice and business ideas were being ignored. During the filming, Cubby and Harry felt that Terence Young was losing control of the film, then, when they left the Bahamas, they discovered that his hotel bill was through the roof. They confronted him at the end of principal photography and demanded he pay the overages. Young, upset, then left the film. Cubby and Harry turned to editor Peter Hunt who found scenes with shots missing and mountains of film of underwater sequences that were poorly logged and slated. The location sound was problematic. Hunt’s first assembly of the film ran four and a half hours, a figure given by the film’s publicist to Variety. Hunt agreed to try to save the film, but he needed to reshoot some material, and he felt that Cubby and Harry had agreed to allow him to direct the next Bond film in exchange for his diligent work. He became bitter for a while when that didn’t happen with You Only Live Twice. The studio had an October release date set, complete with cross-promotion advertising deals, but Hunt candidly told the studio that he could not make the film “good” unless that date was moved back. UA put a brave face on it, but they were not happy, blaming Cubby and Harry. Thunderball became the only Bond film to move its release date significantly after the end of principal photography. During the production of Thunderball, Sean Connery became aware that both Dean Martin and James Coburn had signed to do spy spoof series with lucrative deals that paid them far more than him, so he wasn’t happy. John Barry wasn’t happy with the very short scoring schedule and the last-minute need for a new theme song. Even after it opened, the producers felt that John Stears had taken too much credit for the effects work, so they never told him about his nomination for Best Special Effects and instead sent underwater engineer Jordan Klein to the Oscars. Stears found out he had won when the statuette arrived in the post. There was a lot of ill-will that tempered the film’s amazing success…. What I love is that none of that comes across onscreen. Thunderball is a smooth, confident, lavish film. It is grand in scale in a way that has shaped every Bond film to follow. It defined the multi-unit, big set-piece approach to filmmaking that is still used in the Bond films today. It is the definition of big-screen entertainment. Thunderball is a remarkably influential film beyond the obvious spy spoofs. You can see the Disco Volante fight in Spielberg’s truck fight in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the speedboat fight in Patriot Games. You can see the Junkanoo in the St. Patrick’s Day parade scene in The Fugitive. You can see the Skyhook used in The Dark Knight. Thunderball’s legacy is that the Bond films became epics, global events, overwhelming visual spectacles, films where no one ever says that there is too much of a good thing.

Pfeiffer: Thunderball’s legacy is that, among hardcore Bond fans, the film still resonates so well and is routinely cited as one of the best films of the series. Its success also put the Bond merchandise business into high gear and helped secure the sizable budgets that the producers needed to ensure that each successive movie looked just as opulent, if not more so. Broccoli and Saltzman never fell victim to what I call the “Planet of the Apes Syndrome,” which is producing sequels that were cheaper and less impressive than the original. The Bond films have had some high profile artistic misses, but even the worst movies boast impressive production values. I think that the greatest stroke of luck the producers had occurred when United Artists decided to forego plans to make Thunderball the first Bond film and instead went with Dr. No. Although the rumor mill has attributed this to the on-going litigation involving rights to the novel that resulted in a high profile lawsuit against Ian Fleming, David Picker, who was head of production for UA, tells me that the primary reason was that he recognized that in order to do justice to the scope of Thunderball, the budget would have to be exponentially higher. He showed good judgment. By the time the film went into production, it had a budget of over $5 million compared to Dr. No, which cost a little over $1 million. I think that if Thunderball had been made first, we may not be writing and talking about the film 50 years later. 

Rubin: Thunderball will always be the “big one.” When Bond was bigger than anything on the planet, except maybe the Beatles. 

Rye: When I’m asked which film in the entire Bond series someone should watch that encapsulates the essence of what James Bond is all about, I unhesitatingly nominate Thunderball. For me, Thunderball still remains the strongest example on film of the link between the original character created by Ian Fleming and the flesh and blood man breathed life into by Sean Connery…. In its 50th anniversary year Thunderball still holds up as a sophisticated and exciting entertainment (including the innovative and fascinating underwater sequences), and remains a lasting testament of excellence to the exceptional team of talented men and women responsible for bringing the biggest Bond of all to the cinema screen.

Scivally: Upon its release, Thunderball quickly became one of the top-grossing films of all time. It clearly resonated with audiences of the period, who were willing to stand in long lines for its round-the-clock 24-hour screenings. It was featured in major magazines around the world, generating massive awareness of James Bond, and set the standard for all the big-budget action-adventure extravaganzas that would follow.

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts about Thunderball on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

--END--

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, United Artists Corporation, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

SPECIAL THANKS

John Hazelton, Mark Lensenmayer.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “For Your Eyes Only” on its 35th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached at: michaelcoate@thedigitalbits.com

As with our previous 007 articles (see Thunderball, GoldenEye, A View to a Kill, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Goldfinger, and 007… Fifty Years Strong), The Bits and History, Legacy & Showmanship continue the series with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities who discuss the virtues and shortcomings of For Your Eyes Only.

The participants…

Thomas A. Christie is the author of The James Bond Movies of the 1980s (Crescent Moon, 2013). He has written several other books including The Spectrum of Adventure: A Brief History of Interactive Fiction on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (Extremis, 2016), Mel Brooks: Genius and Loving It! (Crescent Moon, 2015), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Pocket Movie Guide (Crescent Moon, 2010), John Hughes and Eighties Cinema: Teenage Hopes and American Dreams (Crescent Moon, 2009), and The Cinema of Richard Linklater (Crescent Moon, 2008). He is a member of The Royal Society of Literature, The Society of Authors and The Federation of Writers Scotland.

John Cork is the writer and director of the Inside For Your Eyes Only documentary (1999/2005), originally produced for the DVD release of For Your Eyes Only and upgraded to high-definition for the film’s Blu-ray release. He also wrote (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek, and wrote and directed the 2014 feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder in the South for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman).

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies, a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the producer of the Inside For Your Eyes Only documentary (1999/2005) and the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011) and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is the Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to For Your Eyes Only, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities...

--007--

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is For Your Eyes Only worthy of celebration on its 35th anniversary?

Thomas A. Christie: For Your Eyes Only was a significant film for the Bond franchise in a number of ways. It was the first in the series to be directed by John Glen, who would go on to helm a total of five Bond films in succession — a record for the franchise which still stands today. It also marked a very deliberate shift in gear for the Eon Productions creative team, who were making a conscious effort to return some aspect of the series’ 1960s glory days to the franchise: the Cold War trappings, a more tangible sense of threat, and a heightened sense of realism — or at least, as close as a Bond film ever really gets to realism. These creative endeavors to subtly refine the series’ tone and style would continue throughout the eighties, but the journey began with For Your Eyes Only.

John Cork: 007 faced a major challenge with the release of For Your Eyes Only. Its studio was in chaos. In 1975, ‘76 and ‘77, United Artists films had won the Best Picture Oscar. With Bond, Rocky, The Pink Panther and the Woody Allen films, the studio seemed to be one of the most financially stable in Hollywood. But UA’s parent company, Transamerica Corp., decided they were not seeing enough profit from UA to justify lofty salaries for the company’s leadership. That leadership (legendary studio head Arthur Krim and his team) left in 1978 to form Orion Pictures. Cubby Broccoli was very loyal to Krim, but he could not follow Krim to Orion because UA owned Harry Saltzman’s share of Danjaq. The new leadership had not objected to Moonraker’s massive budget, and, in fact, gave Cubby a great deal of freedom in making the film. When the time came to make For Your Eyes Only, the new studio leadership did ask for some cost controls, which matched Cubby’s personal feeling that too much money had been spent on Moonraker. UA needed to save some money because a western modestly budgeted at $12 million was running massively over budget. Heaven’s Gate would end up costing well over $40 million, be delayed for a year, and was yanked from release after a disastrous New York opening. United Artists could not recover. Transamerica fired the studio bosses and summarily put UA up for sale…. In a span of three years, Bond’s safe, stable home, run by men who were in the room when the deal for Dr. No had been struck, was now being sold off as a liability, valued for its library and its intellectual property. The most valuable of those properties was James Bond…. During the summer of 1981, a lot of folks were betting against Bond. Releasing a Bond film in 1981 was for many a bit like making a Roy Rogers singing cowboy western in 1965. Sure, everybody loved Bond…but there was this new kid in town named Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark opens two weeks before For Your Eyes Only in the U.S., and so does Clash of the Titans, which was red meat for the new generation of movie geek teens who were reading Starlog magazine. Then there was Superman II which opens one week before For Your Eyes Only. You know what else opens just one week earlier? The Cannonball Run, which has Roger Moore playing a James Bond fan who wears a tuxedo and drives around in an Aston Martin. The week For Your Eyes Only opens is the same week as Stripes, the most anticipated comedy of the year, and The Great Muppet Caper and Dragonslayer, another expensive fantasy film. The competition was rough. Bond stood his ground. Bond proved UA still had value. Bond proved that he might not sell as many tickets as Indiana Jones, but he was still a global box office phenomenon…. The reason to celebrate For Your Eyes Only is simple: it was the film that proved Bond was a survivor. After the fantasy elements of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only played it (mostly) straight. The film bet big on action, and that bet paid off. It had a number of must-see action scenes, some real moments of suspense, felt a little closer to Ian Fleming and by the time Margaret Thatcher was calling Bond it was way too far in the film for anyone to get a refund.

Bill Desowitz: I believe For Your Eyes Only marked a fresh start for the franchise, as it entered the ‘80s, and for Moore as well. Editor-turned director John Glen wanted a return to Fleming and got a more sensitive and, at times, ruthless performance out of Moore, settling an old score and struggling with vengeance.

Lee Pfeiffer: Eyes was significant at the time because it marked an attempt to bring the character of James Bond back to the real world after the excesses of the previous film, Moonraker. That film was highly successful at the box-office, but producer Cubby Broccoli acknowledged to me years later that he had received a lot of complaints from Bond fans that the series’ emphasis on gadgets and slapstick humor was wearing very thin with them. To his credit, Broccoli abandoned that formula — at least in part — and committed to bringing Bond back to more believable story lines. It was a decision that was enthusiastically welcomed by the 007 purists and probably saved the series from running out of steam, as the overt humor would have worn thin with general audiences very quickly.

Bruce Scivally: For Your Eyes Only is one of those watershed Bond films, a film that took a dramatic turn from what had come before and shifted the series into a new direction. The previous 007 entry, Moonraker, was full-blown fantasy, ending with a space battle involving shuttlecraft and laser guns that, at the time, were years beyond any kind of reality, and a villain whose ultimate goal was not just world domination but global destruction; it was the apotheosis of late-1970s disco-era excess. But the 1980s began on a different note; it was a time of austerity and deregulation, the beginning of the Reagan era in America and the Thatcher era in Britain. Under Thatcher, there was among the general populace a great deal of suspicion about what the government was up to, a feeling which was reflected in British films of the era. And it was in this spirit that John Glen, directing his first Bond film, producer Albert R. Broccoli and scriptwriter Richard Maibaum re-evaluated James Bond and decided that, having gone about as far as possible with fantasy, the time had come to re-ground 007 in reality. Glen, who had edited director Peter Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, signals this in the very first scenes, when we are introduced to 007 standing at the grave of his late wife — an homage to Hunt’s 007 film, which had also eschewed the space elements of the previous film, You Only Live Twice, to bring Bond back to a more human level. As with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only is light on Q’s gadgetry (though gadgets would make a roaring return in Octopussy), focusing more on Bond’s wits and athletic prowess to get him out of jams. And the plot, with its overriding theme of trust and betrayal, mirrored the zeitgeist of the period, making it a very timely 007 film. It was a reboot that the series needed at that point, and while it still had its moments of cheesy humor (a product of Cubby Broccoli’s belief that the Bond films were family entertainment and thus needed humor — he provided Blofeld’s “I’ll buy you a delicatessen, in stainless steel” line that is such a groaner it even overpowers Bond’s “keep your hair on” quip), in its more serious moments it gives viewers a James Bond who had been largely absent from the screen since From Russia With Love, and set the tone of seriousness sprinkled with levity and outrageous stunts that would continue through the remaining 007 films of the 1980s.

Coate: When did you first see For Your Eyes Only and what did you think?

Christie: I first saw the film on TV in the mid-eighties. (There’s a long-running British tradition of screening a Bond film at Christmas and Bank Holidays, and such was their popularity that the country’s electricity grid used to surge during the commercial breaks because that’s when viewers would put on their kettle to make a cup of tea!) The first thing that occurred to me was just how different For Your Eyes Only seemed when compared to its immediate predecessor, Lewis Gilbert’s Moonraker. There was a sense that the previous film had pushed the envelope just about as far as it could go — the lavish globetrotting escapades, the global Armageddon scenario, and even laser battles in planetary orbit. So it came as a breath of fresh air to see the more fantastical trappings dispensed with for a while, and a long overdue return to the kind of Cold War espionage plotlines that had made films such as Terence Young’s From Russia with Love so successful. It may have been a gamble for the production team to have corrected the course of the series quite so sharply, given audience expectation of visual spectacle and high-octane action, but it was one which paid off in the eyes of many critics.

Cork: True story. I took a couple of days off from my summer job, flew standby to London with a rented tux and I snuck into the world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square. I watched the entire film standing up in the back of the theater because I didn’t have a ticket and it was assigned seating, of course. I purchased four premiere programs and pretended I was one of the guys selling them. (Kids, don’t try that!) John Lennon had been shot in December. Reagan was shot at the end of March, someone had fired a starter pistol when the Queen was on parade, Prince Charles and then Lady Diana were attending, the IRA was a real menace at that time, and my last name was about as Irish as you can get — Cork. I was lucky I didn’t end up in Dartmoor prison!....  When you are as big a James Bond fan as I was and you sneak into a premiere, you are predisposed to love the film. It had a great title song, a nod to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the reappearance of Blofeld (unnamed, but obvious) and 007 back on skis. So on that first viewing, I loved the film. Until Margaret Thatcher showed up. In later viewings, I developed the same level of fondness for stainless-steel delicatessens, The-Important-Clue-Giving-Parrot™, Ferrara (AKA, the dead-man-walking), the world’s slowest underwater submarine battle, and Bond’s offer to buy Bibi Dahl an ice cream cone. The keel-hauling scene, though, remains one of the great Bond sequences. In many ways, the film was a delight because, as a fan of Fleming, it was so great to see so many scenes taken from the books.

Desowitz: I saw it on its initial release in L.A. and it immediately impressed me as a dramatic departure during the Moore era. There’s more at stake emotionally for Moore’s Bond. His tender encounter with Cassandra Harris’ Lisl is noteworthy. And although he’s not as comfortable being ruthless, it’s more successful than the awkward scene in The Man with the Golden Gun when he tries to strong-arm Maud Adams’ Andrea. It’s interesting that when I asked Moore about the darker revenge theme he denied it and said he doesn’t self-analyze. But then he discussed the contentious execution of Locque in his book, My Word is My Bond. He quarreled with Glen about being so cold-blooded (a swift kick to the car that sends him to his death) and that it wasn’t true to his Bond, but the director prevailed and Moore performed the scene as requested.

Pfeiffer: I saw it at a critic’s advance screening in New York City shortly before the general release. I didn’t like it at first. While I appreciated the fact that the film afforded Roger Moore some dramatic sequences to work with that brought out the best in him, I thought that the film still contained far too much slapstick humor. The pre-credits sequence was very well done but completely undermined by the bizarre Blofeld clone and the ridiculous dialogue between Bond and him. When 007 dumps him into a smoke stack, I almost walked out. I also thought the requisite car chase was extraordinarily lame and that the character of Bibi Dahl was badly written and undermined the film as a whole. However, with subsequent viewings, the film began to grow on me. It gets much better as it goes along. In fact, you can trace the exact moment that the film improves: it’s when Topol first appears on screen as Bond’s soon-to-be ally Columbo. He’s a great character and adds immeasurably to the film. Topol and Moore enjoy some terrific chemistry and from that point on, the movie improves by the minute. I have mixed feelings about Bill Conti’s disco-heavy score, but I love the title song sung by Sheena Easton. 

Scivally: I first saw For Your Eyes Only in the summer of 1981 in a theater in Huntsville, Alabama, with my brother. Having disliked Moonraker, I went in with low expectations. They were met. I appreciated that they were trying a different approach, but even with its over-the-top stunts, it felt rather small and tame without the Ken Adam sets and John Barry music.

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Coate: Where do you think For Your Eyes Only ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Christie: The really interesting thing about For Your Eyes Only is the way in which it denoted a turning point in the series; it marked the stage where Eon moved away from the flamboyant wide-canvas offerings of the mid-to-late seventies’ period of the franchise and concentrated more carefully on the credibility of the films’ plotlines and their handling of geo-political issues. This was something that would evolve constantly over the rest of the decade, eventually culminating in the casting of the no-nonsense Timothy Dalton and the dramatic shift in tone that we see in The Living Daylights and especially Licence to Kill. The glacial state of the Cold War is reflected more starkly in For Your Eyes Only than many other entries in the series at that time (excepting, perhaps, Octopussy a few years later), and the plausibility of the central threat lent the film an added sense of relevance and immediacy. There is also a sense that Roger Moore was making a determined effort to add a note of solemn pragmatism to his performance, something which is obvious from Bond’s unusually subdued investigative work through to his dispassionate assassination of Emile Locque, the cold-blooded henchman played so strikingly by Michael Gothard.

Cork: Twentieth. It’s a better film than Moonraker, but on some level not as much fun to watch. The film does not hold up as well as one would hope. I felt the move towards realism hurt a key element of the Bond look. I go to see Bond films for moments like the reveal of the secret area of the St. Georges, and there were not enough of those. Because the script was a patchwork of current events, an effort to reference real espionage operations and scenes from various Fleming stories and novels, the film lacks a strong narrative drive. So, if you remember the feeling of seeing Moonraker and being crushed by the humor and torpid pace, For Your Eyes Only seemed like a bright, shining justification of your love of Bond in the summer of 1981. Watching it out of that context? It’s got some good actions scenes, some nice performances, but it is a film that does not suffer from a casual viewing while one is folding laundry or doing dishes. It works better in small doses.

Desowitz: I might be in the minority but it’s my favorite Moore Bond and would rank it around 12th.

Pfeiffer: I think the film has aged reasonably well. I would rank it above Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker, A View to a Kill, any of the Pierce Brosnan Bond flicks, Diamonds Are Forever and Quantum of Solace. The latter is a better film, arguably, but For Your Eyes Only is more satisfying as entertainment. 

Scivally: For me, For Your Eyes Only falls in the middle ranks of James Bond films — a serviceable spy adventure, but nothing special. There are a couple of standout stunts — 007 (doubled by Martin Grace) hanging onto the outside of a helicopter in flight, and being kicked off a mountain (with Rick Sylvester performing the fall) — but compared to other Bonds, the pacing seems slow, the sets too grounded in reality, the plot holds few surprises, and the Bill Conti music lacks the punch of the early John Barry scores. The saving grace is Roger Moore, who handles both the lighter moments and the more dramatic ones with seemingly effortless aplomb, but he was by that point looking a bit long in the tooth to be 007 — a point emphasized when he declines to go to bed with Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson); one expects Sean Connery’s Bond, at any age, would not have been so gallant.

Coate: In what way was Julian Glover’s Aristotle Kristatos a memorable villain?

Christie: Ironically, what makes Kristatos memorable is his low-key nature. After the larger-than-life schemes of villains such as Carl Stromberg and Hugo Drax, both of them intent on global genocide, the audience is suddenly faced with an antagonist drawn from the shadowy world of espionage whose aims seem much more reserved by comparison. Played with admirable restraint by the terrific Julian Glover, Kristatos is unusually manipulative even by Bond villain standards, attempting to double-cross Bond by pitching him against business rival Columbo and playing West against East with consummate sleight of hand. The discovery of Kristatos’s malign dealings midway through the film is very effectively handled, and — such is Glover’s natural charisma — the character appears just as charming when his villainous role is revealed as he did when Bond had initially believed him to be an ally. The theme of antagonists playing the two Cold War superpowers against each other would be revisited throughout John Glen’s later entries in the Bond series, but the calculating Kristatos sets the ball rolling with much panache.

Cork: I love Julian Glover. Anyone who is reading this who has never seen Five Million Years to Earth needs to see it! Glover had already been around forever when he was cast in For Your Eyes Only. He’s an actor of great talent. Unfortunately, he’s not given a lot to do in the film. He never seems menacing. He plays Bond like a cheap hood, enticing him to kill the unfortunately-named good-guy smuggler, Columbo (yes, it’s from Fleming, I know, but at least there it wasn’t spelled the same as the iconic American television series). Glover plays many of the scenes like a good actor in search of a director. There is an uneasy sense that beneath the performance he doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the character of Kristatos…. Like all great Bond villains, Kristatos is a man obsessed. Unfortunately for the audience, he’s obsessed with a teenaged figure skater. Heroin smuggling, working for the Soviets and outsmarting British secret agents seems to be a distraction from his main occupation of staring teary-eyed as Bibi Dahl does another triple-Lutz. The other issue with Kristatos is his obsession with inefficient forms of death. How does one hire a murderous crew of hockey players? Killing someone on snowy ski slopes? Is a motorcycle the best tool for that? In the end, his big quest is collecting his payment from the KGB. To do this, he will apparently sacrifice his entire legitimate business empire, which includes shipping, oil and insurance…. Sartorially, I like my Bond villains to dress the part. Kristatos ends up on his knees in a windbreaker and chinos. I knew guys who dressed better for dinner out at Red Lobster in 1981…. I still don’t understand why he sends his own set of goons down to the wreck of the St. Georges when Bond and Melina have no option but to bring the ATAC back to the surface where he is waiting, but I’m sure the JIM suit and the world’s worst attack sub weren’t too expensive…. So, with great love for Glover, Kristatos is the one Bond villain that I think the average nine year old could outwit.

Desowitz: Glover portrays a refreshingly low-key villain and I like the rivalry with Topol’s Columbo and his thirst for revenge, which serves as a caution to Bond.

Pfeiffer: I’ve always been kind of out there on my own in my opinion that Julian Glover’s Kristatos is one of the better Bond villains. Glover gives an extremely good performance in a role that is not nearly as showy as most of the Bond villains. He has all the ingredients of a Bond baddie: he’s handsome, sophisticated and witty. I always love the scenes in which Bond and villain dine or have drinks with each other, pretending to be friendly but all the while planning each other’s demise.

Scivally: Julian Glover is a fine actor, but the part as written is mediocre at best. Herein lies one of the faults of the film — a hero is only as big as the villain he opposes, and Kristatos is small potatoes compared to, say, Auric Goldfinger, whose outsized plot matched his gregarious personality. Kristatos is initially introduced as an ally, and a rather dull one at that; Bond doesn’t realize Kristatos is the enemy until Columbo tells him so, which has the effect of making 007 just a pawn in everyone else’s games — including Melina’s. An action hero needs to act, and in this film, Bond seems to always be reacting. And this, unfortunately, weakens his character, making this Bond suffer by comparison to the more dynamic 007 of The Spy Who Loved Me.

Coate: In what way was Carole Bouquet’s Melina Havelock a memorable Bond Girl?

Christie: Following two strong female supporting characters in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, both of them intelligence operatives with great technical expertise, Bond’s romantic relationships throughout the eighties films tended to be with women who were similarly smart, resilient, and who often had specialist abilities which equaled or exceeded Bond’s own. This was certainly the case with Melina Havelock, who was highly intelligent (she held a doctorate in marine archaeology), lethally proficient with a crossbow, and totally driven by her desire to avenge her parents’ murder at Kristatos’s orders. In spite of the sizeable age difference between Roger Moore and Carole Bouquet, the chemistry between the pair is rather more touching than many other Bond partnerships due to 007’s concern over Melina’s safety given her lack of field experience and his worry that her obsessive thirst for revenge is slowly consuming her. Bouquet does an admirable job of balancing her character’s obvious emotional pain with the single-mindedness of the vengeance that is driving her, occasionally showing Melina’s vulnerable side while continuing to push her into increasingly perilous situations. Melina Havelock set the bar high for many of the female supporting characters in later Bond films of the eighties, and her depth of characterization would be reflected in other portrayals of Bond’s romantic interests as the decade continued.

Cork: Carole Bouquet is a delightful actress and an amazing beauty. I don’t think she was in a very good place when the film was being made, and John Glen, for whom I have tremendous respect, I don’t think was at a place where he could really work with her on her performance…. Melina’s character is one of the highlights of the film. Although based on Judy Havelock from Fleming’s original short story, For Your Eyes Only, Melina is a re-imagining of Honey Ryder from Dr. No. Melina’s father did archeological work that took her all over the globe, just like Honey’s marine zoologist father travelled with her. Both fathers are killed by the villain. Melina’s quest for vengeance gives the strongest sense of narrative drive in the film…. The loss of her parents also gives Melina a deep sense of sadness that weighs uncomfortably on the film. Bond is doing double takes as his car is blown to bits and attackers are shot, making wisecracks and introducing himself with a charming grin while Melina is clearly suffering unrelenting grief. The two performances are both legitimate, but they do not mix…. In the original short story, Judy Havelock is determined to kill the man who took the life of her parents (and killed her pony and dog for good measure). She is transformed and repulsed by the act of murder, which I always felt would have made a stronger place for Bond to meet Melina in a more serious version of For Your Eyes Only. By the end, she’s killed a few folks, injured others and is ready to kill again when Bond tells her that this isn’t the way. To say that this moralizing seems patronizing coming from 007 is an understatement, and, of course, it almost costs both Bond and Melina their lives…. But Carol Bouquet’s haunting looks are a highlight of the film and provide some of the most memorable emotional moments.

Desowitz: Melina, too, is caught in this quest for revenge and makes a tougher and more exotic Bond Girl.

Pfeiffer: Carole Bouquet was an intriguing choice for the female lead. By all accounts, she and Roger Moore were not enamored of each other on the set but the two worked well together. She’s a great beauty, but not in an over-the-top way. She also marked the continuing trend of presenting Bond’s love interest as a strong, courageous and independent character. 

Scivally: Carole Bouquet is a very beautiful woman, a fabulous model and was splendid as a Chanel spokesperson, but she is not an actress. This is a character who should be in great emotional turmoil, but Bouquet is ice-cold in every scene. Given that she’s the real protagonist of the story — it’s her quest for revenge that drives the plot as much as the search for the ATAC — the lack of emotional investment by the actress creates a lack of emotional involvement in the viewer, leaving Melina’s storyline flat and lifeless. As a result, Carole Bouqet’s Melina Havelock is not, really, a memorable Bond woman.

Coate: What is the legacy of For Your Eyes Only?

Christie: For Your Eyes Only is rarely a film to appear in fans’ top ten lists of favorite Bond movies, but there is still much to recommend it. The winning performances of the main cast, some multifaceted characterization, a credible threat and some well-judged one-liners all combine to create a solid entry in the series, and a robust directorial debut from John Glen. Today it may well be most prominently remembered for the role it plays in shifting the series into darker territory, and for the way in which Moore’s Bond rediscovers his Cold War credentials after the expansive travelogues of his seventies heyday. But no matter how determined the tonal shift may have been, For Your Eyes Only provides plenty of entertainment to enjoy; it may be just about as understated as the Bond films ever got, but those seeking the nostalgia of a taut 1980s espionage thriller will not be disappointed.

Cork: For Your Eyes Only has two important legacies. The first is the one everyone recognizes: this is the Bond that stepped back from the excesses of Moonraker, made a stand to go back to Fleming and attempt to look at the character of James Bond…. The second legacy is that this is the Bond film that marks a real retrenchment in the series. While Hollywood was embracing bold young filmmakers like Scorsese, Lucas and Spielberg, Eon was grooming their own “new” generation: director John Glen, production designer Peter Lamont, co-screenwriter Michael G. Wilson. All of these creative forces had tremendous experience in the world of Bond, but owed nothing to United Artists and little to the film industry at large. John Glen’s talent for amazing action and large set pieces created the tone for the next four Bond films. The writing team of Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum gave voice to 007 for the decade. The balance of Fleming influences, Wilson and Maibaum’s humor and the pair’s reinterpretation of current events would form the basis for the Bond stories through 1989’s Licence to Kill. As UA and soon MGM/UA spiraled into deeper chaos, Cubby Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson did everything they could to insulate 007 from the whims of Hollywood. For Your Eyes Only became the blueprint for Bond in the 1980s, a more realistic 007 whom one could believe not only kept the world safe, but also kept an eye on his expense account. 

Desowitz: Again, it stands out as the toughest and most Fleming-like of the Moore Bonds. The title song by Sheena Easton is memorably romantic, and the pre-credit nod to Tracy with the gravesite visit and the subsequent finishing off of Blofeld is a nice touch (though executed too lightheartedly). It introduces the theme of revenge while tying up a loose end. If Moore had ended his Bond tenure with For Your Eyes Only, it would’ve been all the more noteworthy.

Pfeiffer: For Your Eyes Only enjoys a reasonably enthusiastic following among Bond fans. It’s certainly not top-of-the-pack but its attributes have aged well while its weaker elements don’t seem any worse than they did in 1981. The movie greatly misses a John Barry score and a bit of judicious editing could have made it much better by trimming some of the embarrassing gags, but in the end, it has held up well — and provided fans with what many think is Moore’s best interpretation of Bond. 

Scivally: The biggest legacy of For Your Eyes Only is that it set the tone for the Bond films of the 1980s, all of which were directed by John Glen. These films were smaller in scope than the Bond films of the 1970s, leaning more towards reality than fantasy. They also tried to reintroduce elements of Ian Fleming’s stories that had not yet been used in the films. (Bond and Melina being keel-hauled over coral in shark-infested waters was from the novel Live and Let Die, and the auction scene in the next film, Octopussy, was inspired by the short story Property of a Lady.) There were more dramatic scenes written for James Bond, giving Roger Moore a chance to show some of the character’s darker aspects, as when he kicks Locque’s car off the cliff. But these films still contain the often over-the-top stunts that Bond audiences expect, creating a blend of reality-based moments and pure fantasy that doesn’t always coalesce into a comfortable whole.

Coate: Thank you; Tom, John, Bill, Lee, and Bruce; for participating and sharing your thoughts about For Your Eyes Only on the occasion of its 35th anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, United Artists Corporation, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

SPECIAL THANKS

Mike Heenan, Cliff Stephenson.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Casino Royale” on its 10th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached at: michaelcoate@thedigitalbits.com

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is available on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies, a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Lisa Funnell is the author (with Klaus Dodds) of The Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and editor of For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond (Wallflower, 2015). She is Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Affiliate Faculty, Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma. Her other books include Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star (State University of New York, 2014), (with Man-Fung Yip) American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows (Routledge, 2015) and (with Philippa Gates) Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange (Routledge, 2012).

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Casino Royale, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Casino Royale worthy of celebration on its 10th anniversary?

John Cork: Casino Royale saved Bond. The safe thing to do after Die Another Day would have been to make another Brosnan film, stick to that formula which pleased a lot of viewers, but like with the Roger Moore films in the 1980s, that was a path of diminishing returns. With all the studio chaos erupting between the 2002 and 2006, an unsuccessful Bond film could have permanently wounded the series. Casino Royale was filled with brave, risky choices that thankfully paid off. On a whole other level, the film returned Bond to Ian Fleming. This was not done with a small homage here or there, but with remarkable respect for the original novel in the second half of the film. That, for me, is a huge part of why it succeeds and why it should be celebrated.

Bill Desowitz: Casino Royale is pivotal not only because it was the franchise holy grail to finally adapt Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, but also because it introduced an origin story and a character arc. After 40-plus years, the focus was finally on Bond, and Daniel Craig humanized and demystified him, delving into his troubled psyche and providing a rare glimpse into the “taciturn mask.” Now we finally witnessed more fully the consequences of having a license to kill and living with death every day. Timothy Dalton’s Bond was actually a middle-aged precursor: burned out and emotionally raw and vengeful in his second outing. However, Craig’s newbie Bond explored the blunt instrument and diamond in the rough. He didn’t have all of the answers — he was reckless and impulsive and unsure of his place in the world. It was refreshing and vital in making Bond more relevant in the post 9/11 world.

Lisa Funnell: Much like GoldenEye in the 1990s, Casino Royale helped to reignite interest in the Bond franchise in the 2000s after a four-year hiatus. The film not only updates but also recalibrates many key elements of the Bond brand while introducing the iconic superspy to a new generation of filmgoers.

Lee Pfeiffer: Casino Royale is a vitally important film in the James Bond canon. Although the series was still very popular, the 2002 entry Die Another Day turned off purists and hardcore fans with its over-the-top plot devices, some surprisingly shoddy special effects and a return to the kind of silly humor we hadn’t seen for a couple of decades. Royale reinvented the formula in a very bold manner. The producers could have kept grinding out profitable but by-the-numbers fare. Instead they took a substantial gamble by bringing in an element of grittiness and realism that was much more in tune with modern audiences. They also took a major risk with the casting of Daniel Craig, who was widely lambasted during production as the actor who would bring about the demise of the series. The press was almost entirely against him and an anonymously-written website, www.craigisnotbond.com, was widely quoted, citing all the reasons why Craig would fail. You have to give a lot of credit to producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson for going against the tide and sticking with Craig. He has revitalized the series and has proven to be enormously popular not only with older fans of the series but with younger viewers as well. 

Bruce Scivally: Casino Royale was a game-changer. Previous Bond films, despite changes of actors in leading roles, were all clearly meant to be separate installments of the same series. Casino Royale was a total reboot; the only obvious link to the past was Judi Dench’s reprisal of the role of M. But there was no Moneypenny, no Q, and the actor playing Bond was a dramatic departure from what had come before. After the over-the-top extravagances of Die Another Day, Casino Royale elevated James Bond from the realm of comic book fantasy to more adult, hard-boiled action-drama.

Coate: Can you describe what it was like watching Casino Royale for the first time?

Cork: I was fortunate enough to be invited to the world premiere in London at the Leicester Square Odeon. The excitement was electric. I had read the novel at the age of 12. To see the story unfold in a way that merged what we wanted from the cinematic Bond and what I loved from the literary Bond was a deeply satisfying experience. It was one of the four greatest experiences I’ve ever had watching a Bond film.

Desowitz: I attended the first press screening at the New York junket and it was thrilling. It was like looking forward and back at the same time, which best describes Craig’s tenure as Bond. And then the following day, I sat down with Craig for my first and only 1:1 interview and we had a great conversation about what he’d accomplished and what his aspirations were for continuing as Bond. We even speculated on the return of Blofeld, and he was intrigued about the possibility of updating him in a much more modern, realistic fashion.

Funnell: Casino Royale is the first Bond film I saw in the theater. I went with my dad and we sat in the center of the very top row. Although he really enjoyed it, I did not and left the theater confused and upset. It was not what I expected. As a professor, I teach my students to be highly aware of their emotional reaction to a film and to use this as a stepping stone for film analysis. As a Bond scholar, I have done the same by re-watching the film and analyzing it through a range of lenses. Over time, I have gained a strong appreciation for Casino Royale and especially how it reintroduced and rebranded the franchise. As my thoughts have evolved, so too have my feelings; I am surprised by how much I enjoy the film, so much so that it is now one of my favorites. It certainly was not “love at first sight” but I have grown very fond of Casino Royale over time.

Pfeiffer: I had been invited to attend the Royal Premiere in London at the Odeon Theatre in Leicester Square. Nobody does big, splashy premieres as well as the Brits and none of the Brits can do it better than the Bond team. They actually red-carpeted the Square just for one evening and built walkways and mini-bridges to accommodate the attendees and thousands of on-lookers. I hosted a party at a nightclub/restaurant called Ruby Blue right in the Square and I recall standing on the balcony in a tux smoking cigars while watching the crowds assemble. It was quite a night. Queen Elizabeth attended and the security was air-tight. Everyone had to be in their seats a full hour before the royals arrived. Their arrival was simulcast on the big screen so you could see Her Majesty being introduced to the producers, cast and crew. When the proceedings started, the royal trumpeters came on stage to announce the arrival of the Queen. Lord Richard Attenborough introduced the cast and crew on stage. It was that kind of magical night. I thought the film might be an afterthought but when Craig said “Bond. James Bond” at the movie’s climax, the normally reserved crowd cheered to high heaven. I thought “Well, I guess we won’t be hearing much from the ’Craig Is Not Bond’ website henceforth.”

Scivally: Casino Royale opened just after I moved from Los Angeles to the Chicago suburbs, so I first saw it in a theater in Evanston, Illinois, that I recall being pretty packed. Having been disappointed in the previous 007 film, I went into Casino Royale with low expectations, but from the first frame to the last I found it fresh and exciting. This was in no way a throwback, but a fresh, original, exciting take on a character that was in danger of becoming stale and passé.

Coate: Can you compare and contrast Daniel Craig’s inaugural performance as Agent 007 with that of the other actors who have portrayed the character?

Cork: I love all the Bond actors and what they bring to the screen, even David Niven! Here’s the thing: there is never a moment in Craig’s Bond films where I don’t believe he is James Bond. There are times in Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever where I very much enjoy watching Sean Connery playing James Bond, but you can tell he’s saying lines for the audience, that there is a wink to the absurdity of it. I love it, but I can tell it is artifice. That play to the artifice a huge part of the appeal of Roger Moore. With Brosnan, I always wished he played Bond more like he played Osnard in The Tailor of Panama, embracing the relaxed self-assurance that Le Carré saw in his denouncement of a Bond-type spy. With Craig, there is no artifice, but nor is there the inner rage that stokes Timothy Dalton’s 007. I’ll never let go of Sean being my “favorite” Bond, but I love watching Daniel Craig.

Desowitz: Craig is the only Bond actor working from an origin story and with a character arc, and he has since become the most creatively involved actor in franchise history (getting a producer’s credit on SPECTRE). For him, it always has to be personal, which obviously was taken to the utmost extreme in SPECTRE. He came under intense fire for not looking the part (but then Connery wasn’t exactly Fleming’s Hoagy Carmichael inspiration). He was blond, he was shorter than all of his predecessors and he wasn’t suave. He broke the mold as a rough and tumble 007, who has his heart broken, and he passed his rite of passage. Casino Royale was a significant commercial and critical success that launched the Craig era.

Funnell: Casino Royale introduces a new heroic model of masculinity that depends more on muscularity and physical endurance than libido and sexual conquest. It breaks from the lover literary tradition from which James Bond has his roots and presents a more Hollywood-inspired and body-focused spy. As a result, Craig’s Bond is more muscular and physically engaged than his predecessors, and this factors into his depiction as more of a “blunt instrument,” as Dench’s M would have it, who has much to learn about the value of patience, strategic calculation, and finesse. He is the most bloodied, battered, and bruised Bond in history, and his ability to endure excessive pain (such as Le Chiffre’s attack on his “crown jewels”) and recover from it (for instance, when he sleeps with Vesper Lynd after the attack) becomes emblematic across the Craig era of the resilience of M16 and Britain. Through his tough yet tender performance (as Klaus Dodds would describe it), Craig presents a compelling interpretation of Bond who is action-oriented, emotionally vulnerable, and morally inclined.

Pfeiffer: Every actor who has played Bond to date has had the good sense not to try to emulate any of his predecessors and this is especially true of Daniel Craig. I saw him on stage recently being interviewed in New York and he spoke of his reluctance to take on the mantel of Bond, knowing that he would carry the fate of the entire series on his back. He said he told the producers he would only do it if they threw out the rule book and completely reinvented the formula. He felt there would be no point in him trying to play Bond in the manner in which the character had been developed on screen since 1962. He felt the actors who preceded him all did a great job but that the character had to be in sync with his own personality. Each Bond actor was the right person for their time. Connery and Lazenby had a rugged but charming appeal. Roger Moore emphasized the humor. Timothy Dalton brought some gravitas to the role. And Pierce Brosnan’s charm helped reinvent the franchise. That Daniel Craig, too, has succeeded is evident not only by the critical acclaim the series now enjoys but by the overwhelming box office success of the Craig films. I believe Skyfall is the highest grossing British film in history.

Scivally: Although every actor who has played Bond infused the part with some of his own personality, the basics of the character remained the same for 40 years — tall, dark-haired, classically handsome, urbane and sophisticated. When Daniel Craig’s casting was announced, my first reaction was that he seemed more like a blue-collar thug than a high-society secret agent. But that was part of the conceit of Casino Royale — this was a new Bond, a rugged-faced, blond-haired, inexperienced “blunt instrument.” I would never have cast Craig as Bond, which just goes to show the genius of producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. Casting Craig was a statement that this would be a bold break from the past, and it worked — from his first moments onscreen, Craig totally owned the role, redefining James Bond for a new generation. That said, I think it is a little unfair to compare his Bond to previous ones, since the conception of the role was so different; he wasn’t being asked to play the flippant sophisticated action man. Some fans noted that Craig’s Bond was a throwback to Timothy Dalton’s conception of the character, especially as seen in Licence to Kill, and I do agree that Craig’s 007 is closer to Dalton’s Bond than the Bond of Goldfinger or The Spy Who Loved Me... except Craig’s Bond doesn’t smoke like a chimney.

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Coate: In what way was Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre a memorable villain?

Cork: Mads is a fantastic actor, but he is not even on my radar when it comes to the most memorable Bond villains. You are just never going to hear folks make a pop culture reference to Le Chiffre the way they do to Goldfinger, Dr. No or Blofeld. His performance is great, but this is Bond’s film.

Desowitz: He was the best Bond baddie in recent memory. He was charismatic and sadistic, and his scar linked him to Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. The suspenseful poker scenes and his brutal beating of Bond took the “dance” to a whole new level of wicked fun.

Funnell: Le Chiffre is a memorable villain because of his vulnerability. This goes beyond his malformed tear duct, which causes him to inadvertently cry tears of blood. Like Bond, Le Chiffre is fallible and makes mistakes. His actions, especially after Bond foils the bombing plot, are driven by his desperation and desire for self-preservation, even at the expense of his lover Valenka. Unlike other villains who are depicted somewhat two-dimensionally as megalomaniacs desiring world power, Le Chiffre is humanized through his positioning as a middleman who is visibly terrified of the organization for which he works. The compelling performance of Mads Mikkelsen renders Le Chiffre a more humanized and sympathetic villain much like Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).

Pfeiffer: I very much enjoyed Mads Mikkelsen’s performance as Le Chiffre. The character has a special place in Bond history as the first Bond villain in the first Bond novel. I think Mikkelsen managed to convey the traditional attributes (if you want to call them that) of the great Bond villains: he’s urbane, suave, superficially charming and somehow reassuring even to the person about to be victimized by him. It’s worth noting for the sake of inclusion that he’s the third actor to play the role following Peter Lorre in the 1954 live TV version of Casino Royale and Orson Welles in the 1967 big screen spoof version. I also thought Welles would have made a superb Bond villain in a serious Bond film. He was rumored to have agreed to play one in the mid-70s aborted version of Warhead, which was to be produced by Kevin McClory, but by the time it morphed into Never Say Never Again a decade later, Welles was no longer associated with the project.

Scivally: Mikkelsen was perfectly cast as Le Chiffre. He’s cold, calculating, and very creepy. He’s not a cartoon baddie (though he does have the Bondian touch of a scarred eye that weeps blood) — he’s a serious bad-ass, one not to be crossed. He makes one believe that if Mr. White had arrived just a few minutes later, Bond’s torture would truly have ended in a painful and grisly death.

Coate: In what way was Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd a memorable Bond Girl?

Cork: She wins the award for most eye make-up worn by a Bond woman! My favorite shot of her in the film is when you see her without the make-up and she looks so stunningly beautiful and human in that moment. On a serious note, Eva Green is a rare actress who understands how to play the façade and not the fragility of a character. Her strength, her armor, the wall she has built up around herself makes her a woman we believe James Bond can love. It’s a great performance. The character of Vesper is a keystone character in understanding 007, and you can read the entry in the James Bond Encyclopedia to see how passionate Collin Stutz and I are about Vesper. I’d still vote for less mascara.

Desowitz: Vesper was the most important Bond Girl since Tracy, and in this ret-con universe, Vesper was both the forerunner and echo of Tracy. The testy train meeting, the tender shower scene and her tragic suicide, among others, helped humanize Bond. And their love defined his motivations and actions in subsequent films. It even provided a “quantum of solace” at the end of SPECTRE when Bond gets a second chance at happiness (the last line of the script — “We have all the time in the world” — was cut from the film).

Funnell: To me, Vesper Lynd is not a Bond Girl. Across the orphan origin trilogy — Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall — the Bond Girl archetype is deconstructed and the qualities typically associated with the figure are divided among two or more characters in each film. In Casino Royale, it is Bond and not Lynd who emerges from the sea in a bathing suit — an homage to the introduction of quintessential Bond Girl Honey Ryder from Dr. No — as Solange Dimitrios and, in a later scene, Lynd watch him from the shore, an act that effectively establishes the female look in the film. Thus, it is Bond who is positioned in the traditionally exhibitionist role of Bond Girl and presented as the object of desire (as Laura Mulvey would describe it). As a result, Vesper Lynd is freed from the constraints of the Bond Girl archetype and presented as more of a “Woman” than a “Girl” in the film. Her characterization shares much in common with Judi Dench’s M as she is depicted as a bureaucrat and bean counter who wields both institutional and emotional power over Bond. She is a complicated and multifaceted character, and this makes her both a compelling and sympathetic figure.

Pfeiffer: Eva Green represented how far the image of the Bond woman has changed with the times. It isn’t actually true that Bond’s lovers have all been stereotypical airheads, all bust and no brains. In fact, most of them were courageous, intelligent and self-reliant characters. These attributes continued to be emphasized even more as society evolved and female characters became treated with more respect. In the Bond films this was especially true in the Craig films, where women were not just used as recipients for sexually-charged bon mots tossed out by Bond. Vesper is a complex, fully-fleshed out character who obsesses Bond in a way that no female has done since Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Bond isn’t just excited by her; he is in love with her. They have a mature, believable, but ultimately tragic relationship that continues to haunt him through the next film.

Scivally: Vesper Lynd is probably the most three-dimensional female character in any Bond film, and Eva Green hits all the right notes in her performance. In remarking on the performances, credit must also to be given to the writers (the team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, followed by Paul Haggis) for giving the characters more shades of dimensionality than was found in the previous Bonds, and to director Martin Campbell for getting such superior performances from his cast. Campbell had previously proven his mettle introducing Pierce Brosnan as Bond in GoldenEye, and he does an excellent job introducing Craig. It’s a pity he hasn’t been given more 007 assignments, since he clearly has the right touch for them.

Coate: Where do you think Casino Royale ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Cork: Fifth, which sounds too low for how much I love this film. But after all my praise, I still hold Skyfall just a smidge higher on my list (that could change on a whim). All the others that rank higher are the early Connery Bonds.

Desowitz: In the top five, right behind From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Dr. No and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It holds up very well after 10 years and may be the best of the Craig films, despite his gaining confidence and improving in the subsequent films.

Funnell: Not only is Casino Royale one of the best in the Craig era, but it also ranks highly in the series as a whole. It has a solid narrative, strong character development, dynamic action sequences (such as the parkour-inspired chase sequence), and a compelling soundtrack that enhances the emotional tenor of the film. From start to finish, Casino Royale is an exciting and immersive Bond film.

Pfeiffer: I would certainly rank Royale in the top tier of Bond films… up there with the best of them. In a way it’s hard to compare it to all the films that preceded it because it is so unique in terms of content and style. For example, I love Goldfinger (who doesn’t?) but would it really be appropriate to try to directly compare it to Royale? The Craig films almost exist in their own universe. I would argue that it’s the best of those films (but a case could be made for Skyfall).

Scivally: If I were to rank the 007 films, Casino Royale would definitely be in my top five. It’s tightly scripted, directed with style and confidence, and has superior performances, as well as one of David Arnold’s best scores and a brilliant Daniel Kleinman title sequence. Like Goldfinger, it fires on all cylinders from beginning to end.

Coate: What is the legacy of Casino Royale?

Cork: There are the James Bond films before Casino Royale and there are the ones after. You can love or hate any of them, but Casino Royale changed the look, feel and tone of the Bond movies. Before Casino Royale, certain things were a given. We will open with the gun barrel. We will hear The James Bond Theme as white dots move across the screen. The movie will be in color. James Bond will be an experienced agent already at the top of his game. With the exception of one film, Bond will get the girl at the end. Once Casino Royale successfully broke that mold, for better or worse, everything was on the table. The other legacy of Casino Royale is the ascendancy of Daniel Craig. Barbara Broccoli is the one who picked Daniel Craig, insisted on him over some very strong objections. Michael Wilson backed her instinct on that. Craig is Bond for a legions of filmgoers around the world, and arguably the actor who has wielded the most direct influence over the creative aspects of the series. He’s now been afforded something no other Bond actor ever achieved: he hand-picked Sam Mendes, the director of the last two Bond films, and he has been afforded a co-producer credit, something Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman would have never given to Sean Connery or Roger Moore. These films are now being made in a very different way than they were in the 60s or 70s, not just technologically, but the entire business model has changed. I think Barbara and Michael still approach these films with the same level of personal and business integrity that Cubby embraced, but there is a sense that they know the stakes were raised with Casino Royale, that these can no longer feel like films that are made by a bunch of good friends out having a lark (not that this was ever the case). With Casino Royale, the Bonds became very serious business.

Desowitz: The legacy is that Bond was reborn with Craig in the new millennium. It marked a new dramatic direction that made the character the center of his universe. It began as an origin story and continued as a four-film rite of passage. It also re-connected with Fleming, which was partially cut short when Sam Mendes came aboard for the last two films. He not only developed a more personal Bond story, but also shifted the tone back toward the early Connery films.

Funnell: As a prequel, Casino Royale is an important revisionist film (as Christoph Lindner and James Chapman, among others, have described it) that finally tells the origin story of the iconic superspy from the moment he attains his “00” license to kill. It updates the Bond brand while remaining true to Ian Fleming’s depiction of James Bond as a man who makes mistakes, feels pain, and even harbors doubts about his role as an agent. It is a film that reaches forward cinematically while remaining connected to the literary past.

Pfeiffer: Casino Royale will also have a rich legacy in the Bond canon. The Brosnan films had run their course and needed a creative boost. I also thought it was a pity that Pierce never got his chance to do a gritty, ultra-realistic Bond film because he’s quite a good actor and audiences stayed with him even if some of his movies didn’t live up to their potential. There was such excitement following the premiere of Royale that I could tell a new era had arrived in terms of the Bond movies. Realism was in, gadgets were out. Believable relationships were the order of the day and female characters with sexually suggestive names were relegated to the past. Most important, Royale made Bond relevant to an entirely new and younger audience, which is essential for any series to survive and thrive.

Scivally: As stated before, Casino Royale was a game-changer. It brought James Bond definitively into the 21st century, and did so — ironically — by remaining largely faithful to a novel written more than fifty years earlier. By eschewing many of the traditional trappings of previous 007 films, the filmmakers created a new paradigm for Bond. Unfortunately, it raised the bar so high that Craig’s subsequent 007 films pale in comparison; Quantum of Solace particularly seemed to be a Jason Bourne movie rather than a James Bond film, and Craig’s latter Bond films, while restoring more of the classic Bondian elements, were not as tightly plotted. Perhaps Casino Royale benefited from being the only one of his films to be directly based on an Ian Fleming novel.

Coate: Thank you — John, Bill, Lisa, Lee, and Bruce — for participating and sharing your thoughts about Casino Royale on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Diamonds are Forever” on its 45th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

SPECIAL THANKS

Mike Heenan

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link.

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label. His website is www.jonburlingame.com.

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is available on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies, a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.” 

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Diamonds Are Forever, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Diamonds Are Forever worthy of celebration on its 45th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: Oh, there are so many reasons. First, it marked the unexpected comeback of Sean Connery to the role of 007. He left on such unpleasant terms after You Only Live Twice that I think we were all surprised to see him again. Second, it was the first Bond film to be set largely in the United States. Third, it has one of the greatest Bond scores ever — and very possibly the greatest Bond song ever, sung by our Goldfinger diva Shirley Bassey, making her second appearance in a Bond film.

John Cork: Diamonds Are Forever is the great creative collaboration of four wonderful men who will never give us another film to enjoy: Guy Hamilton, Tom Mankiewicz, John Barry and Ken Adam. Each of these absolutely brilliant creators made films that are completely worthy to see on their own, but Diamonds melded their wit, their artistry, their elegance and their skills into a uniquely joyous brew. From “C-C-C-Cairo” to “Mouton Rothschild is a claret,” the film makes viewers smile. It is exactly the kind of film that Cubby Broccoli loved to produce: handsome men, beautiful women, tension, laughs, lavish sets, exotic locations, wonderful music and an ending that had viewers leaving the cinemas with a bounce in their step. The remarkable part of that is, Cubby didn’t set the tone of Diamonds. That was the work of UA’s David Picker.

Bill Desowitz: Diamonds Are Forever is noteworthy for two reasons: It marked Sean Connery’s last official appearance as Bond and tipped the franchise in a lighter, kitschy direction in the‘70s, which anticipates the Roger Moore era. If you don’t compare it to the first three Connery films, it’s actually a fun ride. Connery enjoys camping it up but still has the presence to pull it off. At the same time, his Bond is actually more assertive. Guy Hamilton was back and newbie screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz added the sharp wit, which even extended to the action (the Moon buggy and Vegas chases are pretty over the top). Blofeld is campy fun and Wint and Kidd are a hoot as the franchise’s first gay couple. It wasn’t From Russia with Love, but it was Connery saying goodbye with tongue very much in cheek.

Lee Pfeiffer: The film is worthy of commemoration primarily because it marked Sean Connery’s return to the role after having quit the series four years earlier. It’s worth commemorating, for better or worse, the fact that it was with this film that overt humor would became a part of the series for decades to come. 

Bruce Scivally: Diamonds Are Forever, is a middling Bond — not the worst of the series, certainly not the best, but with enough enjoyable moments to make for pleasant viewing. As the first James Bond film of the 1970s, it set the course for the Bond films of the 1970s — lighter, breezier, driven more by “set piece” action stunts than tight plotting, and deliberately seeking to give audiences a good time. The‘70s was not a decade when James Bond films took chances. It was a decade that began with scaled-back cost-cutting of the Bond films, and ended with two of the most extravagant entries in the series. After the much more Fleming-esque On Her Majesty’s Secret Service capped off the 1960s as a box-office disappointment, the Bond producers reinvented Bond for the 1970s as more of a cartoon character, a live-action Road Runner cartoon, with only passing nods to the Ian Fleming source material. While other films of the early to mid-1970s took chances, providing some of the greatest films of all time, the Bond series played it safe, content to merely be entertaining. It was a strategy that kept Bond popular, if not relevant, through the Watergate era and beyond.

Coate: Describe what it was like seeing Diamonds Are Forever for the first time?

Burlingame: I was in college at the time, so undoubtedly it was with my dorm buddies (which inevitably meant a lot of lecherous comments about Jill St. John, Lana Wood and the “Bambi & Thumper” girls). We were all Bond fans and I was already a John Barry nut. My memory is that we were all glad to see Connery back but did not feel that it ranked among the stronger entries like Goldfinger, Thunderball and From Russia with Love. But any Bond film was great to us in those days. There was nothing else like it in theaters — the action, the suspense, the humor, the series remained unique in cinema entertainment. And, of course, I could not wait to get hold of the LP in order to savor not only that memorable title song but also some of John Barry’s powerful score.

Cork: I saw Diamonds Are Forever in Montgomery, Alabama, in either late-December 1971 or early 1972. I went with my grandparents. I enjoyed it, but I was not hooked as a James Bond fan. The plot (such that it is) still makes virtually no sense, and I think that I was lost early on. It was not a film that stayed in my mind, probably because few of my friends saw it so it was not a movie that we discussed. The next time I saw it was when it premiered on U.S. television on September 12th, 1975. By then I was a huge Bond fan. I was so enraptured that during a late commercial break, I ran and got my cassette recorder and taped the audio of the end of movie. I used to listen to the dialog over and over. The recording began, appropriately enough with Blofeld ejecting a cassette and uttering, “I do so hate martial music.”

Desowitz: The first viewing was actually my first Bond experience at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. And it was very memorable. It was an early afternoon screening and the second of the day. As much as I liked On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it was great seeing Connery return to battle Blofeld. It was packed and everyone had a good time, though, again, it was a far cry from Connery in his prime.

Pfeiffer: I saw it on opening day, the first show after I got out of high school class (I was a sophomore at the time). My friends and I were quite thrilled to see Connery returning as Bond. We had all been highly impressed with the previous film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and with George Lazenby, as well. The disappointment we felt when it was announced he was leaving the series after only one film was offset when I heard a TV report by gossip columnist Rona Barrett that Connery was to come back to the role of 007. There was enormous interest in the film and quite a bit of coverage leading up to the final release date. 

Scivally: The first time I saw Diamonds Are Forever is when it was first broadcast on ABC television in the 1970s. Seeing the Bond films on TV, Diamonds Are Forever was one of my favorites, and From Russia with Love one of my least favorite. In the early 1980s, when I had to opportunity to see the Bond films at the “revival house” theaters in Los Angeles, my feelings reversed; I now regard From Russia with Love one of the best, and Diamonds Are Forever only so-so. Why the change? I think it’s because the earlier film is one that is much more intricately plotted and requires more of the viewer’s attention; cutting it up with commercials destroys the flow of the story. Diamonds Are Forever, on the other hand, is very episodic. It’s more like a series of mini-movies tied together with a mere suggestion of a plot; chopping it up with advertisements has little effect on it. Like John Cork, I tape-recorded the film when it was shown on TV. To this day, I can recite every line of the pre-credits. Skills. I have skills….

Coate: Where do you think Diamonds ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: That’s hard to say. I think it’s certainly the least significant of the Connery Bonds. To me it begins the downhill slide of the series in the 1970s, with a script that’s a bit too jokey, a climax that seems rushed and inadequate, and a Connery who doesn’t seem very interested in what was going on. But I’d take Diamonds over many of the even sillier Roger Moore outings. And, as you know, I love the song and the score. It was the most musically diverse Bond yet, with a third of the score being the wonderful Las Vegas jazz; a theme for subsidiary villains Wint and Kidd; a grand outer-space number (007 and Counting) and a title song that was not only useful for the romantic scenes but also dramatic moments as well. The release of the expanded Diamonds soundtrack in 2003 demonstrated its range and power far better than the original 1971 LP.

Cork: My son made me rank the films a few years back when we marathoned them. I put it smack in the middle then. I just re-watched it on a trip to Amsterdam and I just had so much fun with it. It is such a different film from Casino Royale (2006) or Skyfall, and it seems unfair to judge it against those. It’s nothing like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but I find it much more fun than You Only Live Twice. It is a great Bond film to revisit at one’s leisure. It is also a fine film to watch in small doses.

Desowitz: I would rank it last among the Connery films and maybe 16th overall. It’s more like a guilty pleasure today. Funny thing: I was at a reception a week ago and Bruce Glover was there. I went up to him and asked how Wint and Kidd were and he smiled and said, “I’m Wint.”

Pfeiffer: Diamonds was the first Bond film that left my friends and I feeling disappointed. The film wasn’t as sharp or exciting as the previous movies. The emphasis on humor seemed to be a misstep especially after the haunting final image of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. We all expected a continuation of that storyline. The movie starts off on that premise with Bond hunting down Blofeld presumably for murdering his wife. The first part of the film is engrossing and seems to be on track to be a winner but things go downhill once Bond gets involved with Tiffany Case. Initially she’s played by Jill St. John as a tough-talking, streetwise accomplice to a smuggling ring. Yet, a few scenes later she inexplicably morphs into a Lucille Ball clone — an inept, naive character who doesn’t provide much substance to the plot — or Bond — beyond sex appeal. The Case character’s seeming schizophrenia is representative of the film as a whole. It’s as though it was made by two competing teams of filmmakers and writers, each with a different vision of the story. Most of the trouble stems from the script, which was co-authored by long time Bond scribe Richard Maibaum and newcomer Tom Mankiewicz. Evidence would suggest that Mankiewicz’s vision prevailed since the movie is far more over-the-top in the gags department than anything Maibaum had previously written for the earlier films. Guy Hamilton’s direction is also all over the map, starting out strong and reaching its zenith with the elevator fight, which is the real action highlight of the film despite the elaborate chase sequences that come later in the film. Sometime later, Hamilton seems more interested in going for cheap laughs and wisecracks rather than presenting suspenseful scenarios. (He once told this writer that he tried to have a major action set piece staged in Disneyland with Bond fighting SPECTRE agents dressed like Disney characters!) The real disappointment comes with the Bond/Blofeld relationship, which doesn’t ring true at all. The casting of Charles Gray is also a major error. Gray is a fine actor and if they called his character anything but “Blofeld“, one could admire his witty performance. However, he doesn’t evoke the slightest traits that audiences had expected of Blofeld. First there is a complete lack of physical resemblance to the actors who preceded him (he’s not even bald!). Then there is his penchant for making quips — something that neither Telly Savalas nor Donald Pleasence had brought to their versions of the character. What is inexplicable is the cozy, humorous relationship Bond establishes with this Blofeld, which is all the more ludicrous given the fact that in the first frames of the film, Bond is on his mission of vengeance to see Blofeld dead. Yet when they finally do meet up, the two engage in some mutually witty banter and Bond seems to have forgotten the unpleasant fact that this man had murdered his wife, Tracy, in the previous film. The watering down of Blofeld goes into overdrive when he actually dresses in drag. The horror, the horror…. Not helping matters is that Gray appeared in another Bond film, You Only Live Twice, a scant four years before as Bond’s ally. So that image was still fresh in viewer’s minds when they were asked to accept him as Blofeld…. The film also suffers from casting errors that extend beyond Charles Gray. As mentioned previously, Jill St. John plays the same kind of “dumb broad” eye candy she had popularized in films such as Tony Rome or Come Blow Your Horn. The shtick was already kind of stale by 1971. It might have been more inventive for the producers to cast Lana Wood, who appears memorably but briefly, as Plenty O’Toole in the role of Tiffany Case. The role of Felix Leiter is played by Norman Burton, thus continuing an annoying pattern of casting a different actor in the role every time he appeared in a Bond film. Burton plays Leiter as a bit of a semi- doofus and there isn’t any way a viewer would believe that his Leiter and Bond are close colleagues. More successful is the casting of Bruce Glover and Putter Smith as gay assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. They are a memorable team but watching the abundance of gay-bashing jokes today is a bit cringe inducing when some of us realize we thought this stuff was funny in 1971. I do like the casting of country singer (and frozen sausage magnate) Jimmy Dean as reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte. It’s an off-beat choice that works well. Similarly, some of the bit roles are well cast: Bruce Cabot (in his final screen appearance), Joe Robinson as the bad guy who goes mano-a-mano with Connery in the elevator fight and, of course, reliable regulars such as Desmond Llewelyn, Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell… along with a welcome appearance by Laurence Naismith…. The climax of the movie was most disappointing — a rather limp affair in which helicopters attack Blofeld’s oil rig in a scenario that seemed as improbable as his main scheme. He has gathered enough diamonds to launch them encrusted in satellite and threatens to destroy key cities around the world unless paid a ransom. Not for nothing’, but if you already have enough wealth to launch a diamond-encrusted satellite, exactly what is it that a ransom would buy you that you wouldn’t already have? The helicopter sequence is also rather blandly executed with some poor special effects (a problem with the film that is apparent earlier). Surely the major powers of the world could have taken down one little bitty oil rig with a well-aimed rocket or torpedo instead of a conventional WWII-era assault by helicopters…. Having denounced much of Diamonds Are Forever, there are plenty of things that make it watchable. Connery seems to be having a great deal of fun and that enthusiasm spills over into his performance. Ken Adam’s sets are up to par and John Barry’s score and the theme song are among the best in the Bond canon.

Scivally: As I stated before, it’s a middling film to me. I still enjoy watching it, despite its drawbacks. Sean Connery looked to have aged about 20 years, even though only 10 had passed since Dr. No, but he seems to be having fun in his return to the role. The quick production schedule seems to have infused the film with a certain energy, and the witty dialogue of Tom Mankiewicz lifts it considerably. Everything about the film is fun, including the villains. There’s absolutely nothing frightening or scary or remotely threatening about Blofeld (more on him below) or about Wint and Kidd, but what they lack in threat they more than make up for in personality. These are villains who could hold their own at the Algonquin Round Table, trading bon mots with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, then casually murdering them on the way out. 

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Coate: In what way was Charles Gray’s Blofeld a memorable villain?

Burlingame: Gray was a fine actor, so memorable as Mycroft Holmes in both The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, not to mention his fairly minor role in You Only Live Twice. He seemed to me to be the most sophisticated Blofeld yet, which was frankly a bit confusing after the more evil Donald Pleasence and mostly nasty Telly Savalas; his appearance was a bit unsettling because of his looks and his demeanor. The fact that we’ve now gotten Blofeld twice more in the films (counting Max Von Sydow and Christoph Waltz) has made the whole Blofeld thing so tired and annoying that I hope we never see the character again.

Cork: Gray was a fun actor, but his Blofeld is a complete fool. Never for a moment do I feel a threat from him. He would much rather talk Bond to death than do anything. Clearly he has a phobia about actually seeing Bond bleed, as he passes up innumerable chances to dispatch 007. The show is completely stolen by Wint and Kidd. They should have had their own series. Yes, they play into the Leopold and Loeb stereotype of homicidal homosexuals, but, putting that aside, the dialog is just so fantastic. “Mrs. Whistler did want some pictures of the canals for the children.” That line is so warped, so perfectly written, played and presented. You just know that they are going to actually mail those photos back to the little school in Africa. It’s horrible, and horribly funny. I hear it and I imagine Alfred Hitchcock smiling, thinking to himself that he wishes one of his writers thought of that.

Desowitz: Again, I think Gray’s Blofeld is memorable for his camp. If he were more like Henderson from You Only Live Twice, he would have more gravitas. But he’s delicious in the way he confounds Bond with the doppelgangers and double entendres. For once, he’s enjoying himself as much as Bond.

Pfeiffer: As indicated [earlier in the interview], Charles Gray and Jill St. John were memorable — but for the wrong reasons. Both were essentially miscast, if not disastrously so, then certainly distractingly so. If Gray were playing a generic villain, his performance would have been appropriate. Similarly, if St. John were cast as an airheaded character, so, too, would her performance have been suitable — but not as a tough, street wise smuggler.

Scivally: I enjoy Charles Gray’s Blofeld. He doesn’t have the chilly, dispassionate demeanor of the business-like Blofeld of the early films, or the physical deformity of Donald Pleasence, or the uber-masculine physicality of Telly Savalas, but he does seem capable, confident, charismatic and utterly charming — a man who would smile in your face while his look-alike double deftly slits your throat from behind. And his encounter with 007 in Willard Whyte’s penthouse is one of the great Bond-villain confrontations, with a swaggeringly confident and calculating James Bond facing off intellectually with an equally conceited and confident — and condescending — Blofeld.

Coate: In what way was Jill St. John’s Tiffany Case a memorable Bond Girl? 

Burlingame: She’s so gorgeous and nonchalant that, in some ways, she was a breath of fresh air as an American Bond girl. After doing The Liquidator and Tony Rome, I think she understood the general territory pretty well. There’s nothing especially exotic about her, especially in the aftermath of Daniela Bianchi and Luciana Paluzzi; or especially sophisticated, as we had enjoyed with Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg. But she’s fine.

Cork: Tiffany Case wins the prize for the brassiest Bond girl. She always reminds me just a tad of Lucile Ball. When Bond finds her at her house after she ditched 007 for the diamonds, I keep expecting him to say, “Tiffany, you gotta lotta ‘splainin’ to do!” The thing I so love about her is that she cares about nothing but the diamonds. She is the spiritual mother of Jamie Lee Curtis in A Fish Called Wanda, completely amoral. If she had to sleep with Felix, Wint, Kidd and Blofeld’s cat to get those diamonds out of Earth orbit, she’d clearly have no compunction about doing so. “I’m cooperating, really.” Uh-huh. She is the first Bond woman whose character provides the “voice” of the Bond title song, its lyrics clearly coming from her world view.

Desowitz: She’s the first Bond bimbo — at least in the second-half — and literally becomes the butt of jokes. She’s as mercenary as they come, and the image of Bond and Tiffany in a fish-filled waterbed is the height of decadence.

Pfeiffer: [See response to the previous question.]

Scivally: And now we come to the weak link in the film. Jill St. John is an attractive woman, but her attempt to “play tough” in the beginning of the film is undone by overdubbed dialogue delivered so flatly that she seems to be reading off items on a lunch menu. And whereas Charles Gray, Bruce Glover and even Sean Connery play the comic moments with just the right insouciance, she tends to overdo it, coming off as a junior-league Lucille Ball, though one without Lucy’s comic timing or delivery. But then again, Lucy wouldn’t have looked nearly as fetching in a long-sleeved bikini.

Coate: What is the legacy of Diamonds Are Forever?

Burlingame: First off, the song. It is certainly one of the greatest Bond songs ever — as the author of the Bond music book, I am often asked which is my favorite and, while I change my mind just about every week, this one tops the list as often as not. John Barry’s sensuous melody, Don Black’s brilliant lyric and Shirley Bassey’s thrilling performance make it, let’s face it, one of the all-time great movie songs even beyond the Bond canon. The fact that the Academy Awards ignored it even for nomination was then, and is still, simply shameful. The film itself ranks somewhere in the middle — not great Connery but better than many Moores. Like many of the Bonds, it is of its time (1971): the films were becoming a bit lighter in tone; Connery’s interest was in a big payday that would benefit a favorite charity; the American setting was unusual for 007; and (just in case no one else mentions it) the poster art was phenomenal!

Cork: After the release of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, David Picker called Bond producer Cubby Broccoli to New York and told him the times they were a changing. He didn’t want more serious Bond films like Majesty’s. He wanted a Bond film like Goldfinger. He wanted it for a budget, and he wanted it to be fun, funny and shot the U.S. where the he could personally stay on top of the production. Cubby was eventually able to move the studio work back to Pinewood but only after Picker brought on Tom Mankiewicz to re-write Maibaum’s first draft, secured the return of Sean Connery and made it clear that if there were major overages on the budget, the studio would take over the film. It was a major rebuke to Broccoli and Saltzman who had made the previous three Bond films and independently two high-budget movies with virtually limitless budgets. So the legacy of Diamonds goes far beyond what appears on the screen. It marked the end of an era, and not just for Connery. It marked a growing interest at UA in controlling 007. Producer Harry Saltzman lasted two more films, and when he sold his share, United Artists purchased it. Gone were the days of the early-60s when UA would approve an independent production deal and then be invited to a screening of the producer’s delivery cut of the movie months later with scant creative involvement. David Picker became a major player in the Bond universe with Diamonds, and someone from UA, MGM or Sony has been deeply involved in each Bond film ever since. That’s the legacy. And, of course, to remember to keep wearing your radiation shields. G Section will be checking.

Desowitz: Again, the last Connery Bond with memorable farewells: dick-swinging with M, brow-beating Q, flirting with Moneypenny, and thrashing the baddies in grand style. He’s older, grayer, heavier, and slower — but still the best.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of Diamonds Are Forever is more important than its immediate qualities as a film are. If Connery had not returned to the role for this film, the series might well have faced an insurmountable crisis — especially since the producers had already cast American actor John Gavin in the role. The notion of an American ever playing Bond would seem unthinkable today but at the time it obviously seemed like a good idea. It wouldn’t have been. The unsung hero was United Artists production chief David V. Picker who agreed to sign Gavin but who couldn’t get comfortable with the idea. He flew to Spain to make a last ditch effort to convince Connery to return, despite his well-documented strained relationship with the producers. Over a game of golf, Picker agreed to pay Connery the highest salary in screen history — a now paltry $1.25 million, which Connery used to establish a charity in Scotland. Diamonds proved to be an enormous hit with even critics extolling its virtues even as hardcore purist fans expressed their disappointment. So the real value of the film is that it probably saved the franchise. For that we can forgive some casting errors, erratic writing and direction and a few cheesy special effects.

Scivally: I believe Diamonds Are Forever has a two-fold legacy. On the one hand, as mentioned before, it set a tone for the Bond films of the 1970s, giving rise to a period where the stunts were the stars, the more outrageous the better (and the ski jump opening of The Spy Who Loved Me being perhaps the best). In the case of Diamonds Are Forever, this meant a car chase on the streets of Las Vegas played for laughs as much as thrills and capped by a car going up on two wheels. It seems pretty tame today, but in 1971 this was exciting stuff, and so popular with audiences that car-chase movies became a 70s genre all their own, leading inevitably to Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run, the latter featuring Roger Moore in an Aston Martin and proving Hal Needham to be a James Bond fan. Conclusion: without Diamonds Are Forever, we’d have been spared Stroker Ace.

Coate: Thank you — Jon, John, Bill, Lee, and Bruce — for participating and sharing your thoughts about Diamonds Are Forever on the occasion of its 45th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “You Only Live Twice” on its 50th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, CBS-Fox Home Video, Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

SPECIAL THANKS

Mike Heenan

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link.

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012) and crafts editor at IndieWire.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Sherman is the author of James Bond’s Cuisine: 007’s Every Last Meal (CreateSpace, 2014). He is considered a top “Bondologist” and has led dozens of 007 fan and memorabilia events featuring appearances by over 120 actors, authors, film technicians and real world intelligence officers (spies!). He has contributed to Chicago Tribune, The Daily Mail, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Parade, Time and Time Europe. His website is bondfanevents.com.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to You Only Live Twice, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is You Only Live Twice worthy of celebration on its 50th anniversary?

John Cork: You Only Live Twice is simply an utterly insane movie, released in a year filled with insane movies. The film makes little sense, but then again neither did Charles Feldman’s Casino Royale, The President’s Analyst, The Ambushers, In Like Flint, The Happiest Millionaire, or Point Blank…. There is a delightfulness to insanity. I think of the Apple ad: “Here’s to the crazy ones.” It makes no sense that a secret agent would go tooling around in a bright yellow gyrocopter, certainly not buzzing fishing villages, but who cannot love Little Nellie? Possibly the least efficient way to deal with a car filled with assassins would be to lift them off the road with a giant electro-magnet dangled from a helicopter. Of the eight thousand ways to kill Bond, dribbling poison down a string must rank almost as low as staging the crash of an expensive private plane. But each attempt to kill anyone in the film has a Road Runner cartoon-like absurdity. And the film embraces that absurdity. Here’s to hollowed-out volcanoes, well-armed gyrocopters, abseiling ninjas, and operating rooms staffed with bikini-clad technicians.

Bill Desowitz: There are two important aspects worthy of celebrating You Only Live Twice: It marked the first official appearance of nemesis Blofeld (Donald Pleasence), leader of SPECTRE, and the first farewell of Sean Connery as Bond. Also, the combination of exotic Tokyo and venturing into outer space were new to the franchise. In addition, Ken Adam’s lavish volcano lair was the crowning design achievement of the Connery era, Little Nellie was a clever variation on the Aston Martin, Freddie Young’s cinematography was stunning, and John Barry’s score was beautiful…. However, the final result (directed by franchise newcomer Lewis Gilbert) was a missed opportunity. Because they had to push back the making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, they were not able to make the so-called “Blofeld Trilogy” in order. As a result, it robbed Bond of his emotionally dramatic arc. The Ian Fleming source material was abandoned for the first time and Roald Dahl’s script ended up being an action-driven, Dr. No-like reworking. However, the death-rebirth theme was an interesting one.

Lee Pfeiffer: You Only Live Twice remains one of the most popular and enduring Bond films. It is probably the most spectacular in terms of locations and production design, even though it must also be said it’s the first Bond movie that completely ignored Ian Fleming’s source novel in place of a modern, hi-tech plot. It’s also the first Bond script that went off totally into the realm of the fantastic. The central plots of Dr. No, Goldfinger and Thunderball were certainly far-fetched but they remained in the realm of the conceivably possible. With Twice, however, the idea of a villain who resides with a private army and a personal version of NASA inside a hollowed-out Japanese volcano required a suspension of any pretense of logic. I often wondered just how these SPECTRE employees report to work in the volcano. Do they punch time clocks? How do they get home from this tiny island after their shifts are over? What transportation do they use to get there? It always reminded me of a similar situation in The Man from U.N.C.L.E TV series wherein we were to presume that hundreds of agents report for work through the doorway of an innocuous neighborhood dry cleaners. With Twice, the whole premise is absurd but the film is so slickly made and moves so rapidly that the absurdities don’t interfere with the enjoyment of watching the movie — in fact, they probably enhance it.

Bruce Scivally: You Only Live Twice is a benchmark film in the 007 series, for two reasons: (1) it was the first not to be scripted by Richard Maibaum or shot by Ted Moore, and (2) it marked what appeared to be the end of Sean Connery’s five-movie run as Bond. But it’s the first point — the absence of Richard Maibaum — that makes this film unique…. You Only Live Twice was scripted by Roald Dahl, the Danish author of fantasy, macabre and children’s tales best known for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Big Friendly Giant. Dahl had known Ian Fleming, and even used an idea of Fleming’s as the basis for a short story (with Fleming’s permission). But by the time he was approached to adapt You Only Live Twice, Fleming was dead, and the 007 producers, having decided to film Fleming’s “Blofeld trilogy” of Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice out of order, chose to eschew Fleming’s plotline and create a more fanciful and fantastic story. Dahl was just the man to deliver it…. In fact, Dahl’s script is so fantastic and fanciful that it seems totally out of step with the first two Bond films, which were more grounded in reality, and a great leap ahead from the 3rd and 4th, which were more tongue-in-cheek. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and posit a wacky fan theory: the film You Only Live Twice is 007’s drug-induced dream…. Remember: at the end of Thunderball, Bond had been yanked up out of the ocean by a Skyhook. What if, say, Domino panicked, and in his efforts to calm her, Bond slipped through the hoop and fell back into the ocean, where his super-fit spy body survived the plunge, but just barely, leaving him unconscious and in a coma? In hospital, Bond is given medications that cause him to have a mad dream, where he has become so well-known and targeted by his enemies that the only way to evade them is to fake his death. He resurrects in a submarine, where M’s office is inexplicably, but conveniently, located, and is told that this is “the big one” — the mission that will absolutely decide the fate of the free world, and he’s the only man who can accomplish it. He proceeds to Tokyo, where he falls down a chocolate factory-type chute into the abode of a Japanese man who is kind of a combination of both Bond and M, and is introduced to a society where all the women are young, pretty, bikini-clad and “sexiful,” and live only to please their men, the kind of place he’d like to retire to. He narrowly escapes death in a crashing plane, vanquishes big enemy helicopters with his nimble gyrocopter, adopts a ridiculously unconvincing Japanese disguise, and trudges up a mountain where — once he reaches the top — day suddenly becomes night, ninja clothing magically appears beneath his Ama fisherman’s garb, and suction cups strong enough to support his weight appear out of nowhere. He climbs down into a fantastic hole filled with fox-like tunnels, until he’s captured and finally comes face-to-face with his mortal enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a man that up to this point he has never met, but whom he imagines as a bald, scarred-face reptile of a man in a Mao suit, with a henchman who is a big unfriendly giant. Of course, Bond overcomes his enemy and gets the girl...and after the fade out of this dream, 007 awakens back in a more grounded reality, only to find that the fall into the ocean has altered his features and inexplicably changed his accent from Scottish to Australian. And this explains why he doesn’t recognize Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Matt Sherman: You Only Live Twice is a spectacle worthy of a big screen. The monumental Ken Adam volcano set is…monumental. The theme tune and soundtrack are lushly orchestrated and cinematographer Freddie Young added some of the most attractive filmic technique of all the Bonds, making Twice a pretty film to watch. As a time capsule, 1967 is when audiences would pack houses to watch Sean Connery read a phone book aloud for two hours. But what they saw was a blockbuster grander in scale than even Thunderball, the previous lavish Bond film.

Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing You Only Live Twice for the first time?

Cork: I saw You Only Live Twice for the first time on November 2, 1975, its broadcast premiere on ABC. By that time, I had probably read the plot summary so many times in John Brosnan’s James Bond in the Cinema, I could all but storyboard the movie. I was just about to turn 14, had read all the Bond novels at least twice, and for me at that age, 007 could do no wrong. I was unfazed by bad matting of stock volcano footage, sub-par model work, ineptly switched footage of Soyuz and Gemini launches and plot holes the size of the Milky Way…. The first time I saw it on the big screen was at the NuArt in Los Angeles in September 1980. At that point, I found other things to love: Sean Connery’s deadpan delivery (“I like ships, and I used to be a sailor”), Blofeld’s cat completely freaking out when the explosions go off, and the amazing fight between Connery and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s grandfather (Peter Fanene Maivia) in Osato’s office. Everyone needs a sofa that can be used to batter one’s opponent!

Desowitz: I saw it in the fall of ’67 at one of the local West [San Fernando] Valley theaters. As a kid, I enjoyed it. We finally met Blofeld and it was fast-moving fun. I also liked the TV promo special, which also served as a wonderful tease for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Pfeiffer: The release strategy for the early Bond movies tended to be the industry norm: big movies would play first exclusively in a few theaters in big cities for a number of weeks before they would sent to local neighborhood theaters. I grew up in Jersey City, which is a stone’s throw across the Hudson River from Times Square. I was nine years old when it opened. My dad was a big Bond fan and I wanted to see the film ASAP so he took me to the Astor, I believe, to see it on Times Square. For many weeks, every time we had gone through the area, I was being teased by that now famous gigantic billboard for the movie that hovered over Times Square. The artwork was stunning and exciting and I couldn’t wait to see it. The movie didn’t disappoint. I loved it then and love it now. Of course, when we got home, I was kind of a “big man on campus” because I had seen the film before anyone else. Naturally, when it opened at the Loew’s in our neighborhood some weeks later, I went with the whole gang to see it numerous times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it over the decades but I never tire of it. Curiously, it didn’t do as well as the preceding film, Thunderball, although it certainly achieved blockbuster status. I think the overwhelming number of spy films and TV series had whetted the public appetite by 1967. Not helping matters was the fact that that big budget spoof version of Casino Royale was still in theaters competing with Twice.

Scivally: I first saw You Only Live Twice on television, and because of its episodic construction, it’s one of the Bond films that seemed almost improved rather than damaged by ABC’s frequent commercial breaks. It wasn’t until about 1981, after I’d moved to Los Angeles, when I saw it on a theater screen and could get the full effect of its extravagance. And extravagant it is, with 1960s Japan spectacularly rendered by cinematographer Freddie Young, who had previously shot David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.

Sherman: I first caught a showing at home on television. I found the Asian locations and the wild action hypnotic. When Bond slides beneath the Tokyo streets to board Japanese Secret Service head Tiger Tanaka’s private train, wow!

Coate: In what way was Donald Pleasence’s Blofeld a memorable villain?

Cork: Blofeld has so little to do in You Only Live Twice. He kills more underlings and business partners than good guys. Do you realize how much money he could have made by just selling tourist tickets to his rocket base? Yet, everyone remembers the scar, the Mao jacket, and the bald head. It is all about first impressions, and Blofeld’s introduction is brilliant…. Donald Pleasence was a wonderfully skilled actor. He worked with Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman before (Killers of Kilimanjaro for Broccoli and Look Back in Anger for Saltzman), and got the part when the first choice, the talented but completely miscast Jan Werich, was summarily fired from the role. His work as “The Dark Hermit” (Satan) in The Greatest Story Ever Told secured him the part. It’s iconic. You ask any Bond fan to describe Blofeld, they describe Pleasence from You Only Live Twice. Sure, part of that is the scar, but Pleasence made that scar come to life. He’s brilliant as Blofeld.

Desowitz: This was the first crack at Blofeld. He looked and acted more menacing and it’s interesting how his iconic look became so influential, both in Austin Powers and SPECTRE. I’ve since found it interesting that Charles Gray’s droll Henderson, the MI6 contact, would’ve been more spot-on as Blofeld than Gray’s over the top turn in Diamonds.

Pfeiffer: Donald Pleasence’s appearance in Twice as Blofeld is one of the most iconic introductions of a screen villain ever. Until then, the character’s face was unseen in the previous Bond movies. Originally a little-known actor named Jan Werich had been hired for the part. He actually shot some scenes before he was replaced by Pleasence, ostensibly because he became ill, though I always suspected that he didn’t have the right approach to the character. Pleasence is so good as Blofeld that you lose sight of the fact that he is on screen for a very limited amount of time. Peter Hunt, the long-time editor of the Bond films, once told me that he was brought back to help oversee the editing process on the movie, that he loathed working with the footage of Pleasence because that he didn’t walk in a menacing manner but, rather, “minced” about. Hunt tried to minimize any footage of Pleasence on his feet for that reason. Not having seen what was cut, I can only say that what emerges of the Pleasence footage is the stuff of Bondian legend. In fact, Mike Myers was so impressed that he based the character of Dr. Evil on him.

Scivally: Pleasance was a last-minute replacement for Jan Werich, who was originally cast as Blofeld but was considered not to be menacing enough. While Pleasance is very slight in stature (painfully obvious when he’s standing next to Sean Connery’s 007), he did convey cool, calculating menace. This was just two years after he’d played Satan in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and four years after starring as the notorious murderer Dr. Crippen, so he was well-versed in playing darker characters. To me, his Blofeld is the most reptilian and snake-like, perhaps because Pleasance seems to be almost hissing his lines.

Sherman: Pleasence had to live up to Ian Fleming’s painstaking, calculating Blofeld. Ice in his veins, Blofeld puts aside sex, relationships and the lives of anyone blocking his illicit empire. Which actor had the book Blofeld’s penetrating, deep black eyes surrounded by white irises, staring out from a muscular body weighing 240 pounds? Pleasence, the first fully realized screen Blofeld, is memorable for sneering as the world rages and his lair burns. And after three underfed glimpses of the villain in the earlier Bonds, Pleasence, wearing a horrific facial scar, also appears haunting, skin-crawling. People still think of Pleasence’s Blofeld when they think about Bond villains. There have been thousands of skits and cartoons in the past 50 years featuring his scarred megalomaniac stroking a cat. A virtuoso actor, Pleasence’s silken tones match Fleming’s description of Blofeld’s “soft, resonant, and very beautifully modulated voice.” But Pleasence remains seated for much of his appearance, as he stood 5’7’’ only. Connery stands seven-inches-plus taller and far broader.

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Coate: In what way was Mie Hama’s Kissy Suzuki a memorable Bond Girl?

Cork: Which one is Kissy again? I’m sorry, that sounds mean. When Bruce Scivally and I were working on various projects together, figuring out which studio glamor shots showed Mie Hama and which showed Akiko Wakabayashi was always a challenge. Mie Hama is lovely and talented. Neither Roald Dahl nor Lewis Gilbert seemed to see the women in Bond films as little more than ornamentation, so it is no surprise that Hama’s role feels generic. Like any heterosexual male, I could look at her lovely face for days and be happy.

Desowitz: She’s memorable for her soft beauty and the way she disarms Bond. Also, the fake marriage anticipates the real thing in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Pfeiffer: Mie Hama’s experience on the film was a challenging one. She was originally going to play the role of the ill-fated Aki but due to complicating factors, it was decided that she should be cast as Kissy Suzuki, the young female agent who “marries” Bond when he goes undercover as a Japanese fisherman. (Perhaps the element of the script that represents an even more fantastic plot device than the villain capturing space craft.) The role of Aki went to Akiko Wakabayashi, who, in turn, had been expected to play Kissy. Like many of the early Bond actresses, their voices were dubbed. Mie has gone on to become an enduring celebrity in Japan. She acquitted herself well and looked great in that white bikini- although her character’s name is not mentioned once on screen.

Scivally: I actually think Akiko Wakabayashi’s Aki is more memorable than Mie Hama’s Kissy Suzuki. Both are terribly underdeveloped characters, but Aki at least has a semblance of an arc, ending with her tragic death (although, given Bond and Tanaka’s reactions, her demise seems to trouble them about as much as a hangnail). Kissy comes on the scene as Bond’s pretend bride (in a beautifully filmed reveal), brushes off his attempts at lovemaking until they’ve trudged halfway up a volcano, joins the fight inside the villain’s lair and ends up with in a raft kissing Bond (I guess she had to live up to her name). But while she does exhibit a certain degree of spunk, there’s just not a lot of personality there.

Sherman: Hama does great work, styling Kissy as delicate, feminine, almost angelic. Yet she shows us that Kissy is also a highly competent agent who is unafraid of battle. Her sweet chemistry with 007 begins as they hold a fake Japanese wedding to throw the bad guys off their trail. These scenes are richly appointed and capture Fleming’s technique of having us live vicariously through Bond, savoring exotic experiences.

Coate: Where do you think You Only Live Twice ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Cork: Okay, here is where things get messy. Over the years, my taste for You Only Live Twice has waned dramatically. The last two times I watched it, I was completely aware of how much I felt the film was a dreadful mess. All the things for which I made apologies when I was a teenager now seem painful. Worse, the script, despite having some moments of amusing dialog, fails to pull me into any kind of story, and I say that with great love for Roald Dahl as a writer (just don’t judge him by his children’s novel, the unworthy sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator). So, ranking them a few years back at my son’s insistence, I ranked it 16th. If you think that’s harsh, it came in 21st for him.

Desowitz: I would rank it fourth among the Connery films and maybe 13th overall.

Pfeiffer: I would rank Twice among the top half-dozen Bond movies. Roald Dahl’s script is wild and has a patchwork element to it but the production values are top-notch. No action sequence in modern screen history matches the battle inside the volcano and Ken Adam’s production design is a work of genius. Incredibly, he was not nominated for an Oscar, but the people who designed the living room set for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner were. It was one of the great injustices in Academy history. For that matter the production design of the spoof version of Casino Royale should have also been nominated the same year. The movie also boasts a magnificent and timeless score by John Barry and a great theme song sung by Nancy Sinatra. A lot of people said that by this point Sean Connery looked bored on screen because he was chomping at the bit to get out of the Bond role. But looking at the film today, it’s possible that the character of Bond is less interesting simply because he is eclipsed by all the grandeur and gadgetry. In any event, I feel the film showcases Connery at his best and he gets good support from an inspired supporting cast including Karin Dor, Tetsuro Tanba and the usual supporting actors.

Scivally: For me, it’s in the lower half of the Top 10. It’s not the best of the series, but it has its moments. For instance, the slow pull-out helicopter shot of the rooftop fight at Kobe Docks is genius; it’s the total antithesis of how a fight scene is “supposed” to be shot, and yet it works beautifully. Plus the locations are gorgeous, John Barry’s music is perfection, and Ken Adam’s sets are a marvel.

Sherman: The old Bond guard ranks Twice fairly high, especially those who are avid Sean Connery fans. Twice is not one of Connery’s strongest 007 performances, but the audience savors Bond suspending disbelief as he saunters through a volcano’s giant rocket launch pad, a helicopter carrying a giant magnet to plunge cars into the ocean, and other inspired nonsense. Each Bond film grew in budget and scope before Twice was hugely indulgent. Twice looks great but some grit is lacking as prior villains had real menace but Twice’s henchmen are merely cool, distant. And in previous films, Bond is a dark, brooding hero facing death with less camp. But visiting Himeji castle for a good ninja fight and to shoot an exploding cigarette and a gyrojet rocket gun adds “thumbs up” to this Bond review.

Coate: What is the legacy of You Only Live Twice?

Cork: You Only Live Twice is the film that almost destroyed 007. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were at each other’s throats. As is often the case with partners, Cubby felt Harry wasn’t pulling his weight (Saltzman, to be fair, was producing a full slate of non-Bond films). Saltzman felt that every time he tried to assert himself, Cubby would block him. This continued on You Only Live Twice with Cubby soon taking over the creative reigns from Harry, firing Harry’s choice for a screenwriter (Harold Jack Bloom, replaced by Dahl), hiring Lewis Gilbert, participating in the location recce for Japan and trying his best to limit Saltzman’s involvement. The two men were barely speaking at various points, and both took on ambitious solo projects immediately after…. Sean Connery, who woke up in 1966 to find that Dean Martin and James Coburn were both making more acting in James Bond spoofs than he was making playing James Bond, entered into tense negotiations before shooting began. He wanted to be a full-partner with Cubby and Harry. He wanted Terrence Young back directing. Instead, he was told that he was replaceable. It is no surprise that he sometimes seems as though he is sleepwalking through the scenes. Of course, Sean Connery sleepwalking as James Bond is still remarkably entertaining…. Further battles occurred with Peter Hunt, who felt that he had been promised the director’s chair after supervising the completion of Thunderball (Terrence Young walked off the picture after principal photography when confronted over his massive hotel bill for the Bahamas shoot). Hunt was eventually enticed to direct the second unit, and after some unsavory studio backstabbing of Lewis Gilbert’s editor, Thelma Connell, he took over editing the film as well…. When the smoke cleared, a lot of folks were unhappy with each other. Cubby felt he had made a big, audience-pleasing film. Harry didn’t like the parody aspects and missed the harder edge of the novels. As a result, Harry convinced Cubby and United Artists to take Bond back to his literary roots…. The film itself is lovely to look at, with lavish cinematography by Freddie Young, a score to die for by John Barry, a great title song (I always enjoy the single version produced by Lee Hazelwood), and one of the greatest sets in motion picture history: Ken Adam’s volcano rocket base…. The legacy of You Only Live Twice in many ways is that it was a film where the sum of the parts was far greater than the whole. Beautifully shot, beautifully scored, amazing sets, lovely women, great action, fantastic gadgets, yet one wonders where James Bond fits in to it all. Twice proved you could make a successful Bond film with very little Bond in the mix, and in that, it set a dangerous precedent.

Desowitz: Again, introduction of Blofeld, Connery’s first farewell, the first Bond set in the Far East, the first using outer space, and the first that explores the theme of death and rebirth. And Adam’s volcano lair remains an impressive set.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of Twice is that it remains one of the most popular Bond films, not with critics, but with the public. Whatever the flaws are with the script, it’s a magnificent production and it was all achieved in the era before CGI. The film retains a very contemporary look and doesn’t appear dated. It’s far more impressive than most of the action movies made today…. I’ll take the opportunity to make a cheap plug for our magazine, Cinema Retro, which is putting out an issue later this year that commemorates the film’s legacy and includes Mie Hama’s personal photos from the set.

Scivally: Everything in You Only Live Twice is bigger — the villain’s lair (Blofeld no longer operates from a mere yacht, but instead from inside an inactive volcano), the villain’s threat (not content with simply attaining a Lektor decoding device, SPECTRE is now appropriating entire rocket capsules), and James Bond’s waistline (though still trim, he’s a little paunchier than in the first four films). This is the film where Bond enters the realm of full on, dreamlike fantasy, where the rules of the real world just don’t apply. Also, You Only Live Twice had a lot of new blood in the creative ranks — scriptwriter Roald Dahl, cinematographer Freddie Young, editor Thelma O’Connell, and director Lewis Gilbert (who returned a decade later to direct The Spy Who Loved Me — a film whose plot seems to be wholly lifted from You Only Live Twice, except with a submarine-eating ship instead of a space capsule-eating rocket — and then returned to space with the even more loopily over-the-top Moonraker). As such, it showed that the franchise was robust enough to survive some turnover in the ranks — though the biggest test of that premise came with the departure of Sean Connery.

Sherman: The first four Bonds — namely, Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball — adhere to Ian Fleming’s plots. You Only Live Twice was cut from whole cloth by screenwriter Roald Dahl. Dahl, known worldwide for his Charlie, Matilda and Danny sophisticated children’s novels and his wonderful short stories featuring shocking endings, added humor and panache. Dahl’s Bond is cool and says few words, mostly snappy punchlines, while other characters give exposition. Dahl’s playful language (remember his “scrumdiddlyumptious”?) has Bond deduce a homograph clue that “LOX” could be a fish dish or else a rocket fuel component. And in the same scene, Bond says “very convenient . . . very competent” as his two punchlines, while Tiger Tanaka’s punchline is that Bond is “exceptionally [very] cultivated.” So Twice has the legacy of a playful, rhythmic script but with no relation to the vivid original novel with its castle of death and assisted suicide plot (not right for 1967’s audience but could be a fascinating movie now). You Only Live Twice reminds us of when Bond and his many imitators dominated the world’s movie and TV screens.

Coate: Thank you — John, Bill, Lee, Bruce and Matt — for participating and sharing your thoughts about You Only Live Twice on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “The Spy Who Loved Me” on its 40th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, CBS-Fox Home Video, EON Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label. His website is www.jonburlingame.com.

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Mark O’Connell is a punditeer, the grandson of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli’s chauffeur, and the author of Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books, 2012). His next book will be published this autumn.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992). He also wrote The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001) and (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). His other books include Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), Booze, Bullets & Broads: The Story of Matt Helm, Superspy of the Mad Men Era (Henry Gray, 2013) and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to The Spy Who Loved Me, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is The Spy Who Loved Me worthy of celebration on its 40th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: This was the third of the Roger Moore Bonds, and in my view the best-realized of the three. Much at the time was made of the “equal status” of Moore’s 007 and Barbara Bach’s Anya, his Soviet counterpart. And while they inevitably ended up in bed together, they were very much spy-versus-spy on an equivalent footing for much of the film. Even Bob Peak’s brilliant key art placed Anya and Bond back-to-back, with Anya on the left, strongly implying that this was not just a “Bond girl” but a woman who could be 007’s match.

The plot was an improvement — a supertanker swallowing nuclear submarines, not a voodoo blaxploitation story or a paid assassin trying to kill Bond — and demanded a gigantic new stage, conceived by production designer Ken Adam to contain his larger-than-life ideas. Pinewood’s new 007 Stage was the result, and it was showcased in dynamite fashion in the film. And, for me as Bond’s resident music historian, it’s hugely important for the song Nobody Does It Better, which reached Number Two on the charts, won an Oscar nomination and became one of the most iconic songs in the history of the Bond franchise.

This was the first of the Bond films to be produced solely by Albert R. Broccoli, following the departure of his longtime partner Harry Saltzman. And it was the first Bond movie to use the title but no characters or storyline from the original novel (although the films had been getting farther and farther away from Ian Fleming’s plotlines anyway).

John Cork: The Spy Who Loved Me was a celebration the moment it premiered. It’s not so much a movie or a story as it is a wondrous tour through the exotic, sexy, dangerous, and beautiful world of Roger Moore’s 007. Just as Goldfinger, the third Connery film, was a celebration of what made Sean Connery’s Bond so appealing, The Spy Who Loved Me, the third Moore film, is a celebration of everything that makes Roger Moore a great James Bond. From the snowy peaks to the ocean depths, from the ancient pyramids to the modern nuclear submarines, the mix is just right. Amazingly, it was a film born out of complete and utter chaos. This is a film that works because of the key ingredient that makes the James Bond films so fantastic: collaboration. There are the obvious names that contributed so much. Let’s start with Ken Adam. Of all his sets, the Liparus interior is the greatest. I remember the sounds of audience members gasping when the lights blasted on. But all the sets are just so perfect. The title song is iconic, Carly Simon’s voice sends chills down my spine every time I hear it. Marvin Hamlish’s score is perfect for the film. John Glenn and his crew, working with Rick Sylvester captured the greatest stunt in film history in a shot that has every viewer holding their breath. Second Unit Director Ernie Day did masterful work. The helicopter/Lotus chase was his. Derek Meddings did his best model work for Spy. How good? They originally had permission to shoot a real Shell tanker for free, but the insurance was still too expensive. They still invited the folks from Shell to the premiere, and they wanted to know what company loaned them a supertanker for filming. They didn’t know it was a model! Willy Bogner was back shooting the skiing. That great shot going under the ice bridge still works. Lamar Boren was back with the underwater unit in the Bahamas. But there were other names few are likely to know. Robin Browne, an amazing cameraman with a brilliant eye shot so much of the effects work. Gordon MacCallum did the mix, and no Bond film has ever sounded better.

Mark O’Connell: Bond ‘77 totally warrants celebration. Of course, the sad and recent passing of Roger Moore and the rapid fire tribute screenings of this film which were held across the land have put it under a timely spotlight again. Fate celebrated this film before film fans could, but either way — when most Bond fans of any standing have to pick a Roger Moore Bond film this is the one. It doesn’t have to be everyone’s favorite but the audiences know this was the one that re-ignited the onscreen Bond juggernaut and it is often the Roger Moore Bond film.

Lee Pfeiffer: The Spy Who Loved Me was a very significant film in the Bond canon. After The Man with the Golden Gun was released in 1974, producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman saw their partnership break up when Saltzman had to divest his shares of the Bond series in order to pay off mounting personal debt. There was bad will because he never offered Cubby an opportunity to buy his shares and own the franchise outright. Instead, he sold his half of the Bond series directly to United Artists, thus tying Cubby to the studio as his new partner. This made the acrimonious relationship between Cubby and Harry even worse. Not helping matters was the fact that The Man with the Golden Gun — Roger Moore’s second screen outing as 007 — did not perform as well as expected at the box office. The film’s emphasis on slapstick humor combined with the worst script of the series led some to wonder if the Bond films were in danger of going out of style. Cubby realized he had to make a bold move to bring Bond back in dramatic fashion. Instead of rushing into production, he painstakingly made plans to adapt The Spy Who Loved Me for the screen. It would be two-and-a-half years before the film would hit theaters — a rather lengthy gap in those days. Fleming had detested his own source novel, which was a bizarre, stagnant tale set mostly in enclosed rooms and lacking the larger-than-life villains and locations his books were known for. Thus, Fleming insisted in his contract with the producers that only the title could be used for a future film, not any of the novel’s elements. Cubby seemed to realize he had one more shot to make the Bond franchise reinvigorated — and to prove he could do so without Harry Saltzman. United Artists pulled out all the stops and granted the film the biggest budget of the series to date. The film enjoyed unusually strong reviews and became a box office sensation, allowing Roger Moore to prove that he was indeed a successful Bond in his own right.

Bruce Scivally: The Spy Who Loved Me is the film in which Roger Moore really came into his own as James Bond. Moore’s previous 007 director, Guy Hamilton, tried to balance his natural gift for witty bon mots with an edge of Connery-esque toughness (like slapping Andrea Anders and threatening to break her arm in The Man with the Golden Gun). Lewis Gilbert, on the other hand, simply let Moore be Moore, a kind of Cary Grant-lite who looked great in a tux, and didn’t seem to be taking any of the proceedings very seriously, letting us all in on the joke and giving us permission to simply enjoy it and go along for the ride. As a result, Moore recast 007 in his image — a Bond more suave and debonair than Sean Connery’s, less feral and threatening than Connery’s, but still able to make audiences believe that a tricked-out car could do incredible things at the push of a button. Two films later, Moore would again reinvent the character, returning to a slightly tougher portrayal, but after The Spy Who Loved Me his Bond would always have a twinkle in his eye that seemed to say, “Yes, it’s outlandish, but go with it. Have fun. I am.” And yes, even on first viewing, I recognized that the plot of The Spy Who Loved Me was basically a retread of Lewis Gilbert’s earlier Bond opus, You Only Live Twice, except Spy had more action and less travelogue — and a 007 who actually seemed to be enjoying himself.

Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing The Spy Who Loved Me for the first time?

Burlingame: I vividly remember thrilling to the pre-credit sequence, with composer Marvin Hamlisch’s ultra-modern, synth-laden, Bond Theme adaptation for the spectacular stunt, as Bond skis off the side of the mountain. The music stops (for a full 20 seconds!) and then bursts into the screaming-brass Bond Theme midsection as 007’s Union Jack-adorned parachute opens. Then, of course, we cut to the opening titles and our first exposure to Carly Simon singing Nobody Does It Better — again, one of the great all-time Bond themes.

I rarely use the word “awesome” (I’m way out of that demographic) but I remember thinking Ken Adam’s production designs on this film were awesome. From Stromberg’s giant sea fortress Atlantis to the car/submarine Lotus Esprit, everything was eye-popping. The locations — from Egypt to Sardinia — were stunning in Claude Renoir’s cinematography, and while Hamlisch’s score isn’t to everyone’s taste, it was certainly a fresh take on Bond music at the time; and Paul Buckmaster’s Mujaba Club music was pretty hip in 1977.

Cork: I was 15. My grandfather had set me up with a summer trip to Europe in 1977. I knew The Spy Who Loved Me was coming out, and I even found Eon Productions’ address and mailed them asking how to get premiere tickets. They sent me the brochure and would have sold me tickets, but the tour wasn’t going to be in London on 7/7/77, the premiere date. About 10 days later I arrived, and that night, I went to the Odeon Leicester Square, bought tickets to both the evening show and the late show. I had never been in a movie theater like the Odeon. I had never heard surround sound before. I remember jumping when I heard explosions behind me in the cinema! It was one of the greatest film-going experiences of my life. Little can describe the way that audience reacted. I remember walking down Piccadilly toward Hyde Park in the middle of the night after having seen the film twice, the banners for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee handing from light posts, the streets all but empty, replaying the film in my mind.

O’Connell: I caught it on an ailing VHS copy found by chance in the bottom of a bargain basement bin being suffocated by a Pink Panther or two and what Emmanuelle film had come out to rent that month. It was a bit like finally getting that landmark Beatles album where you already loved a lot of the tracks but hadn’t experienced them in their context. The parachute jump, the Lotus dive, the Studio 54 wet-bike arrival, Gogol and his phone-call day-wear, Stromberg, the risqué blue titles not hiding everything of a flesh-based nature and some of the killer lines were already part of the Greatest Hits of Bond movies. I knew what a lot of the heralded ingredients were. But now I could see them in the way the Eon chefs wanted.

Pfeiffer: I was in college and had just come back from a whirlwind tour around Europe and Africa for a month. I was happy that my return to America coincided with the opening of the film. I saw it in a New Jersey theater where they had a Lotus Esprit on display, though I’m still not sure if it was the one seen in the film. Like most Bond fans, I breathed a sigh of relief. After Golden Gun, Bond finally had his mojo back.

Scivally: I earned my driver’s license in the spring of 1977, so this was the first James Bond film that I saw in a theater. By then, I’d been introduced to 007 through the telecasts of the films on ABC-TV, and loved them. It’s hard to appreciate the impact those movies had in the 1960s and 70s, when they were the apotheosis of action films, with eye-popping stunts and exotic locations, and featuring some of the most fetching beauties in cinema. The Spy Who Loved Me had all that, and something different — the humor that had always been an undertone of the films became an overtone with The Spy Who Loved Me, a change that befit Roger Moore. From the eye-popping pre-credits ski stunt to Bond “keeping the British end up,” this 007 fired on all cylinders from start to finish. As a 16-year-old, I absolutely loved it; as a 56-year-old, the 16-year-old in me still revels in it.

Coate: In what way was Curt Jurgens’ Karl Stromberg a memorable villain?

Burlingame: Jurgens was a formidable screen presence, in the aftermath of his performances as German officers in The Enemy Below, The Longest Day and Battle of Britain, so he brought a gravitas to Stromberg that was different than the distinguished, elitist tone of Christopher Lee (in The Man With the Golden Gun) and the ruthless, mostly disgusted attitude of Yaphet Kotto (in Live and Let Die).

Cork: Jurgens is a great actor, and I love that Stromberg is a “brain” villain, elegant, evil, far from the physical threat to Bond, yet, somehow more dangerous for it. A good “brain” villain will have you on what you think is the President’s jet, or sitting down at his dinner table because he’s clearly defenseless. Jurgens knows how to appear larger-than-life in every shot, and that made him perfect for those amazing Ken Adam sets.

Of course, we have to mention Richard Kiel. Second best henchman of the series behind Oddjob. Lewis Gilbert’s cameraman, Claude Renoir, knew how to photograph Kiel and really work shots to have fun with his height and size. That was missing in Moonraker. Renoir gets grief because his eyes were slowly failing during shooting, but he was very important to the visuals of Spy. Watch his films and he knows where to place the camera to help tell the story.

Okay, time for absurd Curt Jurgens trivia! He holds the distinction (as best as I can tell) of appearing in more films with other Bond villain actors than any other Bond villain actor! He’s in movies with Robert Shaw, Walter Gotell (a villain in From Russia with Love), Gert Frobe, Luciana Paluzzi, Telly Savalas, Steven Berkoff, Orson Welles (yes, I count the 1967 Casino Royale), and, wait for it, Christoph Waltz. He’s also in movies with the top names in 60s spy culture: Sean Connery, Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), James Coburn, Robert Culp, Peter Graves, and even almost-Bond, John Gavin!

O’Connell: He certainly works two of the mainstays of Bond villainy — being sat at a table or standing menacingly with both hands behind your back. Curt Jurgens is a fascinating European actor who doesn’t struggle at conveying duplicitous charm. Yet for me Stromberg is one of the more passive, less beguiling Bond adversaries. The villainy of the character is achieved via other means — particularly Ken Adam’s pointed production design suggesting the wealth and vision, but also the loneliness of the man as well as the spider web of villainy is summed up by that black, hulking arachnid of a base, Atlantis. The real villainy of The Spy Who Loved Me is achieved by the trail of sub-villains. The might and dangerous intentions of Stromberg are not conveyed through Jurgens, but rather Jaws, Naomi and the gang passing on that story baton of a microfilm. I always suggest that a good Bond foe is merely Bond himself gone wrong. Michael Lonsdale’s Drax in the following Moonraker does that societal one-upmanship and powerplay with more of a delicious, ruthless streak. It is also not clear why a life under the sea is so endearing to Stromberg. And Bond gets no real confrontation with the villain here. Shooting under a table over a light lunch of salad leaves is not the same as being inflated by air, set on fire or sucked out into space.

Pfeiffer: Curt Jurgens was an exceptionally good actor, internationally respected. He had known Cubby, who respected his talents. The knock against Jurgens at the time was that he was a bit old and too sedate to pose a significant menace to Bond, but I always defended his presence in the film. Even if the role of Stromberg was somewhat under-written, his scenes opposite Roger Moore are very enjoyable. Stromberg isn’t one of the more memorable, world-class villains, but Jurgens’ presence in a Bond movie is quite satisfying.

Scivally: Best known for playing military commanders and barons, Curt Jurgens had an imperial presence, but he played Stromberg with a dignified, regal reserve that seemed out of step with the rest of the film’s performances, making him seem dull by comparison. Rather than an out-sized megalomaniac taking great glee in his villainy, Jurgens seemed more like a corporate bureaucrat who, if he weren’t going to kill Bond, would sell him shares in Atlantis. In previous 007 films, the henchman was often colorful, but never more so than the villain; in Spy, Jurgens’ Stromberg is totally upstaged by Jaws, a steel-toothed killer who is initially terrifying but becomes increasingly comedic as the film progresses, somehow managing to be both menacing and endearing at the same time. When Jaws plops into the shark tank, we want him to bite that shark and live to terrorize 007 again; by contrast, when Oddjob was electrocuted, we were relieved that the seemingly indestructible strongman was finally stone cold dead.

Coate: In what way was Barbara Bach’s Anya Amasova a memorable Bond Girl?

Burlingame: And that’s the point: She was a Bond Girl but not a Bond Girl. Anya was a highly trained, highly capable and thoroughly untrustworthy (shades of Putin!) KGB agent. She and 007 must join forces but remain wary of one another. As an actress, Barbara Bach was no Diana Rigg or Eva Green, but in that era the look and the style was pretty important. I daresay this is her best-remembered film (she made Caveman and married Ringo Starr in 1981).

Cork: There is a strange silkiness to Bach’s Anya that really fits the film. I love her in the movie, but, and this is going to sound so, so wrong, if late in the movie her face got hit and a faceplate fell off revealing Stepford Wife robot workings inside, I would have thought, “Oh, of course she was a robot! It all makes sense now!” That sing-song voice, those weird little delays before she reacts to dialogue, think about it the next time you watch the film. There is an undeniable fembot quality. That moment when she bumps into Bond wandering around the columns of Luxor and spins around in karate mode, sees it’s Bond, then drop out of that program and into the next, watch that. That is not an actress playing a Russian spy. That’s an actress brilliantly playing a robot playing a Russian spy. Whatever you want to think, that performance works like gangbusters. It is perfect for the film.

O’Connell: The role of Amasova is key as it heralds a new era of more equal-minded Bond women. All intents and purposes clearly were to really challenge 007 and his professional world and for the most part, Bach’s icy cold and very still performance works. She certainly made an impact on a lot of male Bond fans at the time, and it wasn’t just the Lotus Esprit’s buttons she knew how to press. Anya also affords Moore one of his starkest, least expected beats of Bond and that is when he is faced with the murder of Amasova’s lover. His line about being a spy and on a job is brilliantly and pointedly delivered and reminds that Moore’s Bond always had a serious core in the role.

Pfeiffer: Barbara Bach was one of the most stunning beauties to ever grace a Bond movie. Her acting skills were somewhat limited, to put it charitably, but she represented the key ingredients of a Bond heroine: courageous, resourceful and intelligent. There is a myth in some quarters that Bond women were all gorgeous airheads, but for the most part, this was not the case. They were very independent, quick thinking characters who were able to contribute mightily to thwarting the villains’ capers. It’s safe to say that Bond needed them as much as they needed Bond. Bach made such an eye-popping appearance, especially in the provocative outfits she wore in the film, that I recall John Simon, the ordinarily grumpy film critic for New York Magazine, salivating over her in his review as though he was a teenage boy ogling his teacher.

Scivally: While Barbara Bach would never give Meryl Streep a run for her money as a dramatic actress, her acting chops were adequate enough for The Spy Who Loved Me, and with her doe eyes and pouty lips, she was quite a looker, with a smashing figure, which is about all Bond movies of the period required of their leading ladies. The character was memorable for the series making its first nod to 70s feminism by attempting to portray a female equivalent to Bond — though Anya still needs 007 to rescue her from Stromberg in the end. She’s a character I’d like to have seen return; it should have been her and not General Gogol coming to collect the ATAC at the end of For Your Eyes Only, or sharing a hot tub with Bond in A View to a Kill.

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Coate: Where do you think The Spy Who Loved Me ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: I would rank it fairly high among the Moore Bonds — not as great as For Your Eyes Only but more watchable than A View to a Kill and Moonraker. I am not the biggest fan of the more jokey Moore installments but I know that, for fans who didn’t grow up with the Connery films, these are seminal Bond experiences. As the films changed with the times, and action became more intense, it’s easy to rank some of the Dalton, Brosnan and Craig films more highly than the Moores. But they were products of the 1970s and ‘80s, and in their time, pretty darned impressive action-adventure films. It’s always important to remember that.

Cork: Recently a pack of big James Bond fans gathered and did an hours-long assessment of all the Bond movies, recorded the audio and put it up on YouTube. I’m just sick enough to listen to the whole thing. These are all really smart folks whose opinions I respect. They ranked all the films individually, then averaged out the results. The Spy Who Loved Me topped their list. Better than Goldfinger, Majesty’s, Casino Royale, Skyfall, From Russia with Love in their assessment. That’s how great this film is. I don’t rank it at the top. When I ranked them with my son in 2012, we both ranked Spy 8th, which sounds low, but it’s not. There are nine Bond films on that list that I think are just magnificent, and Spy is one that I love without apologies.

O’Connell: It is one of the Bond entries which the non-fan enjoys and remembers. And for that alone it holds great merit as the wider, less Bond savvy spectators are key to the box office, global fondness and ultimate momentum for the series. Having recently seen the film again on the big screen, it still holds up well. For a film that has such a large cast of locations, countries, hotel lobbies, receptionists, barbed visitations and methods of transport, the success of the project is found in how gorgeously effortless all these factors are stitched together. Lewis Gilbert was already the master of Big Bond, but here the skill is how the whole piece doesn’t ski off that Austrian mountain without a parachute. It has massive ambitions but still zips along. For that alone it is a vital Bond film.

Pfeiffer: Most people consider the film to be the high water mark of the Moore era and it’s understandable why people feel that way. The movie has sweep and spectacle and some wonderful exotic locations. I would rank it in the middle of the pack in terms of the overall series. I’ll admit that I’ve always rather favored Octopussy, but that’s a minority opinion to be sure. The biggest gripe about The Spy Who Loved Me is the rather unimaginative screenplay. The dialogue is good, but the film is basically a remake of You Only Live Twice, with the action set in the ocean instead of in space.

Scivally: For me, The Spy Who Loved Me is my favorite of the Roger Moore 007 films, and I’d put it at the bottom of the top 5. And a great deal of the enjoyment for me — besides the fact that it is perhaps the most tightly-plotted of the Moore films — is Moore himself. He looked his best in this film, and no other 007 actor is as facile with a quip as Moore, with the possible exception of Sean Connery who, after all, began the practice (though I’d argue that a tough guy spouting witty quips goes back at least as far as Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca; his Rick Blaine is almost a template for Bond, albeit a burned-out one, and one comfortable enough in his masculinity to actually be vulnerable and shed tears for a lost love).

Coate: In light of the recent passing of Sir Roger Moore, what do you believe was Moore’s greatest contribution to film/TV in general and to the James Bond series in particular?

Burlingame: I’d have to say his portrayal of Simon Templar in The Saint. Lots of actors have played the character, from George Sanders to Val Kilmer, but no one ever inhabited Templar quite so well, or frankly made him more popular. I’m very partial to Moore’s role as Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders, but it’s really The Saint that will be his most lasting accomplishment as an actor. Had he been initially cast as 007 instead of Sean Connery we might be looking at this from an entirely different perspective, but coming after Connery and providing a lighter and very different take on James Bond, I really don’t see that as bigger or better than his work as Templar over six impressive seasons in the 1960s.

Cork: I firmly believe that Roger Moore’s greatest contribution to entertainment is his performance in The Spy Who Loved Me. He was born to act with Marvin Hamlish’s flirtatious score. Someday he had to walk among Egyptian ruins in a tuxedo in a film. I really don’t know that another actor could pull off the “give me the keys” scene. Only Roger Moore could make you believe that his character would be unperturbed by Jaws ripping off the roof of the van. He had a special talent for carrying off that kind of absurdity without winking to the audience. But he could also carrying off the popping of his tie loose, sending Sandor to his death. There is a gracefulness to the way Moore moves in this film that matches the elegance of the tone of the movie. Nothing is more boring than watching a character descend a staircase, but watching Moore do it in Cairo is like watching a ballet dancer. There are other moments in other films that define Roger Moore — The Fiction-Makers, for example, is his best work as The Saint. His introduction in The Wild Geese shows he knows how to hold a mediocre scene together with solid, restrained acting. But I so love him as the world’s greatest detective in Sherlock Holmes in New York. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Roger to record his audio commentaries for his Bonds, and I count that as four days where he brought a lot of joy to some grueling work. Nobody did it better. Goodbye, Mr. Moore. Well, let’s say, “au revoir.” I have a hopeful feeling we’ll be meeting again sometime.

O’Connell: The reason we have Bond films today is because of Roger Moore. He took on the role at a time in cinematic history where a tailored chap with a gun from England was not where the audiences for The Godfather, Chinatown and The Last Picture Show were. When Moore took the role in 1972 he was the third change of 007 in as many films. Yet, he endeared audiences to his Bond. He didn’t mock the role, he didn’t take it for granted. He knew less was more and that rather than the absurdities of Bond’s world at that time he pricked the criticisms of it with a warmth, charm and care for the role. He didn’t wholly take his Bond from the current movie zeitgeist and in doing so made it more appealing. He then steered the series from the parting of the waves of Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, via the box office might and dominance of Jaws, Star Wars, the rise of Reaganite American cinema, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Beverly Hills Cop. That wasn’t just because of the character of James Bond. That was because of Roger Moore himself.

Pfeiffer: Roger was that rarity in today’s film industry: an old world, genuine gentleman. He knew that he represented a dying breed of British actor, namely the type that could play sophisticated roles and extol and cherish the English language. They rarely write roles for those kinds of actors anymore. It’s doubtful even Cary Grant would find employment in today’s film industry. Roger had the most wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor. He once told me that if a person can laugh at themselves it kind of takes the wind out of the sails of others who want to criticize you. He truly believed no one should take themselves so seriously that they couldn’t laugh at their own flaws. It’s a good life lesson for everyone, including certain prominent political figures who have no ability to admit flaws. He felt that although he never got rave reviews for any of his performances, he was never completely crucified, either, because even critics found it hard not to like his persona.

Roger said that the personality traits he established in playing in The Saint seemed to work for him and that he essentially channeled those same qualities into most of his other characters, including Bond. When I once asked him what his best screen performance was, he replied “None!” After pressuring him a bit, he conceded that the little-seen 1970 movie The Man Who Haunted Himself was the performance he was most proud of because it allowed him to play a rather off-beat character. He was actually a good dramatic actor, as evidenced by his work in films like Shout at the Devil, Gold, The Wild Geese and The Sea Wolves, all of which show him in top form. Roger achieved what many people thought was impossible: being as successful as Sean Connery was in the role of Bond. He made the character his own and never imitated his predecessor. I last saw Roger a couple of years ago in Bath. He and his assistant Gareth Owen had developed a stage production in which Roger would simply chat about his career and take questions from the audience. It gave him a whole new aspect of his life and he was grateful for all the sold out theaters, which proved he still was very popular. His legacy, however, is his tireless work for UNICEF, for which he was Goodwill Ambassador for a number of years. There are countless people alive today thanks to his efforts and I know that was the career achievement he was most proud of.

Scivally: To me, Roger Moore is the Cary Grant of the latter half of the 20th century. The Bristol-born Archie Leach reinvented himself as suave, debonair Cary Grant in 1930s screwball comedies and Hitchcock suspense films much the same way Cockney Londoner Roger Moore adopted a more refined British accent to become the embodiment of British sophistication first on TV as the Saint and later in film as 007. Both were capable actors given limited opportunities because their good looks and the mores of the time typed them as leading men. But both were also humble and self-deprecating; you had a sense they would be enjoyable and entertaining companions to hang out with. Having established himself as a kind of James Bond-like character on TV’s The Saint, Moore was probably the only actor who could so effortlessly take over the role of 007 from Sean Connery. And as the Bond films veered away from the Fleming source material and became more comedic in the 1970s — a move that likely kept the series alive in the changing counter-culture climate — Moore fit the tenor of the times beautifully. It has been my experience that while men generally prefer Sean Connery as Bond, women have great affection for Moore’s 007, a Bond with a lighter touch and a twinkle in his eye that signaled he didn’t really take it all very seriously, but he was having a hell of a good time doing it.

Coate: What is the legacy of The Spy Who Loved Me?

Burlingame: First, it successfully upgraded the previously subordinate Bond Girl to co-starring status, no small feat in a world that (as originally conceived by Ian Fleming) largely viewed women as sex objects. Second, it kept the outlandish plots going, this time with Stromberg’s nonsensical notion that an undersea civilization would succeed a devastating nuclear war; we love all those insane criminal plots. Third, it introduced Walter Gotell as Soviet General Gogol and Geoffrey Keen as the Minister of Defense while retaining Bond regulars M, Q and Moneypenny, thus adding new supporting characters while keeping the old standby favorites. Fourth, it added a hip soundtrack with a top-selling song, demonstrating that, in terms of music, Bond could still be fresh in its musical approach. It certainly convinced me that the Roger Moore Bonds, while very different from the Connery Bonds, had value all their own and could propel 007 well into the future.

Cork: The first is the Legacy of Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. This is the film where he became not just a producer of the Bond films, but the producer. The battle for the future of James Bond had really gotten ugly after Harry Saltzman needed to withdraw from Danjaq, the holding company that held the rights to make James Bond films. Cubby was very angry, feeling that Harry had endangered the future of Danjaq through other business dealings. Cubby and Harry also both had the right to sell out, but only to someone of whom the other partner approved. Harry kept finding potential buyers, and Cubby wouldn’t approve of them, which was his right. Some have said that Cubby wanted to force Harry to sell to him for a very low price. Whether that was the case or not, Harry went to United Artists and struck a deal with them. This was a very savvy move on Harry’s part because Cubby could not say he couldn’t work with UA because he was already working with UA. Initially, this worked out very well for Cubby. He was able to get UA to basically double the budget of The Man with the Golden Gun, and he even struck a deal where UA paid for the building of the 007 Stage for the Liparus set, but Cubby ended up owning the physical soundstage building. He’s the one who had to guide the script through a skillion drafts, deal with an attempt to derail the film by Kevin McClory because early drafts had a new iteration of SPECTRE in it. At one point, he had Tom Mankiewicz come to his house, and they took many of the drafts and finally built a story. But there is another great legacy with Spy, and that’s Michael G. Wilson. He became very involved with working with the writers on Spy. He’s the one who pitched the skiing/base jump opening. But he did something more. He pushed for there to be a real emotional storyline in the Bond films. He understood the need for real tension between Bond and Anya, and that little thread works incredibly well in the film. The creative team that makes The Spy Who Loved Me, that family in some form or another is deeply involved in the Bond films until the end of the 1980s, and for some, well beyond. There is also a legacy of Lewis Gilbert, a man who started as a child actor in England, who has done some just wonderful smaller films. But Gilbert knew how to mount a massive production. He knew how to get shots that told the story. He understood visual filmmaking. I remember seeing The Adventurers when I was a kid, and Seventh Dawn when I was a teenager. These are big movies. They would be a series on HBO now, but he’s a very under-rated director. Some folks knock Spy for copying so many story elements from Gilbert’s previous Bond film, You Only Live Twice, but this film corrects so many weaknesses of that film for me. The legacy of The Spy Who Loved Me is that it said to the world that James Bond knew how to adapt, to thrill audiences and entertain on a grand scale even 15 years and ten films on from Dr. No. It was true then, and it is true today, nobody does it better.

O’Connell: That the Bond films continue to this very day. The film represented a possible make-or-break moment for Cubby Broccoli. With his director Lewis Gilbert, writer Christopher Wood, new scoring from Marvin Hamlisch, a new car that finally enabled Moore to have his own DB5 icon in the guise of the Lotus and the production intent as masterminded by Oscar nominated Ken Adam — The Spy Who Loved Me could be seen as the greatest illustration of that Eon Productions commitment to the project, audience, local film production and entertainment. The resulting 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios alone resulted in renewed production opportunities and bookings for British filmmaking at a time when such business was beginning to dip. This was a film that held its own in a year that included Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The 1977 context also helped inadvertently seal James Bond’s role in British culture. It was a Jubilee year, politicians and Prime Ministers visited the set, the BBC ran an epic Open University (public home education access and programming) series dissecting the whole production and of course that Union Jack moment struck a global cord that was echoed in the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games. In an era of the rise of the American blockbuster, Roger Moore and Eon Productions proved a story about a chap from England could hold its own and buoy up the future fortunes of all Bond films that followed.

Pfeiffer: The film, more so than the other Moore movies, is probably the most evergreen in terms of the opinion of fans. Not hurting matters was the durability of the title song, Nobody Does It Better, which has become a romantic standard. It still irks me that when the song was nominated for an Oscar, it lost to the saccharine You Light Up My Life. Like most Bond movies, it has aged well. The sets are still spectacularly impressive, thanks to the late, great Sir Ken Adam, and the action sequences hold up very well indeed. The introduction of Richard Kiel as Jaws was also an inspiration and helped elevate his career so substantially that he returned in Moonraker. The film was a mess in his its pre-production stages with seemingly half of the film industry contributing ideas (John Landis and Stanley Kubrick among them). Thus, the patchy screenplay is somewhat understandable, but it holds up well as a first-rate Bond entry.

Scivally: Having first been introduced to Bond through the films of Sean Connery, my initial reaction to Spy was that it was a “Batman Bond,” which is to say, it approaches the hero with the same lightness and sense of camp as the 1966-68 Batman TV series. Unlike From Russia with Love, which exists in a universe of heightened reality, The Spy Who Loved Me is utter fantasy, like Goldfinger on steroids. But it works. After the rather scaled-down Live and Let Die and the hastily-produced The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me returned James Bond to big-budget, wide-screen elegance and opulence. None of Moore’s subsequent Bond films would ever again get the mix quite so right. For the Roger Moore era of 007, The Spy Who Loved Me truly was the biggest, the best, Bond — and beyond. From first frame to last, it is consistently entertaining, living up to the memorable line from its theme song: “Nobody does it better.”

Coate: Thank you — Jon, John, Mark, Lee and Bruce — for participating and sharing your thoughts about The Spy Who Loved Me on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “The Living Daylights” on its 30th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, CBS-Fox Home Video, Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

SPECIAL THANKS

John Hazelton.

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

Extras on the Blu-ray editions will include audio commentary (with director and producer Alex Kurtzman, and cast members Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, and Jake Johnson), Deleted and Extended Scenes, 8 featurettes (Cruise & Kurtzman: A Conversation Rooted in Reality, Rooted in Reality, Life in Zero-G: Creating the Plane Crash, Meet Ahmanet, Cruise in Action, Becoming Jekyll and Hyde, Choreographed Chaos, and Nick Morton: In Search of a Soul), and the Ahmanet Reborn animated graphic novel. Both the Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD will include Dolby Atmos audio. There’s no word of Dolby Vision, but the 4K will certainly have HDR-10. You can see the cover artwork to the left and below.

Shout! Factory has announced the Hype!: Collector’s Edition as their newest Shout Select Blu-ray release, due on 9/29. Extras are TBA, but will include “a new audio commentary with Director Doug Pray, vintage Interviews and performances, Peter Bagge’s animated short Hate, outtakes, and a new featurette with interviews and insights from some of the original characters in Hype! two decades later.”

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has just announced more TV titles for DVD only release in August and September, including Tyrant: The Complete Season 2 and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll: The Complete Second Season on 8/8, and Better Things: Season 1 and You’re the Worst: Season 3 on DVD on 9/6.

Retail sources are now starting to confirm that Sony will release Close Encounters of the Third Kind on 4K Ultra HD in September. It may (or may not) be a retail-exclusive title, but Best Buy will certainly have an exclusive Steelbook-packaged version on 9/19 (see this link).

RLJ Entertainment has set Once Upon a Time in Venice for Blu-ray and DVD on 8/15.

And here’s something fun: Kino Lorber has just revealed a new Studio Classics title for release on 9/2: Tobor the Great (1954)! It’ll have a new HD master and audio commentary by historian Richard Harland Smith. Also coming on 9/12 is the Jerry Lewis comedy Visit to a Small Planet (1960), along with Custer of the West (1967), and Krakatoa, East of Java (1968). And on 9/5, look for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) and The Birthday Party (1968).

All right... back to Disney and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. After checking directly with Disney’s press reps NO LESS THAT TWICE to confirm that the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 4K Ultra HD disc would have Dolby Vision HDR, and being assured that yes, it would... NOW, I’m being told that: hang on, they’re not sure and we’ll get back to you. And because the big D23 convention starts in Anaheim tomorrow, it might take a few days for Disney’s PR team to find out for sure what they’re sure of on the subject.

Yeah.

To quote a funny man in a funny film: “Mother puss bucket...!”

So... I don’t fault these press people. They’re great folks, doing the best they can. The fault lies with Disney leadership up in Burbank, and especially Home Video leadership. The job of site like The Digital Bits, which caters to the most enthusiastic consumers of Blu-ray, DVD, Blu-ray 3D, and 4K Ultra HD, is to try and get the best available information from the studios to those consumers, so that those consumers feel comfortable buying discs. That really it, along with sharing our own love of films in general and these formats in particular. Now, there was a time when the senior Home Video leadership at the major Hollywood studios understood that, and understood the VALUE to their business of that. ENTHUSIASTS BUY DISCS. The more enthusiastic they are, the more discs they buy. So the more good information and support you can give them, the better.

Over the first 10-15 years of the videodisc business, starting with DVD back in 1997, there were very senior people at all of the major studios who knew that it was important to communicate with the enthusiast press directly – to evangelize for these formats and answer questions, so that we can pass that information on to the enthusiasts themselves. But that’s changed these days. Now, those executives don’t want to be bothered dealing with either the press or enthusiasts. They want all communication with the outside world to go through the studio PR department, which often doesn’t understand this technology at anywhere near the level that enthusiasts do. Nor do they really even speak the same technical language. Mostly, the studio’s PR effort with regard to Home Video formats these days boils down just blasting simple messages out on social media. And it’s almost exclusively a one-way communication.

Meanwhile, sites like The Bits, doing what we’ve done for 20 years now, are getting LOTS AND LOTS of technical questions from consumers. Not only are the studios not helping to get us accurate answers to those questions, in some cases they’re actively making it impossible for us to do so by deliberately putting more and more impenetrable layers of studio secrecy, ignorance, and apathy between their people with the answers and the press. Not only do we not have authorized studio contacts who are willing to talk with us to provide answers and responsive enough to our inquiries to do it effectively, they they’re deliberately making it harder and harder for us to find anyone who can. So the only people willing to talk are studio insiders who are afraid to do so for fear of getting in trouble with their bosses. When they do talk, they have to do it anonymously or off the record.

Frankly, in an industry that’s trying to promote a new home video format like 4K Ultra HD, that is a fucking OUTRAGEOUS situation. It really is.

Now, I’m going to have more to say about this on Monday. But first, I need to take a couple days off. Because we’ve been dealing with this situation for a few years now, and it’s only gotten worse and more frustrating each year. And if you can’t tell, I’m a little pissed about it. After TWENTY YEARS of working to promote these discs we love, and to bring the studios together with their best customers in a positive way, to be dealing with a situation like this is really insane. And it’s not just The Bits – I talk regularly with other enthusiast bloggers and writers who’ve been doing this a while, and all of them are having similar troubles. “Hey, do you have a contact over at...?“ is a question I get from them on a regular basis. And the answer given, more and more often lately, is “No.”

If the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format is ever going to be more than just a blip in the radar, that situation HAS TO CHANGE. And the change that needs to happen has to start with senior studio Home Video leadership. Guys, 15-20 years ago, there were people in your jobs who knew how to grow a format. Making it impossible to get good accurate information about that format IS NOT how to do it.

Anyway, like I said, I’m going to cool off for a couple days – because I NEED to cool off for a couple days – and I’ll talk more about this on Monday. In the meantime, there’s a chance I’m going to be at D23 this weekend myself. If so, I’ll try to get to the bottom of this directly. If and when I finally do get accurate final word about Dolby Vision on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 4K, I’ll let you know ASAP – likely first on my personal Twitter and Facebook pages, so be sure to follow those if you’re interested.

I’d like to apologize to all of you for the confusion on this... and for my dysfunctional industry that’s allowed confusion about such things to become the rule and not the exception. It’s embarrassing. There is nobody more frustrated about this than we are, believe me.

All right, here’s some new BD and 4K cover artwork for you to check out (with Amazon links if available)...

Now, I’m going to go and take a blood pressure pill… maybe pour a bourbon. Back on Monday, or sooner if we get word from Disney. Stay tuned...

- Bill Hunt

(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

Thomas A. Christie is the author of The James Bond Movies of the 1980s (Crescent Moon, 2013). His other books include The Spectrum of Adventure: A Brief History of Interactive Fiction on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (Extremis, 2016), Mel Brooks: Genius and Loving It! (Crescent Moon, 2015), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Pocket Movie Guide (Crescent Moon, 2010), John Hughes and Eighties Cinema: Teenage Hopes and American Dreams (Crescent Moon, 2009), and The Cinema of Richard Linklater (Crescent Moon, 2008). He is a member of The Royal Society of Literature, The Society of Authors and The Federation of Writers Scotland.

John Cork is the author (with Maryam d’Abo) of Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and numerous James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Charles Helfenstein is the author of The Making of The Living Daylights (Spies, 2012). His other book is The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Spies, 2009).

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992). He also wrote The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001) and (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). His other books include Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), Booze, Bullets & Broads: The Story of Matt Helm, Superspy of the Mad Men Era (Henry Gray, 2013) and Dracula FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Count from Transylvania (Backbeat, 2015). As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He is Vice President of New Dimension Media in Chicago, Illinois.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to The Living Daylights, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is The Living Daylights worthy of celebration on its 30th anniversary?

Thomas A. Christie: When The Living Daylights first appeared in 1987 it marked the 25th anniversary of the James Bond movie series, and it was to symbolize an effort by Eon Productions to highlight the series’ continued relevance to global audiences. The world was presented with a new Bond, and a new take on the character which was to set a very different tone for the years ahead. Looking back at the film thirty years later, The Living Daylights was an admirable attempt to inject the series with renewed purpose and to ensure that it remained germane to moviegoers of the time. There is a perceptible sense that the creative team was determined to update Bond for the demands of an increasingly uncertain world, taking into account political shifts as well as socio-cultural changes, and the extravagant flamboyance of the previous decade’s entries in the series suddenly felt impossibly far-removed from the comparatively stark, back-to-basics approach that was being offered to audiences of the late eighties. The movie was not only to prove very entertaining, but also laid considerable groundwork for the franchise’s subsequent evolution throughout the coming decades.

John Cork: The Living Daylights was the beginning of the modern era of Bond films. It is the movie where the filmmakers and fans began to take 007 seriously again, where the spirit of Ian Fleming again became vital to the cinematic 007. It is a film that has an excellent mix of all the ingredients that make James Bond so popular. It features a great cast and some spectacular action and effects. It is also John Barry’s last Bond score, and it is a score that I absolutely love — elegant, romantic, sexy, and filled with spy-movie vibe. The movie is pure 1980s, but in the best way.

Charles Helfenstein: There is so much to celebrate — the locations are the right blend of British and exotic, the music is classic John Barry amplified by 80s synth-pop, the story rewards you for paying attention, there are beautiful damsels in distress, there are heart-stopping jump scares, thrilling stunts, and in the center of it all is Timothy Dalton: an intense, wolf-eyed, lithe, chain-smoking, ridiculously handsome James Bond who looks like he just stepped off the page of an Ian Fleming novel. Daylights (and Dalton) swung the pendulum back to seriousness and back to Bond’s literary source. The film brought also mystery back to the series, both with a complex plot and with an actor who was not a household name.

Lee Pfeiffer: The Living Daylights is often overlooked by fans in terms of its importance in revitalizing the Bond film franchise. While Roger Moore was extremely popular and successful, even he admitted that A View to a Kill was a pretty anemic finish to his tenure as Bond. That movie had reverted to many of the overtly slapstick elements that most hardcore Bond fans abhorred. The script was uninspiring and the film underperformed compared to expectations. There was real concern that Bond’s audience was starting to become indifferent. The casting of Timothy Dalton revitalized the series when it needed it most. The Living Daylights is not a classic Bond movie. The script was written generically so it wasn’t fine-tuned for Dalton’s persona. It also has two weak villains and a plot that meanders somewhat. However, Dalton brought back a sense of seriousness to the role of Bond that was welcomed by the fans. The ads played this up with up with tag lines like “Dalton…Dangerous.” He looked like he meant business and managed to infuse the character with some Fleming-esque characteristics that had largely disappeared over the years.

Bruce Scivally: The Living Daylights is worthy of celebration if for no other reason than being the first 007 film to star Timothy Dalton, whose brooding performance was a sharp departure from the lighter touch of his predecessor, Roger Moore. With a new star, the filmmakers took a newer approach, making a James Bond film that felt tougher and more Fleming-esque; for fans of the Connery Bonds, it was like a throwback to the days of From Russia With Love, when James Bond films were humorous without trying to be over-the-top funny, as, say, Octopussy had been. A trained theatrical actor, Dalton researched the role by reading Ian Fleming’s original novels and trying to embody Fleming’s 007 as best he could. The result was a 007 film closer than ever to the Bond of the novels — a chain-smoking, hard drinking assassin on the verge of burnout who did not suffer fools gladly.

Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing The Living Daylights for the first time?

Christie: The Living Daylights felt like a breath of fresh air after a period of stylistic uncertainty in the Bond franchise. Following the larger-than-life world domination scenarios of the late seventies Bond movies, the production team — and director John Glen, in particular — seemed determined to pull the series back towards the Cold War thriller scenarios of its glory days. With films such as For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, there was a noticeable effort to tone down elements of the fantastic that had permeated big-budget efforts such as The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, reintroducing some much-needed realism (or as close as a Bond movie ever really gets to realism) into the mix. But the late Sir Roger Moore had never seemed entirely comfortable with this attempt to return Bond to his literary roots as a battle-hardened and sometimes cynical figure who has been profoundly, and adversely, affected by his experiences in the intelligence community. Suddenly, with the arrival of Timothy Dalton, the mission to divert the course of the Bond series along a darker, slightly grittier trajectory seemed to have been kicked into top gear. Moore’s increasingly avuncular, seemingly-indestructible Bond was now gone, and in his place was a leaner, younger, more dangerous figure who reintroduced a much-needed element of unpredictability to the franchise. Everyone seemed to be upping their game, from Glen in the director’s chair to veteran screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, and the comparison to the movie’s immediate predecessor — the lackluster, oft-maligned A View to a Kill — could not have been more striking.

Cork: One may not understand the pent-up anticipation for Daylights. A View to a Kill and Never Say Never Again had tested the resolve of many adult Bond fans. I forget the machinations, but Bruce Scivally and I went to see The Living Daylights at a press screening in Los Angeles. My initial reaction was disappointment. I wanted the film to sweep me away, deliver everything I had been missing from the later Moore films. I recalled to Bruce the old joke about the very religious but racist sexist man who has a heart attack and flat lines. He’s resuscitated by paramedics and has this shocked look on his face. His family asks what happened. “I went to heaven. I, I, I saw God, and she’s black!” I felt like him. I had gotten everything I wanted, a more serious Bond film with lots of Fleming elements, but somehow I didn’t connect to it on that first viewing. That said, I saw it probably ten times in the movie theater and listened to the score for hour after hour that summer.

Helfenstein: Daylights benefited from two publicity hooks: the debut of a new actor and the 25th anniversary of James Bond in the cinema. So there was a great deal of interest, a great deal of coverage. I remember repeatedly watching the trailer and the brief preview included in Happy Anniversary 007. The Gibraltar stunts had my jaw on the floor. My brother and I went to the first day, first showing. We loved the film but were a bit confused by the complex plot, and went back for a second showing and everything made more sense. Seeing it in the theater was a treat. It’s the film that turned me from a casual Bond fan into a super fan. That summer I also saw the film in Maine, Scotland, and Greece — it was a Daylights world tour of sorts.

Pfeiffer: I saw the film at advance critics’ screening in New York City. I was extremely happy with the end result and relieved that a more serious approach to the Bond character had been taken. The overall reaction was very positive. I think everyone realized that the series was in danger of running out of steam and becoming too predictable. Daylights put Bond back into more realistic situations that reflected the changing tastes of modern action movie audiences. It must be said, however, that the movie went against Cubby Broccoli’s philosophy of embroiling Bond in contemporary political situations. When you look at the movie today, it’s a bit cringe-inducing to realize that the Afghan “freedom fighters” who Bond sides with against the Soviets would eventually morph into the Taliban and other terrorist groups that adamantly opposed the West.

Scivally: I first saw The Living Daylights, if memory serves, at a pre-release BAFTA screening in Los Angeles. The pre-credits sequence, I felt, was adequate, but not up to the standard set by the amazing stunts in the pre-credits of The Spy Who Loved Me or Moonraker (back when stuntmen actually risked their lives to create those amazing scenes). The Bratislava sequence, I thought, had a more authentically Fleming feel than perhaps any other 007 film... and by the time the film was over, I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. Books and movies are different animals, and changes are often made to book characters to make them more palatable for a film audience. Like the Bond of the books, Dalton’s 007 is relatively humorless, and the film is, in some ways, a less entertaining Bond film because of it. While, at the time, I did appreciate that Dalton was pushing Bond in a more serious direction, with the passage of time — and repeated viewings — I see that more as a liability than a plus.

Coate: Can you compare and contrast Timothy Dalton’s inaugural performance as Agent 007 with that of the other actors who have portrayed the character?

Christie: Dalton was famously an admirer of Ian Fleming’s fiction, and he is known to have studied the original Bond novels and short fiction closely when preparing to take on the part. Thus Dalton’s Bond was much more of a reluctant hero in comparison to Roger Moore’s incarnation, and there was an undeniable influence of the Fleming Bond in the way that the veteran agent was not always comfortable with carrying out his orders. Though he hits the ground running, thanks in no small part to a pre-credits sequence that hurls him straight into the thick of the action, it is interesting to see how Dalton’s take on the character quickly establishes itself as no-nonsense, slightly jaded, and considerably more contemplative than many of his predecessors. Whereas Sean Connery’s Bond appeared as more or less a fully-formed character from the earliest scenes of Dr. No, and George Lazenby faced the challenge of establishing himself as a successor while putting his own stamp on 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Moore had a much more stately introduction to the Bond role in Live and Let Die, easing himself into the character rather more gradually. But Dalton appeared determined to waste no time in establishing his troubled, world-weary take on Bond and — though he often seemed less than comfortable with the film’s sparing moments of light-heartedness and occasional punning witticisms — he performs with great confidence and lends this brooding, discontented figure a laudable depth of character throughout.

Cork: Dalton is a great actor. I’ve met him very briefly on a couple of occasions and he fills up the room with his charm. He was in a very tough position following Moore, who made the role his own. Like Moore, he had the same director as the previous Bond’s last film. (Guy Hamilton directed Connery in Diamonds Are Forever, then Moore’s first Bond, just as John Glen directed Moore’s last Bond film then Dalton.) I’m not sure this was the best circumstance for either actor because in both cases I think the director was quite naturally making a comparison. Also, Dalton had absolutely no prep time, no ability to rehearse and live in the part. Considering this, he gives an amazing performance. It just doesn’t quite feel like Bond to me. He laughs too easily and is too quick to play the line rather than play against the line. Connery, for example, would take an angry line and give it a very light touch. Note how Connery never breaks a sweat in the dinner with Dr. No, never talks through gritted teeth. Dalton to me runs a little too hot and cold, but rarely finds that perfectly cool center. And the thing is, meet him in person, he’s got that in spades. One of the finest scenes in any Bond film is when Dalton’s Bond goes to murder General Puskin. That’s where you can see Dalton’s amazing skill. He’s working with another actor (the brilliant John Rhys-Davies) and the tone is just perfect. There isn’t a flaw in that scene. But then Bond’s soon lumbering through the rooftop chase which was originally scripted as a comic action set-piece, and there was no way Dalton could hold that perfect tone in a script that didn’t embrace it.

Helfenstein: Dalton had the shortest preparation time of any of the Bond actors between when he was signed and when he started filming. But he was a fan of the novels and wanted to return the character to Fleming’s literary roots. Looks wise, Dalton was perfect. Rolling Stone magazine said he looked like he was genetically engineered for the role. He conveyed anger perfectly, did a great job with the love scenes and stunts, and his voice was like steel wrapped in silk. His theatrical-influenced delivery could have been toned down a bit in some scenes (“To drop a BOMB!”). Unfortunately his humor fell a bit flat, though I doubt even Roger Moore could have made a line like “Salt corrosion” uproariously hilarious. Dalton had been on Eon’s radar for a long time and his fantastic debut proved that those instincts were right.

Pfeiffer: I was always very admiring of Roger Moore’s interpretation of Bond, which was incomparable. But even he knew the producers had to bring some new energy and variations to the character. Dalton was the antithesis of Moore’s characterization of 007. He wasn’t comfortable tossing out bon mots and in some cases the insistence that he do so looked rather strained. Instead, he played the part as a deadly, sober and serious character and the result brought plenty of new energy to the franchise. Dalton reverted the character back to the earliest days of the films in which Sean Connery played the part essentially in a serious manner, with a few quips tossed out periodically. That’s the style in which George Lazenby portrayed Bond in his one and only outing as 007. Roger Moore realized he could not emulate Connery and successfully brought his own unique interpretation to the role. Since Moore was a very funny man in real life, he brought those attributes to his performances as Bond and it worked well. However, just as Moore couldn’t imitate Connery, Dalton wisely sought not to imitate Moore. He created the role anew by bringing in his own, more serious interpretation of the role.

Scivally: The great tragedy to me is that Dalton did not get a third chance to play 007. If one looks at Connery’s films, he seems a bit insecure, rushing his dialogue in Dr. No, and is getting the hang of the role with From Russia With Love, but it’s not really until Goldfinger — his third film — that he truly owns the role, bringing a swaggering confidence to every minute of his screen time. Similarly, after a couple of films where Roger Moore was rather awkwardly trying to fit his 007 into a Sean Connery mold, he was finally allowed to be more of himself with his third outing, The Spy Who Loved Me, creating a lighter Bond persona that kept the series alive into the 1980s. Especially given that the series was more or less re-booted with GoldenEye — a film that had a much larger budget than Licence to Kill, and benefited from a new director and fresh writers — it would have been interesting to see how a third Timothy Dalton film would have turned out. I like to think that under the guidance of a director like Martin Campbell, his rough edges would have been smoothed and he would have delivered one of the best Bond performances.

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Coate: In what way was Joe Don Baker’s Brad Whitaker (or Jeroen Krabbe’s General Koskov) an effective or memorable villain?

Christie: There was a degree of novelty in the way that The Living Daylights established dual antagonists in the form of unstable arms dealer Whitaker and the scheming, underhand Russian defector Koskov. It is rather interesting to contrast Koskov with Steven Berkoff’s General Orlov in Octopussy. Whereas Orlov had been the very acme of hardline Soviet zealotry, obsessed with gaining an upper hand in the Cold War at any cost, Koskov proved to be a refreshing change — his motivation was monetary greed, pure and simple. By the late 1980s, the temperature of the Cold War had changed a great deal as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, and Koskov was a product of this newly-emerging world; content to play both superpowers against each other for his own personal gain, he was charismatic and callous in equal measure. While seeming the epitome of charm on the surface, his elaborate plotting puts his girlfriend at direct risk of lethal harm and almost leads to the execution of his KGB superior, John Rhys-Davies’s Leonid Pushkin. Thus in his calculating treachery, Koskov was far removed from the grandiose, ranting supervillains of years past, and his urbane duplicity was surprisingly well balanced by the pugnacious Whitaker. Obsessed with military history and glorifying warfare while singularly lacking any real experience of armed combat, Whitaker could have seemed like a buffoonish fantasist in lesser hands. But Joe Don Baker brings a low-key bloodlust to this deluded sociopath, laying bare his twisted view of the world and the wanton savagery which bubbles under his veneer of forced geniality.

Cork: I never felt a threat from Whitaker or Koskov. Their plot was a twist on the Iran-Contra affair (illegal arms sales profits used to finance a secret operation), but it is more complex than Rube Goldberg’s self-buttering toaster. But here’s the thing, I love both actors. Baker is always fun to watch. I keep trying to get my son to re-watch Walking Tall with me.

Joe Don Baker story: When he was leaving Morocco, a female crew member (who shall remain unnamed) took him to the airport. This was back when you could walk someone to the gate. This is a liberal Islamic country, but it is an Islamic country. Joe Don Baker turned to her just before he got on the plane and said, I got you a present, and he hands her a brown paper bag. She thanks him and walks away. Then she looks in the bag. It’s filled with porn magazines and maybe a couple of other things that are not quite legal in Morocco! She quickly threw away the bag. But when you see how bigger than life Joe Don Baker can be on screen, well, he’s lived a life that is pretty big, too.

Jeroen Krabbe is a very different character entirely. He does a great job playing someone who does not seem villainous at all, then has a great turn at the end where that darkness comes out. He’s, of course, a very talented visual artist and a lovely man. I really enjoy his performance. I do wish that both characters had been given the chance to have a villainous moment that gave them the chance to really turn on what makes them so watchable. That was something missing in the script for me.

Helfenstein: In some ways Whitaker and Koskov are the Laurel and Hardy of Bond villains. Neither are terribly menacing. While he’s a scoundrel, Jeroen Krabbe’s Koskov is almost too likeable and charming to be a Bond villain. Joe Don Baker’s Whitaker was a bit too much like a cartoon. Playing with toy soldiers and ripping the claws off of lobsters isn’t threatening enough to make any impact. But Baker was a favorite of Barbara Broccoli’s, and so he was brought back as Wade for the Brosnan era.

Pfeiffer: One of the negative aspects of Daylights is that it lacks a good, strong central villain. Brad Whitaker is an uninspired, smaller-than-life character with none of the grandiose schemes we associate with the more memorable Bond baddies. He’s more like a villain from a “B” spy movie from the 1960s and Joe Don Baker is miscast in the role. Similarly, the character of General Koskov is also a bit of a dud. Not helping matters is that Jerome Krabbe sometimes goes “over-the-top” in his performance. The weak villains reflect perhaps the most unsatisfying aspect of the movie.

Scivally: Who’s the villain of this movie again? Is it Georgi Koskov, or Brad Whitaker? Whittaker doesn’t even show up until a third of the way in, but it’s he who has the final show-down with 007; by that point, Koskov has become a comic character sent away by Pushkin with a quip and a nod and a couple of manhandling bodyguards. Then there’s Necros, the Ivan Drago-like henchman portrayed by Andreas Wisniewski. Wisniewski was formerly a ballet dancer, and it shows; he moves with panther-like grace, and proves to be a lethal killer. It’s a pity that the best hand-to-hand fight scene in the film involves him with an agent other than 007, at the Blayden Safe House; when he and Bond finally square off at the climax, what we get is a terrific stunt scene, but one that lacks the punch, so to speak, of the Blayden fight.

Coate: In what way was Maryam d’Abo’s Kara Milovy an effective or memorable Bond Girl?

Christie: What made Maryam d’Abo stand out as Kara Milovy is her relatability. She is a sympathetic and likeable character who has been unwittingly drawn into a clandestine world of spies and double-dealing simply because she happened to fall in love with the wrong individual. Kara is a fish out of water in many respects, and just as it is a pleasure to witness her wide-eyed enthusiasm as she emerges into the West after having spent her life behind the Iron Curtain in the oppressively authoritarian Eastern Bloc, similarly we feel for her as she slowly begins to realize the full extent of her former lover Koskov’s betrayal. As a classical musician by profession, she lacks the highly-specialized skillset required to endure for long in the shadowy world of espionage, and yet time and again she proves herself to be highly intelligent, resourceful, and above all independent. For all these reasons, it is easy to warm to Kara, and d’Abo brings a guileless appeal to the character while also emphasizing her autonomy, practicality and individuality — qualities which not only aid in her survival, but also make her ideally matched to Dalton’s more thoughtful, meditative take on Bond.

Cork: Having written a book with Maryam, I’m completely biased. I thought she gave a fantastic performance in the film when I first saw it. I don’t mind the idea of ”the woman is Bond’s equal” but I strongly prefer that the woman be a complement to 007 with her own competing interests and goals, not a mirror. Kara is that. She’s talented, smart, and where Bond has to be emotionally unattached, her weakness is her desire to be in love. I really found myself rooting for her in the film, which is rare in a Bond film. But I cared what happened to her, and I give all the credit for that to Maryam for infusing Kara with humanity.

Helfenstein: Producer Michael G Wilson said they needed “an innocent pawn with a classical face” and Maryam d’Abo fit the bill perfectly. A poor Czech girl living in a crappy apartment is a far cry from the glamorous world of James Bond, and so when she gets whisked into to Bond’s orbit, her wide-eyed innocence helps reinforce the contrast and reminds us of how cool Bond is. Critics made light of the fact that the film features a woman who is more interested in getting a Stradivarius between her legs than she is with Bond, but it was fun to see a Bond girl with a world-class musical skill. Her romance with Bond is quite believable. She doesn’t just throw herself at him — Dalton’s Bond has to work for it, getting her to trust him, extracting information, and finally sealing the deal. Then she betrays him, and then switches sides again. Daylights certainly has a lot of double-crossing!

Pfeiffer: Maryam d’Abo gave a fine performance as Kara Milovy. She was more in line with the contemporary view of women, thus we don’t have a voluptuous actress cast in the role. Kara’s main appeal is her intelligence and her courage. It should be noted that the script also caters to a more contemporary attitude towards sex in the era of the AIDS horror. Bond has an adult, meaningful relationship with one woman, Kara (if you excuse his dalliance with the rich woman in the film’s amusing pre-credits sequence).

Scivally: Maryam d’Abo is a lovely actress, more waifish, perhaps, than the usual “Bond Woman,” and in the beginning of the film seems poised to be — like Barbara Bach’s Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me — an equal to Bond. But of course she’s not a real assassin, but rather a dupe in an elaborate scheme that takes a Venn diagram to figure out (like Octopussy, one of the failings of The Living Daylights is that it is confusingly over-plotted), and in the fight scene in the Afghan jail, all she does is stand there with her hands at her sides, totally useless... as she proves to be for the remainder of the film. In the end, she is the farthest thing possible from an equal to Bond; she’s naive, clueless, and mostly just a pretty decoration. But she does play a pretty mean cello.

Coate: Where do you think The Living Daylights ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Christie: There is no doubt that The Living Daylights is a divisive movie amongst fans. For everyone who admires its attempts to drag Bond into the political realities of the eighties with its complex plot dynamics and moodier tone, there are others who lament its comparative lack of humor and Dalton’s straight-faced determination to play the character as a more somber, introspective intelligence operative who is not immune from self-doubt. Considered in isolation, the film was well-received by many critics at the time on account of its tense, intricate storyline and the obvious effort that had been taken to keep the series relevant in the fast-changing geopolitical climate of the late 1980s. The movie represented a particular point in the franchise where the creative team were determined to energetically steer both the style and content of the Bond films in a striking new direction, and Dalton’s more agile, saturnine approach to the protagonist — which would be more fully developed in 1989’s Licence to Kill — arguably helped to lay the groundwork for Daniel Craig’s uncompromising portrayal of the character in the twenty-first century, in all his unflinching drive and grim determination.

Cork: To me, the script for Daylights is the weakest link. So much is so good, but the whole never quite comes together for me. I can watch it easily, but I never list it among my favorites. It is one where there are whole scenes where I am fine to go wandering around the house, where the story just seems to go nowhere. Great scenes get little moments that kill them for me. Are there really Soviet soldiers who are showering during a battle on their airbase? They couldn’t hear the explosions? The gunfire? So a great battle gets interrupted by a cheap joke, but a joke that doesn’t make sense in the context of the scene. This happens over and over. But there are moments where the film just soars: the extended Aston Martin chase that ends with the cello case sled scene, a moment that in the script I thought would be beyond idiotic, but that I love in the film (and that all goes to John Glen who dreamed it up and got the tone just right). But as an overall film, when ranked the Bonds with my son in 2012, it landed at #17. I feel like it should be higher, but that was my ranking then.

Helfenstein: It’s my second favorite Bond film, though I know I am in the extreme minority ranking it that high. The film has some big deficiencies: an overly complex plot, weak villains, some wooden acting from the lesser players, etc. But Daylights has a tremendous amount of positives going for it: a glorious return to the work of Ian Fleming, an incredible soundtrack (John Barry leaving the series on a high note), a playful and sweet romance, great stunts, an astonishing pre-title sequence, and a commanding, era-defining, note-perfect performance from Timothy Dalton.

Pfeiffer: I would rank Daylights in the middle of the pack. I think it’s more satisfying than The Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker, A View to a Kill, Diamonds are Forever, Quantum of Solace and all of the Pierce Brosnan movies, though I thought Pierce made an excellent Bond. There are some dated aspects to it in terms of the political tone but it boasts some incredible stunt work, especially that fight scene with Bond and the baddie dangling out of a cargo plane. There’s also a fine score by John Barry and a good title theme song. I’m among the few who believe that Licence to Kill, Dalton’s second and final outing as Bond, was far superior to Daylights because the script was written expressly for him and had a very strong villain in Sanchez, played by Robert Davi.

Scivally: Of the two Dalton films, The Living Daylights is my favorite, because it seems more “Bond-ish” to me, with a more globe-trotting feel, a tricked-out Aston Martin, and a Bond who hasn’t “gone rogue.” Not to mention a superb John Barry score. (Sadly, his final one for the Bond series.) I’d put it somewhere in the top half of the bottom 10.

Coate: What is the legacy of The Living Daylights?

Christie: The Living Daylights brought the Bond franchise bang up to date at an interesting period in its history. Arguably the apex of John Glen and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s attempts to bring Bond back into the realms of dramatic credibility, the series felt as though it had re-entered the territory of the spy thriller with a vengeance. The movie marked an occasion where the Bond cinematic cycle was re-evaluated and rejuvenated — a phenomenon which would occur again, in different ways, with GoldenEye and Casino Royale some years later. With the Cold War influences which had shaped earlier entries in the series now starting to wane and an uncertain global political environment beginning to emerge, Eon Productions knew that the Bond movies had to change, and The Living Daylights was perhaps the most noteworthy example of the franchise beginning to come to terms with this shift in world affairs. Although Dalton’s short tenure in the role means that the movie is often considered in tandem with its immediate successor, Licence to Kill, there are many who felt that the latter feature’s revenge-themed storyline was to drift too far from the Bond structural formula that had made the series such an enduring success. But with The Living Daylights, we have what might well be considered the ultimate 1980s take on James Bond — political intrigue, erudite characters, changing geopolitical realities, cutting-edge gadgetry, and one of the most sophisticated and engrossing storylines in the series until that point.

Cork: I think this is John Glen’s best directing effort. But the legacy to me was that this is the film where Michael G. Wilson really became the leading force for the cinematic 007. Cubby Broccoli was still deeply involved, but Michael was much more involved in the daily production, the creative choices, the final film, and from those I’ve spoken to, while Cubby always had the last word, his trust in Michael, and Michael’s great energy, even temperament, and respect for Cubby allowed him to be making most of the decisions. Cubby did a brilliant job of positioning both his daughter Barbara and his step-son Michael to continue to lead the Bond franchise. While the complicated plot of the film gets in the way of some of the great acting and action in the movie, this film helped keep Bond relevant and brought him back to reality much more than For Your Eyes Only (which is given much more credit in that regard). One could see Daniel Craig in a remake of this film more so than any other Bond film. This film is also the legacy of a man only a few have ever heard of in relation to this movie: Baron Enrico di Portanova. Bond fans know the name because it is his house in Acapulco that is seen in the next Bond film, Licence to Kill. But this film would not exist without ”Ricky.” He was instrumental in making a film designed to support the Mujahideen’s fight against the Soviets. That film put Cubby and Michael on the track to have Bond get embroiled in the Soviet battle to maintain control of Afghanistan. Considering the sweeping geopolitical changes in the nation in the past three decades, the film seems strangely ironic. Where would Kamran Shah, the Mujahideen leader, be today? Would he have been a moderate who wanted peace with the West, or would he have celebrated 9/11? Would he be supporting ISIS? The idea that high-level Russians would be coming to the West to manipulate entire nations for their benefit seemed outdated not too long after the film came out, but today? I wouldn’t be surprised if The New York Times soon identified another General Koskov-like character as an attendee at a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. It is by far the most overtly political Bond film, and the one that with Octopussy delves most deeply into the Cold War politics of the moment. It’s a film that has a lot going for it, a great watch for a rainy afternoon, and even greater if you start dissecting the politics behind it.

Helfenstein: The Living Daylights is so much more than just a course correction from the Roger Moore era. It is so much more than just the 25th anniversary film. It is so much more than just Timothy Dalton’s debut as Bond. It is a throwback to Bond’s cold war thriller roots. It is John Barry’s final bow. It is pure, classic Bond: he’s fighting the Russians, romancing a blonde, driving a rocket-powered Aston Martin, parachuting in and out of danger, and doing everything with a panache that only 007 can achieve. Its legacy proved that a fourth man could succeed at playing Bond, and make an indelible mark on the series. Underappreciated by the general public, but celebrated by serious fans, it’s everything we love about James Bond.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of The Living Daylights is that its legacy should be stronger. The two Dalton films are often overlooked in critical discussions of the series. In a way, Dalton never really had his chance. The release of Licence to Kill had been botched by UA in the United States and the series then went on a six-year hiatus due to legal disputes with the studio. By the time Bond was ready to come back, it was time to reinvigorate the role again with Pierce Brosnan, who, as most Bond fans know, had originally been slated to play 007 in The Living Daylights. I think Timothy Dalton never quite got the praise he deserves for helping to revitalize the series.

Scivally: At the time of its release, The Living Daylights was viewed — in its way — as a commentary on the AIDS epidemic; much was made of there being only one “Bond girl” in the film, though I never understood how everyone could overlook the obviously sex-starved woman on the boat in the pre-credits; what do they think Bond was doing with her for nearly two hours? It’s also significant for Timothy Dalton’s introduction as 007. Dalton is a fine actor who brought a much-welcomed harder edge to James Bond, but to me his 007 has always been lacking, and what he lacks most is charm. Dalton himself can be quite charming, and has been in other roles, but as James Bond, he seemed more apt to skewer you with a steak knife than with a sharp witty riposte. He is, to me, “the angry Bond,” the one who always seems just one mission away from intensive psychiatric therapy or a very, very long respite at Shrublands. There is a reason the teaser posters for The Living Daylights promised “The Most Dangerous Bond... Ever!” Audiences at the time were not ready for such a grim 007, and reaction to Dalton was unenthusiastic. As a result, it would be almost 20 years before a Dalton-style Bond would be seen again, this time to much acclaim, in Casino Royale.

Coate: Thank you — Tom, John, Charles, Lee and Bruce — for participating and sharing your thoughts about The Living Daylights on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Dr. No” on its 55th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, CBS-Fox Home Video, Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

SPECIAL THANKS

John Hazelton

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label. His website is www.jonburlingame.com.

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and value added material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles as well as Chariots of Fire and The Hustler. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992). He also wrote The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001) and (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Steven Jay Rubin is the author of The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History (Random House, 1981) and The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia (McGraw-Hill, 2002). His other books include The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia (Chicago Review, 2017) and Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010 (McFarland, 2011), and he has written for Cinefantastique and Cinema Retro.

Graham Rye is the author of The James Bond Girls (Boxtree, 1989) and the editor, designer and publisher of 007 Magazine.

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Dr. No, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Dr. No worthy of celebration on its 55th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: In so many ways we can’t possibly count them! How much poorer would our lives have been without James Bond movies for the past 50 years?! It’s really unthinkable when you consider the enormous cultural impact over the years of Ian Fleming, James Bond, Cubby Broccoli & Harry Saltzman, even composer John Barry (whose initial fame stemmed from his association with the 007 franchise).

It’s where it all started. And while the film hasn’t aged as well as some others in that first decade, it did have that amazing sense of style, that impressive story and indelible characters, the larger-than-life spy plot that we had not really encountered before in films. When you think of what director Terence Young and star Sean Connery managed on a fairly limited budget, it’s really remarkable. And of course it launched an entire series — today we’d call it a “franchise” — of movies that influenced a generation in how to think about espionage and East-West relations, and in some ways predicted the dark and dangerous side of global corporate entities that didn’t have people’s best interests at heart, only their own (“counter-intelligence, terrorism, revenge and extortion,” one might say).

John Cork: Dr. No gave us the cinematic James Bond, the James Bond Theme, the gunbarrel opening, the first of the Maurice Binder title sequences, and Ursula Andress walking from the sea in her white bikini. The film also gave audiences Sean Connery as a major star. Something shifted with Dr. No. When Bond basically coerces Miss Taro into having sex with him (twice) and then shoots Professor Dent in the back, audiences saw a different kind of ruthless hero. Bond was not portrayed as a damaged man, like John Wayne in The Searchers or Red River or T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, but a figure to be admired, whose morals are never brought into question. It was startling and felt completely new.

Dr. No is a fantastic film. It may seem a bit less outlandish than later Bonds to some, but the movie has everything: exotic locales, elegance, sex, action, adventure, and one of the great film villains. Yes, a few of the performances are clunky, and the back projection feels like…back projection, but, news alert, in fifty-five years the CGI in the Marvel movies isn’t going to hold up very well, either. There is a thick dose of racism that informs the character of Quarrel, which thankfully gets horrified laughter and even groans from modern audiences. But mostly, there is the character of Bond who embodies so many masculine ideas. He is dangerous, intelligent, elegant, confident, and sexually attractive to women. This is a difficult combination to beat, but equally a difficult combination to pull off on film without lapsing into pompousness or self-parody. What Terence Young and Sean Connery delivered was a game-changer.

Lee Pfeiffer: Dr. No’s influence on the action cinema genre is incalculable. Not only did the film introduce an iconic screen hero to international audiences, the movie changed the entire look and feel of action/adventure films. There was plenty of credit to go around beginning with a script that allowed the hero to be witty and not take the developments too seriously. Terence Young was the perfect director. He played up the surrealistic aspects of the film without ever devolving into satire or slapstick. There was also the influence of Peter Hunt, whose fast-style editing of quick cuts proved to be widely influential. Then there were the musical contributions of Monty Norman, who composed the James Bond Theme, and John Barry who orchestrated it so memorably. Most obviously was the casting of Sean Connery. Had an actor not so well-suited to the role of Bond been cast, the series might have been short-lived. The film did well at the box office but was not a blockbuster. It did, however, pave the way for the future Bond movies which were blockbusters. I believe that Dr. No probably made more money on reissues than it did during its initial run. Because Bond movies came out in those days in relatively rapid succession, the momentum established with Dr. No was able to build exponentially and very quickly. With the release of Goldfinger a scant two years later, Bond was already an international phenomenon.

Steven Jay Rubin: Dr. No is worthy because it was the first movie in the series and established the ground rules for much of the films that followed. Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli also put together a killer team on both sides of the camera. They gave Sean Connery his first true starring role in a major feature, paving the way for films that achieved enormous success in the international box office. They paired writer Richard Maibaum with director Terence Young, a great combination. They brought in production designer Ken Adam, editor Peter Hunt, stuntman Bob Simmons, cameraman Ted Moore, and many other artists who brought their A game to a little film budgeted just north of $1 million. And they delivered a wonderful adventure film that is truly underrated in the 007 canon.

Graham Rye: It’s not only the James Bond film that started the record-breaking James Bond film series but also the spy craze in international cinema. It was a unique groundbreaking picture for its time and set so much more in motion it should be celebrated every 10 years forever!

Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing Dr. No for the first time?

Burlingame: Sorry to say that I was only 9 when it was released in 1962 and I didn’t see it for several years. I had to catch up with the first five after I saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and did so with various double-bill reissues, and was hooked forever after. And having already experienced the John Barry scores for the second through sixth films, I was a little startled by the musical hodgepodge that greeted me with the Dr. No score (the Barry-arranged Bond theme, the odd mix of Monty Norman songs and score, etc.). And then the differences between the score and the soundtrack album took years to unravel and understand.

Cork: I have no memory of the first time I saw Dr. No. It was the summer of 1965 on a double-bill with From Russia with Love. My mother says that we saw both films, but I was not quite four, and all I remember is one scene in From Russia with Love. I later saw the film on ABC when it premiered. I loved it, but by that time I was already obsessed with James Bond. The first time I saw it on the big screen as an adult was in the fall of 1980 at the Nuart in Los Angeles again on a double bill with From Russia with Love. I took the bus to the theater across town from the USC campus and then walked for miles to get back in the middle of the night. It was a great night at the movies, and one that really re-ignited my love of James Bond films.

Pfeiffer: The first Bond movie I saw was From Russia with Love on its U.S. release in 1964. I had actually wanted to see the second feature: Vincent Price in Twice Told Tales at the Loew’s Jersey City movie palace. I didn’t want to stay for the Bond film because, based on the title — and being an eight-year-old boy — I thought it would be a sappy love story about people in the Soviet Union. My father convinced me to stay and I’m glad he did because the Bond film blew me away. I had never seen an action movie like it. Later that evening, my older brother Ray informed me that there had been a previous Bond film, Dr. No, that he had seen. I became obsessed with seeing it, but of course in those days there was no home video. In 1965, they re-issued Dr. No with From Russia with Love as the first Bond double feature. It did phenomenal business and allowed those of us who hadn’t seen Dr. No to finally catch up with it. I loved the movie but remember being a bit puzzled. By this point I had seen Desmond Llewelyn twice in the role of “Q” and I couldn’t figure out why they had another actor, Peter Burton, play him in Dr. No. I was also a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a pre-credits sequence and no deadly gadgets. But I was greatly impressed by the film and especially Joseph Wiseman as Dr. No.

Rubin: I did not see Dr. No first run. The first two Bond films were released to Los Angeles theaters in 1963 [and 1964, respectively] to little fanfare. Like most of us, I caught the film when it was re-released on a celebrated double feature with From Russia with Love after the release of Goldfinger. I loved Dr. No. Connery was terrific, the women were gorgeous, Joseph Wiseman was a cool villain, and the film was well directed by Terence Young. With From Russia with Love, it was the probably the best four hours I’ve ever spent in a movie theater.

Rye: Its impact on me is clear to anyone who has followed the publication of 007 Magazine for the last three decades. When, as an 11-year-old I was taken to see Dr. No by my father at the Odeon Southall I could not in my wildest dreams at that age have imagined what I was going to see up there on that big screen in the dark with the wonderful aroma of every kind of tobacco smoke and hotdogs filling the auditorium. But as soon as it began I felt apprehensive; the unnerving electronic sounds that opened the picture, the white dot that paced across the screen, soon opening out into a view looking down a gun barrel, not through a camera iris as many people mistakenly thought (my Dad served in the Royal Navy during WWII and had firearms experience, so he was able to immediately explain to me in the cinema what it was), and a man in a hat (they wore them in those days) appears walking along as the gun barrel follows him until he quickly turns and surprisingly fires directly at me as a film of blood runs down the screen and a blast of brass stabs out the opening theme music before the blood has had a chance to reach the bottom of the screen, and the gun barrel wavers and moves down to change into a series of colored dots here, there and everywhere.

My eyes are assaulted by the shimmering colors until the first name appears on the screen “Ian Fleming’s” (who?) and the title Dr. No jumps all over the place making me feel as though I’m being subjected to the eye test from hell, then that twanging guitar of Vic Flick’s kicks in as a strip of colored squares flash the three numbers down the screen that are going to haunt me to the grave (but I don’t know it yet!) and eventually partner on screen with the words starring SEAN CONNERY,” that will have an even more spectral effect on him, but with the great side-effect of iconic fame and fabulous fortune. Colored dots, dots dots dots and more dots — I’ve often wondered what a color-blind person would have seen — until other names appear, none of whom mean anything to an 11-year-old schoolboy, but will later; some of whom I’ll interview and others who will even become friends. Wow! — bongos and dancing female and male red silhouettes overlap each other and replace the tub thumping brass as the Technicolored screen continues to dazzle and hypnotize me. Main title designed by MAURICE BINDER — remember that name Graham! Silhouettes of three blind men, blind beggars, three blind mice in the road, take over as they shuffle along to a calypso beat all the while, Produced by HARRY SALTZMAN & ALBERT R. BROCCOLI, Directed by TERENCE YOUNG — and dissolve into live action film of the three black men walking along a street, a street I later learn is in Kingston, Jamaica — but still with that light-hearted calypso tune with dark lyrics to accompany them on their way until they arrive at a sign that reads: “Queens Club PRIVATE MEMBERS ONLY” — and the lead blind beggar touches it as though he can read it by touch, even see it. Cut to four smart suited white men playing cards on a veranda, one of whom, Strangways, seemingly a nice chap, leaves the game to speak with his UK office on the telephone, while another man at the table orders more drinks, treating the black waiter he’s rung for in an arrogant, almost rude manner — not a nice chap. His look as Strangways walks away from the card game should tell me something. I don’t know how or why, but the arrogant card player knows exactly what is going to happen next. As Strangways passes the three beggars he places a coin in the first man’s begging cup, confirming for me he’s a decent chap. As he opens the door of his green Ford Anglia (my Grandmother would never have anything green colored in the house, she thought it was unlucky; and in this instance she was right!) three heavy coughs almost bark as one as Strangways’ body is hurled forward as though it has been kicked. The “beggars” aren’t blind and have shot the decent chap to death. In an instant Strangways’ body is dumped unceremoniously into a hearse which has sped into the drive, and in which the trinity of killers are chauffeured to their next hit — Strangways’ secretary Mary. Her killing is carried out just as quickly and abruptly, and mercilessly, and is even more shocking because it’s a woman, and it’s a bloody killing. Phew! All this in a breakneck opening few minutes, and I haven’t even met James Bond yet, or “M,” Moneypenny, Sylvia Trench, Quarrel, Felix Leiter, Honey Ryder — and of course, Dr. No. Over the years and after many viewings this film still remains, for me, the exciting and saucy introduction into a world that has brought me, and millions of people around the world, a great deal of pleasure and entertainment. With their instinctive abilities at being able to assemble the best possible talent around during that golden period of the 1960s, producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, with a budget of barely a million dollars, managed to pull a gold-plated rabbit from a hat with Dr. No. No one at that time could possibly have dreamt the level of success this film would enjoy or that by 2002 its worldwide box office gross would have exceeded $59 million.

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Coate: In what way was Sean Connery an ideal choice to play James Bond?

Burlingame: I’m sure my colleagues in this group are better equipped than I to answer this question in historical and socio-cultural detail. I can only say that for me, Connery’s toughness, his ruthlessness, his obvious comfort level with fists and firearms, his way with women, all seemed completely in sync with the Bond I had encountered in the Fleming novels — and, as depicted on screen, created an iconic screen persona that resonates decades later.

Cork: Sean Connery understood that Bond was a character who was defined by his confidence, not by his self-doubt or flaws. He was a man who came up from a hard-scrabble life in Edinburgh, Scotland. Despite his physique, he had washed out of the Navy. Focusing on bodybuilding, he took a chance on an audition as a chorus boy for the touring company of South Pacific. Offered a tryout for a major British pro football team, he took valued advice and decided to pursue acting. He remade himself into an actor. Nothing was handed to him on a silver platter. He studied the classics, he watched the pros who had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he learned the craft. He proved to have the perfect combination of the arrogance one obtains from being a self-made man and the swagger of having grown up on streets where fist fights were common. He held within himself the disdain and jealously for the moneyed class whom he felt had taken advantage of the British and Scottish working classes for generations. Meeting Fleming, Connery thought he was a fascinating snob, and he tried to avoid that aspect of Bond’s character. He worked with Terence Young to find a way into the character, and that came through humor. Connery’s Bond saw through the false sense of moral superiority of the British upper classes and mocked them not only with his one-liners, but by completely undermining the very notion of the British sense of “fair play.” His Bond would spy, but taunt a woman for listening at a key hole. Just because Professor Dent is supposed to be part of the “old boy” network with all the right friends at the Queen’s Club, he does not escape Bond’s suspicions. There is a wonderful expression Connery gave to Bond, one that he used on friend and foe alike, a look that said, “I think you are full of shit.” You see it when he looks at Pleydell-Smith upon his arrival in Jamaica and also at Miss Taro, but never with M or, initially, Quarrel (until the drinking starts). That is a very subtle thing for an actor to pull together, to create a character who is so fully formed that his worldview can be captured in those small interactions. It is a great performance, and without it I doubt we’d be watching James Bond films today.

Pfeiffer: There were many actors who were considered for the role of Bond. Some of the legendary stories you’ve read about them are true and others are bogus. However, it is true that Richard Johnson was actually invited to Eon’s offices in London to discuss the role. Some years ago I befriended him when he was a guest on Cinema Retro’s Movie Magic tour of England. One of the events was a screening of The Haunting at the manor house where the movie was filmed. In the course of interviewing Richard about the film, I asked him about his near-miss with Bond. He said he understood why he was offered the role because he was a classically trained actor who had attended RADA. He turned it down because he didn’t actually see the potential in the role. In fact, no one did. I don’t think anyone ever thought it would go beyond a few films and actors often didn’t want to be confined to a specific role. Johnson said he would have played the role all wrong (i.e. far too seriously). He felt that Connery, who was not locked into formal acting techniques, was more responsive to playing the role with a degree of flippancy that Johnson would have been opposed to. I think he said it best when he told us, “I was so right for the role, I would have played it wrong. Sean was so wrong for the role, that he played it right.” That is the most succinct explanation I’ve ever heard.

Rubin: Connery was just what Broccoli and Saltzman needed to flesh out James Bond: they called him a “ballsy Englishman.” Up until that point, for the most part, Brits were gentlemanly, elegant, polished, well-appointed well-dressed men, but they weren’t known for their action skills. Connery changed all that, almost overnight — introducing a whole generation of Commonwealth actors who were good with their fists. With Terence Young’s help, Connery just soaked up the role like a sponge. He wore the clothes well, projected a certain sophistication with ordering wines and caviar, but didn’t overdo it. As screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz once said, when Connery walked into the bar, you knew he was capable of killing someone. He projected raw physical power — something that has also been a hallmark of Daniel Craig.

Rye: The fact that Sean Connery was the antithesis of Ian Fleming’s James Bond made him, for a lot of people in the film industry, the entirely wrong person for the role, and accordingly he took a lot of outright insults on the chin from all and sundry who found the idea of the brawny Scot from Edinburgh being cast as Secret Agent 007 laughable in the extreme. However, what those people failed to see was that he was a highly competent actor, although still honing his craft as a big screen actor, and a sexual charisma that jumped off the screen at audiences who had never seen his like before. When Director Terence Young was interviewed in the early 1990s he said: “If you asked me what were the three ingredients for James Bond, it was Sean Connery, Sean Connery and Sean Connery!” If any other actor had been cast as James Bond in Dr. No we wouldn’t be having this discussion now in 2017 — it really is as basic and simple as that!

Coate: In what way was Joseph Wiseman’s Dr. No an effective or memorable villain?

Burlingame: I loved Wiseman’s performance; it’s a highlight of the film for me. I didn’t know his work prior to this, and I understand that he later disdained the part (why did he take the role? Surely he must have found it fun to play); but he was an ideal Dr. No, from his look to his no-nonsense demeanor. And his performance here helped me to appreciate his later work, notably in the great Jerry Goldsmith-scored TV movies Pursuit and QB VII.

Cork: Wiseman set a very high bar for Bond villains to follow. He’s amazing in the role. Of course, he follows a long line of non-Asian actors who put on “yellow-face” which means on one level we can look at the performance as part of the Western cliché of Asian “inscrutability.” On another level, he plays a half-German / half-Chinese character who has rebuilt himself after a near-death experience, a man who has an almost supernatural control over his emotions. Think of him as an early Iron Man gone very wrong. I love the omniscience of his character, the way he knows everything about Bond and Bond’s actions. I am glad there is so little humanity in his performance. The dinner table scene between Dr. No and Bond ranks as one of my favorite hero and villain encounters. Wiseman was a great actor who understood that film acting was all in the subtleties. It is very hard for an actor to play a character like Dr. No with so little movement, so little expression, yet still convey so much with just a flick of direction in his eyes or a brief pause before a single word. It is a masterful performance.

Pfeiffer: The Bond producers were guilty of the widespread practice that still exists today: casting Caucasian actors in key roles as Asian characters. However, the film demanded an experienced, well-known character actor and there simply weren’t many Asian actors at the time with the kind of name recognition that Joseph Wiseman had. He was an acclaimed actor of stage, television and the big screen and his presence in the title role added another layer of respectability to the production. Wiseman is brilliant in the role. Once you are introduced to him late in the film, he tends to dominate most of what follows. His performance is so commanding that the viewer probably doesn’t realize how limited his time is on screen. More importantly, critics loved the old Flash Gordon-type villain he portrayed and he set the mode for those classic baddies who followed.

Rubin: Joseph Wiseman was a terrific villain. He set the prototype for many future Bond adversaries. Extremely wealthy, he surrounded himself with a virtual army of retainers, thugs, killers, informers, and secretaries. He’s ruthless, heartless, and egocentric. He built an island fortress from scratch. He hatches a nefarious scheme to topple American missiles, and he manages to capture Bond and Honey, allowing him to show off his scheme. I thought he nailed the role.

Rye: Joseph Wiseman brought a quiet deadly almost robotic manner to the role of Dr. No, and beautifully underplayed No’s sense of repressed anger and violence; he’s a man who’s been snubbed by the Superpowers and is intent on taking his revenge.

Coate: In what way was Ursula Andress’ Honey Ryder a memorable Bond Girl?

Burlingame: Just think about that incredible introduction as she emerges from the water for the first time. It’s one of the great moments of ‘60s cinema.

Cork: “A memorable Bond Girl”? Ursula Andress defined the role of women in the James Bond films. Not only did she look beautiful, she gives a great physical performance (and Nikki van der Zyl, who dubbed her lines for the English-language release, gives Honey a perfect voice). Andress is a hypnotically beautiful actress, but more than that, she understood how to act with her eyes. She was cast off of a photo taken by her then husband John Derek, a wet t-shirt photo to be exact. Harry Saltzman saw it and brought it to Cubby, who completely ignored it until, desperate one day he started plowing through pictures trying to find an actress with the right athletic look. When he found the picture, he called Max Arnow of Columbia Pictures. Arnow told Cubby that everyone tried to cast Andress, but she was scared to act in films and had backed out of more than one. Second, he said she’s the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen, that pictures don’t do her justice, but that she has a voice like a Dutch comic! Cubby and Harry, undeterred, sent her the script. It arrived one day at her husband John Derek’s house. Kirk Douglas was visiting and he said they should do an impromptu reading. Here’s what Ursula told me about that: “We were all, you know, there on the floor, laughing and having fun with it, and then Kirk said, Ursula, you have to do it. It’s fun, it’s easy, you have to do it.”

Pfeiffer: We are finally now in an era in which audiences embrace female action heroes. That wasn’t the case when Dr. No was released. The term “Bond Girl” has sometimes been used derisively in the sense that, in some quarters, Bond’s leading ladies are painted as shallow, brainless beauties. In fact, in the overwhelming number of cases that wasn’t true. Ursula Andress (who was dubbed for the role despite being able to speak fluent English) set the high water mark for a Bond heroine. She’s intelligent, courageous and self-reliant. She’s also comfortable with her outlook on sex which would be deemed promiscuous by the standards of the day. We don’t actually see Honey and Bond as lovers during the course of the adventure because for the most part their lives are in danger. However, the last scene in the film clearly implies that they will finally get up close and personal now that the crisis has passed. Andress in her white bikini represents one of the great screen entrances of all time, matched by Connery’s introduction in the film, which was said to have been inspired by Paul Munee’s first appearance in the film Juarez.

Rubin: Ursula Andress made what was arguably the greatest entrance of any actress in the history of movies. Coming out of the water in that tight, dripping, white bikini was just stunning to this teenage American boy. How could she not make an impression? She’s also very believable as an island girl, very knowledgeable about sea shells and marine life, and a great teammate for Connery. Certainly, a nod should also be given to Nikki Van Der Zyl for completely re-voicing Andress.

Rye: One only has to look at Ursula’s face, and her body dressed in that brief white bikini to answer that question. Anyone not being aroused by her appearance in Dr. No must have been dead above and below the belt!

Coate: Where do you think Dr. No ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: It’s a difficult question. It might not be my first choice, considering that the series grew by leaps and bounds as Broccoli, Saltzman, Young, Connery, editor Peter Hunt et al. found their way over the next few movies. I still think Goldfinger is the pinnacle of that 1960s period and I would probably watch all of the other ‘60s films before the first installment. But there is still much to recommend about that first film, not the least of which are the actors we’ve just discussed. So I would say that, of the 24 official Bond films, Dr. No would be in the first half.

Cork: When I ranked them all in 2012 with my son, I ranked it fourth. My son, who was 12 at the time, ranked it seventh. Many modern viewers are much harsher on the film. I love the way it draws you into Dr. No’s exotic, seductive, and very deadly world.

Pfeiffer: I would certainly rank it in the top ten. The film has aged amazingly well, as have all of the early Bonds. Aside from some fashions and vintage cars, the basic scripts could easily be converted into contemporary thrillers. Because it was the first film in the series, some of the trademark characteristics we would come to associate with the franchise were not in place yet. The formula was just being established and therefore was not perfected. So there is an oddball quality to some aspects of the production when compared to the comfortable template the movies that followed would adhere to. That’s also part of the film’s charm. We’re watching the birth of an iconic screen hero.

Rubin: It has a dated element to it, but that adds to its charm. This is, indeed, early Bond. There’s no digital effects, and Bond doesn’t act like a robot with gadgets. He sits down in a Jamaican hotel room and pours himself a drink, then goes to bed, eventually battling a poisonous spider, which he pounds into pulp. There’s a rawness to Connery and rawness to the sexuality between him and Sylvia Trench, Miss Taro and Honey. It’s just refreshing to see the story just play without distractions. The repartee with M, Q and Moneypenny is business like but fun. I personally like the music very much. I would rank it in the top ten Bond films of all time.

Rye: It’s a little rough around the edges in various places and lacks the sophistication of, say, Goldfinger or Thunderball, or the quality screenplay and cast of From Russia with Love, but it’s still a cracking piece of entertainment, and Connery makes it the watchable exciting adventure it still is.

Coate: What is the legacy of Dr. No?

Burlingame: From my music-centric vantage point, my first thought is the introduction of the James Bond Theme as composed by Monty Norman, arranged and conducted by John Barry. It’s easy to forget that that one minute and 45 second piece of music is now among the most significant and impactful pieces of movie music in the 20th century. What Barry created by taking the Norman tune and embellishing it (partly pop, partly jazz, partly orchestral) was a huge breakthrough in scoring action-adventure films, something he expanded upon for the rest of the Bond films in the 1960s.

In a more general sense, the film not only launched one of the biggest, most successful movie franchises in history, it single-handedly defined the spy film genre for many years. It launched several careers on both sides of the camera and look, after 55 years we are still debating and discussing the Cinematic Bond as created by Dr. No. How many other movies can boast such a legacy?

Cork: There are only a handful of movies that change cinema, that re-wire popular culture, that last on for generations. Dr. No is one of those films.

There were very profitable film series prior to James Bond. Tarzan, Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, the Road movies, all the way to Ma and Pa Kettle and the Francis the Talking Mule films. These films were generally made by the “B” units of the studios. Some, like Tarzan, started as high-budget “A” films, then migrated to the “B” units as box office fell. In many ways, Dr. No was a “B” picture for United Artists (although the way UA was set up, there were no “A” and “B” units).

One of the producers (Cubby Broccoli) had long been making the kind of films that looked like they could have mostly been taken from articles in men’s adventure magazines of the era. Broccoli (and his producing partner Irving Allen) made films inexpensively, using embargoed studio profits trapped in Britain under the Eady Levy tax scheme. That Eady Levy money had to be spent on “home-grown” British films made by mostly British crews. This investment elevated the British film industry to remarkable heights. While Broccoli’s modestly-budgeted films like Safari and Odongo did well at the box office in the US as mostly second-billing fare, Eady money was soon financing massively budgeted top-billing films like The Bridge on the River Kwai, Sons and Lovers, The Guns of Navarone, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Lawrence of Arabia. Cubby Broccoli very much wanted to be making larger films in this mold. His first attempt, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, failed, but he saw great potential with Bond. As importantly, United Artists also saw that potential.

Everyone succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. The success of Dr. No led to increasing budgets for the Bond films that followed. Although not thought of in this form at the time, Dr. No launched the idea of the modern studio franchise. These films are now referred to as “tent pole” films. They are all but guaranteed to not only turn a profit, but to create so much profit that they cover the losses from other films at the studios.

Dr. No begins the process of shifting studio resources from big-budget “prestige” films (usually based on major best-selling books, or big-budget musicals adapted from Broadway shows) to big-budget films aimed basically at the imagination of 14-year-old boys. By the mid-1970s every studio considered successful films to be the potential launching point for a series that, like Bond, could draw steady audiences every year or two. Broccoli also urged United Artists to launch the Bond films in as many theaters as possible, advertising nationally, capitalizing on the built-in audience. Very few films buck that formula today.

Dr. No not only gave us the cinematic James Bond, but it gave us much of the film industry we have today. That’s quite a legacy.

Pfeiffer: Dr. No’s legacy is that of an action adventure film that influenced the movie industry in ways that can hardly be imagined by younger audiences. Were it not for the Bond movies, who knows if the action heroes we revere today would even be in existence. Dr. No launched the Bond phenomenon, which in turn launched the spy movie boom of the 1960s. The influence is still felt today. Spy movie crazes come and go and right now they are hot again. The Mission: Impossible films are still very popular today — but how many people realize they wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the classic TV series that would not have existed without the success of the 007 franchise? Prior to Dr. No, espionage films generally showed the realistic, drab side of spying. Bond made it glamorous…and often preposterous, but that was part of the fun. Today most of the big screen spy heroes revel at some point in glamour. There’s almost always scenes involving people dressed to the nines in exotic locations and engaging in exotic and erotic activities. It can all be traced back to Dr. No.

Rubin: Dr. No’s legacy is that it was the birth of Bond — a very good, memorable birth that set the tone for many James Bond adventures to come. It will be remembered for introducing Sean Connery and Ursula Andress to international audiences, and initiating the most successful film series in history.

Rye: The twenty-three films that followed it, some better, but more mostly worse, and some, a lot worse!

Coate: Thank you — Jon, John, Lee, Steven and Graham— for participating and sharing your thoughts about Dr. No on the occasion of its 55th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Die Another Day” on its 15th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, CBS-Fox Home Video, Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

SPECIAL THANKS

Sheldon Hall and John Hazelton

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

The participants (in alphabetical order)…

Neil S. Bulk is a music editor and soundtrack producer. He co-produced Star Trek: The Original Series Soundtrack Collection and has been involved with over 150 other CD soundtrack/original score releases including Titanic, Total Recall, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and a 3-CD collection of music from the 1970s Wonder Woman television show. He recently produced with composer David Arnold, the newly expanded 2-CD release of Die Another Day for La-La Land Records.

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010).

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and value added material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles as well as Chariots of Fire and The Hustler. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Lisa Funnell is the author (with Klaus Dodds) of The Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and editor of For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond (Wallflower, 2015). She is Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Affiliate Faculty, Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma. Her other books include Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star (State University of New York, 2014), (with Man-Fung Yip) American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows (Routledge, 2015) and (with Philippa Gates) Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange (Routledge, 2012).

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Die Another Day, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Die Another Day worthy of celebration on its 15th anniversary?

Neil S. Bulk: Die Another Day was the twentieth Bond film released in forty years and it represents a culmination of the entire series to that point and it marks the end of an era. The Bond films followed a formula established in the 60s and after this film the series was rebooted and hasn’t quite gotten back to that formula yet. Die Another Day diverged from the formula a little (for instance the opening gun barrel, a series mainstay, was tweaked to include a bullet, and the opening credits advanced the narrative) but for the most part it followed a pattern that the series was known for and incredibly successful using. For that reason, Die Another Day is an indispensable part of the Bond canon and it could be why we’re still talking about it fifteen years later.

Robert Caplen: Given current events on the Korean peninsula, it is fitting that we are revisiting Die Another Day now. As farcical as the film’s plot may have seemed fifteen years ago with an Icarus satellite designed to sweep across the DMZ, it offers a tame alternative to the real threat that emanates from Pyongyang today.

Unfortunately, we have no real-life North Korean General Moon, who at least advocated (albeit unsuccessfully) for pragmatism and the prevention of nuclear war. Instead, we face the specter of a North Korean ICBM striking anywhere in the world. For better or worse, Die Another Day is relevant once again, an unlikely beneficiary of the greatest nuclear threat since the end of the Cold War. But even in the absence of a current North Korean threat, Pierce Brosnan’s final mission as 007 deserves renewed focus and attention. As the final film before the Daniel Craig reboot, Die Another Day represented the end of certain stylistic elements that pervaded the films for years. It also served as the first film in what I term the “Revisionist Bond Girl Era.”

John Cork: Die Another Day marked the end of the Pierce Brosnan era, which isn’t necessarily something to celebrate. I enjoyed Brosnan as Bond. The film marked a strange turning point for the series, and it seemed to encapsulate the best and worst of the 1990s Bond. It was a big, brash, and in many ways, incoherent spectacle. At the time, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli thought audiences wanted a movie in the vein of The Spy Who Loved Me. It felt like the mood of 1977 (the year TSWLM and Star Wars were released). The Phantom Menace had been released during the summer before The World Is Not Enough, and Attack of the Clones was scheduled to be released during the summer before Die Another Day. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone had dominated the box office the previous year, and the second Potter film was due to be released during 2002. These films were being made in the UK with many Bond alumni. Over at Sony, there was tremendous heat on Spider-man, also due in 2002. In short, CGI-laden fantasy and spectacle were back. The lesson of their huge success was simple: dream big and make it pretty in post-production. This was clearly the direction that the studio thought was right for Bond.

Unfortunately, this was not the style that came naturally for the creative team working on the film. Like trying to get Eminem to record a country music album, Lee Tamahori, Purvis and Wade, and Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli found themselves making a film that I believe none of them truly knew how to embrace. Cubby Broccoli, Christopher Wood, Tom Mankiewicz (who worked uncredited on Spy), Richard Maibaum, and Lewis Gilbert could dance a beautiful waltz with the absurd. They could grill up a Bond story with extra-cheese and make it taste like caviar.

The weak link in the chain turned out to be Lee Tamahori who made a brilliant film in his native New Zealand about the Maori population, Once Were Warriors (1994). Tamahori is an immensely talented, intelligent, but quirky filmmaker (with, admittedly, some personal issues that came up after Die Another Day). He turned out not to have an ear for the softer edge performances need in a Bond film. In scenes where subtlety was needed, he directed talented actors to go bigger and brasher. Too many lines are yelled. Fun double-entendres fall like bricks onto glass (Jinx’s line about Bond’s “big bang theory” comes to mind). He makes big mistakes. For example, the film opens with Bond surfing on a monster wave. That was done for real. Then, later, a CGI Bond again surfs (or kite-surfs to be exact) on a CGI wave during a CGI icefall into the ocean. CGI Bond didn’t look great, but since the filmmakers had gone to great lengths to show us Bond surfing some of the largest real waves in the world in the same film, it looked horrible. The right director knows one of those two scenes needs to go.

So what is there to celebrate? Those cars sliding across the ice give us an incredibly cool chase scene. John Cleese as Q makes me wish I could have seen him in half-a-dozen more Bond films. The “can you catch it” references to the glorious legacy of the Bond films (and novels) makes the film a fantastic puzzle for 007 buffs. Only Bond could pull off a hovercraft chase through a minefield. We have swordplay, amazing sets, brutal fights, and, occasional flashes of brilliance. And, of course, a great David Arnold score which, on this anniversary, is now being re-released as a deluxe double CD set by La-La Land records with tons of music never before available. That alone is completely worthy of celebration.

Lisa Funnell: Die Another Day marks the 40th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. The film was highly referential of previous Bond films from an homage to the first Bond Girl Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962), to the use of diamonds to create a “sun gun” like in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), to the showcasing of previous spy gadgets like the jet pack in Thunderball (1965) and the crocodile submarine in Octopussy (1983). It offers an interesting reflection on the series before the franchise moves into a different direction narratively, thematically, and stylistically.

Lee Pfeiffer: The film is primarily notable only because it marked Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond film after a very successful seven year run. There’s not too much else to recommend about it. The movie is generally regarded as a misfire among most hardcore Bond enthusiasts, though there is no denying the general public came out in droves for it and it grossed over a half billion dollars.

Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing Die Another Day for the first time?

Bulk: Complete excitement. I’m always excited when a new Bond movie comes out. For Die Another Day, I was excited when they announced the start of filming (on Good Morning America here in the US). I was excited when I saw the first teaser (in front of Attack of the Clones). And, of course, I was excited on opening day when I got to see it. My recollection is that I saw it four times on its initial release.

Caplen: I saw Die Another Day in theaters the day after its US release. I recall being excited to watch another Pierce Brosnan installment and hopeful that some of the gimmicks from The World Is Not Enough (i.e. Renard’s traveling bullet that made him impervious to pain, the annual frequency of Christmas) would be toned down. The title sequence stood out to me as arguably the most graphic (and disturbing) in the franchise. I also recall disappointment in the poor CGI quality, though I quickly forgave producers when the Vanquish went incognito.

Cork: I was in deep at the time. I was in the midst of the publicity tour for the official 40th Anniversary 007 book, James Bond: The Legacy, which I had co-authored with Bruce Scivally. I was doing a minor task for the Special Edition DVD release, writing a trivia track for the film. I had visited the set, been in Eon’s offices during production, talked with key members of the production team. Just before I saw the film for the first time, I had been invited to co-author Bond Girls Are Forever with the wonderful Maryam d’Abo. I was living, eating, drinking Bond pretty much 24/7.

I saw the film for the first time at the premiere at the Royal Albert Hall, which was a glorious affair. There is really nothing like it. The party was held across the street in a massive tent. I spent a lot of time with Guy Hamilton, who only a few recognized. He didn’t much care for the film, but I took him around and introduced him to a lot of the more recent generations of the Bond family, and he so enjoyed meeting them, and they loved meeting him.

At the time, I was oddly disassociated with the movie. I couldn’t rationally judge it. I was having this amazing experience that only existed because this film existed. Yet, 9/11 had happened just over a year earlier. A long, ugly war was coming, and I very honestly wondered how Bond would adapt to this strange conflict which was brewing. Something told me that this big film which was giving me such great experiences was not the right tone for the moment.

Funnell: Honestly, I had mixed feelings about the film then and still do now. There are some elements that I enjoy [see comments above] and others that I find problematic [see comments below]. I remember thinking, where do we go from here?

Pfeiffer: I was invited by the producers to the Royal Premiere in London. It was the first time a movie was ever shown at the Royal Albert Hall. The venue wasn’t equipped to do so and the studio spent a fortune putting in the proper equipment and technical aspects just for this single showing. The release of the film marked the 40th anniversary of the Bond film franchise so there was quite a lot of hoopla that went with the publicity campaign. Queen Elizabeth was in attendance and her arrival was broadcast by closed circuit on the big screen so you could watch her go through the customary greeting with the cast and key crew members. Producer Michael Wilson introduced to her each person in turn. When she entered the auditorium it was to fanfare played by her royal guardsmen. Topping things off was the presence on stage of previous Bond actors Roger Moore, George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton. Only Sean Connery couldn’t be induced to attend. The Albert Hall premiere was spectacular. Only the British can seem to pull off the kind of old world, spectacular movie premieres any more. The film set a precedent in one regard, as other Bond premieres have been held there since. The producer’s party afterward was also surrealistic in its grandeur with props from the ice palace set imported to serve as set designs for the venue and servers carrying around trays of seemingly limitless champagne, a hallmark of every Bond after-party.

Coate: In what way was Toby Stephens’ Gustav Graves (or Will Yun Lee’s Colonel Tan-Sun Moon) a memorable villain?

Bulk: He’s effective because he’s a physical match to Bond, which he tells us is by design. This makes him more of a menace than the usual megalomaniac in a Bond film. Typically Bond villains have a menacing henchman to deal with Bond, but Gustav Graves gets into several fights with Bond, and while Bond defeats him every time (maybe he’s not that effective after all) it’s always a pretty close fight.

Caplen: Gustav Graves is another clever iteration of the Janus-like villain that defined the Pierce Brosnan era. Whereas the theme of treachery is primarily ideological or political in GoldenEye (Alec Travelyan’s Cossack betrayal of MI6), Tomorrow Never Dies (Elliot Carver’s seemingly impartial news conglomerate that, in fact, manipulates the global affairs it covers to Carver’s advantage), and The World Is Not Enough (Elektra King’s betrayal of M to exact revenge for her father’s death), Colonel Moon takes it to the next level by literally altering his identity and transforming into the Anglo Graves. The permeation of this theme is not surprising given the strong influence of writer Bruce Feirstein, who wrote or co-wrote GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World Is Not Enough. In the latter film, Feirstein collaborated with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who both took over the reins for Die Another Day and added their own twist to the Janus theme.

Graves/Moon is the epitome of Janus, torn between two worlds: West against East; “civilized” (fencing) against rogue (arms smuggler); creation (the vast wealth of the Graves Foundation) against destruction (annihilating South Korea). And yet, he is not very memorable, especially when compared to his diamond-deformed henchman Zao.

Cork: It is funny, but Gustav Graves becomes yet another attempt to put Hugo Drax from the novel Moonraker in a film. In the novel, Drax is a badly wounded German soldier in World War II whose command of English allows him to take on a false British identity, become a wealthy industrialist and build a rocket to destroy London. This had been Michael France’s inspiration for the Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye, so a lot of Graves and his plot felt strangely familiar. This was the third film out of the previous four to have its plot turn on a satellite, and the sun-ray was an intentional nod, of course, to Diamonds Are Forever. All this undercuts Graves. Additionally, the fascinating subtext of a character literally changing his race (something Bond does in You Only Live Twice) gets brushed aside. Watching the manic Graves quickly becomes exhausting. Additionally, Richard Branson who somewhat inspired the grinning showmanship of Graves (and who shows up as an extra in the next Bond film) is such a likable fellow that the performance quickly veers into caricature. For this I blame Tamahori, who seemed to be directing with commands of “bigger, faster, louder, wilder!” Toby Stephens is a fine actor, and I feel that with the right director, he could have delivered a menacing, tortured, nuanced performance. I can see Graves with a smooth, understated delivery that only briefly reveals the tension and anger lurking beneath his calculating mask. But that wasn’t the performance that ended up on screen.

Funnell: I have mixed feelings about the villain and particularly his racial transformation. While it provides an unexpected “a-ha” moment, it perpetuates role stratification based on race/ethnicity that is (still) all too common in Hollywood and has been historically employed in the James Bond franchise. Will Yun Lee’s Tan-Sun Moon would have the first Asian arch-villain in a James Bond film since Dr. No who was played by Len Wiseman depicted through the racist convention of yellowface. But once again, the Asian villain is being “modified” in some way and this is deeply troubling.

Pfeiffer: Unfortunately, the film is memorable in mostly the wrong ways. The story starts off promisingly but devolves into confusion and absurdities. Having said that, the first half hour is pretty good — and I must say that Brosnan is in top form. Also, the fencing sequence, which was partially filmed in London’s legendary Reform Club, is one of the best action scenes in any Bond movie. If only the rest of the film held up as well. 

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Coate: In what way was Halle Berry’s Jinx a memorable Bond Girl?

Bulk: Casting Halle Berry in the role of Jinx Johnson (“Jinx Jordan” on the soundtrack album!) was a big deal because she was already an established movie star and then in the middle of production she won an Oscar for Best Actress further adding to her cachet. The Bond series never had an actress of her caliber in the female leading role.

As a character, she was meant to be the female equivalent of Bond, something that the media always plays up as a big deal, but has been happening pretty regularly in the series since 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. I found Michelle Yeoh’s character of Wai-Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies more successful and interesting than Jinx, who doesn’t get to do much in this movie. Bond winds up having to save her quite a few times, so I’m not sure how effective the character is. Her memorable moments are based more on her physical attributes than for anything her character has to do in the movie.

Caplen: Die Another Day celebrated forty years of James Bond films, and the movie incorporates many tributes to Bond’s earlier missions. The character of Jinx is no exception. She is, in essence, an amalgam of previous Bond Girls over the years.

The obvious correlation is to Honey Ryder (Dr. No). After all, Jinx is introduced to audiences in the same way as her 1962 counterpart: Bond (this time using binoculars) accidentally discovers Jinx emerging from the ocean in an Ursula Andress-styled bikini replete with a knife affixed to her waist.

Jinx, however, is not hunting for seashells. Instead, like Dr. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker), Jinx is employed by an American intelligence agency (Jinx with the NSA) and is on her own mission to extract information from Zao. She and Bond cross paths as they pursue the same target (Moonraker). After spending the night with Bond, Jinx borrows from Teresa di Vicenzo’s playbook and leaves him sleeping alone (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).

And that is when things go south for Jinx. Like Honey Ryder, Jinx repeatedly finds herself in similar predicaments that require Bond to rescue her, first from a laser that is about to slice off her head (Goldfinger) and then from drowning as the structures around her collapse (Dr. No, The Spy Who Loved Me). Fortunately, Jinx can pilot a plane (like Pussy Galore and Dr. Holly Godhead), but she is forced to survive her own “cat fight” against Miranda Frost (like the gypsy scene in From Russia with Love) before striking a fatal blow to her adversary (like Domino Derval in Thunderball).

Jinx is therefore the perfect Bond Girl to inaugurate the “Revisionist Bond Girl Era.” Her character is built entirely upon the strengths and weaknesses of many of her predecessors. As such, Jinx is memorable for what she represents.

Cork: Jinx is beautiful and fine, although I felt terribly underdeveloped in the film. Purvis and Wade wrote a spin-off script for her that delves much deeper into her character. It didn’t get made, alas.

But I want to talk about Miranda Frost. She steals this movie. Rosamund Pike rises above the snarls, barking and gnashing of teeth that dominates too much of the acting in this film. She imbues her character with just the right elements, and my only knock on her is that I wish she’d been in much, much more of the film. None of that is to diminish Halle Berry’s talents. I just never felt like Jinx had anywhere to go. If they made a Miranda Frost film, I’d be first in line to see it. I mean, she could have survived, right?

Funnell: Jinx Johnson is memorable for her introduction. She is spied by Bond emerging from the sea in a bikini and this scene is an homage to introduction of quintessential Bond Girl Honey Ryder in Dr. No. Die Another Day marks the 40th anniversary of the James Bond series and the action-oriented nature of Johnson highlights the increasing physical empowerment and narrative importance of women in the franchise and especially in the Brosnan era. Although Berry is the first women of color to play the central Bond Girl in a James Bond film, her characterization is not without problems. She is oversexed in ways that white Bond Girls (like Honey Ryder) are not and her depiction arguably taps into cinematic/cultural stereotypes for black women (see the essays by Travis Wagner and Charles Burnetts in For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond [2015]).

Pfeiffer: If memory serves me Halle Berry was the first woman of color to become Bond’s lover since Grace Jones in A View to a Kill in 1985. The lady who broke the glass ceiling in this regard was Gloria Hendry in Live and Let Die in 1973. The producers had to be very happy they cast Berry because before the movie was released, she won the Best Actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball — and it never hurts to have an Oscar winner associated with a Bond movie. Berry certainly fit the bill not only in terms of acting ability but also for the memorable scene in which she comes out of the surf in a bikini, one of several intended homages to previous Bond movies, in this case Ursula Andress in Dr. No. The pity is that the role of Jinx as a street savvy, wise-cracking heroine seemed out of place in a Bond movie. There were plans to give her a series of her own but MGM never carried through with them.

Coate: Where do you think Die Another Day ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Bulk: I tend not to rank the Bond films. I’m not even sure which one is my favorite. I tend to prefer the more grounded Bond films, like Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Licence to Kill and 2006’s Casino Royale. Die Another Day isn’t my favorite, but if one of the local theaters here in L.A. plays it, I’ll probably be the first person to buy a ticket to see it.

Caplen: Die Another Day is darker than its Pierce Brosnan predecessors. While Emilio Largo intimates in Thunderball that he will torture Domino by the strategic, scientific application of heat and cold, we never see him victimize her on film. But the title sequence of Die Another Day allows us to witness, in graphic detail, the extent to which Bond is subjected to these acts, which are accompanied by the venomous stings of scorpions.

I think that Die Another Day is the weakest of the Brosnan films. Compared to other actors’ finales as Bond, Die Another Day does not outshine Diamonds Are Forever, Licence to Kill, or even A View to a Kill. While Die Another Day may present greater excitement and pace than A View to a Kill, I am of the view that the strength of Casino Royale has impacted Die Another Day to a greater degree than The Living Daylights has affected A View to a Kill. While some may affirmatively desire to forget A View to a Kill, Die Another Day is easily susceptible to being simply forgotten.

Cork: Twenty-third out of twenty-six (including the ’67 Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again).

Funnell: It is not in my top 10. It is not the worst Bond film but certainly not the best.

Pfeiffer: I’d lump Die Another Day above only The Man with the Golden Gun. The special effects were disappointing and the film became more absurd as it went along. It was clogged with too many villains and a plot line that meandered. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I suspect no one was very satisfied with the end result. I always thought it was a pity that Brosnan’s reign as Bond had to end on a down note.

Coate: What is the legacy of Die Another Day?

Bulk: The current Bond films are a direct result of Die Another Day. The series tends to reset itself after getting a little outlandish. You Only Live Twice, which involves rockets being stolen in space to escalate World War III, was followed by the down to Earth On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Moonraker, a film that literally sends Bond into outer space, was followed by the more grounded spy thriller, For Your Eyes Only. And Die Another Day, which involves the villain using a space-based weapon ultimately controlled by a robot suit, was followed up with Casino Royale, a more realistic take on Bond and that’s the path the series has been on ever since, although SPECTRE was a little out there. Maybe the next one will take a back to basics approach. I can’t wait to find out!

Caplen: Die Another Day seemed to conclude the Pierce Brosnan era with a question mark, rather than an exclamation point. After completing his final mission, Brosnan quipped that the franchise was “on [its] last legs, and it was not until 2006 that Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale reached theaters. Die Another Day ultimately marked a significant turning point for the franchise, which has taken a more serious tone and accentuates Bond’s relationships (particularly with Dame Judi Dench’s M). It is likely that such an introspective reexamination was not possible with Brosnan, who brought to the role a boyish playfulness that, itself, was a stark departure from Timothy Dalton’s approach.

Cork: The legacy is a completely new direction for 007. Eon walked down that road and found it wasn’t the kind of film they wanted to be making. With the end of the McClory/Sony lawsuits in 2000, Eon could tackle Casino Royale, and they wanted to do that in the right way. That meant jettisoning Brosnan, casting Craig, and rebuilding 007 from the pages of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel. It was an important step. Die Another Day made good money, delivered on spectacle, but didn’t resonate.

What is interesting to me is that although Die Another Day and Casino Royale are so different, many of the seeds of Casino were sewn in Die Another Day. Michael Wilson had long been interested in the funding of conflict in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Africa, and both DAD and Casino begin with scenes dealing with the funding of distant conflicts and illicit arms trade. Brosnan, whom I think is a fine actor, delivers a grouchy, angry performance as Bond that presages the tone written for Craig (who pulls this off brilliantly). When Purvis and Wade worked on the Jinx stand-alone script, they explored her origin story, which helped them look for ways to explore Bond’s origins in Casino Royale. Both films feature Bond’s heart stopping, villains who are well-known, but whose origins are a mystery to British Intelligence. Both films feature major sequences in collapsing buildings that are sinking into water that end with the “drowning” of the lead female character. So there is lots of weird overlap.

Because of all the work I was doing on Bond-related projects at the time, Die Another Day represents a fantastic time in my life. I just wish I liked the movie a bit better.

Funnell: Die Another Day is a turning point for the Bond film franchise. The film contains a notable amount of (obvious) CGI and draws into question if audiences will accept James Bond as a digital hero. James Bond is known for getting out of tricky situations and performing some pretty amazing feats but what happens when the action physically impossible/improbable? Die Another Day pushes Bond to the digital limit (if not over it) and created a turning point in the series as the following films feature the more gritty and physically grounded physical performances of Daniel Craig.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of the film is an important one. As I said previously, I don’t think too many people involved with the movie were enthused with the final cut. That inspired producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to make drastic changes to the franchise, which was in danger of getting stale. Michael had long wanted to shake up the Bond formula by reinventing the films and making them more believable by bringing back the elements of Ian Fleming’s novels. They took a huge gamble on doing so by hiring Daniel Craig and launching the first “real” film version of Casino Royale (assuming one discounts the fun but zany 1967 spoof version). The gamble paid off handsomely and the rest is history. The Bond franchise has been reinvigorated for a new generation. So in that respect, Die Another Day’s legacy is that it paved the way for far superior films.

Coate: Thank you — Neil, Robert, John, Lisa, and Lee — for participating and sharing your thoughts about Die Another Day on the occasion of its 15th anniversary. The James Bond historian roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Tomorrow Never Dies” on its 20th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

The participants for this segment are (in alphabetical order)….

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010).

John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and value added material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles as well as Chariots of Fire and The Hustler. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Lisa Funnell is the author (with Klaus Dodds) of The Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and editor of For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond (Wallflower, 2015). She is Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Affiliate Faculty, Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma. Her other books include Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star (State University of New York, 2014), (with Man-Fung Yip) American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows (Routledge, 2015), and (with Philippa Gates) Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange (Routledge, 2012).

Mark O’Connell is a punditeer, the grandson of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli’s chauffeur, and the author of Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books, 2012). His next book, Watching Skies: Star Wars, Spielberg and Us, will be published in May 2018.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

The interviews were conducted separately and edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Tomorrow Never Dies, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Tomorrow Never Dies worthy of celebration on its 20th anniversary?

Robert Caplen: In our current era of “fake news,” Tomorrow Never Dies seems more relevant than ever. Released in 1997 with the Internet in its infancy, Tomorrow Never Dies addressed issues with which we grapple today: manipulation and dishonesty in journalism, cyberterrorism, and the threat of nuclear war. Tomorrow Never Dies was overshadowed by the success of Titanic, but it is arguably Pierce Brosnan’s second best performance as James Bond (after GoldenEye).

John Cork: Tomorrow Never Dies is my favorite of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films. I think it’s Brosnan’s best performance as Bond. It is his most relaxed, his most confident. He moves with a fluidity in the film that seemed perfect for 007.

The film was a nightmare production on many levels. It is no secret that the director, Roger Spottiswoode, and the producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, did not get along during production. That’s always unfortunate. Having worked closely with Barbara and Michael, I felt for them. On the other hand, a friend started dating Roger during the production, and just before the film opened in the U.S., I joined my friend and Roger for dinner. It was fascinating to hear his experiences in that kind of casual setting. Regardless of why the communication and trust broke down, you could tell it was a very stressful experience for all involved. Pierce Brosnan had his battles on the set, too. He and Terri Hatcher had a well-publicized row when he bit her lip during the shooting of their intimate scene. He likely felt embarrassed by her response, but the result was a very mean-spirited piece on Hatcher on American television portraying her as a diva on the set. For various reasons, the script always seemed to be in flux, which frustrated actors and crew. Yet, I found the resulting film beautifully edited, filled with Bondian touches, some fantastic dialogue thanks to Bruce Feirstein’s scripting, two great songs, and a David Arnold score that gets my blood racing every time.

Lisa Funnell: Released in 1997, Tomorrow Never Dies reflects the fact that the world in which Bond is operating has changed geopolitically. First, the film highlights the porous nature of national borders (particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union) where alliances and allegiances are less clear. This is emphasized in the pre-credit sequence with the description of the weapons being sold at the “terrorist supermarket,” many of which have national descriptors: “Chinese longmark SCUD, a Panther A-658 attack helicopter, American rifles, Chilean mines and German explosives. Fun for the whole family.” Second, the film does the imaginative work of culture by (re)envisioning a new relationship between Britain and China after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. Bond works in concert with a Chinese agent, Wai Lin, and the pair take down a threat to the global order. Through this cooperative relationship, Britain via Bond remains a key player in East Asia even as the actual influence of the UK is waning in the region.

Mark O’Connell: I am struggling to pinpoint a Bond film which has never been more prescient twenty years on than Tomorrow Never Dies. Broadcast rights, fake news, rising tensions in Chinese territories, a Britain being told it is no longer the empirical player it once was, younger trophy wives, spun headlines, shoe-horning news into political ammo, a villain obsessed with ratings, media mogul cohorts of the Prime Minister, a villain obsessed with one-sided rallies, arms deals on Russian soil, loathsome press secretaries, talk of corrupt MPs, dubious bankers, an America still reeling from Vietnam and a bit of racist bigotry on the part of the villain — two decades on Tomorrow Never Dies is less a Bond movie, and more of lean, stylish, mature, yet inadvertent prophecy on a post-Obama, post-fact world. It’s also a markedly solid caper of a Bond film and warrants any celebration for that alone.

Lee Pfeiffer: It was Pierce Brosnan’s second Bond film and was essential in proving that his success in GoldenEye wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan. Every Bond actor seems to get better and more assured in the role the longer he plays it. Brosnan’s performance in TND follows that pattern. The role of Bond fit him like a glove. He had been a popular choice for the part when Roger Moore left the series but, as we all know, Brosnan couldn’t take the role at the last minute because NBC decided to renew his TV series Remington Steele. They thought they could have the actor who plays James Bond appearing every week in their TV series. All they achieved was depriving Brosnan of the role, as Timothy Dalton was signed. Brosnan later admitted, however, that it was a blessing in disguise. By the time Bond did arrive at his doorstep, he was more mature physically and more refined as an actor.

Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing Tomorrow Never Dies for the first time?

Caplen: I enjoyed the film when I watched it the first time. The title sequence initially struck me as odd with suspended female silhouettes randomly floating and looking like insects, but the remaining visuals were fantastic and a prelude to an exciting plot. I really enjoyed Tomorrow Never Dies and thought Pierce Brosnan made James Bond his own.

Cork: I saw the film numerous times before the Los Angeles premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I believe the first time was when MGM held a big pre-release screening in Westwood and Eon Productions gave me ten tickets. I invited a good group of friends. My favorite moment was as I was entering the theater from the lobby, James Coburn was walking in. When he was right beside me, I turned to one of my friends and so Coburn could hear it said, “Derek Flint could always kick James Bond’s ass.” Coburn smiled, nodded and went on to his seat.

Funnell: In the early 2000s, I was writing my MA thesis on the Bond Girl. I was doing a quantitative content analysis of all the James Bond films and exploring various facets of the archetype. This was the first time I saw Tomorrow Never Dies and I was so captivated by the dynamic performance of Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin that I stopped taking notes. I had to re-watch the film in order to complete my analysis (oh darn!). This film and especially the performance of Yeoh had a strong impact on me. It inspired me to research and write my first book Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star. Thus, my first viewing of Tomorrow Never Dies set me down a research path that has helped to shape and define my academic career! So the film occupies a special place in my heart!

O’Connell: I saw it on opening night, having returned earlier from university to continue the family traditions of seeing a new Bond together. From the white dots onwards, this was clearly a Bond movie that wanted to sprint from the starting blocks. It reminds of The Empire Strikes Back where everything and everyone is on the run. What immediately struck was just how frenzied and fast-lane it all was. The opening half hour is a slick unraveling of potentially convoluted events — but in using that initial surveillance room as a narrative crossroads for all the non-Bond elements vying for political and story attention, the film cuts off twenty minutes of exposition and quickly emerges as one of the tightest 007 movies (helmed by Sam Peckinpah’s 70s editor Roger Spottiswoode helps I imagine).

Pfeiffer: I saw the film at a press screening in London then went to the gala premiere that night at the Odeon Theatre in Leicester Square. I had not been as enamored with GoldenEye as most people, though I like it more today. I felt that TND started out as a vast improvement over that film but unfortunately fell apart in the second half of the film when it drops a compelling story line in favor of spectacular action scenes.

Coate: In what way was Jonathan Pryce’s Elliot Carver a memorable/effective villain?

Caplen: Elliot Carver is two decades ahead of his time: a cold, calculating, manipulative, so-called journalist in charge of a large media conglomerate that carefully controls the dissemination of (false and manufactured) information. Today we would call Carver the editor-in-chief of a “fake news” network. Carver’s journalistic proclivities are accompanied by a wild fanaticism grounded in extortion (of individuals, including the American president, and governments). In an era that predated social media, Carver’s diabolical use of media is scary. Information is Carver’s weapon of mass destruction. Yet, he is no Auric Goldfinger or Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Cork: I love Jonathan Pryce as an actor. When I was working with Eon before GoldenEye, there was a discussion about whether it would be appropriate to bring back Desmond Llewelyn as Q. Of course it was. Desmond was a great asset to the first three Brosnan Bond films. But I had suggested Pryce as a potential replacement.

The character of Elliot Carver went through so many iterations, with his motivations ranging from originally wanting to destroy Hong Kong to desiring cable news rights in China. He was part Citizen Kane and part Robert Maxwell and part Rupert Murdoch. His original name, Elliot Harmsway, was a bit too close to Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere, who had died in 1978. Why would anyone care? Well, Esmond Harmsworth was the prior husband of Ian Fleming’s wife Ann, and his son still ran the Daily Mail at the time (it is now controlled by his grandson).

Pryce plays Carver with unbridled, malevolent joy. “There’s no news like bad news” is a good line gloriously delivered. I love the scene where he’s creating headlines. “The Empire Strikes Back” is just so perfect. But Pryce gets the line of dialogue that for me is the single best line of dialogue in the Bond series, one that I quote often, one that other screenwriters have asked me if they could steal. That line is: “The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” That’s a Bruce Feirstein line, and I’m glad I don’t have to pay him a dime every time I use it!

Carver’s weak spot is that his goals seem so out of whack to the lengths he goes to achieve them. At some point the audience is left wondering, wait, this is all for satellite rights in China? He also has the problem of “movie keyboard syndrome” where he is typing with one hand on a keyboard as he wanders around the scene. Don’t watch that closely while trying to swallow a mouthful of milk. He also suffered from a weak death scene. I love Bond’s line, but the moment onscreen does not work well, and on paper, it did.

Funnell: Jonathan Pryce delivers a compelling portrayal of a power hungry villain who delights in his ability to influence the thoughts and actions of the leaders of major world powers. But as a writer myself, what I envy the most about Elliot Carver is his ability to type on his keyboard with one hand without making any typos and without looking down at the keys. This is a truly remarkable skill that would serve him well in the era of smartphones!

O’Connell: Pryce certainly makes the best of a potentially hammy foe. He totally sells the Blofeldian machinations of possibly the first SPECTRE-framed villain since Sir Hugo Drax and 1979’s Moonraker. The importance of nearly being Ernst is all there in how the audience comes to his world. We don’t first see him on the racecourse, opera, chemical plant or auction house. He is stood alone facing banks of screens, monitors, buttons and mayhem. How that production motif by designer Allan Cameron unfurls and frames the villain of this film greatly aids Jonathan Pryce who was familiar with eating up a Broadway and West End stage or two. Conversely, there are some curious beats to Carver — not least his awkward predilection for blatant racism (his karate-chop tirade against Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin always jars). Yet, Pryce’s Carver has arguably one of the best lines of any character in any Bond film — “The distance between sanity and genius is measured only by success”. It is a mantra for the Bond movie juggernaut itself and great testament to writer Bruce Feirstein. Ultimately for this Bond writer the strength of the plotting and the contemporary machinations of Carver’s scheme props up the villain more than perhaps the performance.

Pfeiffer: Despite my criticisms of the film, I always felt Pryce — along with Vincent Schiavelli — proved to be two excellent villains in the style of the old Bond baddies. The villains were getting smaller-than-life and Pryce at least had some grandeur to his persona and his schemes.

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Coate: In what way was Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin a memorable/effective Bond Girl?

Caplen: Wai Lin is a unique complement for James Bond. A Chinese spy trained in the martial arts, Wai Lin is much more skillful, strong, and assertive than Ling, another Chinese agent who made a brief appearance in You Only Live Twice. In effect, Wai Lin is a 1990s equivalent of Anya Amasova or Dr. Holly Goodhead, both of whom are assigned to the same case and must ultimately work together with James Bond to complete the mission.

Wai Lin successfully outmaneuvers Bond on several occasions, notably her gravity defying escape from assault and handcuffing Bond to the outdoor shower, and rejects his romantic overtures. Despite her mental acumen and athletic abilities (unlike the school girls in The Man With The Golden Gun who make one brief appearance, Wai Lin’s martial arts skills are prominently featured and recurring), Wai Lin is ultimately a Bond Girl. As such, Bond, not Wai Lin, is tasked with disposing of the villains and successfully completing the mission (with Wai Lin’s assistance, of course), while Wai Lin must be rescued. Here, Mr. Stamper’s preferred death method for Wai Lin is drowning (reminiscent of Dr. No, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and The Spy Who Loved Me). For all of Wai Lin’s independence and empowering attributes, though, she ultimately owes her life to Bond, who literally breathes new life into her while underwater. For those efforts, Wai Lin finally succumbs to Bond’s physical desires, ensuring that the gender paradigm within James Bond’s universe is progressive-lite.

Cork: Michelle Yeoh is a force of nature. While Eon considered a Jinx spinoff film, my vote would have been for a Wai Lin film. She is a joy to watch.

Funnell: Michelle Yeoh plays the strongest and most physically capable Bond Girl in the series. Not only does Wai Lin outfight and outshine Bond in all of the scenes that they share, but Yeoh performed her own stunts and even brought in her own stunt team from Hong Kong. Moreover, she is presented as being a co-hero to Bond and even a superior agent. This is achieved in two ways. First, she is not overtly sexualized and fetishized on screen even though the Bond Girl is a predetermined sexualized role. While sex and sexuality tend to bolster male heroism (serving as visual signifiers of heteronormative masculinity), these images typically work to diminish the heroic competency of action women (as it renders then passive objects of the male gaze). Lin remains focused on the mission at hand while Bond seems eager for a sexual distraction. Second, she is presented as a superspy with her own stash of Q-like gadgets. It is Bond and not Lin who is set up as the butt of a series of gags in which he accidentally sets off a number of devices. In the end, it is Lin and not Bond who is shown to be the superior spy. This might be one reason why she only appears in half of the film so as to not overshadow the title hero. This is, after all, a James Bond film.

O’Connell: She was the first woman for a while who was given that “she’s Bond’s equal” badge who actually deserved it. Yes, Wai Lin still needs rescuing by Bond more than once, but holding her own is clearly no problem for one of 80s Asian Cinema’s biggest names. Yeoh is more effective because she is allowed to be older, and have a momentum to her character that is already three scenes down the line when we meet her. And she is gifted that great fun moment when she is escaping Carver’s Hamburg printing house by using her inner Emma Peel, a piton wrist shooting thin and a slick leather catsuit. Yeoh always has great screen grace and dignity. It was maybe Tomorrow Never Dies that allowed her to share that with the movie world. And she is one of the few Bond actresses whose career shifted a gear after her time with 007 ended. From Bond actress to Star Trek captain is much deserved (with both productions boasting Wrath of Khan’s Nicholas Meyer on less publicized screenplay input duties).

Pfeiffer: The film was cutting edge in terms of presenting Wai Lin as a female kick-ass action hero long before this was deemed to be popular. For decades, female action heroes were considered to be the kiss of death to movie audiences but the Bond films help break that glass ceiling and pave the way for today’s current crop of action-oriented heroines.

Coate: Where do you think Tomorrow Never Dies ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Caplen: I think Tomorrow Never Dies is Pierce Brosnan’s second strongest James Bond film. That said, I believe it cannot compare to several pre-1997 films or Casino Royale, Skyfall, and SPECTRE.

Cork: For me, it ranks #10, which is pretty high among fans. That’s just above GoldenEye on my list.

Funnell: I might be in the minority here but I really like Tomorrow Never Dies. It is not in my top 5 but certainly ranks in my top 10. This is primarily due to the performance of Michelle Yeoh who is utterly captivating on screen. The depiction of strong and capable women enhance Bond films. This is where the last two Craig era films — Skyfall and SPECTRE — fall short for me.

O’Connell: For this Bond writer it is easily Pierce Brosnan’s best turn as 007 in easily his best 007 movie. GoldenEye shook off the cobwebs of Bond’s enforced six-year sabbatical. But Tomorrow Never Dies is where he really settles into the role and the swagger of it. Despite the strange bitey kissing thing he has going on more than once, he totally commands the screen. The audience is glad when he is there amidst the arms bazaar. The audience is glad he wanders into the heated exchanges with a flash of a Carver newspaper and an “it might be too late for that.” There is a great beat of Bond checking the strength of a glass ash-tray whilst being beaten up in a sound proofed recording studio in Hamburg. It is one of the defining tics of Brosnan’s time in the role. The pace of the movie is worth noting too. Twenty years on, and having caught it again recently, this a sleek, fast Bond movie that rarely drags. Spottiswoode certainly knew how to condense the tropes to keep the film — rather than perhaps the franchise — moving. Despite a purportedly hard shoot, Spottiswoode and his editors on this one deserve better credit for that.

Pfeiffer: Certainly not in the top ranks but there are enough good and impressive elements to it to make it rise above the lesser entries in the series. The film benefits from a good score and two good songs over the opening and closing credits. There are other compensating factors but the film’s second half diminishes noticeably in terms of plot and for me that seriously mitigates the potential that the first half of the movie promises.

Coate: What is the legacy of Tomorrow Never Dies?

Caplen: Tomorrow Never Dies firmly implanted Pierce Brosnan in the role of James Bond. GoldenEye was a hard act to follow, but the 1997 installment offered enough realism to complement the fantasy that rendered Tomorrow Never Dies a tremendous success.

Cork: The film showed that GoldenEye was not a fluke, that Bond was not only back, but beloved. It came out a few months after Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, which in its own way helped introduce a new generation to James Bond. Just as importantly, it came out four months after the launch of the GoldenEye 007 video game, a game that had tremendous influence on the video game market, and primed the pump for more Bond mania.

Also, at the time, a lot of artists were incorporating music from Bond films into their own compositions. The Sneaker Pimps had a huge hit with Six Underground, which sampled music from the Goldfinger score. One of the biggest albums of 1997 was Portishead’s self-titled album, and their sound was a loving homage to John Barry and the spy film sound. And that brings us to David Arnold. Although John Barry had been unofficially announced as the composer a year before the film was released, when negotiations broke down the filmmakers turned to David Arnold. At the time David Arnold was creating a James Bond tribute album with the spectacular Propellerheads version of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Arnold’s score is not only a trip down memory lane for Bond soundtrack lovers, with numerous hat-tips to prior Bond film scores, but it is a brilliant score on its own. While many dismiss the title track by Sheryl Crow, I love it. And Arnold’s swipe at a title song, which was retitled Surrender just lifts up the entire ending. He knocks it out of the park. Nor should we forget Moby’s version of the James Bond Theme. I’m not sure David Arnold much liked it, but it made 007 feel absolutely of the moment. Music is such a vital part of the legacy of James Bond, and Tomorrow Never Dies, for me, defines the entire decade of the 90s for the Bond sound. I listen to that score as often as many of the 60s Bond scores.

Watching Tomorrow Never Dies today, the cynical view of the press is deeply reflected in the attacks on the media by folks like Donald Trump with his cries of “fake news,” (a term he co-opted from the name given to the Russian government’s effort to generate completely fake news to influence elections not only in the U.S., but throughout Europe). Those on the political left see diligent efforts to re-shape our reality by outlets like Fox News and Breitbart and through sub-rosa efforts by Vladimir Putin. Those on the political right believe the press has always had a Liberal tilt, and regularly attack outlets like CNN and MSNBC. If I were teaching a course on the public perception of journalism, I would show Tomorrow Never Dies along with films like All the President’s Men, Spotlight, and The Post. It’s not that the film explores public cynicism toward the press in depth, but it plays into all our greatest concerns that we are being played by media barons with some agenda. I can think of no other film that does this so seamlessly and with such casual bitterness.

Most Bond films exploit our fear of criminal organizations or morally corrupt moguls bent on world domination. Tomorrow Never Dies is the only Bond film to make one of the West’s most cherished freedoms — the press — its target. It is unique in that. And, with the massive (and unfortunate) increase in distrust of the press over the past 20 years, it is also somewhat prescient.

Funnell: Tomorrow Never Dies explores the impact that a media mogul and his various “news” outputs can have on social consciousness and political decision-making. This remains an important issue 20 years later given the rise of bias and punditry in mainstream corporate news media with an emphasis on clicks/clickbait (rather than, say, accuracy and objectivity). It offers a warning of the ways in which those in positions of power can select, distort, and promote stories/narratives that fit their viewpoint of the world and financial objectives.

O’Connell: As the millennium approached, Bond ‘97 heralded a new era for 007 movie making. David Arnold came on board with what is his best Bond score (a close tie with Casino Royale). The film proves that Bond has many templates. But here it is one of utter contemporary steel. Tomorrow Never Dies operates in a coyly-constructed world of grey Europe cities, curbside newsstands, yellowing Tomorrow logos suggesting a history to the brand, dull high street car rental units, neon midnight parties in laser show hangars, and a cacophony of naval personnel and panic — these all lend a current nature to the piece rather than the classical Europe motifs of other Bond movies. The whole film also has a constant silvery palette — almost suggesting a sci-fi mentality without taking Bond into space. The media mogul backdrop was a natural fit for a Bond villain (and the Robert Maxwell “suicide at sea” press release idea from M was delicious at the time). The film also kept a grip of its multiple characters and sub-villains with slick aplomb. It could be argued the side figures of Brosnan’s subsequent Bond outings had less focus and usage than the fun and brilliantly pitched likes of Dr. Kaufman, Admiral Roebuck and Paris Carver here.

There is often one Bond film that is the definitive adventure of its decade. Goldfinger in the Sixties, The Spy Who Loved Me for the Seventies, and A View to a Kill for the Eighties all receive differing fan responses, but physically they are the films where their decades infiltrate everything about them. Tomorrow Never Dies — released at the height of Brit Pop, with musical contributions from Moby, The Propellerheads, Sheryl Crow and KD Lang, the end of British empire with the ‘97 handover of Hong Kong and the first marked use of cell phone technology in a Bond film — is easily the Nineties equivalent. That it is also about clickbait, fake news, media “likes” and ratings before some of those terms were even coined suggests Q gave Bond a crystal ball along with that BMW.

Pfeiffer: I don’t think TND has shown the staying power that most of the other Bond movies have. It isn’t widely discussed nowadays but that shouldn’t diminish the fact that it was a major hit at the time of its release, even though it was directly competing against Titanic. I suppose its major importance was in cementing Pierce Brosnan as the James Bond of that time period — a responsibility he fulfilled very successfully.

Coate: Thank you — Robert, John, Lisa, Mark, and Lee — for participating and sharing your thoughts about Tomorrow Never Dies on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Casino Royale” on its 50th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Eon Productions Limited, Danjaq LLC, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

The participants for this segment are (in alphabetical order)….

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label. His website is www.jonburlingame.com.

John Cork is featured on the Casino Royale Blu-ray Disc audio commentary track and is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and several James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Casino Royale, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): Should Casino Royale be considered a James Bond movie?

Jon Burlingame: Yes, but with an asterisk! Fleming had long ago sold the rights to his first novel, and those rights eventually fell to agent-turned-producer Charles K. Feldman. With the enormous success of the Broccoli-Saltzman “official” 007 films, Feldman went the spoof route and tried to send up the Connery films with an all-star, big-budget, pull-out-all-the-stops movie that would make its own splash at the box-office.

Aside from the 1954 Casino Royale done for CBS television, there had been no film adaptation of the first James Bond adventure and so, yes, we need to consider this as a Bond film. Of sorts.

John Cork: Casino Royale is what happens when you make a James Bond movie without James Bond. In 1967, as any billboard or newspaper ad would tell you, “Sean Connery is James Bond.” Here is this producer, Charles K. Feldman, who has ended up with the rights to one James Bond film. He can’t get Sean Connery. He can’t make the deal he wants with Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and he’s just had a hit with a film that made absolutely no sense, What’s New, Pussycat? He decides that if he can’t get Sean Connery, he’ll make the What’s New Pussycat? of James Bond movies. Woody Allen wrote that what Charlie Feldman was “really trying to do is eliminate the Bond pictures forever.” So, in a lot of ways, one can argue that it isn’t a “James Bond” movie. It certainly misses much of the cinematic trademarks of Bond as well as the iconography. There is no gunbarrel opening, no James Bond Theme, no “James Bond will return…” at the end. And the plot itself does not focus on the character of James Bond. In fact, the film intentionally confounds the very notion of there being any single character named James Bond that the audience can follow. Even more audacious, and often overlooked, this is a film where the villain’s plot to destroy the world accidentally works. Spoiler alert: James Bond dies in the end!

On the other hand, the film has all the right ingredients. There are beautiful women, fantastic sets, more genuine Ian Fleming content from the novel than in You Only Live Twice (which is not actually saying much at all), an amazing score, action and daring-do, and jokes that would later end up in other “real” James Bond films. Watched back-to-back with Moonraker, A View to a Kill, or Die Another Day, Casino Royale ‘67 fairs pretty well.

It is also a film that holds such an amazing place in the history of James Bond that it should not be discounted or ignored.

Lee Pfeiffer: Casino Royale should not be considered to be a “James Bond” movie except in the legal sense. It is ostensibly derived from elements of Ian Fleming’s novel but those elements are few and far between. Nevertheless, the screen rights to the book, which was Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, had an erratic history. Initially, Fleming sold the rights for virtually nothing so that the novel could be adapted to a one-hour live television drama. It was broadcast in 1954 on CBS in America as part of the Climax! Mystery Theater program that presented a different story with a different cast every week. Barry Nelson was cast as Bond and is referred to in one scene as “Card Sense Jimmy Bond.” That makes a Bond purist cringe today but as Nelson once told me, the character was virtually unknown and thus, the absurdity of casting an American with a crew cut didn’t strike anyone as abnormal — nor did the attempt to portray him as a Bogart-like American tough guy. The show was an admirable attempt to follow Fleming’s plot but was hampered by a meager production budget and the fact that it was telecast live meant there were no exterior shots — it all had to be presented on sound stages. The program had no impact and Bond lingered for years until producer Charles K. Feldman obtained the screen rights. By the early 1960s producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed a partnership that gave them the screen rights to every other Fleming Bond novel — and United Artists’ production head David Picker agreed to distribute the films.

Feldman hadn’t seen the potential in Bond until the UA series became a blockbuster. He approached Broccoli and Saltzman with a proposition to film Casino Royale starring Sean Connery — but Broccoli and Saltzman weren’t interested. They had just had to take on Kevin McClory as a third-wheel producer on Thunderball because he controlled the screen rights, which was part of a complex legal settlement between McClory and Fleming that compromised the rights Broccoli and Saltzman thought they had obtained outright. They didn’t want another partner on the next film, which turned out to be You Only Live Twice. Feldman had a valuable property but felt he couldn’t compete with the makers of the Connery Bond films so he went in another direction. Having recently produced the hit, mod comedy What’s New Pussycat?, he turned Casino Royale into a similarly-themed big budget, star-packed madcap spoof. Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress and Woody Allen all reunited from the Pussycat team but this time the results were not as favorable. Feldman had four directors (including the esteemed John Huston) shooting simultaneously in different British studios — though none of them consulted each other. The script was written on the fly and the budget soared out of control. In the midst of it all, Feldman fired Peter Sellers before he could shoot his scenes for the climax of the movie. The filming was utter chaos.

Coate: How do you think Casino Royale should be remembered on its 50th anniversary?

Burlingame: As a product of its time. Today, fifty years later, I am able to enjoy it for what it is. An incomprehensible mess, of course, but with so many amusing asides along the way. For every cringe-worthy moment involving Woody Allen or Peter Sellers, there are compensations: I love Orson Welles as Le Chiffre, who came in and did it as a lark (probably to make enough money to invest in his next film); and Joanna Pettet as the love child of Bond and Mata Hari — well, even if you shake your head at the concept you must admit she is spectacular in the part.

There is, however, one unassailable, brilliant, contribution, and that is Burt Bacharach’s score. I had the pleasure of reviewing Bacharach’s original sketches and orchestrations while I was writing my book five years ago. As terrible as the film is, Bacharach’s score is a work of genius. He knew precisely what to do despite the madness, and even if you only consider The Look of Love (his romantic theme for Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress, with its incredible Hal David lyrics and unforgettable Dusty Springfield vocal), well, that was worth the entire effort. Even Leslie Bricusse, who won the best-song Oscar that year for Talk to the Animals from Doctor Dolittle, later admitted that he thinks The Look of Love (also nominated) should have won because it’s “ten times better” than what he wrote.

Cork: I think Casino Royale should be celebrated. The film is a classic, a monument to everything that was right and everything that was wrong with cinema in the mid-1960s. It is baffling, audacious, a pop-art masterpiece as much as any Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein work, at times brilliantly funny, and yet completely infuriating. It was a huge middle finger to its intended audience. On one hand, it is the Star Wars Holiday Special of James Bond films. On the other, it is a movie whose brilliance could not be seen by many Bond fans until they saw so much of it re-digested through the eyes of Mike Myers and Jay Roach in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. It is a James Bond film produced by a man who had grown to hate James Bond. And he recruits some of the most talented names in cinema to make this film: Woody Allen, Orson Welles, John Huston are some of the greatest filmmakers ever, and they all contributed their creative talents. Woody Allen is brilliant in the film. So is Welles.

And that score! Ah, that Bacharach score is some of the most wonderful music ever written for a film. This American Life used to use needle drops from Casino Royale all the time. The Look of Love still raises goosebumps for me every time I hear it. This is a song that charted three times! The single version by Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 charts in 1968 after they performed it at the Oscars. Isaac Hayes does a fantastically trippy version in 1970, and Diana Krall charts with it on the Adult Contemporary charts in 2001! The original sung by Dusty Springfield, and produced by Phil Ramone, is worshiped by music professionals. The song itself is in the Grammy Hall of Fame. It is one of my favorite scores of all time.

The film is brilliantly shot. Jack Hildyard, who had shot Bridge on the River Kwai for David Lean was the main man behind the camera. He had just come off the similarly insane Modesty Blaise, setting the bar for marrying studio style and Pop Art sensibilities. But Hildyard was supplemented with another cinematographer who had a huge influence on Casino Royale, and that was Nicholas Roeg. So many of the brilliant shots in the film belong to Roeg, including the claustrophobic close-ups and surreal sequences.

The fantastic supporting actors provide amazing moments of comedy. As does Peter Sellers and so many other members of the cast.

It is much better to watch this film as if one were watching a couple of episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Don’t expect it to make sense. Don’t expect to care about any of the characters. Just roll with it. Watch the film for what it is: a celebration and parody of popular culture in the year 1967.

Pfeiffer: The film was often loathed by Bond fans because they felt it represented a waste of a great Fleming novel. However, MGM and Eon Productions obtained all screen rights to the novel — and Feldman’s film version — in the 1990s, leaving them free to make a “real” version of the book. That marked Daniel Craig’s debut as Bond in 2006 and the movie was met with international acclaim. Since then, I’ve noticed that people have taken a more benign view of the spoof version of Casino Royale.

Cinema Retro covered the making of the movie exhaustively way back in issue #6 and in researching the article, I remembered the things I liked most about it. There is a superb score and title theme by Burt Bacharach and some of the best production design work in any film of the period. Much of it is also very funny thanks to the inspired cast and some uncredited jokes by Woody Allen. So for my taste, there is much to love about the movie even if I’m in a distinct minority. My co-publisher Dave Worrall loathes it. It makes for some fun arguments if we’re sitting around a pub.  

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Coate: Can you describe what it was like seeing Casino Royale for the first time? 

Burlingame: Oh, Lord, I was appalled. It must have been on television in the ‘70s, because I certainly didn’t see it in the theaters at the time of its release. Yes, there is an all-star cast that includes David Niven, Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Deborah Kerr and Andress; but with six directors and something like ten screenwriters (three credited, most not), it was like passing a multi-car wreck on the freeway — terrible, but you couldn’t look away. I watched and thought to myself, how can anyone not be embarrassed by this disaster?

Cork: My aunt Lois took me to see Casino Royale at the drive-in in Montgomery, Alabama, in the summer of 1967. I was five years old. It’s likely I fell asleep in the car watching the film. I actually remember seeing the trailer for the film (again with my aunt) at some movie prior to that, and I recall shots from the end of the film in the trailer, but not from seeing it at the drive-in. My main memory of seeing the film that time was thinking, even at the age of five, that Deborah Kerr swinging around on the drain pipes was not nearly as funny as the filmmakers must have thought it would be. That opinion still holds. But the remote control car chase that followed? I loved that and still do! The very next day, my aunt drove us out to a local record store where she bought the soundtrack. When I became a James Bond fan, she let me have it, and I still have it to this day.

Pfeiffer: I saw it at the grand old Stanley Theatre in Jersey City, New Jersey, where I grew up. I was ten years old and went to see it with my parents. I was already a big Bond fan but was too young to realize that this film would seem to preclude a serious version of the story ever being brought to the screen. I remember liking it very much and going to see it several times, a not uncommon experience for a kid in an era where a children’s ticket cost fifty cents. I still have my original vinyl soundtrack that I played quite a bit.

Coate: Where do you think Casino Royale ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: I have wrestled with this for years, especially when writing my book. When the issue arose about whether to include Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again, the two unofficial Bond releases, I quickly came to the conclusion that Bond fans would be curious about both even if they were not considered canon by 007 fans. And when Eon declined to cooperate with my book that made it even easier to include them.

That being said, I have to say I’d rank the ‘67 Casino Royale at the very bottom of all Bond films. If you’re a Fleming fan you can easily do without it. Especially considering the 2006 version with Daniel Craig, which certainly ranks among the greatest Bond films ever.

Cork: In 2012, my son and I watched all the Bond film in order and ranked them. That’s five years ago, but I’m going with them. Everyone can clutch their pearls, but I rank the 1967 Casino Royale at number nine. Here’s why: I enjoy the film. In many ways it is a big stinking mess. But I had a friend who has now passed away, James Burkart Jr. He and I would watch the film together late at night and laugh ourselves silly. He could quote dialogue and I would quote other bits and parts of the film became shorthand for us. “We stand, we bid! We no stand, we no bid!” “My goodness this is strong shampoo.” So I greatly enjoy the film. Even the ending, which for years, I winced at, found a way into my heart.

Terry Southern, who had poked fun at Bond in his script for The Loved One and who was just about to help make Easy Rider a phenomenon, was brought in as one of an innumerable list of writers, and the absurd fight at the end was his doing. He had already written a version of that scene before, a scene where everyone fights for no reason as the world comes to an end. That was the pie fight in Dr. Strangelove, a scene cut out at the last minute. The chaotic ending of Casino Royale is a version of that scene where idiotic comedic violence takes place as the seconds tick down to the end of everything. Watching it again and thinking of Woody Allen as Slim Pickens working to release the bomb, and the fight in the casino as the pie fight in the war room, always makes me smile.

Pfeiffer: It doesn’t rank anywhere in the Bond series. It stands alone in its own universe. It simply can’t be compared to any other movie in the series, although I’d still rather watch it than a couple of the weakest “real” Bonds.

Coate: What is the legacy of Casino Royale?

Burlingame: That’s a difficult question. I’m tempted to use that wildly overused phrase, “it is what it is” — meaning, it’s a one-of-a-kind movie that can’t really be considered a Bond film in the classic sense, yet it is based (however loosely) on the Fleming novel. And it is from the ‘60s, when we were all so immersed in spy movies; this was just one more, although a departure from what we may have expected or even wanted.

I come back to the Burt Bacharach angle: His score is a masterpiece, a remarkable work considering what inspired it. I remember finding the LP in the 1970s and then learning, many years later, that it was considered the apex of audiophile recordings, one of the greatest-sounding albums ever recorded (The New York Times even extolled its sonic merits in a 1991 story). And as much as I love Burt’s Casino Royale theme with its Herb Alpert trumpet against those equally brilliant Richard Williams titles (I find something new every time I watch them!), the Look of Love song is so great that it’s worth everything you have to sit through to hear it.

Cork: Did you ever laugh at the Austin Powers films? They wouldn’t exist without Casino Royale. Did you ever slow dance to The Look of Love? Casino Royale is part of some strange continuum that stretches from Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon through to Walkabout, Annie Hall, Midnight in Paris and the Harry Potter films. Stuart Craig who did such amazing work bringing the Harry Potter universe to life as the production designer on those films worked on Casino Royale. There is probably no film before or since that gathered so much talent in front of and behind the cameras. It is completely absurdist, devoid of a plot, but for me it is a joy to watch.

Pfeiffer: When the film opened in 1967, it grossed quite a bit of money but the soaring production costs compromised any chance of major profits. Feldman had a nervous breakdown from making it and retired from the industry. The film’s prospects were also compromised by the release of You Only Live Twice shortly thereafter. Both films probably ended up cannibalizing each other’s grosses but the Connery movie was much better received for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, Casino has grown in stature. Its greatest legacy is that Mike Myers is a major fan of the movie and I doubt Austin Powers would exist if it wasn’t for Casino Royale. The first Powers movie took so much of its inspiration from the Feldman production. The movie also inspired Woody Allen to take control of his film career. Having witnessed the chaos and waste of money on the Casino production, he became determined to have total say over all of his future movies. So the debacle of the film helped bring us an American comedy genius’s best movies.

Casino Royale is finally getting some much-deserved respect in recent years. I went this summer to see a big screen presentation of it at The Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a John Huston festival and was surprised at how well-attended it was and how receptive the audience was to the gags. Huston himself disowned the movie but it seems there are still plenty of us who are willing to embrace it. If nothing else, everyone agrees that Bacharach score is great.

Coate: Thank you — Jon, John, and Lee — for participating and sharing your thoughts about Casino Royale on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “Octopussy” on its 35th Anniversary.

IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, Danjaq LLC, Famous Artists Productions, MGM Home Entertainment, United Artists Corporation.

SPECIAL THANKS

John Hazelton

- Michael Coate

Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

As with our previous 007 article, The Bits celebrates the occasion with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities. The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

Okay, let’s (alphabetically) meet the participants…

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012; and recently issued in paperback with an updated Skyfall chapter). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label.

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). Based in Washington, DC, he practices antitrust and commercial litigation and has published numerous law review articles in leading academic journals. Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (which was quoted in Sir Roger Moore’s memoir, Bond on Bond) is his first book. He is working on a follow-up book and can be reached via Facebook (www.Facebook.com/bondgirlbook) and Twitter (@bondgirlbook).

James Chapman is a Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (Tauris, 2007). His other books include Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who—A Cultural History (Tauris, 2006), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (Tauris, 2002), and (with Nicholas J. Cull) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (Tauris, 2009). Chapman is also a Council member of the International Association for Media and History and is Editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is now touring festivals.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012); and updated for Kindle which includes a chapter on Skyfall and exclusive interview with Sam Mendes). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies, a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Charles Helfenstein is the author of The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Spies, 2009) and The Making of The Living Daylights (Spies, 2012).

Mark O’Connell is a punditeer (his word) and the grandson of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli’s chauffeur. With a Prelude by Barbara Broccoli and Foreword by Mark Gatiss, his book Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books, 2012) is a gilded, unique account of growing up as a Bond fan. He is working on his second book and can be found online here.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

Steven Jay Rubin is the author of The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History (Random House, 1981) and The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia (McGraw-Hill, 2002). He also wrote Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010 (McFarland, 2011) and has written for Cinefantastique magazine.

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and the forthcoming Dracula FAQ. As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He teaches screenwriting, film production and cinema history and theory at The Illinois Institute of Art–Chicago and Columbia College.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest cueing up the Goldfinger soundtrack album and preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course), and then enjoy this conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is Goldfinger worthy of celebration on its 50th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: I have always agreed with composer John Barry that Goldfinger is the Bond film “where it all came together”: the style, the song, the score. I think From Russia with Love and Goldfinger mark the high points of 60s Bond, with Goldfinger lightening the mood just a bit, finding the right balance between suspense, danger, fascinating characters and humor. Gert Frobe and Honor Blackman played worthy adversaries for Sean Connery’s 007, and John Barry’s bold, brassy score tied it all together. It’s hard to imagine a more entertaining, satisfying 007 adventure.

Robert A. Caplen: The third film in Eon Productions’ franchise, Goldfinger marked a conscious effort by Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to tailor James Bond to American audiences. The first James Bond film to be classified as a box office blockbuster, Goldfinger is noteworthy for redefining cinematic success: it became the fastest-grossing film for its time. It also was groundbreaking for its special effects. Goldfinger became the first film to showcase a laser as part of the plot. And no other image has become as recognizable as Shirley Eaton’s “golden girl,” which offered audiences a new aesthetic for fetishizes sex objects. 

There is no question that Goldfinger is deserving of celebration fifty years after its release. The film is equally entertaining today as it was in 1964, and the commentary it offers of social mores—and the portrayals of women—remains highly relevant. 

James Chapman: While Goldfinger wasn’t the first James Bond movie, it was the one that really marked the breakthrough for Bond as a cultural phenomenon and ensured the longevity of the series. The first two films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, had been big hits in Britain and Europe, but Goldfinger was the first really to score big at the US box office as well. This might be attributed to the film’s predominantly US setting (though a lot of the locations, including the attack on Fort Knox, were shot at Pinewood Studios in England) and the fact that the conspiracy is directed against the United States.

It was also the success of Goldfinger that kick-started the spy craze of the 1960s. There hadn’t been many Bond imitations following the first two movies—the only one I can think of is the spoof Carry On Spying—but after Goldfinger the floodgates opened with the Derek Flint and Matt Helm films and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, I Spy and Mission: Impossible on television, not to mention the revamp of The Avengers (which began in 1961 and had starred a pre-Pussy Galore Honor Blackman) which became more fantasy-oriented with its fourth series. So it was Goldfinger that really got the whole Sixties spy/secret agent cycle under way.

John Cork: Goldfinger is always worth celebrating! It doesn’t matter if it is the 3rd anniversary or the 150th. The film rocks. There are many great villains, but I would argue that there is no greater criminal villain in film than Goldfinger. Henchmen? Would anyone even want to claim that there is a better henchman than Oddjob? Nah. And it is not too much to say that no female character in cinema history had ever confounded more teachers and parents than Pussy Galore. Best car in a movie? The Aston Martin DB5, hands down. It is a brilliant, funny, sexy, clever and satisfying film on every level.

Bill Desowitz: Goldfinger was the game-changer for Bond and the first modern tent-pole. It was an instant blockbuster and influenced pop culture, spawning Bond mania and then spy mania. Everything was grander, more lavish and elevated, from the action to the humor to the greater physicality of Bond to the pacing to the self-reverential attitude of Bond. Plus there was Ken Adam’s fantastical design, the greedy super villain and his deadly henchman, Oddjob; the sexy and powerful Bond girl, Pussy Galore; the stunning John Barry score and Shirley Bassey’s wild title song; and the introduction of the best gadget of them all, the tricked out Aston Martin DB5. The new director, Guy Hamilton, made it more a Bond movie than a spy movie, in which we follow his POV with one obstacle course after another for Bond to get out of. This became the Bond template.

Charles Helfenstein: It is the perfect encapsulation of what makes James Bond so great. The film has everything you can want in a Bond film: a great teaser sequence, iconic imagery with girls painted in gold, an ambitious villain, an indestructible henchman, a tricked out car, an incredible soundtrack, and in the middle of all this is Sean Connery, playing Bond with a casual, bemused cool that personifies the old Etonian ethos of “Effortless Superiority.” 

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Mark O’Connell: Goldfinger is most worthy of a golden celebration. It is the film that changed the Bond series and marked the point when Bond changed mainstream cinema. It is not just Sean Connery who emerges from the shadows at the beginning of the film. The modern blockbuster does too. Goldfinger marks the serendipitous moment when the 1960s finally aligned with Bond to create a cultural fusion that the series is still dominated by to this day (check out the deliberate classicism and nods to the Bond of old in Skyfall). Dr. No and From Russia with Love were still part of the tail-end of the 1950s—with a certain degree of stiff upper Britishness and hemlines. They are part of that small window I call the “Kennedy Sixties” where it looked like America would continue dominating popular culture in the way it did throughout the 1950s. But things were to change. Suddenly Britain, the Beatles, Biba and Bond were to take center stage. Goldfinger is the stylish overture to that where all these creatives suddenly conspired together (accidentally more than anything) to craft a sharp thriller of a 007 blockbuster. And after the male dominated shenanigans of the first two Bond films, Goldfinger marks a possible entry point for the women in the audience. It certainly is the moment when Bond allows the kids of the audience into its world. From Russia with Love and Dr. No are great, but arguably very cerebral cat and mouse thrillers. Goldfinger has great movement—its camerawork, music, direction, editing and story. It inhabits a very visual world (Bond on a laser table, Bond and the car, Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus, the fake duck on the diving cap). These are all great for kids…and global audiences not immediately savvy with the Cold War politics.

Lee Pfeiffer: Goldfinger, more than any other Bond film, influenced the trends in pop culture during the 1960s. The previous two films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, were sizable hits but it was with Goldfinger that the series found the formula that would define the series for decades to come. Director Guy Hamilton emphasized the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the humor moreso than the first two films had done, yet he was careful not to go “over-the-top” into slapstick. (Ironically, Hamilton would be guilty of doing just that on his three later Bond films: Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun.) It was Goldfinger that primarily launched the spy craze of the mid-to-late 1960s and the introduction of the gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5 was largely responsible for this. The vehicle proved to be such a hit that Bond was still driving the car fifty years later in Skyfall. Goldfinger influenced pop culture on an international level and proved that Bond was not a provincial hero but, rather, a character that people in vastly different cultures could relate to. 

Steven Jay Rubin: Goldfinger was the film that catapulted 007 from a first rate action series to a true international film phenomenon. It was so successful that it was the first movie screened in a movie theater 24 hours a day (in New York City) and probably made money faster than any film since Gone with the Wind. Creatively, it was the film that perfectly balanced Sean Connery’s coolness, throwaway humor and pure sexiness with some terrifically dramatic action scenes. Although there are, arguably, better James Bond movies, Goldfinger is still the launching vehicle for the series, a film that never loses its freshness and remains the 007 adventure that is the most pure fun, without getting silly or stupid. It also features the best prop in the series—the truly ultimate driving machine—the Aston Martin DB5 with modifications.

Bruce Scivally: Goldfinger is the Bond film that really set the formula the films would follow over the next five decades: a megalomaniacal villain, exotic locations, beautiful women (usually three, including the villainess, the sacrificial lamb and the one Bond ends up with), and cutting-edge gadgetry. Dr. No didn’t have any gadgets to speak of (unless you include the Geiger counter) and From Russia with Love had only the trick briefcase, but Goldfinger had the tricked-out Aston Martin, which raised the bar considerably. From this film onward, outrageous gadgetry would become an integral part of the Bond films. Goldfinger is also the film where the tone of the film was perfected, with just the right blend of humor, action and suspense; the first two Bond films leaned more towards straight-ahead spy thrillers. And for me, Goldfinger is the film where Sean Connery really came into his own and took ownership of the role, with a relaxed confidence and swagger only hinted at in the first two films.

Coate: When did you first see Goldfinger and what was your reaction?

Burlingame: It was a long time ago, so I’m not certain. I didn’t see it in its initial run; I suspect it was on a double bill with another Bond film at a drive-in in the late 1960s. Everyone was talking about Bond movies and I finally got the chance to catch up with the early films in second-run exhibition.

Caplen: I first watched Goldfinger on VHS at a young age, perhaps too young to appreciate, let alone understand, the film’s innuendos. I believe Goldfinger was the first James Bond film I viewed, and it piqued my interest in the franchise. I could never image then that I would be writing about Goldfinger and James Bond many years later.

Chapman: I saw it on ITV in Britain in the late 1970s. It was on a Sunday evening, I was about eight, I think, and it was a school day the next day, so I was on my best behavior all weekend to be allowed to stay up and watch it. Everyone was talking about it the next day. As kids I think we particularly liked Oddjob and his hat, and Bond’s Aston Martin with his gadgets and ejector seat. A few years later when it was shown again on Christmas Day, I would have noticed the girls too!

Cork: I first saw Goldfinger on ABC on September 17, 1972. At the time, I liked James Bond, but I wasn’t any kind of serious fan. I was only ten years old. While I was loving the film (despite it being cropped, cut and filled with commercials), it was a typical Sunday night. We had dinner and then most of my family went to bed as the movie ran. My uncle (who was fresh out of college) came over with a friend and made fun of the film as I was watching it. Then, just as Bond was handcuffed to the bomb in Fort Knox, the local ABC station went off the air. It was 1972, and this kind of thing happened regularly. I begged my uncle to tell me how the film ended. Very convincingly, he told me that the bomb went off in Fort Knox, and that it killed Oddjob, but turned James Bond into “a pulsating blue superhuman.” I have to tell you that at age ten, it seemed like a really cool ending for the movie!  When the local station came back on, Bond was on the plane flying to meet the president, and my uncle informed me that I was an idiot for believing him. The first time I saw Goldfinger uncut was when HBO played the Bonds in May/June of 1980. In the fall of 1980, I finally saw Goldfinger on the big screen at the Nuart in Los Angeles. The audience was filled with Bond fans, and it was a great experience. Robert Short, the effects man who worked on many great films, had his DB5 parked out front, and the theater put out a display of Bond memorabilia. It couldn’t have been more fun.

Desowitz: I remember it well. It my introduction to Bond in ‘65 and I was about eight and my parents took me to the La Reina Theater in Sherman Oaks in L.A. on Ventura Blvd., and afterward we had ice cream at Wil Wright’s. I remember asking if that was Bond in the scuba suit in the opening scene and when he fought Oddjob, I whispered that he should grab the electrical wire. It was a distinctive moviegoing thrill and set me on my path to becoming a lifelong fan.

Helfenstein: Unfortunately my first viewing of Goldfinger didn’t quite do it justice—I first saw a butchered, pan-and-scan version of it on ABC in the late 70s. Despite those drawbacks, the film greatly impressed me—especially the tuxedo under the wetsuit, the car, Bond’s fight with Oddjob…and the cornucopia of blondes.

O’Connell: I first saw Goldfinger in January 1987. It was on ITV midweek. It was not the first or even the third Bond movie I had seen but already its mark and stature in the Bond canon was known to me. Like a Greatest Hits album its key beats—the car, the song, the artwork, the gold, the music, and the henchman—were familiar way before I saw it for the first time. It is one of the Bond movies whose reputation precedes itself at every turn.

Pfeiffer: I first saw the film at age eight at the Loew’s Theatre in Jersey City, New Jersey. It’s a peculiarity of “Baby Boomer Generation” males that we seem to have such trivia as where we saw a movie and with whom emblazoned in our minds. Nevertheless, my dad, who had taken me to see the previous Bond film, escorted me to this one. I was blown away by it. I don’t think today’s movies ever have that kind of impact on audiences, who are now rather blasé about special effects and action sequences. But seeing that DB5 in action, the audience howling at the use of the gadgets and finally the “innovative” introduction of a laser beam proved to be unforgettable elements in my mind. On a more crass level, when we returned home, my dad was raving about the film to my mom and I remember him saying, “There’s a woman in it named Pussy Galore!” I didn’t understand why they thought this was so amusing because I equated the name with the benign Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke. Nevertheless, we all trotted back to the theater to see the film again the next night because my mom had to see it for herself. I later went again on my own—the first time I had seen a movie unaccompanied. Mr. Bond has provided many such pleasant memories to countless millions of movie fans around the globe.

Rubin: I saw Goldfinger at Christmas 1964 at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It was wonderful. As a junior high school student in Los Angeles, I had read the book before I saw the movie, which was only the second time I had done that (the first was Paul Brickhill’s book that became The Great Escape). Bond was a big event that year—like a Harry Potter or a Star Wars film today.

Scivally: I believe I first saw Goldfinger on television in 1972, when it first aired on ABC. I know it was the first 007 film I saw, and at that young age (I was 11), I was most impressed by the Aston Martin. I continued watching the Bond films whenever they came on television (there was no home video in those days, at least not in rural north Alabama), and when puberty kicked in I began to appreciate them for more than just the spy thrills and gadgets. Coming of age in a very remote, agrarian region, the sophisticated, world-traveling, authority-defying, sexually potent James Bond was a powerful fantasy figure. I was hooked.

Coate: Where do you think Goldfinger ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: Certainly near, or at, the very top. If I had to choose the five best Bonds, I think Goldfinger would be either #1 or #2.

Caplen: It is very difficult to rank the James Bond films, and it depends upon what criteria are utilized. In terms of story line, success, and cinematography, Goldfinger should rank among the top films in the franchise. [In my book] I have focused upon the presentation of women in the franchise, and in that regard, Goldfinger would not receive a high rating from feminists. Regardless, and as I have written, the manner in which the Bond Girls are presented in Goldfinger reinforced an archetype that defined the cinematic franchise. In that regard, Goldfinger cannot be underestimated. 

Chapman: It tends to be seen as the one that really established the Bond formula: megalomaniac criminal mastermind with a grand conspiracy; a strong, silent henchman; and the gadgets that Bond uses. The previous film, From Russia with Love, had been a more realistic spy thriller, quite old-fashioned in some ways, with its Orient Express scenes and a plot revolving around a stolen cypher machine. With Goldfinger the Bond series moved, decisively as it happens, towards techno-hardware and fantasy (e.g. the laser and Bond’s car).

Looked at today the film still seems fresh and hasn’t dated. Sean Connery is relaxed and commanding in the role (though there are tense moments such as the scene where he is spread-eagled before the laser beam) and the casting of the supporting parts such as Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson and Harold Sakata as Oddjob is spot-on.

Cork: For years, I’ve always said you could just take the first four Bond films and put them on a loop for me. I love them, and like a true fan, I even love them for their faults. I can amuse myself by enjoying the anti-logic of Goldfinger explaining his plan to a bunch of guys he plans to kill, or even having gone to the trouble to have strange flashing lights that go on and off for no reason when poison gas is spraying the hoods’ convention. One can argue that Casino Royale and Skyfall are more engaging to someone who is only now being introduced to Bond, but, I’ll tell you, only Sean Connery in 1964 could pull off wearing a baby-blue terrycloth onesie and still make every woman in the audience breathe a little more deeply and every man want to be him. Goldfinger isn’t only one of the most entertaining Bond films, it is one of the most important films of the Sixties, one of the most essential films ever made. Everyone with a pulse sees that movie and understands the appeal of James Bond.

Desowitz: I think it’s in the top three, still the best for many. I won’t argue with Connery about From Russia with Love being the best.

Helfenstein: If we are ranking the films in the series by how influential they are, then Goldfinger occupies the #1 spot without question. If one were to pick a single film to represent what is great about the James Bond series and what makes it popular, then Goldfinger would be the obvious choice. But if we are choosing a film that is artistically the best film, I would have to edge out Goldfinger just slightly and give that award to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

O’Connell: It is not the best Bond movie (007 spends a lot of the film passively overhearing and not actively investigating) but it is the one where as I say in Catching Bullets the designer alloys of Ken Adam, John Barry, Peter Hunt, Guy Hamilton, Eon Productions and Sean Connery all come together to gilded effect. I wonder if Goldfinger had not happened in the way it did we would be privy to a continued 007 franchise now. Possibly not. The Bond phenomenon was obviously growing on the success of the first two films and the explosion of interest via Fleming’s books. But it was not a phenomenon at all until Goldfinger gave enough creative and financial confidence to Eon Productions, Cubby and Harry to really go for it with the real box office game-changer: Thunderball.

Pfeiffer: Most people consider Goldfinger the best of the series, though I would argue that valid cases can be made for From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Casino Royale and Skyfall, the latter two because they so drastically and successfully reinvented the series. 

Rubin: I rank Goldfinger just below the Daniel Craig Casino Royale. So that would be #2. Casino Royale is so good and Craig is such a revelation as Bond, I have to place it #1. However, since Goldfinger was the first 007 adventure I ever say, it remains my favorite. It’s also my favorite script with the best lines of dialogue in the series. It also gets the biggest laugh in the series—not because it’s stupid or inane, but because it’s just funny. And that’s the introduction to Pussy Galore.

Scivally: In my estimation, Goldfinger is still hands-down the most entertaining of all the Bond films. If I wanted to introduce someone who’d never seen a 007 film to Bond, but could only show them one film, I’d choose Goldfinger. To me, it’s simply the distilled essence of Bond. However, that said, it ranks #2 on my list of personal favorite; From Russia with Love is #1, because I enjoy the cat-and-mouse game between SPECTRE and Bond, and 007 operating with almost no gadgets.

Coate: In what way was Auric Goldfinger a memorable villain?

Burlingame: He was among the best ever: truly mad, yet insane in a thoughtful, calculating way! The plot of the movie has one of the greatest twists in Bond: Goldfinger doesn’t need to own the gold in Fort Knox; he just wants to blow it up so that his own stash will be worth even more! How great is that? And Gert Frobe is completely believable in this mad role.

Caplen: Goldfinger, the mastermind of Operation Grand Slam, is, in some respects, more plausible than other over-the-top villains in the franchise, namely Dr. No, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Stromberg, and Hugo Drax. Goldfinger is, in essence, a crooked businessman: a gold smuggler whose obsession leads to him scheme a way of penetrating Fort Knox in order to radiate the American gold supply and increase the value of his own holdings. Thus, his motives are intriguing and extend beyond the prototypical lust for world domination. Goldfinger is memorable because he is essentially the first James Bond villain to out-maneuver the Americans, requiring James Bond’s services to spare Fort Knox and restore order. As one scholar argued, Ian Fleming created James Bond as a vehicle through which to capture some nostalgia for the pre-World War Two supremacy of the British Empire. Defeating Goldfinger on American soil comports with that theory.

Chapman: Goldfinger has some of the best lines (e.g. “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” in response to Bond’s “Do you expect me to talk?”) and Gert Frobe has a commanding presence on screen. The scene where he explains how he intends to “knock off” Fort Knox works because he seems to believe it. For my money Dr. No and Goldfinger were the most memorable of the early villains. Several of the early Bonds revolved around the villain Blofeld, who became a bit of a stooge with his pet cat, but Goldfinger just seems a slightly better-realized character—by the standards of diabolical master criminals that is.

Cork: A great villain needs to get more powerful, seemingly smarter during the course of a story. The film starts with Bond busting Goldfinger as he cheats at cards, then Bond steals Goldfinger’s paid companion. But Goldfinger exacts a brutal price for this. Bond then beats Goldfinger at golf, but all-too-soon Bond finds himself strapped down with a laser pointed between his legs, his car destroyed. This is the halfway point of the film. Hero and villain have traded blows almost as equals. But when we enter the laser room, it is like we have passed through the looking glass. Goldfinger isn’t a rich gold smuggler, but an obsessed man who is on the verge of destabilizing the global economy. Even late in the film, when Bond points out the absurdity of trying to tote the gold out of Fort Knox, Goldfinger is one step ahead. When he discovers that Bond has been able to foil much of the plan, he whips off that overcoat and no one in the audience ever saw his escape coming. Most actors who have played Bond villains gradually allow 007 to get under their skin, to unnerve them as the story progresses. Not Gert Frobe’s Goldfinger. He snaps that pencil early on, and that’s it. He gets calmer and smarter as the film progresses. I love that. He is, for me, the perfect villain.

Desowitz: Goldfinger was the first freelance villain not associated with SPECTRE and is even more larger than life than Dr. No. His obsession with gold and winning at all costs is very personal.

Helfenstein: Goldfinger sticks out as a memorable villain for so many reasons. Compared to Dr. No and Grant, the two previous villains, his personality is so much bigger. While his predecessors were almost robotic, Goldfinger is having a good time because he enjoys being a villain. He toys with Bond and laughs at him. Frobe hit the sweet spot of what makes a villain great.

When I was researching my first book, I was stunned to uncover the fact that screenwriter Richard Maibaum kept trying to bring Gert Frobe back to the series so many times—not just for Thunderball, but also for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds are Forever, and even as late as Octopussy!

O’Connell: He is pitched as this nearly gauche Toad of Toad Hall figure, the first societal duel Bond has with a villain. He is also the first Bond villain to hold that certain quality that all the great Bond villains (Scaramanga, Silva, Kananga and Largo) have and that is that he is just a bad Bond, or 007 gone wrong.

Pfeiffer: Auric Goldfinger is one of cinema’s most enduring and classic villains, thanks in no small part to the brilliance of casting Gert Frobe in what would become his signature role. Frobe not only fit the bill physically, he was an accomplished actor, as well. What many people don’t know is that he barely spoke a word of English. He spoke his dialogue phonetically and British actor Michael Collins dubbed him in the final cut. 

Rubin: Auric Goldfinger is still the best villain in the series because he’s simultaneously larger than life, but still a real believable person. Like Bond, he never becomes a caricature and he has some truly chilling moments—particularly when he’s about to fry 007’s privates with a laser beam, or lecture a bunch of doomed henchmen on his scheme, or getting 007 to understand the true nature of his plan. He also plays a wicked game of golf, cheating as usual. 

Scivally: As embodied by Gert Frobe and voiced by Michael Collins, Goldfinger was the quintessence of Bond villainy: physically imposing, charming, calculating, ruthless and quite mad. And he had some of the best dialogue of any Bond villain, including his priceless response to Bond’s “Do you expect me to talk?”—”No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE!”

Coate: In what way was Pussy Galore a memorable Bond Girl?

Burlingame: Honor Blackman could not improve on this performance. Tough yet tender, beautiful, resourceful, yet vulnerable at the right moments. Maybe one of the two or three best Bond women.

Caplen: I have written extensively about Pussy Galore in my book, Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond. Honor Blackman’s portrayal of this unique character is exceptional. I believe that Pussy Galore is one of the most important Bond Girl characters in what I have termed the Golden Era of the Bond Girl. On the surface, Pussy Galore seems imbued with attributes that would brand her a modern-day feminist. But all that glitters is not gold. I argue that Pussy Galore represents something very different: she actually reinforces a much more traditional archetype addressing women’s appropriate role in society. Pussy Galore is therefore both groundbreaking and reactionary, and no discussion of the Bond Girl evolution can be complete without considering her contributions to the development of the Bond Girl archetype I believe the James Bond franchise developed and continues to refine today.

Chapman: Well, there’s her name for one thing! She was the first of the girls—at least the first of the main girls—who was more than just eye candy but could give Bond as good as she got in return. In the book she’s a lesbian, and her conversion to heterosexuality to help Bond out isn’t very plausible. In the film, though, the lesbianism is downplayed—it’s hinted at but not overtly. And, of course, the characterization was influenced by the casting of Honor Blackman, who brought the association of her role as Cathy Gale in The Avengers. The scene where Pussy shows off her judo prowess seems to have been written specifically for Honor Blackman.

Cork: Two words: “pussy galore.” I mean, come on. That’s a name that makes the right people smile and everyone else’s mouths go dry. But Pussy Galore is also the right character at just the right moment in history. Homosexuality was just wiggling its toe into popular culture. Some Like It Hot was five years earlier, and The Children’s Hour came out in 1961, but both those films play only with the existence of homosexuality without really indulging in it as anything attractive. In Britain, there were a slew of films dealing with male homosexuality: The Victim (a very good, but depressing film with Dirk Bogarde), and, of course, the two Oscar Wilde films (that both played such strange roles in Bond history). From Russia with Love had a very unattractive lesbian with Rosa Klebb, which was more of the standard portrayal in popular culture.

Pussy Galore in Goldfinger was different. Her lesbianism (never explicitly mentioned, but clear to adult viewers) is accompanied by confidence, not self-loathing. It is not portrayed so much as a perversion, but rather a sexually legitimate lifestyle. Viewers are attracted to Pussy Galore, even before she comes over to Bond’s side. She is strong, attractive, alluring and such a refreshing change from the way women were often portrayed in escapist films of the day. Of course, we can wince now at the rather distasteful “rape conversion therapy” that Bond employs to win her over. And younger audiences do roll their eyes, shake their heads and groan when the forced kiss turns into a warm embrace. But the same thing can be said of Rhett Butler carrying Scarlet O’Hara up the stairs in Gone with the Wind, and John Wayne’s Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man pulling Mary Kate into the doorway, twisting her arm up behind her and kissing her. But Pussy Galore in so many ways is a remarkable character. She is a sexually liberated, confident lesbian and audiences loved her. That just didn’t happen in mainstream movies before 1964.

Part of the great success of the character came from a brilliant idea that the filmmakers had (and I can’t tell you if it was one of the screenwriters or Guy Hamilton or someone else), but they took their cue for Pussy Galore from a real person: Barbara “Joe” Carstairs. Carstairs used her family fortune to race boats and later bought a private island in the Bahamas and went “back to nature.” Because the filmmakers had a model they could use beyond the character in the novel, and because there was a great actress in the role (Honor Blackman), the character came to life in ways that might have otherwise been squandered. In her own way, Pussy Galore feels real on some level. Blackman had strength and a swagger in the role that convinced us that she could be the leader of a real flying circus. She was just butch enough and just sexy enough to be something that moviegoers had never encountered.

Desowitz: Pussy Galore is memorable because of the name and getting it by the censors, the fact that she’s a lesbian and resists Bond at first, and is able to share Judo flips with him, and because Bond has to work so hard to seduce her.

Helfenstein: Besides her suggestive name, Pussy Galore is memorable for her homosexuality, greatly toned down in the film compared to the book. Bond’s “conversion” of her would probably not play well with today’s audiences. That scene aside, what makes her so memorable is that she is Bond’s equal. While the two previous girls, Honey and Tanya, were essentially innocents caught up in Bond’s world, Pussy is an operator in the criminal underworld and even has her own team. Her decision to switch sides saves the day.

Actress wise, Blackman shows off her physical skills learned during her time during The Avengers, and was different in the fact that she was older than Connery. That older female to younger male casting age difference has only happened one other time in the series, when they chose Rigg, also an Avengers veteran, for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

O’Connell: Honor Blackman’s Galore is memorable for being the first Bond girl that stands up to Bond. And she was doing it way before the series felt it had to appease any naïve notions of sexism.

Pfeiffer: Although the character of Pussy Galore was watered down for the film version (she’s an overt lesbian in the novel), the character still broke new ground in terms of female empowerment—even if she does fall under Bond’s spell after one kiss. Here was a tough, kick-ass woman who was adept at defending herself and who is every bit as resourceful as Bond or Goldfinger. There are veiled hints about her sexuality (all of her pilots are gorgeous females and she initially tells Bond she is “immune” to his charm), but in retrospect, this was a rather unique female hero to bring to cinema screens in 1964. As with Gert Frobe, so much of the credit must go to the actor, in this case Honor Blackman, who was letter-perfect in the role. 

Rubin: Pussy Galore is memorable because she’s so sexy and cool and has the greatest name ever invented for a fictional character in the history of writing. Honor Blackman has made her a true legend in the series. 

Scivally: Pussy Galore was the first “Bond woman” who seemed to be almost his equal: intelligent, self-assured, capable, an ace at judo and “a damned good pilot.” She wasn’t just a wilting damsel waiting to be rescued; she gave as good as she got.

Coate: What is the legacy of Goldfinger?

Burlingame: I am especially fond of the Goldfinger score as quintessential, top-of-the-line John Barry. After making a hit of the James Bond Theme on Dr. No and crafting a suspenseful, effective score for From Russia with Love, Broccoli and Saltzman gave Barry the opportunity to write both song and score on Goldfinger and Barry didn’t disappoint. From the thrilling opening song (with those diabolical Bricusse & Newley lyrics) belted by Shirley Bassey to the intricacies of his orchestral score, including the brilliant Dawn Raid on Fort Knox variations on the theme, John Barry helped to define the sound of Bond—and indeed, create a new subgenre of film music in his combination of pop, jazz and symphonic music—for all time with this score. I hope that, in all the celebrations of Goldfinger, that accomplishment is not forgotten.

Caplen: Goldfinger opened the American market to James Bond. That fact, by itself, is perhaps Goldfinger’s true legacy. The James Bond franchise would not be as successful today had Goldfinger not had such an important impact upon American audiences. Goldfinger also presented to the world one of Ian Fleming’s greatest “name as sex” jokes, beginning a long legacy that will always be associated with the James Bond franchise and has been parodied by others (such as the Austin Powers trilogy) ever since. 

Chapman: It’s still a classic Bond movie—classic both in the sense of being a favorite with fans and being a representative example of the style and format of the films. I think that when most boys (and men!) fantasize about being Bond, it’s the Bond of Goldfinger—whether for the Aston Martin, the Anthony Sinclair three-piece suit, or simply the opportunity to dally with girls called Pussy.

Cork: I think the biggest legacy of Goldfinger is very different than most folks would imagine. If you look at the top-grossing films of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, there are very few that one could categorize as part of a franchise. There were franchises, but they were Tarzan, Frankenstein, Francis the Talking Mule and Ma and Pa Kettle films. These films made lots of money, but the following entries were generally B-movie fare—filler for the masses that were not nearly as important to a studio as an “event film” based on an “important” best-selling novel. Bond changed that. The Bond films became the first “tent-pole” films—movies that could virtually be guaranteed blockbuster status just because of the presence of the main character. The folks who grew up on Bond are running studios now. Look at the films the studios bank on in recent years: Harry Potter, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Batman, Transformers (and, yes, Star Wars and Indiana Jones). Huge budgets…no expense spared…but they are selling an endless stream of films, not just one film. Even the failures of recent years like The Lone Ranger and John Carter were attempts to create a franchise. And franchises are where the money comes from. The studios know that they can sell Transformers packages on iTunes or to Netflix or Amazon or in endless rotation on cable networks for decades to come, just as has happened with the Bond packages. And Goldfinger, more than any other single film, is the movie that proved a series could be made like A-films and do the box office of A-films, even out-grossing the films that came before in the series. Every time another big-budget tent-pole franchise film comes out and makes a fortune, I think that those filmmakers should give a tip of the hat to Goldfinger.

Desowitz: The legacy is clear enough with the audience cheering at the DB5’s appearance in Skyfall for the 50th anniversary and then how its destruction elicited the biggest emotional response from Bond in the entire film. Goldfinger made Bond and the franchise a pop culture phenomenon and it was a fitting tribute.

Helfenstein: I think the legacy of Goldfinger is that it moved the series from the smaller-scale, cold war thriller to the wide open grander scale of agent vs super villain. While Terence Young’s two films set the template for Bond’s elegance and panache, Guy Hamilton updated that recipe with a stronger dose of the fantastic, and a larger dose of humor.

When Alfred Hitchcock saw the film, he only had one comment to the director. It wasn’t about the glorious Ken Adam sets, the incredible car, or the blaring soundtrack—he complemented Hamilton on the little old lady that waddles out of the checkpoint with a machine gun.

Bond screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz stated that the instant Connery pressed the red eject button on the Aston Martin, the series changed forever. Anything was possible from then on. Years later the producers would try to transfer some of Goldfinger’s cool to Brosnan and Craig by giving them the Goldfinger Aston Martin, and in Skyfall Craig’s Bond even threatens to deploy the ejector seat with that famous red button, 48 years after the gadget debuted.

Half a century later, Goldfinger’s influence still resonates both in and outside the James Bond series.

O’Connell: The fact that a film known only as Bond 24 is in pre-production. That is its legacy. Goldfinger sealed the deal. It raised Bond onscreen from just being a literary adaptation of a successful run of books to being a franchise at the pinnacle of contemporary music and film scoring, film editing, production design, and marketing. I don’t think the Bond series was a franchise until Goldfinger fired up the enthusiasm of Eon Productions and the world and melted the box office norms by creating a delicious, sexy, dangerous, sadistically sketched narrative and production template for 007. It is not the only template for Bond, but it is the one that the series has been guided by ever since.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of Goldfinger is illustrated by the fact you are still writing about the film fifty years later. It has a timeless quality and presents a moment in time when the Sixties were still kind of fun, at least in more privileged parts of the world. The dissention of the protest movements, high profile assassinations and the heightening of Cold War tensions would all threaten to make Bond look like a relic at least for a period of years. However, Goldfinger represents master filmmaking craftsmanship, from the performances to every aspect of the production. It’s also the last time Sean Connery appeared to be having a genuinely good time playing 007.

Rubin: One hundred years from now, film aficionados will still admire the film for its pure adrenaline rush, its colorful locations and set pieces, witty script, wonderful performances by a great cast and a perfect musical score by John Barry. I believe Goldfinger defined movie cool in the 60s, on a par with the Steve McQueen film Bullitt. Put those two films together and you see all that was cool in the era. Interestingly, Connery and McQueen, born the same year, had similar career trajectories—at least initially, although Sean has had the far more lengthy career.

Scivally: The success of Goldfinger propelled 007 into the popular consciousness, making Bond one of the three most memorable B’s of the 1960s (the other two being the Beatles and Batman). Its success also set off a slew of imitators both in cinemas and on television, sparking the mid-1960s spy craze, and set the style for a series that continues to evolve and attract a massive audience five decades later. It truly was a film with a Midas touch.

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts on Goldfinger.

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The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering Thunderball on its 50th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

As with our previous 007 articles (available here and here), The Bits celebrates the occasion with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of James Bond authorities who discuss the virtues and shortcomings of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and why the passage of time has been particularly kind to this film more than any other in the long-running series. The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

Okay, let’s (alphabetically) meet the participants….

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012; and recently issued in paperback with an updated Skyfall chapter). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment-industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label.

Robert A. Caplen is an attorney and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010). Based in Washington, DC, he practices antitrust and commercial litigation and has published numerous law review articles in leading academic journals. Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (which was quoted in Sir Roger Moore’s memoir, Bond on Bond) is his first book. He is working on a follow-up book and can be reached via Facebook (www.Facebook.com/bondgirlbook) and Twitter (@bondgirlbook).

James Chapman is a Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (Tauris, 2007). His other books include Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who—A Cultural History (Tauris, 2006), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (Tauris, 2002), and (with Nicholas J. Cull) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (Tauris, 2009). Chapman is also a Council member of the International Association for Media and History and is Editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

John Cork is the author (with Bruce Scivally) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He also wrote (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003) and (with Collin Stutz) James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and many of the James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He recently wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman); the film is now touring festivals.

Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked (Spies, 2012; www.jamesbondunmasked.com; and updated for Kindle which includes a chapter on Skyfall and exclusive interview with Sam Mendes). He is the owner of Immersed in Movies (www.billdesowitz.com), a contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and contributing editor of Animation Scoop at Indiewire. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Charles Helfenstein is the author of The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Spies, 2009) and The Making of The Living Daylights (Spies, 2012).

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Philip Lisa) of The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001), and (with Dave Worrall) The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999). He also wrote (with Michael Lewis) The Films of Harrison Ford (Citadel, 2002) and (with Dave Worrall) The Great Fox War Movies (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the founder (with Dave Worrall) and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.” 

Bruce Scivally is the author (with John Cork) of James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002). He has also written Superman on Film, Television, Radio & Broadway (McFarland, 2006), Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon (Henry Gray, 2011), and the forthcoming Dracula FAQ. As well, he has written and produced numerous documentaries and featurettes that have appeared as supplemental material on LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including several of the Charlie Chan, James Bond, and Pink Panther releases. He teaches screenwriting, film production and cinema history and theory at The Illinois Institute of Art–Chicago and Columbia College.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest cueing up the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service soundtrack album and preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course), and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

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Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service worthy of celebration on its 45th anniversary?

Jon Burlingame: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is without a doubt one of the all-time great Bond films. It’s been fashionable for a long time to complain about it because of George Lazenby’s one-shot take on 007, but that ignores the impressive accomplishments of the movie in every other respect, from script to direction to locations to music. It’s still a masterpiece.

Robert A. Caplen: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is worthy of praise for imbuing the series with a more humanistic approach, depicting the vulnerability of James Bond as he falls in love with and mourns the death of Tracy di Vicenzo. While the film has garnered significant criticism, it endures and remains entertaining. And, with SPECTRE on the horizon in 2015, there is a possibility, unless I read too much into the SPECTRE teaser art, that OHMSS could experience a renaissance.

James Chapman: All Bond movies are worth celebrating, though On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a special case as it’s unique in the Bond series. I think for a long time it was the black sheep of the Bond family, the one film in the series that was supposedly a failure. Let’s put that one to bed straight away. OHMSS was a failure only in so far as it was less successful at the box-office than the previous four Bond movies; it was still one of the biggest-grossing films of 1970 and was the top box-office attraction in Britain. And when I looked at the critical reception when I was researching my book on the Bond movies, I found that, while the reception was mixed, it was no more mixed than the response to Dr. No—in fact, some critics thought it was an improvement on Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.

This is a cliché, but it’s a film that improves every time I watch it. It’s the closest of all the films to the source, and, while I don’t think that fidelity to Fleming is necessary for a great Bond movie (viz. The Spy Who Loved Me or Skyfall), I think that a lot of the qualities I like in OHMSS are from the book. I’m glad they kept the ending, for example. In fact, I think it’s the downbeat ending that was probably responsible for the film’s lesser performance at the box-office than George Lazenby, who became something of a whipping boy after the event and carried the can for its supposed “failure.” It’s an old film industry adage that a happy ending doubles the box-office. As Molly Haskell said in her review of the film for Village Voice: “If you like your Bonds with a happy ending, don’t go.”

John Cork: Majesty’s holds an almost magical significance for many Bond fans, particularly the fans of my generation. The cinematic Bond has always tread this fine line between absurdist spectacle, nearly mythic storytelling and this sense that there is something a bit more human going on at the heart of Bond than meets the eye. We can love Bond battling Dr. No in a nuclear reactor as fuel rods are melting down, but that is balanced by the cold resignation of Bond shooting Professor Dent and listening to Honey describe murdering the man who raped her. But just four and a half years later with You Only Live Twice, the human element had all but evaporated. Did we really care if Aki is killed? Sure, YOLT is a fun film—great score, lovely locations—but it lacks any of the soul of literary 007. Majesty’s was a big, strange bet on Ian Fleming’s Bond, and in so many ways (and fans will hate that I say this) it failed. It almost killed the Bond franchise. Yet, I would argue it stands shoulder to shoulder with Goldfinger as the most influential Bond film in the series. How this happened is a remarkable story.

After OHMSS aired on ABC, fans were outraged at the way the film had been re-cut for the two-night run, with voice-over from an actor who was clearly not George Lazenby. Those who remembered the film well were very vocal in defending the movie. Richard Schenkman, president of the James Bond Fan Club in the US confronted Cubby Broccoli about it personally in 1977. Cubby was again questioned about it publically at a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979. There were soon two drumbeats that became constant in the fan community: one was about Kevin McClory’s attempt to remake Thunderball, and the other was about how OHMSS was the forgotten, underrated Bond film, and how the things that made it great were the very things missing in the Roger Moore Bond movies of the 70s.

After the success of Moonraker, Michael G. Wilson became a much more important creative partner in the series, and he tried to bring the Bond series back to Fleming and very much to setting the clock back to 1970. If you think of For Your Eyes Only almost as a sequel to OHMSS, you will get the idea. There’s Bond at Tracy’s grave. There’s Blofeld wearing the neck brace. The film is grounded in reality. Looking beyond that, we see the action scenes remind us of OHMSS—the skiing, the bobsled, the fight on a beach, the mountaintop lair. Before John Glen was tapped to direct the film, Eon reached out to Terence Young, who said no, and to Peter Hunt, the director of OHMSS. Hunt had other commitments and grave misgivings about going back to Bond at that point.

And after For Your Eyes Only, there is this continual battle over how much of the Fleming Bond is going to be present in the cinematic Bond, and, even more importantly, how that will be portrayed. The tone of Majesty’s is a strong and direct influence on Licence to Kill. It played a big role in the development of The World Is Not Enough. The shadow of Majesty’s permeates every bit of the Daniel Craig Bond films, and Eon’s buy-out of McClory’s rights ensures that the filmmakers can work with that part of Bond’s literary history again.

Bill Desowitz: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a landmark Bond movie in so many ways: the first without Sean Connery; the sole appearance by newbie actor George Lazenby; the first and only directorial effort of editor Peter Hunt; the most faithful Fleming adaptation; a return to the lean, mean espionage of From Russia with Love; the first movie centered on Bond and falling in love with Tracy, played engagingly by Diana Rigg (who left The Avengers); the best action in the snow in franchise history; the most haunting score by John Barry; and the most devastatingly tragic finale with the murder of Tracy by Blofeld and his assistant, Irma Bunt.

Charles Helfenstein: It is the crown jewel of the James Bond series. Somewhat ignored and dismissed after its initial release, the film has enjoyed a well-deserved renaissance. It is a masterpiece, and those who ignore it just because of George Lazenby are missing out on something incredibly special…Ian Fleming’s world perfectly captured on film.

Lee Pfeiffer: The stature of OHMSS among critics and the public has risen appreciably since the film was released in 1969. At the time, virtually any film that followed the Connery era would have been met with derision. The film was not judged fairly, though hardcore Bond fans seemed to like it. The fact that the film grossed far less than the Connery Bonds also added to the mistaken notion that it was a dud. Lazenby did himself no favors by announcing he was quitting the role after one film, so critics could be excused for predicting that the Bond era was over. Yet, it’s precisely because of the oddball, one-off nature of the film that it resonates as one of the best entries in the series. Most of the credit has to go to Peter Hunt, who had edited the early Bond films. This was his directorial debut and it must have been a very sobering challenge for him to undertake a big-budget film with such high expectations. Hunt was determined to revitalize the series by thinking outside of the box. He correctly presumed that the series could not go any further into gadgetry and spectacle, especially in the wake of You Only Live Twice, which is a marvelous film but one that finally soured Connery completely in regard to playing 007. His criticism was well-founded: Bond was becoming a less interesting character and simply a catalyst for big action sequences. Hunt once told me that he felt by this point, Bond was simply a guy who presses a few buttons to utilize gadgets to get out of a jam. Hunt wanted to go back to the essence of Fleming’s novels, and he succeeded admirably. OHMSS is a thinking man’s Bond flick in the way that From Russia with Love was. There was a lot of tension during the making of the film. Hunt and Lazenby barely spoke. The producers, Broccoli and Saltzman, not only had troubles between themselves, but they were understandably upset that their new investment—George Lazenby—would not be doing another film. (It’s the only movie where “James Bond 007” gets above-the-title billing instead of the lead actor. Why promote someone who was moving on from the role?) There was also controversy about the running time of the movie with some of the “suits” arguing that it needed to be cut. But Peter Hunt stood his ground. The film was still successful financially but not nearly as much as its predecessors. Yet, its qualities have only grown with time and people have taken a much more mature attitude evaluating its merits.

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Bruce Scivally: Why is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service worthy of celebration? Because it is a James Bond film like no other. It has an emotional resonance lacking in the earlier films, innovative editing, less reliance on gadgetry than almost any other film in the series, top-flight action scenes, an epic scope, beautiful cinematography, and one of the best scores in the series. It’s the bridge between the “classic” Bond of Sean Connery and the lighter, breezier Bond films of the 1970s. It was an attempt to return Bond away from the cartoon extravagance of You Only Live Twice and back to the Bond of Ian Fleming. It has the best screenplay of the series. And the biggest reason it’s worth of celebrating: Diana Rigg.

Coate: When did you first see On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and what was your reaction?

Burlingame: OHMSS was the first Bond I actually saw in a movie theater during its initial run, just after Christmas 1969 in upstate New York. I was “wowed” and it hooked me not only on Ian Fleming’s hero but on all things Bond, from novels to films to (of course) soundtrack albums.

Caplen: I recall watching OHMSS for the first time as a teenager and thought it was unique among the Bond films. The Louis Armstrong-crooning love scenes and the concept of a brainwashing a group of women as Blofeld’s angels of death were striking. The humor peppered throughout the film contrasted the final scene, which I thought was jarring and unsettling. Ultimately, I think that George Lazenby’s 007, despite all the negative criticism, fits the part in OHMSS quite well, and I view the film as a perfect bridge as the franchise moved into the 1970s.

Chapman: It would have been the occasion of its first TV screening on ITV (around about 1979 or 1980?). I have to confess that at the time I was rather underwhelmed. I was disappointed that it wasn’t the same as Goldfinger or You Only Live Twice and that it didn’t have Sean Connery in it. I’ve changed my mind since!

Cork: I first saw OHMSS at the Martin Twin theaters in Montgomery, Alabama, on its original release. I was just barely eight years old, and frankly, I had few concrete memories. My favorite moment was the snow plow, of course. And in a brutally honest confession, I didn’t understand Tracy’s fate at the end until my grandfather explained it to me.

Folks talk about the “downer ending,” but this was the era of Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Planet of the Apes, all huge hits, all with downer endings, and three of them involved key characters dying in a hail of bullets. Regardless, eight-year-old me thought Tracy just might have been taking a rest. I mean, that’s what James Bond was telling me.

Desowitz: I saw it first run at a new theater [in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles] called the Valley Circle across from the Motion Picture Retirement Home. I saw it two weeks in a row because I enjoyed it so much. It had such rare emotional impact for a Bond movie. I missed Connery, but this was the most exciting and riveting for me.

Helfenstein: I first saw it on TV in the late 70s, and although it was a butchered, pan-and-scan version courtesy of ABC, Majesty’s is so brilliant that those presentation flaws didn’t matter—I was blown away. The hyper-kinetic fight scenes, Diana Rigg’s breath-taking beauty, the gorgeous cinematography, John Barry’s score, the final assault on Piz Gloria—it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Pfeiffer: I don’t know why, but men always seem to remember exactly where they saw virtually every movie they’ve ever experienced. I saw OHMSS at the State Theater in my home town of Jersey City, New Jersey. The fact that the studio didn’t have much confidence in it was illustrated by the fact that it was the first Bond movie in years to open with a second feature attached (Guns of the Magnificent Seven). Ordinarily, Bond films never played on double features because the theaters could make far more money by simply playing the latest 007 flick back-to-back. I recall being optimistic but wary. I was 13 years old and my mom and dad accompanied me. My mom was hooked on Connery and she hated the film. She thought Lazenby was a poor successor to him. She also said the film was far too loud and seemed endless. 

Scivally: I first saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service when it was broadcast on ABC-TV on February 16 and February 23, 1976. In that notorious broadcast, the film had been chopped in half to accommodate two 90-minute time slots over two evenings, and to pad it out to the requisite length, the ski chase scene was put at the beginning, with an actor who sounded nothing like George Lazenby doing a lame voice-over as 007. It then “flash-backed” to the actual beginning of the film...for a bit. Then it was the car rally scene. Then Bond’s meeting with Draco. In short, the re-edit bowdlerized the film, making it incomprehensible. After about half an hour of this travesty, I turned it off. When ABC ran the film again sometime later, I was a more dedicated James Bond fan, and determined that I would watch the film all the way to the end, no matter how horrible, so I could truthfully say I’d seen all the films in the series. This time, the network ran the film in a 3-hour slot (with commercials), and without any goofy re-editing. It was a revelation. By the time it was over, I was sure I’d seen one of the very best films of the series; it was as though the Connery films were the “Hollywood version” of the exploits of the “real” James Bond presented in Majesty’s.

Coate: Where do you think On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ranks among the James Bond movie series?

Burlingame: Within the top five, unquestionably. I’d place one or two of the Connery films ahead of it and maybe the Daniel Craig Casino Royale. But it’s near the top, for sure. One of the reasons it’s so great is John Barry’s extraordinary score. Barry knew going in that the music, as much as any element of OHMSS, would have to reinforce the idea that this new fellow was 007 just as much as his predecessor. So the score is strong and memorable at every turn: the stylish main theme, the beautiful love theme (We Have All the Time in the World, sung so memorably by Louis Armstrong), the cutting-edge use of the Moog synthesizer, and thrilling music for the action sequences, all contributing to one of the greatest Bond scores of all time.

Caplen: I struggle ranking the films as I enjoy them all for different reasons. For me, OHMSS deserves its own category because it has a different feel than the other films. Given my focus on the franchise’s portrayal of women, I cannot say that OHMSS departs in any meaningful way from the films immediately preceding and postdating it. As I have written, OHMSS perpetuates the Bond Girl archetype by introducing a harem theme and the easy manipulation of women for pecuniary or other gain.

Chapman: For me it’s in the top three along with From Russia with Love and The Spy Who Loved Me. (My Bond tastes encompass both the traditional spy-type Bond pictures and the big spectacular action-adventure Bond pictures!)

Cork: This really depends. For me—and some folks will hate me for this—it personally ranks in the middle. There is so much I love about the film, but I think Michael Reed and Peter Hunt played with the look of the 60s Bond films a bit too much. I think it could be shorter. I wish some of the editing was bit less abstract. The scene where Draco talks about Tracy after kidnapping Bond seems to go on for weeks. Norman Wanstall’s sound editing is sorely missed, and the sub-standard sound effects and looping in places are a real distraction for me. Ultimately, the lack of on-screen chemistry between Tracy and Bond hobbles the film for me.

On the other hand, there is so much going for it, so much of the mood of Fleming’s writing, so much spectacle that is mind-blowingly wonderful. Barry’s score is among the best of his career. I think one of the things that I find frustrating about the film is just how close it came to being the movie that truly re-defined Bond for audiences when it came out. But it didn’t. It would take filmmakers who so loved Majesty’s to find a way to do that with Casino Royale and Skyfall.

Finally, in many ways, I can judge the film differently. Not by how successful it was at doing what it set out to do, but by what it aimed for, by travelling the path less taken, by aspiring to give Bond back his soul.

Desowitz: In the Top 10. For me it’s my personal favorite. It’s a meta-Bond; unappreciated in its day but beloved by many fans today. It has stood the test of time really well and served as the template for Casino Royale in many ways. Chris Nolan even paid homage to it in Inception.

Helfenstein: Artistically it is the best film in the series. It excels in four key areas. (1) The script. It is hands-down the most faithful adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel. (2) The visuals. Director Peter Hunt’s vision, cinematographer Michael Reed’s lighting and camera work, combined with the lush, dense sets created by production designer Syd Cain make a striking cinematic environment that simply hasn’t been topped since. To quote director Steven Soderbergh: “Shot to shot, this movie is beautiful in a way none of the other Bond films are—the anamorphic compositions are relentlessly arresting.” (3) The action. While Bond films are always on the cutting edge in the action department, stunt personnel that I’ve interviewed said OHMSS was about a decade ahead of its time with the fight scenes and stunts. (4) The love story. Hunt was astonishingly able to combine a technically brilliant action film with a heart-tugging, tragic love story.

Pfeiffer: I would rank the film alongside Goldfinger as my favorites of the series. It has aged very well, unlike some of the Bond flicks of the 1970s. It’s got a strong script and the type of exotic production values we’ve come to associate with the series. If I have any gripe about the films made since For Your Eyes Only, it’s that they lack the kind of spectacular endings that the Bond films were once known for. It seems like every film has Bond and the villain going mano-a-mano at the end. I’m second to none in my admiration for Daniel Craig and the great work he’s done in revitalizing the franchise. However, I would like to see something like the finale of OHMSS, with Bond leading an assault force against the bad guys. 

Scivally: When I went to Los Angeles to go to USC, I would go to James Bond double- and triple-features at the “revival house” movie theaters, and it was there that I saw the film on the big screen, in wide-screen, sans commercials. After seeing all the other Bond films at the revival houses, I decided that the best of all of them was From Russia with Love, and the next best was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, followed by Goldfinger. Those films remain my top three favorites. The thing I find most appealing about From Russia and Majesty’s is that both of those films present 007 as a character who must use his brains to get out of dangerous situations, rather than, say, pushing a button on his wristwatch. There’s a very good example in Majesty’s, where Bond is imprisoned in the wheelhouse of the cable car, and with no gadgets, and no winter gear, he rips the pockets out of his slacks to use as makeshift gloves. That shows Bond to be clever, to be a little smarter than the average bear. Pressing a button on a gadget to get out of a bad situation—heck, I could do that.

Coate: Charles, what was the objective with your On Her Majesty’s Secret Service making-of book?

Helfenstein: My primary goal was to document not only the technical details (exact dates and times, locations, finances, challenges overcome, equipment used, etc.) but to uncover the influences of the key personnel. Not just the “how” it was filmed, but “why” the creative decisions were made. I started at the beginning, with the source material for the novel, in author Ian Fleming’s archives. Then I plumbed the depths of screenwriter Richard Maibaum’s archives, for the fascinating five years of work he did on the screenplay, including alternate drafts when Connery was still attached to the project, as well as ones with strange tangents including plastic surgery, and ones where Bond befriends a chimpanzee!

Film fans aren’t just interested in what made it to the screen, they want to know about what didn’t, so not only did I uncover the unused material from the early drafts, I also acquired storyboards from scenes cut including a large chase sequence through London and in the postal subway system, as well as a strange scene with a train full of corpses.

A large number of the call sheets, production memos, correspondence and 600-plus photographs in the book came directly from the OHMSS production archive of director Peter Hunt, which I acquired after he passed away in 2002. All told, the book took me about 10 years to put together, and judging from the tremendous response of both James Bond fans and the OHMSS cast and crew, my efforts paid off.

Coate: Compare and contrast George Lazenby’s turn as Agent 007….

Burlingame: Coming after Connery’s five films, it was impossible for Lazenby to measure up. I sometimes wonder whether we would have thought him more “acceptable” had there not been a Connery before him. Every actor has made his own mark on 007, from the more lighthearted Moore to the more serious Dalton, the somewhere-in-between Brosnan and now the modern-day Craig. But Lazenby did a creditable job. Had he stayed around to do Diamonds Are Forever, would he have grown into the role and be less “dismissed” today? One wonders.

Caplen: George Lazenby was tasked with the unenviable role of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond. Of course, no one can truly replace an original, so Lazenby was severely handicapped. To add insult to injury, Lazenby never seemed to win the full support of the producers, who continued to search for a replacement even after he was cast. Film reviews were particularly unforgiving. I recall one likened Lazenby to exuding the expressiveness of an Easter Island statue. Each time I watch the film, though, I am reminded that ”the other fellow” arguably would not have been able to deliver the James Bond required for OHMSS. It’s difficult to analyze Lazenby in the one-film vacuum, but I find that his portrayal of 007 has an energy and pace that is missing from Connery’s return in Diamonds Are Forever.

Chapman: Lazenby gets better in my eyes every time I watch the film. First—he looks good and moves well, nearly as well as Connery and Craig. Second—he’s superb in the action scenes. I think that of all the Bonds, Lazenby was the best at staging the fisticuffs. And the action scenes in OHMSS are some of the best in the whole series. And third—he proves himself a perfectly competent actor. Granted, he doesn’t have Connery’s confidence, and there are one or two scenes where he doesn’t get it right, notably the meeting with Draco. But I think he nails the final scene pretty well. In a sense, the fact that Lazenby wasn’t an experienced actor works in the film’s favor. His Bond reveals a degree of vulnerability, that’s there in the novel but not in the other films, at least until Casino Royale. For me Lazenby’s best scene is at the ice rink where he’s being hunted by Blofeld’s men after the ski chase. He looks frightened—note his reaction when he knocks into the person in the giant bear costume. This is psychologically plausible: he’s just skied down the mountain and fought off the two heavies in the bell-room so he must be exhausted. In the book Fleming writes that Bond was at the end of his tether and there wasn’t any stuffing left in him for another fight. The scene in the film has the same feeling.

Again, when I read the contemporary reviews, I found that the response to Lazenby was mixed. About half the reviews I read compared him unfavorably with Connery, but the other half thought he brought a freshness and new vitality to a series that some thought was starting to become stale after five movies. And, to be fair, the critical response to Connery in Dr. No was also mixed—some critics thought he was too thuggish and brutal (compare to the reaction to Daniel Craig), while others thought he fitted the role like a Savile Row suit. Connery’s performance in Dr. No is edgy: he really came into his own in From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. I do think that he was sleep-walking through the part by the time of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, and in that sense it was time for a change.

Cork: It is almost unfair to talk about Lazenby. He is so honest when he talks about his own turn in the role. There is that great Sondre Lerche song, Like Lazenby, which was inspired by Lazenby’s interviews on the special features I helped produce for the DVD / Blu-ray releases of the film. The opening line is, “It’s a travesty, where do I begin…” That says a lot. George Lazenby is a fantastic guy. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time with him, and had lunch with him earlier this year. He’s a great person, owns the room when he enters. But Bond was not kind to him. Peter Hunt believed he could edit a great performance out of him. Harry Saltzman advised him to act like a star and let no one push him around. And the press was brutal to him long before the film came out. It was a very harsh spotlight. For audiences, there was a real problem with what happened with Lazenby. For a significant portion of the film, he is impersonating someone else, a reasonably openly gay man. That was a tough burden for your typical James Bond audiences to stay within 1969/70. It wasn’t that they were offended, but one of the great appeals of Bond was his overt heterosexuality. But even worse, Lazenby is dubbed during this section of the film, robbing audiences of a key part of his performance. But, ultimately, he needed a stronger director, one that really knew how to draw a performance out of an actor rather than one who believed he could edit that performance into being. The result are some key scenes where Lazenby looks slightly lost. He is too often looking around like, “What the hell is going on?” There is a YouTube video intercutting the Bond casino scenes to make it appear that all the Bonds are playing against one another. In it, you can see how lost Lazenby looks compared to the others. It is a director’s job to make sure that Bond’s inner confidence can be seen throughout. I was friends with Peter Hunt. I think in so many ways he was vital to the success of Bond, a brilliant editor, but not an actor’s director. He did Lazenby no favors by under-directing him.

Desowitz: By all logic, Lazenby should’ve been a total disaster. And yet he was wonderful. He was handsome and had raw power and handled the action well. He was too young for this movie and had never acted before and it showed dramatically. Yet he was like a cipher without any previous baggage and I accepted him from the outset. (I think the opening line about “This never happened to the other fella” was a great icebreaker.) He was physically capable and unafraid of being vulnerable. We believed he was devastated at the end. He was a new kind of Bond, and it’s a shame he couldn’t be even more of himself instead of being directed in the mold of Connery.

Helfenstein: His massive physicality is evident from the pre-credits sequence onwards. The viewer has no trouble believing that this man is paid to kill people. Lazenby is without a doubt the Bond with the greatest amount of swagger. Those are his two greatest strengths. He’s certainly believable in the love scenes. Where he falls flat is the expository dialog scenes, especially the ones as Sir Hilary Bray, where he was dubbed. Those were the first scenes shot, and rather than bog down with getting the accent right, Hunt built Lazenby’s confidence by accepting takes he knew he would fix later in post-production. I think Lazenby’s overall confidence and happiness work very well in the film, and that positive outlook makes the gut-punch ending that much more powerful. Is George Lazenby the greatest “Actor” with a capital A to ever play James Bond? Of course not. But is he absolutely perfect for the part in OHMSS? Indubitably!

Pfeiffer: Lazenby was wise not to take the obvious route by trying to blatantly imitate Connery. Whether you like his interpretation of Bond or not, he did play the role in his own unique style and brought his own unique qualities to the role. 

Scivally: George Lazenby is the weakest link in the cast of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He lacks the sheer animal charisma and seductive voice of Sean Connery, but he has a great physique, is classically handsome, and performs most of his scenes with assuredness; his initial encounter with Marc-Ange Draco (Gabrielle Ferzetti) is his least accomplished bit, but he’s quite good in his scenes with Telly Savalas’s Blofeld, and shows real tenderness and sincerity in his scenes with Diana Rigg. He manages to invest Bond with an air of vulnerability missing in Sean Connery’s portrayal, and his worst moments are no worse than some of the leaden scenes played by Connery in You Only Live Twice. By the end of the film, when he seems more polished, it’s easy to buy him as James Bond. It has always seemed to me that with every actor who played the role, it takes three films for them to fully grow into it. I think it’s a shame that Lazenby didn’t get three chances to perfect his Bond persona. It would have been interesting to see him in Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die.

Coate: In what way was Telly Savalas’s Blofeld a memorable villain?

Burlingame: Savalas might just be the best of the Blofelds. (It’s either him or Pleasence.) He’s not at all to be taken lightly, and he and Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt make a formidable duo. He was so good that I had a lot of trouble thinking of him as a good guy when he took the Kojak role a few years later.

Caplen: The Blofeld we see in OHMSS is devious, maniacal, and cunning. But he is also somewhat more plausible than his prior iteration on You Only Live Twice. His facial scar replaced with no earlobes, the OHMSS Blofeld is a character that is more amenable to anonymity and disappearing without much fanfare. He can also be taken seriously, which cannot describe his campy successor in Diamonds Are Forever. Casting Telly Savalas (and Diana Rigg) around newcomer George Lazenby undoubtedly strengthened the film’s acting credentials. 

Chapman: “Okay, we’ll head them off at the precipice!” The first time I saw the film, I was surprised to see Blofeld taking such an active role in the ski chase, as in the other films he’s presented as a hands-off supremo who leaves the physical work to his henchmen. But in YOLT (novel) he has a sword fight with Bond. So in that sense Savalas’s more active Blofeld is consistent with the books. I like it when the villain represents a physical threat to Bond regardless of whether he has a big henchman, so for that reason I prefer Savalas to the other Blofelds. Donald Pleasence with his scarred eye looks great in YOLT but his stature and delivery are nothing like the silhouetted Blofeld we’ve seen in previous films. And while I think Charles Gray is a marvelous actor, the less said about his Noel Coward turn as Blofeld in DAF the better.

Cork: Savalas was this great figure. I encountered him twice, and each time he had that same easy Greek smile that confounded you as to whether he was about to invite you to have dinner or simply slice off your head and show it to his friends. That is a great quality, and Savalas was a very skilled actor. Savalas dominates virtually every scene he’s in, but I do wonder what his performance could have been with just a bit more direction. During the ski chase and the final chase, where so much could have been done with his close-ups and his lines, so little is. In particular, I think of his reaction shot to Piz Gloria blowing up or him dropping the grenade in the bobsled or the shot of him driving at the very end of the film. He seems weak. Those are moments where a director and actor can lift something up, infuse a standard reaction with something that brings the character into focus. Think of Goldfinger’s little glance around when he’s briefly in the vault in Fort Knox. You just know this guy wants to have sex with that gold. Or think of Rosa Klebb’s reactions in From Russia with Love. Savalas is also saddled with the scene where he’s smitten with Tracy and trying to convince her to become his mistress, and that scene works for her, but not for him. He seems smarmy, clownish and awkward. Again, a strong director working with an actor of his caliber could have made that scene work, built up a real dangerous sense of sexual tension, and had the audience in the palm of their hand.

Yet, all my nitpicking aside, Savalas is always fun to watch, and one of the things he does best is chew up the scenery. He knows how to speak with this marvelous imperious tone. But those who know his body of work also know what he was capable of doing.

Desowitz: Savalas, like Lazenby, was miscast on the surface but was the best Blofeld: urbane, physically fit, witty, serious, pretentious—not at all like the thugs he usually played. In fact, The Assassination Bureau (which co-starred both Rigg and Savalas) was like a warm up for him. You almost felt sorry for him when he witnesses Piz Gloria going to pieces at the end. The bobsled climax was thrilling too.

Helfenstein: When Salavas was first interviewed in 1968 about what sets Blofeld apart from other Bond villains, he answered “Flair,” and I think that answer can apply to Savalas himself. While some people complain that Savalas seems a bit thuggish to be a criminal mastermind, I think he fits the part like a glove. Hunt did not want to re-hire the previous Blofeld, Donald Pleasance, because he was simply too slight, and he “waddled rather than walked.” He would not have worked with such a physical movie like OHMSS. Savalas has a commanding presence, an authoritarian voice, and he’s quite believable as the head of SPECTRE. You can picture him working his way up the ladder, taking out rivals with his bare hands if need be. My favorite Savalas moment is the demented cackle he makes after his grenade explodes—sending Bond hurdling out of the bobsleigh. You can tell this guy enjoys being evil!

Pfeiffer: There are plenty of fans who think that Savalas was poorly cast as Blofeld. It’s true that Savalas was primarily known for playing earthy tough guys and had recently come off playing two such characters in The Dirty Dozen and The Scalphunters. The main complaint against him is that he was out of place playing an aristocratic villain and intellectual. There is some validity in this. He lacks the sophistication that someone like George Sanders would have brought to the role, and certainly Donald Pleasence cast a larger shadow as Blofeld, bringing nuance and mystery to the character. However, there is no way Pleasence could have played Blofeld in OHMSS, given the requirements of the script which mandated that this time around, Blofeld had to pose a physical challenge to Bond. It wouldn’t have thrilled audiences very much to see George Lazenby tossing around a slightly built, much older man like Pleasence. So count me among those who feel that Savalas acquitted himself quite well in the role, not only in terms of the physical demands, but also in terms of interpreting the character. What he may have lacked in sophistication, he made up for in the area of wit and humor. 

Scivally: Telly Savalas is a menacing presence, and is believable as an athletic, physically capable adversary of Bond. One can’t easily imagine Donald Pleasance or Charles Gray in the ski chase. But while Pleasance gave Blofeld a slightly Germanic accent, Savalas plays it with his own Garden City, New York, American accent, making his more of a Bronx Blofeld. With Savalas, the polished veneer of civility really does seem like just a veneer—you sense that he’s a tough SOB underneath, whom you don’t want to cross. Charles Gray, by comparison, is so charming and civilized that it’s difficult to believe he would do the nasty things Blofeld is supposed to do. And while Pleasance has an oily, evil presence, he lacked the physical stature to make a credible physical adversary to Bond; he would never have seemed like a threat in the hand-to-hand fighting of the bobsled scene. With Savalas, you can believe that he might just get the best of 007.

Coate: In what way was Tracy (Diana Rigg) a memorable Bond Girl?

Burlingame: Really, do you even have to ask? Diana Rigg is one of the great actresses of our time, from Shakespeare to The Avengers, and coming off the role of Emma Peel, she was simply ideal casting. If there is a problem with Lazenby in the role, it’s simply the fact that he just couldn’t match Rigg as Tracy and they had very little chemistry together. It was such a great part—the woman who finally won James Bond’s heart—and she still melts mine. I think Diana Rigg may just be the greatest “Bond girl” of all.

Caplen: I discuss Tracy di Vicenzo at length in Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond. She is a significant female character in the franchise. Flawed, rebellious, and “untamed,” she must be repositioned by James Bond, the man who saves her from suicide at the beginning of the film but cannot shield her from Blofeld’s bullets at its conclusion. OHMSS shows the audience, through Tracy, what befalls a woman who challenges the role reserved for her in a patriarchal society. 

Chapman: “Her price is far above rubies—or even your million dollars.” I’m biased because I’ve had a major crush on Diana Rigg ever since I first saw The Avengers! But I think she was the first of the Bond “girls” with any real depth of characterization—partly due to the writing and partly to the performance. Most of the early Bond women are beautiful to look at but at best are two-dimensional characters. Even Pussy Galore isn’t all that well fleshed out, though Honor Blackman is superb in the role. But Pussy, having been set up as an independent woman resistant to Bond’s charms, succumbs pretty easily in the end. Tracy is different. I think Diana Rigg captures both the vulnerability and the bravado of the character. And for once the woman is seen acting independently—she saves Bond when she turns up at the ice rink. In fact I’d say she’s my favorite heroine in the whole series. A shame that she had to be killed off at the end, but there again, that’s what makes this film distinctive and provides a degree of emotional investment that we don’t really get in the other films.

Cork: Diana Rigg is beyond a doubt the greatest thing in the film. She owns the screen. The character of Tracy is, internally, the most complex Bond woman. Sure, Vesper is tormented, but more because of external factors. Tracy is a troubled mess who doesn’t know if life is worth living, and it is the loss of her life that becomes one of the most powerful moments in any Bond film. Bond saves her as a stranger, and loses her as the love of his life. I get great joy from the action and many other things about OHMSS, but it is Tracy’s story and Rigg’s performance that makes the film one I can watch over and over.

Desowitz: Tracy is the best Bond Girl because she’s the first that won his heart. Rigg evoked Emma Peel with her spunk and sense of fun and adventure. Tracy is such a sad soul who has nothing to live for in the beginning but is given a new lease on life after the wedding, only to have it taken away from her. She could hold her own in a fight and could match wits with 007. The proposal scene is touching and romantic, the car rally is good fun, and the closing sight of her corpse is unforgettable.

Helfenstein: The typical method of casting Bond girls involved finding unknowns, except for Goldfinger, and they decided to follow that alternate recipe exactly by hiring another Avengers veteran, and thank God they did. The role required a real range of emotions, not just window dressing. Rigg plays Tracy with an incredible mix of sophistication and elegance, emotional vulnerability, and independent spirit. Her physical abilities, honed by her years on The Avengers, caused the filmmakers to rewrite the climax so she would have a fight scene to show off her talents. It is difficult to imagine any Bond girl of any era coming close to the full package Rigg brought to OHMSS. There is only one woman on the planet that can get 007 to give up his bachelorhood, and her name is Diana Rigg.

Pfeiffer: Until Diana Rigg appeared in OHMSS, most Bond women were (unjustifiably) written off as beautiful airheads. That really isn’t true. Most of the airhead characters came after this film (those played by Jill St. John, Britt Ekland and Tanya Roberts being the most egregious examples). It can be said that Bond women represented liberated female characters. Sure, they may have swooned in Bond’s presence, but they were generally courageous, self-reliant women who were getting along just fine before Bond entered their lives. With the character of Tracy in OHMSS, there was much more of an overt attempt to present her as a modern, liberated woman. This was, after all, a film made in the burgeoning days of the Women’s Lib movement. Tracy was also Bond’s intellectual equal and was presented as a daring risk-taker. It didn’t hurt that she was portrayed by an actress of exceptional skill. This seemed to be the first time critics gave some grudging respect to a leading female character in a Bond film. 

Scivally: Long before I saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I was in love with Diana Rigg. She was my idea of the ideal woman—beautiful, brainy and able to kick butt. I was a big fan of The Avengers, and wanted to grow up to be Mr. Steed so I could run around with Emma Peel. So, I was already pre-disposed to like Rigg before I saw the film. But her portrayal of Tracy di Vicenzo differs from her role of Mrs. Peel. Tracy has an inner melancholy that, when we first see her, is driving her to attempt suicide, and afterwards seems to be just under the surface. When she helps Bond escape from Mürren, the excitement of the situation—and his proposal—lifts her spirits and brings her to life; for the first time in her life, she’s really happy, and that makes her untimely death all the more tragic. Rigg, being an immensely skilled actress, makes us feel for Tracy from the first frame she’s in to the last.

Coate: What is the legacy of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service?

Burlingame: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service demonstrated (conclusively, even at the time) that a tight, Fleming-based script; direction by the guy who had so brilliantly edited the previous five films; a genuinely inspired music score; great actors including Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas; superb production design; well-chosen locations and eye-popping action sequences; could ensure that a top-notch Bond film was possible even without Sean Connery. To this day OHMSS ranks as one of the finest 007 films ever made.

Caplen: OHMSS serves as proof that the character of James Bond transcends the actor cast for the role. Sean Connery’s departure ultimately had little impact on the franchise and paved the way for continuity with different actors portraying our favorite protagonist. Whatever your opinion of George Lazenby may be, he served a greater function than merely portraying James Bond in one film, and that aspect is often overlooked.

Chapman: I think there are both short-term and longer-term legacies. Its perceived “failure” at the box-office meant that the producers changed direction for the next film. So in the short term the legacy of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was Diamonds Are Forever: Connery back, gadgets back, more or less a remake of Goldfinger but even more excessive in its bizarre situations and visuals. I know that some fans maintain that the Roger Moore films ruined the Bond series. I don’t. And the style of the 1970s Bonds was set by Diamonds, which has more silliness and more camp than any of Roger’s films. Blofeld was never meant to be a realistic character, but the moment he appeared in drag ruined him as a plausible villain for me. Diamonds was back up at the box-office, though, suggesting that’s the style that audiences at the time preferred. But it meant the Bond movies steered away from any attempt at psychological or emotional realism, and instead embraced spectacle, visual excess and campy humor.

In the longer term, though, I think the influence of OHMSS can be seen in the modern Bond movies. With Casino Royale we had a vulnerable Bond again, grieving over the death of a woman he has fallen in love with. And with Daniel Craig, the Bond films have again explored Bond’s sense of duty and loyalty, most obviously in Skyfall, but it’s also there in the other two. The action set pieces in the recent films are also influenced by Majesty’s, I think: big and spectacular—and in the case of the pre-title sequence of Skyfall extended like the ski chase in OHMSS—but not silly or entirely impossible. I’ve been used to saying in recent times that I thought, in hindsight, Licence to Kill was the first Daniel Craig Bond movie—albeit without Daniel Craig. But perhaps, I might suggest, OHMSS was the first Daniel Craig Bond movie?

Cork: I answered this one way back in the first question. I’ll answer a different way now. I’ve talked about how Majesty’s influenced Bond films that echo its tone and style, but there is a counterpoint to that. When Majesty’s came out and did not become a breakout success on the scale UA hoped for, it changed the Bond films. UA made it very clear to Cubby and Harry that there were no more blank checks, that the studio would be heavily involved in the future Bonds, and David Picker personally became a major influence on Diamonds Are Forever. He got Connery back. He selected Tom Mankiewicz to do re-writes on the script. He almost succeeded in getting the film made in Hollywood where studio supervision would have been even more apparent. Most of all, Picker declared that what he wanted, and what he believed audiences wanted, was more Goldfinger and more humor. Until the end of the Brosnan era (with the exception of Licence to Kill), we are looking at a tone for Bond that is very heavily influenced by Picker’s creative input on Diamonds Are Forever. That’s an unexpected legacy, but it comes straight from OHMSS’s lack of box-office success.

Another legacy has to do with the way the producers and studios approached the job of directing Bond. I can’t speak for them, but we can look at their actions. Cubby’s big advice to Michael and Barbara was always not to let others screw up Bond. When you hire a director, it is a big leap of faith. Although Cubby later approached Peter Hunt for For Your Eyes Only, he was not pleased with Majesty’s. Peter was not someone he could relate to on a personal level. Terence Young, Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert were directors who were brilliant, but never pulled the “artiste” card. John Glen was a craftsman. And Cubby saw them all as problem-solvers. Peter as a director on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was not seen as a problem solver. He was seen as a bit of an artiste. It would be twenty-five years before the filmmakers would hire a director with whom they did not already have a working relationship. Now, with Mendes—who was brought in at Daniel Craig’s suggestion—there is again the kind of creative trust with a director that Peter Hunt was given because of his history with the series.

There is one last legacy I want to mention that Majesty’s instilled in the series. For many years, the legacy was “stick to the formula, and don’t go stray or the audience will punish you.” But you can read in the interviews with Michael and Barbara that the films in the series that they keep talking about are Goldfinger and Majesty’s. They keep coming back to Majesty’s. Like me, I believe that they felt in a way that it was so close, so wonderful, but it wasn’t quite there. With the casting of Daniel Craig, it is clear they finally felt they had the right actor to take the kinds of creative chances that Majesty’s took, and to learn from the places where Majesty’s didn’t win over audiences. Bond films used to be very safe creatively. Now, they aren’t. Now they are taking chances like they did in 1969 with Majesty’s. But no longer is it one first-time director trying to steer the Bond juggernaut back to Fleming with the producers and the studio simply believing that Bond would never slide at the box-office. Now, it is the entire creative team encouraged by Michael and Barbara to take risks, to dig into the character of Bond, to challenge our expectations. And, in that sense, the legacy of Majesty’s is the continued success of the Bond films today.

Desowitz: The legacy is that it gave the franchise permission to be dark and tragic, and every now and then the franchise returns to the tone of this special movie, most recently with Craig’s trio of films. It also proved that the franchise could last without Connery, even though it would’ve been great to see Connery make this tender story as his Bond finale.

Helfenstein: It’s a legacy of risk-taking and a legacy of influence. While producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were known gamblers, both in casinos and in the movie business, they gambled to the extreme with OHMSS. Peter Hunt was a first time director. George Lazenby had never acted before. Think about that. They were replacing the world’s best known movie star with an absolute novice. They also took a risk by keeping Fleming’s tragic ending, and keeping the lengthy run time.

From an artistic standpoint the gamble paid off beautifully, with a masterpiece of a film. Financially however, the film did not make as much as some of its predecessors, and so it caused the pendulum to swing away from serious films to more light hearted ones.

The legacy of OHMSS influence has been demonstrated by nods and homages in every subsequent Bond actor era from Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig. The most prolific James Bond film director, with five entries under his belt, John Glen, is a huge fan of OHMSS, and that love for the film is seen throughout his work.

Marc Forster, the director of Daniel Craig’s second Bond film, states that his favorite Bond film is OHMSS, and when asked about his favorite Bond girl, Craig answers that it is Diana Rigg. Forty-five years later, Craig is currently filming SPECTRE, where he will face a villain named Blofeld, and a henchwoman named Irma.

But OHMSS’s influence reaches far outside the Bond series as well. A-list directors like Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh profess their love for the film, and the climax of Nolan’s Inception is a direct nod to OHMSS. OHMSS’s influence isn’t limited to just cinematic film makers. The plot of the second season premiere of the BBC’s wildly successful Sherlock TV series, A Scandal in Belgravia, was influenced by the unused “death train” scene from OHMSS. Series co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss discuss the influence of OHMSS, as well as my making-of book, in the audio commentary of the episode.

Forty-five years later, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is no longer seen as the failed experiment, but as the cinematic triumph it truly is.

Pfeiffer: The legacy of OHMSS is that the Bond producers are generally rewarded, at least in the artistic sense, when they are willing to take risks. They did so with Roger Moore, who was the antithesis of Connery but was undeniably the popular choice during the years he played 007. The Dalton films could have been a major turning point in the series but only half-measures were taken and he never really got the opportunity he deserved to introduce an entirely new incarnation of Bond. They got it right with Brosnan, who was pivotal in bringing the series back from a six-year hiatus and proved Bond was relevant in the post-Cold War period. The producers’ big gamble with Daniel Craig has also paid off big time, and it illustrates the most daring gamble they ever took in terms of rebooting the entire series. But we shouldn’t forget that the first ballsy move in that regard occurred with OHMSS. The film was a painful experience for most of those involved due to infighting and bad press, but its legacy is that it holds up as being far superior to most of the CGI-filled monstrosities that pass for thrillers in the modern cinema. 

Scivally: After the gadgetry of Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice threatened to make technology the real star of the 007 films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service returned the focus to James Bond, making him a more human character. For many years after its release, pundits said it was a shame that it did not star Sean Connery, salivating over the prospects of a Connery-Diana Rigg pairing when both were at the height of their sex appeal. But had Connery agreed to make the film, it would have been a very different movie. First of all, there would have been no need to have a stronger actress be the “Bond woman,” since Rigg was hired precisely because Lazenby was an inexperienced unknown. Secondly, Connery’s 007 was a much more callous lady-killer; Lazenby’s Bond showed more sensitivity. One can believe that Lazenby’s Bond would fall in love, and be shattered when his wife is murdered. In the prior film, You Only Live Twice, Bond seems to be falling for Aki, yet when she is killed, he immediately begins speaking to Tanaka about the mission, as if Aki’s death is merely a nuisance, like, say, a hangnail. Furthermore, it was because a new actor was taking on the role that director Peter Hunt felt emboldened to reinvent the series by taking it back to a tone closer to Ian Fleming’s source material and away from the jokey gadget-fests the Bond movies had become. Sadly, the film stumbled at the box-office (though its reputation has grown over the years), and the subsequent 007 films veered away from the more reality-based spy thriller mold of Majesty’s and back to the fun-filled romp model, beginning with Connery’s return in Diamonds Are Forever. James Bond would never be so serious again until Casino Royale. Lastly, the lasting impact of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is that it showed that a James Bond film could be made without Sean Connery in the lead role. The producers maintained that audiences came to the films to see James Bond, not necessarily the actor playing him. Majesty’s helped prove that point.

Coate: Thank you, everyone, for participating and for sharing your thoughts about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on the occasion of its 45th anniversary.

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The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering A View to a Kill on its 30th Anniversary.

- Michael Coate

I’m personally really looking forward to this. Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is my all-time favorite Ghibli film. It’s absolutely stunning animation from a master at the top of his game. As you should already know, Miyazaki’s first animated film, Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro, will be released on Collector’s Edition Blu-ray here in the States for the first time on 6/23 from Discotek Media. We’ve also confirmed that GKids and Universal will be releasing Studio Ghibli’s latest film, When Marnie Was There, on Blu-ray and DVD later this year.

Speaking of Universal, the studio has set Parks and Recreation: Season Seven – The Farewell Season and Parks and Recreation: The Complete Series for DVD only release on 6/2.

Meanwhile, Troma is releasing The Toxic Avenger, Part II on Blu-ray/DVD Combo on 4/14 (SRP $24.95), along with Class of Nuke ‘Em High 2 on Blu-ray/DVD Combo that same day.

Ketchup Entertainment is releasing Harlock: Space Pirate on DVD on 3/31.

Also, PBS Distribution has set Dancing on the Edge for Blu-ray and DVD release on 5/5, followed by Masterpiece Mystery!: Grantchester on both formats on 4/7.

Finally today, are there any Bond fans in the house? In about two hours, the official 007 website is going to debut the first teaser trailer for Bond 24, a.k.a. SPECTRE. Click the link for that and enjoy.

Here’s a look at all three of the Ghibli Blu-ray titles listed above. Click on the cover art to support The Bits by pre-ordering them on Amazon.com…

That’s all for now. Gave a great weekend and we’ll see you on Monday!

- Bill Hunt