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(Deceased February 23, 1965 at age 51--Rome, Lazio, Italy.)
1913: Claude Renoir is born--Paris, France. Acts as director of photography for The Spy Who Loved Me.
1923: actor Norman Burton is born--NYC, New York.
1944: actor Jeroen Krabbé is born--Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands.
He plays Kara Milovy's boyfriend in The Living Daylights.
1976: 007 Stage officially opens at Pinewood Studios.
The ceremony has the former British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, in attendance.
2004: Jean Tournier (born 3 April 3 1926--Toulon, Var, France; director of photography on Moonraker)
dies in Paris at age 78.
2012: BOND 23 confirmed as highest grossing film of all time at the UK box-office.
1921: George Leech , stunt double and action coordinator, is born--London, England. He starts with Dr. No and progresses in most Bond films to A View to a Kill. In 1983 he performs stunts in Octopussy, plus rival Bond film Never Say Never Again (uncredited). (Mr. Leech passes 17 June 2012--London, England.)
1962: Colin Salmon born--Luton, Bedfordshire, England.
1999: the end date of Radioactive label release "The World Is Not Enough" single in Europe (15 November to 6 December) for three-track CD digipak or two-track single (reverse side "Ice Bandits").
2011: Skyfall scene filmed on the Department of Energy and Climate Change rooftop, Whitehall, London. Moneypenny hands box to OO7.
1955: Priscilla Barnes is born--Fort Dix, New Jersey.
1965: Jeffrey Wright is born--Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
2008: Daniel Craig confirmed BOND 23's plot will not continue the Casino Royale nor Quantum of Solace story arc: "I'm done with that story. I want to lie on a beach for the first half an hour of the next movie drinking a cocktail."
It's funny how true that comment came to be four years later considering how SF kicks off post-PTS.
1950: Rick Baker is born--Binghamton, New York. Early in his career (and uncredited) he works
on the special effects for Live and Let Die.
1964: Teri Hatcher is born--Palo Alto, California.
2014: BOND 24 production begins at Pinewood Studios. Filming commences the next 7 months
including in London, Mexico City, Rome, Morocco.
1934: Judi Dench is born--York, North Yorkshire, England.
1965: Thunderball premieres in Japan. Then is released 11 December--in Japan.
[Compare to US release 22 December, UK release 29 December.]
2006: “You Know My Name”--written by Chris Cornell and David Arnold,.
As performed by Cornell it peaks at 57 on The Billboard Hot 100.
It is his highest charting single.
1977: The Spy Who Loved Me is released in Japan.
[Compare to UK release 8 July, US release 3 August. Turnabout is fair play.]
2011: The Aston Martin DB5 sees after hours action on Childers Street, Lewisham, London, as the Skyfall escape to Scotland sequence is filmed.
And David Arnold. They co-wrote the song. Wikipedia has a pretty good breakdown on who did what actually.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Know_My_Name_(Chris_Cornell_song)
1986: Royalty--meaning Prince Charles and Princess Diana--visit the The Living Daylights set
and meet Timothy Dalton, the latest James Bond.
1964: John Barry's Goldfinger soundtrack premieres on the Billboard charts the week ending this date--it reaches #1 and stays in the Top 200 a total of 70 weeks.
1997: Tomorrow Never Dies is released in the UK, Ireland, and Iceland.
1915: Curd Jürgens is born--Solin, Munich, Germany. [And passes 18 June 1982 at age 66--Vienna, Austria.]
1941: "Australian Girl" Anouska Hempel is born--Wellington, New Zealand.
1958: Lynn-Holly Johnson is born--Chicago, Illinois.
1958: The first syndicated comic version of a Fleming story --Casino Royale, illustrated by John McLusky and written by Anthony Hern--ends its run in the Daily Express. As started 7 July 1958.
http://www.nytimes.com/1964/12/13/james-bonds-39-bumps.html?_r=0
RICHARD MAIBAUM - DEC. 13, 1964
I ONCE told the late Ian Fleming that he wrote too well. Speaking strictly as a screenwriter, that is, who is handed a novel by a producer and told to translate it into celluloid. In the long run, of course, the director does that, but the screenplay is his blueprint and has inherent in it the completed motion picture.
Mr. Fleming seemed pleased, beaming when I ascribed to him “an untransferable literary quality,” but I’m sure he did not entirely realize I was paying him a left - handed compliment. Again from the standpoint of the screen dramatist.
There is little doubt in my mind that the success of the Bond films stems directly from the success of the novels, their combination of terror and elegance, sophisti[cation]...
Fleming's tongue‐in-cheek attitude toward his material (intrigue, expertise, violence, love, death) finds a ready mass response in a world where audiences enjoy sick jokes. Incidentally, it is the aspect of Fleming which the films have most developed. Sometimes, I think, far beyond what Fleming himself intended. He said as much to me once when he commented rather innocently, “Somehow the pictures seem funnier than my books.”
Digging Deep
Having said all this about the novels, it would appear that a screenwriter adapting them would feel like a fortunate prospector discovering an inexhaustible mother‐lode of pure gold. And yet there are problems.
A screenwriter is limited to setting down, as suggestion to the director, only what can be said and done by actors and what can be photographed by the cameraman. Lovely descriptive passages; illuminating streams of consciousness revealing character; great hunks of brilliant, interesting exposition; carefully documented quasitreatises; all must go.
A case in point is a scene in “Goldfinger” in which Bond is strapped to a workbench and menaced by an approaching circular saw. Somehow in the reading, because Fleming writes so effectively, “The Perils of Pauline” do not immediately occur to one. Vividly depicted on the screen, however, we were sure audiences would find the episode old‐fashioned, hackneyed and ludicrous. What to do? We substituted an industrial laser beam, a development as fresh as tomorrow, for the antiquated circular saw. Do I hear anyone asking sotto voce about the screenwriter's blushes? If he was the blushing type he wouldn't be doing Bond screenplays in the first place. Besides, it's all good clean fun, or so he tells himself.
Logic is another problem. Once, as a young man, I worked as Writer Number 34, I think, for Alfred Hitchcock on “Foreign Correspondent.” I told him I thought a certain situation was illogical. He looked at me sadly and replied, “Dear boy, don't be dull. I’m not interested in logic, but in effects. If the audience ever thinks about logic it's on their way home from the theater and by that time they’ve already paid for their tickets.”
Verisimilitude
Still there is a point beyond which audiences will reject a film for too many abuses of actuality. In “Goldfinger,” for example, Fleming has Goldfinger, a supposedly criminal genius, plot to break into Fort Knox and steal 16 billion dollars worth of gold bullion. Fleming, bless him, in the best Hitchcockian tradition, never bothered his head about how long it would take to transport that amount of gold, or how many men and vehicles would be required. Obviously, it would take weeks, hundreds of trucks and hundreds of men. The problem that faced us was not an easy one. Why, we...
Rough Grind
Then there is the question of “bumps.” Hitchcock once said to me, “If I have 13 ‘bumps’ I know I have a picture.” By “bumps,” he meant, of course, shocks, highpoints, thrills, whatever you choose to call them. From the beginning, through “Dr. No,” “From Russia With Love,” and now with “Goldfinger,” Mr. Broccoli and Mr. Saltzman, the producers, and myself have not been content with 13 “bumps.” We aim for 39. Our objective has been to make every foot of film pay off in terms of exciting entertainment. Fleming, too, has his “bumps,” but not nearly enough for the kind of films we’re trying to make.
Actually, Fleming himself, unlike many authors of well-known literary works to be made into films, seemed unusually complacent as to how his books were treated. The only question he ever asked...
The actual characterization of James Bond (and we are lucky devils to have Sean Connery) was also a departure from the novels. Both Terence Young and Guy Hamilton, our directors, shared and augmented the concept of Bond as visualized by the producers and myself. That concept retained a basic super‐sleuth, super‐fighter, super‐hedonist, super‐lover of Fleming's, but added another large dimension: humor. Humor vocalized in wry comments at critical moments. In the books, Bond was singularly lacking in this.
A bright young producer accord me one day with glittering eyes. “I’m making a parody of the James Bond films.” How, I asked myself, does one make a parody of a parody? For that is precisely, in the final analysis, what we have done with Fleming's books. Parodied them. I’m not sure that Ian himself ever completely realized this. Or perhaps I underestimate his perception. At any rate, he seemed happy with what we were doing.
The writer adapted "Dr. No," "From Russia With Love" and "Goldfinger," which opens at the DeMille and Coronet Theaters on Dec. 21, to the screen.
This article can be viewed in its original form.
query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C06E1D7143BE233A25750C1A9649D946591D6CF&src=DigitizedArticle
Please send questions and feedback to [email protected]
1953: Vijay Amritraj is born--Madras, Madras State, India.
1960: Gregory Ratoff (born 20 April 20 1897--Samara, Russian Empire) dies at age 63--Solothurn, Switzerland. Later in 1961, his widow sells the Casino Royale film rights to producer Charles K. Feldman for $75,000.
1971: Diamonds Are Forever released in West Germany, ahead of the US (17 December) and UK (30 December).
1983: London premiere of Never Say Never Again.
2009: The Orient Express, featured in From Russia With Love book and film, ceases operations. Replaced by high-speed trains and air travel. (The Venice-Simplon Orient Express train--an Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. private venture, now Belmond--still runs carriages circa 1920s-1930s from London to Venice and even the original Paris to Istanbul route.)
2014: EON releases statements confirming a cyber-attack on Sony stole an early version of the BOND 24 screenplay .
1948: Cassandra Harris is born--Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
1958: The second syndicated comic version of a Fleming story--Live and Let Die, illustrated by John McLusky and written by Henry Gammidge--begins its run in the Daily Express that eventually finishes 28 March 1959.
2014: Vodka producer Belvedere showcases two limited edition 007 bottles at a London Film Museum launch party.
A Vodka Martini In The New ‘Spectre’ Movie
businessinsider.com/belvedere-vodka-partners-james-bond-spectre-2014-12
Lara O'Reilly - Dec. 15, 2014, 7:01 PM
Belvedere, the luxury vodka brand owned by the LVMH Group, is partnering with the next movie in the James Bond franchise, “Spectre.”
Harnessing Bond’s penchant for vodka martinis and his iconic “Shaken, not stirred” line, Belvedere becomes the official vodka of the movie, which is due for cinematic release next November from Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The news will be something of a relief for Bond fans: In previous movies the spy had been seen (implausibly) drinking Heineken and (more plausibly) Smirnoff. Fans tend to forget he also drank Red Stripe in the first movie, Dr. No. The arrival of Belvedere will therefore pull Bond upmarket a bit.
Sitting down with Business Insider at a suitably secretive London location this week (think "spies," that's all we're allowed to say,) Belvedere Vodka president Charles Gibbs told us the partnership marks the brand’s “biggest” marketing push to date, although he declined to divulge financial details. It is hoped the partnership will raise awareness of the brand globally and highlight Belvedere vodka's quality credentials.
To kick off the partnership, Belvedere has created two (very large) 1.75l limited edition bottles, which it will showcase at a launch party at London's Film Museum tonight (December 15.)
The MI6 bottle pays homage to 007's HQ, swapping the signature Belvedere blue ink with the color of green ink used by MI6 officials to sign documents. Belvedere has also replaced the iconic Belvedere Palace that appears on its bottles with an etching of the MI6 building. Only 100 of this bottle will be made, but they won’t be available to buy. Instead Belvedere plans to gift them to “Bond aficionados” and put them up for charity auctions.
Here's the MI6 bottle:
The second, more flashy bottle is called the 007 Silver Saber. The metallic bottle lights up, thanks to an in-built LED system. It will be available on sale next year "in selective distribution."
Here's the 007 Silver Saber:
Next year, the campaign will ramp up with TV, cinema, digital ads, additional special packs and events planned. As the film is still in production, Gibbs could not confirm exactly what role Belvedere will play in Spectre. Gibbs also turned coy when asked whether there was the possibility of partnering with one of the other brands paying for product placement in the film (Aston Martin is the only other brand confirmed to appear so far, although that doesn't seem a likely fit.)
The main appeal of the partnering with the Bond franchise was its global reach beyond its core base of 25 to 40-year-old customers, but Gibbs also hopes the partnership will allow the aspirational Belvedere brand to "break through the clutter" of marketing messages from big-spending alcohol brands by associating with a "moment in popular culture."
The martini story also allows Belevedere to authentically talk up the provenance of its ingredients. The vodka is made from Dankowskie Rye and blended with own water from its own source in Poland, all key messages the brand hopes will hit home with lapsed drinkers as well as those new to the brand. It is hoped that making Belvedere Bond's choice for a vodka martini will also encourage bartenders to push the product to their cocktail lists.
LVMH, which also owns the Moët Hennessy brand, saw a 7% drop year on year in reported revenue in the first 9 months of 2014 to €2.63 billion. At the time of reporting, the company said the trend was reflective of a declining cognac market in China. It did not split out separate figures for Belvedere, but said the brand had "sustained volume growth."
2002: New York Times article "North Korea Denounces Bond Film" reports that North Korea denounces Bond film.
nytimes.com/2002/12/15/world/north-korea-denounces-james-bond-film.html
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE - DEC. 15, 2002
North Korea issued a statement today denouncing the latest James Bond film, ''Die Another Day,'' for ''insulting the Korean nation.''
''The U.S. should stop at once the dirty and cursed burlesque'' the official Korean Central News Agency said, citing a bulletin by the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.
In the film, the fictional secret agent 007 is captured in North Korea and tortured. He also has sex in a Buddhist temple.
The film is ''a deliberate and premeditated act of mocking at and insulting the Korean nation,'' the news agency said, citing the bulletin, and shows that the United States is ''the root cause of all disasters and misfortune of the Korean nation,'' ''an empire of evil'' and ''the headquarters that spreads abnormality, degeneration, violence and fin-de-siècle corrupt sex culture.''
"You hombres will never guess what I brought for us to watch to mark the beginning of the long international partnership between North Korea and the United States. Hey, Jong-un, I heard your daddy was a big movie guy, BIG movie guy. Well, this here is one of my absolute favorites, the only James Bond film set in your beautiful country, "Die Another Day". It's a good...pretty great movie. Nice visuals, just...nice. I know it makes you guys look pretty nasty, pretty mean....but we know it's just a movie, right? Not real, like fake news. Anyway, just brush that off...it's not a big league deal or anything, and we know you guys are good guys. It's also got that "Gone Girl" chick in it and she's a real babe, so there's something in it for all of us. Obama wouldn't do this for you, trust me...trust me. He'd probably make you sit through "The Color Purple" or "Shaft" or something. He doesn't even like white people in his movies, you know, must less his own country, even though he's really from Kenya. Trust me on that, I had the best guys look into it, the very best guys...he's just disgusting, real nasty. What a jerk...a total jerk. Anyway, pop that corn and enjoy the show, the very best show. Do you hombres have popcorn here?"
And I can also string together actual sentences, so that's another thing...
1965: Thunderball released in West Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France, Australia.
1968: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang released in the UK.
1969: Honor Blackman is featured on This is Your Life, Thames TV. (They had to do it again 17 February 1993, and she's still going strong today.)
1971: Diamonds Are Forever released in USA, Denmark, Italy.
1973: Live and Let Die released in Denmark and Spain. (UK and US got it in July)
1975: Producer Harry Saltzman concludes the sale of his interests in the Bond franchise to United Artists, ending his partnership with Albert R. Broccoli.
1967: The Spy Who Loved Me begins its comic strip run in the Daily Express, written by Jim Lawrence and drawn by Yaroslav Horak. The 18th and final Bond comic for them (ran through 3 October 1968).
1974: The Man With the Golden Gun premieres Leicester Square Odeon, HRH Prince Philip in attendance.
1997: Tomorrow Never Dies released in Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Lebanon, Netherlands, Slovenia.
1969: On Her Majesty's Secret Service released in the UK, USA, West Germany, Finland.
1969: The New York Times reviews the latest Bond film.
Screen: New James Bond:George Lazenby Follows the Connery Pattern
December 19, 1969 - By A. H. WEILER
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F07E5DC1131EE3BBC4152DFB4678382679EDE&pagewanted=print
A BARE fact must be faced. The superheated screen activities of Ian Fleming's supersleuth and sex symbol, James Bond, are as inevitable as sex or crime or "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," the sixth steaming annal in the sock 'em and spoof 'em spy series that crashed into the DeMille and other local theaters yesterday.
Serious criticism of such an esteemed institution would be tantamount to throwing rocks at Buckingham Palace, but it does call for a handful of pebbles. Devotees will note that Sean Connery, the virile, suave conqueror of all those dastards and dames in the five previous capers, has given up his 007 Bond credentials to George Lazenby, a 30-year-old Australian newcomer to films. He's tall, dark, handsome and has a dimpled chin. But Mr. Lazenby, if not a spurious Bond, is merely a casual, pleasant, satisfactory replacement.
For the record, he plays a decidedly second fiddle to an overabundance of continuous action, a soundtrack as explosive as the London Blitz, and flip dialogue and characterizations set against some authentic, truly spectacular Portuguese and Swiss scenic backgrounds, caught in eyecatching colors.
What are Bond's problems now? They're too numerous, as usual, to hold the constant attention of anyone other than a charter member of Her Majesty's Secret Service. What sets our bully boy off and fighting, running, shooting and loving this time is a lissome, leggy lass mysteriously bent on drowning herself in the waves thunderously crashing on a lonely Portuguese beach.
First thing you know he's involved in a battle with two toughs that is as full of karate chops and belts in the belly as a brawl in a Singapore alley. To the credit of Richard Maibaum, the scenarist, the film's tongue-in-cheek attitude is set right at the outset. Once our new Bond emerges triumphant, he turns to the audience and says, somewhat plaintively: "This never happened to the other fellow."
But it does. The lady of his life, the svelte Diana Rigg, who learned her karate chops from the British TV "Avenger" series, is the daughter of the blandly effete Gabriele Ferzetti, Mafioso-like tycoon, who likes Bond and wants to destroy that Spectre chief, Telly Savalas, his competition in world crime. That suits Bond too, and practically right off he's in Switzerland, where our villain maintains an eyrie atop an Alp.
It's an inaccessible retreat, supposedly an institute for allergy research complete with hired guns, scientific gimmicks and an international conclave of allegedly allergic beauties who are really being brainwashed by the oily, bald-domed Mr. Savalas to spread his biological destruction of the world's food supply. Get it?
Bond dallies with the dolls, of course, but the heart of the matter is a series of chases shot by the 41-year-old Peter Hunt, second unit director of the previous adventures, who's making his directorial debut with this one. The chases are breakneck, devastating affairs.
A viewer must remember what seems to be the longest ski chase and bobsled run ever, full of gunfire and spills, that even includes an avalanche. There also is a decibel-filled fight amid clanging Swiss cow bells, the jarring bombing of that eyrie by helicopter-borne rescuers and the inadvertent clashes of the escaping Bond and Miss Rigg in a slithering, bang-up stock car race. One must say amen to a colleague's observation:
"I never expected to see Switzerland defoliated like "this."
It should be reported that the producers and distributors already have rung up a reported $82,200,000 on their first five Bond issues. It is not ungallant to report that Bond marries Miss Rigg, who is gunned down and killed by Savalas on their honeymoon. So it is reasonable to expect that Bond inevitably will be loving, shooting and running again.
1974: The Man with the Golden Gun premieres in London, plus is released in the US, West Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark.
1997: Tomorrow Never Dies released in the US, Austria, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway; Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Israel.
1997: The New York Times reviews the latest Bond film.
FILM REVIEW; Shaken, Not Stirred, Bond Is in Business
nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F04E1DB113FF93AA25751C1A961958260
By JANET MASLIN - Published: December 19, 1997
No need to feel badly if the right watch, drink, cell phone, etc., don't turn you into James Bond. They don't really do it for Pierce Brosnan in ''Tomorrow Never Dies,'' either. Despite Mr. Brosnan's best efforts to be lethally debonair, the Bond franchise has sacrificed most of what made this character unique in the first place, turning the world's suavest spy into one more pitchman and fashion plate. This latest film is such a generic action event that it could be any old summer blockbuster, except that its hero is chronically overdressed.
This is not to say that ''Tomorrow Never Dies'' won't be an international success like ''Goldeneye,'' which wasn't much better. But it should fare best in corners of the world where nobody knows how little the title means, or how accurately it reflects the rest of the film's shallowness. Closer than ever to cartoon superhero status, Bond is seen battling ridiculous odds, dodging computer-generated explosions, delivering lame bon mots and boasting pitifully about his sexual prowess. All that gives this an up-to-date sensibility is the audience's awareness that M (Judi Dench) and Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) could sue him for sexual harassment on the basis of his small talk.
This film does have a lively villain in Jonathan Pryce, as a media mogul who dreams of everything from manufacturing his own war to marketing software with bugs (so that customers will have to upgrade for years). Mr. Pryce reigns mischievously over an empire that Bond must infiltrate, and he also has a wife (Teri Hatcher) who is one of Bond's approximately one million ex-flames. Ms. Hatcher, like Mr. Brosnan, speaks in a perfect monotone, and so does Michelle Yeoh, the Hong Kong action star who is meant to kick some life into the series.
The film's other attempts to show Bond in a romantic light are so hopeless that it's a lucky thing his partnership with Ms. Yeoh's character, the svelte and athletic Wai Lin, stays confined to toylike weaponry and flat double-entendres.
''And now a word from our sponsor,'' muttered the critic beside me, as the camera offered a good look at James Bond's vodka bottle midway through the so-called story. (The humor-free screenplay is by Bruce Feirstein, author of ''Real Men Don't Eat Quiche'' as well as ''Goldeneye.'' The workmanlike director is Roger Spottiswoode.) Indeed, despite Bond's mission to defeat the evil mogul, product plugs are the film's most serious business, especially since the audience may be bored enough to start looking at labels.
The film's two best supporting turns come from Vincent Schiavelli, who has a cheerfully outrageous scene as a torture expert, and from a nice, smart BMW that works on remote control. Hiding in the back seat, Bond pilots the car through a tire-screeching chase. Don't try this at home.
''Tomorrow Never Dies'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes violence a la videogames, smirky innuendoes and a couple of brief sexual situations.
He was born 12 September 1914--Newport, Wales. UK.
I really need to go through his speeches and create a montage of him saying this. I can hear him right now.
A minor correction I only just caught. Should be "much less his own country," not "must less."
1959: The Atticus column of the Sunday Times presents some thoughts from Ian Fleming on Christmas.
"Ideally, the only possible place to spent it is Monte Carlo. You don't have to eat turkey--a detestable bird. There aren't any people there you know at this time of year, and it's perfectly easy to play a little golf and avoid over-eating."
But even for the creator of James Bond, the ideal is not always attainable, and Mr. Fleming will in fact be spending his Christmas near Belfast, reading three good American thrillers, including the latest Rex Stout, and "going to church in a long crocodile with the rest of the family" on Christmas morning. His one way of simplifying Christmas is to give the same present year after year to all and sundry. It consists of a dozen snuff handkerchiefs from Fribourg and Treyer.
2009: Screenwriter Peter Morgan reveals an unimaginable twist planned for BOND 23--the death of M.
1964: Goldfinger premieres in the US--at the DeMille Theatre, New York City, NY.
(Compare to UK premiere 17 September in London. Followed by Hollywood, CA 25 December.
Then US general release 9 January 1965.)
(Followed by US general release 22 December. UK release 29 December. The true world premiere was earlier: December 9, Hibiya Cinema, Tokyo, Japan.)
1968: On Her Majesty's Secret Service principal shooting ends. (Began: 21 October.)
1969: Ilse Steppat passes--West Berlin, Germany. (Born--30 November 1917 Barmen, Germany.)
1999: Desmond Llewelyn's obituary appears in the Independent two days after his passing.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-desmond-llewelyn-1133864.html
Tom Vallance - Tuesday 21 December 1999 00:02 GMT - The Independent Culture
DESMOND LLEWELYN was an actor for over 60 years, but will forever be remembered for just one role, that of "Q", inventor of countless gadgets for the spy James Bond. With an air of impatient but kindly acumen, he would introduce Bond to a batch of innocent-looking but lethal high-tech instruments in a scene that was always a highlight of each adventure.
When the producers left him out of one of the Bond movies, Live and Let Die (1973), claiming that the films were becoming too dependent on gadgetry, there was a storm of protest from fans who missed his trademark cameo. The character was restored permanently and is to be seen in the latest adventure, The World Is Not Enough. During the last week Llewelyn had been attracting large crowds at book signings for a new biography, Q: the biography of Desmond Llewelyn, written by Sandy Hernu, who described the actor as "enormously funny and entertaining and great fun to be with". She said that the man on screen was similar to the real one, except that Llewelyn hated gadgets. He once said, "In real life gadgets explode or expire as I touch them."
The son of a coal-mining engineer, Llewelyn was born in South Wales in 1914. His parents wanted him to be a chartered accountant, but a period as an articled clerk bored him, and after considering several professions he decided on a stage career and enrolled, at the age of 20, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he studied for two years.
As he said later, "I'd tried the Church and that failed. I was too dim for accountancy, too short-sighted for the police force and an insufficient liar to make a good politician. What else was left but to become an actor? I remember Richard Burton saying to me years later that the reason there are so many Welsh actors is because the Church is not very popular nowadays." Fellow students at Rada included Geoffrey Keen, later to appear in several Bond films, and Margaret Lockwood, "to whom I quite lost my heart".
While still at Rada he made his film debut with a walk-on in the Gracie Fields film Look Up and Laugh (1935), but his first professional job after leaving the academy was with a repertory company in Southend, the first of several such companies with whom he gained experience. He was appearing in Bexhill, East Sussex (where he eventually settled) when he met Pamela Pantlin, a member of the "Women's League for Health and Beauty", and they were married in 1938.
The following year, Llewelyn was in another film, the Will Hay comedy Ask a Policeman, but his career was then interrupted by the Second World War, in which he served as a second lieutenant assigned to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Captured by German soldiers in France, he spent five years as a prisoner of war.
He resumed his film career with a war film, They Were Not Divided (1950), in which he was one of two soldiers named Jones, who was thus addressed as "77 Jones" - the other was "45 Jones". The director was Terence Young, who 13 years later was director of From Russia With Love, the film which changed the course of Llewelyn's career.
Llewelyn had been appearing in regional theatre and playing small film roles - he had four lines in Cleopatra (1962) - when he auditioned for the role of Q. The character is not in the Ian Fleming books, though in the first Bond story, Casino Royale, it is "Q Branch" that provides 007's gadgets, and in Llewelyn's first two Bond films his character is billed as "Major Boothroyd", becoming simply "Q" in Thunderball (1965). (In the first Bond film, Dr No (1962), Boothroyd had been played by Peter Burton, who was not available for the filming of From Russia With Love.)
Young wanted the character to speak with a Welsh accent, but Llewelyn preferred to interpret the character as "a toffee-nosed Englishman". "At the risk of losing the part and with silent apologies to my native land, I launched into Q's lines using the worst Welsh accent, followed by the same in English," he said.
Bond was in need of gadgets in From Russia With Love, for he had to contend with two of the most dastardly villains of the series, the blond hulk Red Grant (Robert Shaw) and the sadistic Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), who uses knife-toed boots to kick her victims to death. A booby-trapped briefcase was the principal item with which Bond was equipped, courtesy of Q, who was to become a fixture of the Bond adventures (with the exception of Live and Let Die) and almost as popular a figure as Bond himself. His description of the versatile briefcase was typical of Q's briefings: "Here is an ordinary black leather case. Hidden in these steel rods are 20 rounds of ammunition. Press that button and you have a throwing knife. Inside is your AR7, a folding sniper's rifle and 50 gold sovereigns. This looks like an ordinary tin of talcum powder, but it conceals a tear gas cartridge and is kept in place by a magnetic device . . ."
Guy Hamilton directed the next film in which Llewelyn played Q, Goldfinger (1964), and the actor credits him with changing his approach to the role. "Previously I'd played Q as a toffee-nosed technician, more than slightly in awe of Bond." Hamilton changed that approach. "He said, `This man annoys you. He's irritatingly flippant and doesn't treat your gadgets with respect. Deep down you may envy his charm with women, but remember you're the teacher."
After that, Llewelyn stated, he played Q with "a veiled exasperation coupled with a humorous tolerance to 007's flippancy and aggravating habit of fiddling with the gadgets". That exasperation mounted over the years, and in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Q's first words to 007 were "Now pay attention, Bond", and his last, "Oh, grow up, 007!"
Asked recently which Bond he considered best, Llewelyn chose Sean Connery as "perfect", adding, "George Lazenby played it straight and rather well. Roger Moore was much lighter and more jokey. It was a rather camp portrayal, with a lot more emphasis on humour, but it worked. Timothy Dalton was Ian Fleming's Bond - a real character. His confidence and surliness were straight from the books. It was brave, but people didn't like it. Pierre Brosnan is extremely good. He has the right look and manner."
The character of Q was due to be retired after the latest Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, with his sidekick R, played by John Cleese, replacing him. The actor loved playing Q, but in recent years his private life had been marked by tragedy as he watched his wife suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
Llewelyn appeared in such television series as Doomwatch and Follyfoot and made other films, including Operation Kid Brother (1967), which starred Sean Connery's brother Neil playing the sibling of 007. Bernard Lee ("M") and Lois Maxwell ("Moneypenny") were other Bond regulars cast in this weak film to bolster its appeal. But it is for his performances in 17 Bond films that Llewelyn will have a permanent part in film history, equipping the hero with toxic fountain-pens, exploding toothpaste and dozens of similar gadgets with which to confound or exterminate his adversaries.
Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn, actor: born Newport, Monmouthshire 12 September 1914; married 1938 Pamela Pantlin (two sons); died Firle, East Sussex 19 December 1999.
2017: Ian Fleming Publications gives Christmas Greetings with their annual card.
1962: Ralph Fiennes is born--Ipswich, Suffolk, England.
1964: Bosley Crowther reviews Goldfinger in The New York Times.
nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF173DE464BC4A51DFB467838F679EDE
By Bosley Crowther - Published: December 22, 1964
Old Double-Oh Seven is slipping—or, rather, his scriptwriters are. They are involving him more and more with gadgets and less and less with girls. This is tediously apparent in Goldfinger, the latest movie adventure of James Bond, the dauntless sleuth of Ian Fleming's detective fiction, whom Sean Connery so handsomely portrays.
In this third of the Bond screen adventures, which opened last night at the DeMille and goes continuous today at that theater and the Coronet, Agent 007 of the British Secret Service virtually spurns the lush temptations of voluptuous females in favor of high-powered cars and tricky machines.
That is to say, he virtually spurns them in comparison to the way he went for them in his previous cinematic conniptions, Dr. No and From Russia with Love. In those fantastic fabrications, you may remember, he was constantly assailed by an unending flow of luxurious, exotic, and insatiable girls. And, being the sort of omnipotent and adaptable fellow he is, he did what he could to oblige them in the course of pursuing his sleuthing chores.
But in this most gaudy of his outings—the most elaborate and fantastic to date—he manages to bestow his male attentions on only a couple of passing supplicants. One is a pliant little number who expires early, sealed in a skin of gold paint, and the other is a brawny pilot who remarkably resembles Gorgeous George. Neither is up to the standard of femininity usually maintained for Mr. Bond.
Why this neglect of his love life is difficult to imagine—except that Mr. Bond's off-handed conquests were always open to a certain amount of doubt, a certain amount of skepticism as to how much of a Lothario he actually is. Indeed, they have often intimated a bland contempt for, or, at least, a slippery spoof of the whole notion of masculine prowess. One might question whether Bond really likes girls.
So maybe his careful scriptwriters have played down that overly amorous side, delicately displacing dolls with automation and beautiful bodies with electronic brains. Anyhow, what they give us in Goldfinger is an excess of science-fiction fun, a mess of mechanical melodrama, and a minimum of bedroom farce.
It is good fun, all right, fast and furious, racing hither and yon about the world as Double-Oh Seven pursues the intrigues of a mysterious financier named Goldfinger, who is criminally tampering with the gold reserves of Britain and the United States.
Meeting his quarry in a crooked card game on the terrace of a hotel in Miami Beach, he follows him to a golf club outside London, trails him to a gold refinery in the Swiss Alps, and then is captured by him and flown to America to be an inside observer of a fantastic raid on Fort Knox. En route, the fellow has some lively set-tos, exercises smashing ingenuity, and meets that Amazonian pilot, whom he conquers after a deadly judo match.
As usual, Mr. Connery plays the hero with an insultingly cool, commanding air, providing a great vicarious image for all the panting Walter Mittys in the world. Gert Fršbe is aptly fat and feral as the villainous financier, and Honor Blackman is forbiddingly frigid and flashy as the latter's aeronautical accomplice.
In lesser roles, Shirley Eaton is delectable as the girl who is quickly painted out, and Harold Sakata is traditionally sinister as a mute Oriental who is adept at throwing a razor-brimmed hat.
Of course, the high point of the picture is the climactic raid on Fort Knox with the intent of blowing it up and contaminating its hoard of gold with a nuclear bomb. It is spinningly staged and enacted, drenched in cliff-hanging suspense. But somehow, by the time it gets to this point—well, we've had Mr. Bond.
1965: Bosley Crowther reviews Thunderball in The New York Times.
nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9907E4DE1430E33ABC4A51DFB467838E679EDE
By BOSLEY CROWTHER - Published: December 22, 1965
THE popular image of James Bond as the man who has everything, already magnificently developed in three progressively more compelling films, is now being cheerfully expanded beyond any possible chance of doubt in this latest and most handsome screen rendering of an Ian Fleming novel, "Thunderball."
Now Mr. Fleming's superhero, still performed by Sean Connery and guided through this adventure by the director of his first two, Terence Young, has not only power over women, miraculous physical reserves, skill in perilous maneuvers and knowledge of all things great and small, but he also has a much better sense of humor than he has shown in his previous films. And this is the secret ingredient that makes "Thunderball" the best of the lot.
This time old Double-Oh Seven, which is Mr. Bond's code number in the British intelligence service he so faithfully and tirelessly adorns, is tossing quips faster and better then he did even in "From Russia With Love," and he is viewing his current adventure with more gaiety and aplomb.
I think you will, too. In this creation of superman travesty, which arrived yesterday at the reopened Paramount, the Sutton, Cinema II and twoscore or more other theaters in the metropolitan area. Bond is engaged in discovering who hijacked two nuclear bombs in a NATO aircraft over Europe and is secretly holding them for a ransom of £100 million.
That in itself is fairly funny — fanciful and absurd in the same way as are all the problems that require the attention of Bond. But what Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins as the script writers have done is sprinkle their gaudy fabrication with the very best sight and verbal gags.
"Let my friend sit this one out." Bond asks politely of two disinterested young men as he places his dancing partner in a chair beside them at a table in a nightclub in Nassau. The gentlemen nod permission. "She's just dead," he explains.
Or when Bond leaps from a hovering helicopter wearing a skindiver's suit of extraordinary mechanical complexity to engage in an underwater war between SPECTRE and C.I.A. frogmen in the climactic scene of the film, he flips the conclusive comment: "Here comes the kitchen sink!"
In addition to being funny, "Thunderball" is pretty, too, and it is filled with such underwater action as would delight Capt. Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The gimmick is that the airplane carrying the hijacked bombs has been ditched, sunk and covered with camouflaging on a coral reef off Nassau. And to get this information and then find and explore the sunken plane. Bond has to do a lot of skindiving, with companions and alone.
The amount of underwater equipment the scriptwriters and Mr. Young have provided their athletic actors, including an assortment of beautiful girls in the barest of bare bikinis, is a measure of the splendor of the film. Diving saucers, aqualungs, frogman outfits and a fantastic hydrofoil yacht that belongs to the head man of SPECTRE are devices of daring and fun.
So it is in this liveliest extension of the cultural scope of the comic strip. Machinery of the most way-out nature become the instruments and the master, too, of man. "I must be six inches taller," Bond wryly quips at one point after he has been almost shaken to pieces on an electric vibrating machine. The comment is not without significance. This is what machines do to men in these extravagant and tongue-in-cheek Bond pictures. They make distortions of them.
Mr. Connery is at his peak of coolness and nonchalance with the girls. Adolfo Celi is piratical as the villain with a black patch over his eye. Claudine Auger, a French beauty winner, is a tasty skindiving dish and Luciana Paluzzi is streamlined as the inevitable and almost insuperable villainous girl.
The color is handsome. The scenery in the Bahamas is an irresistible lure. Even the violence is funny. That's the best I can say for a Bond film.