JAMES BOND - For Your Eyes Only, JOHN MORENO, Luigi Ferrara - Autograph Card A42 - Rittenhouse 2004


For Your Eyes Only is a 1981 British spy film and the twelfth in the James Bond series to be produced by Eon Productions, and the fifth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It marked the directorial debut of John Glen, who had worked as editor and second unit director in three other Bond films.

The screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson takes its characters and combines elements from the plots from two short stories from Ian Fleming's For Your Eyes Only collection: the title story and "Risico". In the plot, Bond attempts to locate a missile command system while becoming tangled in a web of deception spun by rival Greek businessmen along with Melina Havelock, a woman seeking to avenge the murder of her parents. Some writing elements were inspired by the novels Live and Let Die, Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

After the science fiction-focused Moonraker, the producers wanted a return to the style of the early Bond films and the works of 007 creator Fleming. For Your Eyes Only followed a grittier, more realistic approach and a narrative theme of revenge and its consequences. Filming locations included Greece, Italy and England, while underwater footage was shot in The Bahamas.

For Your Eyes Only was released on 24 June 1981, ten years after release of Diamonds Are Forever (1971), to a mixed critical reception; the film was a financial success, generating $195.3 million worldwide. This was the final Bond film to be distributed solely by United Artists; the studio merged with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soon after this film's release.

Plot

The British information gathering vessel St Georges, which holds the Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC), the system used by the Ministry of Defence to communicate with and co-ordinate the Royal Navy's fleet of Polaris submarines, is sunk after accidentally trawling an old naval mine in the Ionian Sea. MI6 agent James Bond is ordered by the Minister of Defence, Sir Frederick Gray and MI6 Chief of Staff, Bill Tanner, to retrieve the ATAC before the Soviets, as the transmitter could order attacks by the submarines' Polaris ballistic missiles.

The head of the KGB, General Gogol, has also learned of the fate of the St Georges and already notified his contact in Greece. A marine archaeologist, Sir Timothy Havelock, who had been asked by the British to secretly locate the St Georges, is murdered with his wife by a Cuban hitman, Hector Gonzales. Bond goes to Spain to find out who hired Gonzales.

While spying on Gonzales' villa, Bond is captured by his men, but manages to escape as Gonzales is killed by a crossbow bolt. Outside, he finds the assassin was Melina Havelock, the daughter of Sir Timothy, and the two escape. With the help of Bond, Q uses computerised technology to identify the man Bond saw paying off Gonzales as Emile Leopold Locque, and then goes to Locque's possible base in Cortina, Italy. There Bond meets his contact, Luigi Ferrara, and a well-connected Greek businessman and intelligence informant, Aris Kristatos, who tells Bond that Locque is employed by Milos Columbo, known as "the Dove" in the Greek underworld, Kristatos' former resistance partner during the Second World War. After Bond goes with Kristatos' protégée, figure skater Bibi Dahl, to a biathlon course, a group of three men, which includes East German biathlete Eric Kriegler, chases Bond, trying to kill him. Bond escapes and then goes with Ferrara to bid Bibi farewell in an ice rink, where he fends off another attempt on his life by men in ice hockey gear. Ferrara is killed in his car, with a dove pin in his hand. Bond then travels to Corfu in pursuit of Columbo.

There, at the casino, Bond meets with Kristatos and asks how to meet Columbo, not knowing that Columbo's men are secretly recording their conversation. After Columbo and his mistress, Countess Lisl von Schlaf, argue, Bond offers to escort her home with Kristatos' car and driver. The two then spend the night together. In the morning Lisl and Bond are ambushed by Locque and Lisl is killed. Bond is captured by Columbo's men before Locque can kill him; Columbo then tells Bond that Locque was actually hired by Kristatos, who is working for the KGB to retrieve the ATAC. Bond accompanies Columbo and his crew on a raid on one of Kristatos' opium-processing warehouses in Albania, where Bond uncovers naval mines similar to the one that sank the St Georges, suggesting it was not an accident. After the base is destroyed, Bond chases Locque and kills him.

Afterwards, Bond meets with Melina, and they recover the ATAC from the wreckage of the St Georges, but Kristatos is waiting for them when they surface and he takes the ATAC. After the two escape an assassination attempt, they discover Kristatos' rendezvous point when Melina's parrot repeats the phrase "ATAC to St Cyril's". With the help of Columbo and his men, Bond and Melina break into St Cyril's, an abandoned mountaintop monastery. As Columbo confronts Kristatos, Bond kills the biathlete Kriegler.

Bond retrieves the ATAC system and stops Melina from killing Kristatos after he surrenders. Kristatos tries to kill Bond with a hidden flick knife, but is killed by a knife thrown by Columbo; Gogol arrives by helicopter to collect the ATAC, but Bond throws it off the cliff. Bond and Melina later spend a romantic evening aboard her father's yacht when he receives a call from the Prime Minister.

Cast

Production

For Your Eyes Only marked a change in the make up of the production crew: John Glen was promoted from his duties as a film editor to director, a position he would occupy for four subsequent films. The transition in directors resulted in a harder-edged directorial style, with less emphasis on gadgetry and large action sequences in huge arenas (as was favoured by Lewis Gilbert). Emphasis was placed on tension, plot and character in addition to a return to Bond's more serious roots, whilst For Your Eyes Only "showed a clear attempt to activate some lapsed and inactive parts of the Bond mythology."

The film was also a deliberate effort to bring the series more back to reality, following the success of Moonraker in 1979. As co-writer Michael G. Wilson pointed out, "If we went through the path of Moonraker things would just get more outlandish, so we needed to get back to basics". To that end, the story that emerged was simpler, not one in which the world was at risk, but returning the series to that of a Cold War thriller; Bond would also rely more on his wits than gadgets to survive. Glen decided to symbolically represent it with a scene where Bond's Lotus blows itself up and forces 007 to rely on Melina's more humble Citroën 2CV. Since Ken Adam was busy with Pennies from Heaven, Peter Lamont, who had worked in the art department since Goldfinger, was promoted to production designer. Following a suggestion of Glen, Lamont created realistic scenery, instead of the elaborate set pieces for which the series had been known.

Writing

Richard Maibaum was once again the scriptwriter for the story, assisted by Michael G. Wilson. According to Wilson, the ideas from stories could have come from anyone as the outlines were worked out in committee that could include Broccoli, Maibaum, Wilson and stunt coordinators. Much of the inspiration for the stories for the film came from two Ian Fleming short stories from the collection For Your Eyes Only: Risico and For Your Eyes Only. Another set-piece from the novel of Live and Let Die – the keelhauling – which was unused in the film of the same name, was also inserted into the plot. Other ideas from Fleming were also used in For Your Eyes Only, such as the Identigraph which comes from the novel Goldfinger, where it was originally called the "Identicast". These elements from Fleming's stories were mixed with a Cold War story centred on the macguffin of the ATAC. An initial treatment for “For Your Eyes Only” was submitted by Ronald Hardy, an English novelist and screenwriter in 1979. Hardy’s treatment included the involvement of a character named Julia Havelock whose parents were assassinated by a man named Gonzales.

For Your Eyes Only is noted for its pre-title sequence, described variously as either "out-of place and disappointing" or "roaringly enjoyable". The scene was shot to introduce a potential new Bond to audiences, thus linking the new actor to elements from previous Bond films (see casting, below).

The sequence begins with Bond laying flowers at the grave of his wife Tracy Bond, before a Universal Exports helicopter picks him up for an emergency. Control of the helicopter is taken over by remote control by a bald man in a grey Nehru jacket with a white cat. This character is unnamed in either the film or the credits, although he looks and sounds like Ernst Stavro Blofeld as played by Donald Pleasence or Telly Savalas. Director John Glen referred to the identity of the villain obliquely: "We just let people use their imaginations and draw their own conclusions ... It's a legal thing". The character is deliberately not named due to copyright restrictions with Kevin McClory, who owned the film rights to Thunderball, which supposedly includes the character Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the organisation SPECTRE, and other material associated with the development of Thunderball. Eon disputed McClory's ownership of the Blofeld character, but decided not to use him again: the scene was "a deliberate statement by Broccoli of his lack of need to use the character."

Casting

Roger Moore had originally signed a three-film contract with Eon Productions, which covered his first three appearances up to The Spy Who Loved Me. Subsequent to this, the actor negotiated contracts on a film-by-film basis. Uncertainty surrounding his involvement in For Your Eyes Only considering retire by age, led to other actors being considered to take over, including Lewis Collins, known in the UK for his portrayal of Bodie in The Professionals; Ian Ogilvy, like Moore very known by his role in Return of the Saint ; Michael Billington, who previously appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me as Agent XXX's ill-fated lover, (Billington's screen test for For Your Eyes Only was one of the five occasions he auditioned for the role of Bond) and Michael Jayston, who had appeared as the eponymous spy in the British TV series of Quiller (Jayston eventually played Bond in a BBC Radio production of You Only Live Twice in 1985). Timothy Dalton was strongly considered but Dalton declined, as he disliked the direction the series was taking at the time.  Eventually, this came to nothing as Moore agreed to play Bond once again.

Bernard Lee died in January 1981, after filming had started on For Your Eyes Only, but before he could film his scenes as M, the head of MI6, as he had done in the previous eleven films of the series. Out of respect, no new actor was hired to assume the role and, instead, the script was re-written so that the character is said to be on leave, letting Chief of Staff Bill Tanner take over the role as acting head of MI6 and briefing Bond alongside the Minister of Defence.

Chaim Topol was cast following a suggestion by Broccoli's wife Dana, while Julian Glover joined the cast as the producers felt he was stylish – Glover was even considered to play Bond at some point, but Michael G. Wilson stated that "when we first thought of him he was too young, and by the time of For Your Eyes Only he was too old". Carole Bouquet was a suggestion of United Artists publicist Jerry Juroe, and after Glen and Broccoli saw her in That Obscure Object of Desire, they went to Rome to invite Bouquet for the role of Melina.

Filming

A yellow car drives down a grassy road.
A Citroën 2CV 007, similar to the one used in the film.

Production of For Your Eyes Only began on 2 September 1980 in the North Sea, with three days shooting exterior scenes with the St Georges. The interiors were shot later in Pinewood Studios, as well as the ship's explosion, which was done with a miniature in Pinewood's tank on the 007 Stage. On 15 September principal photography started on Corfu at the Villa Sylva at Kanoni, above Corfu Town, which acted as the location of the Spanish villa. Many of the local houses were painted white for scenographic reasons. Glen opted to use the local slopes and olive trees for the chase scene between Melina's Citroën 2CV and Gonzales' men driving Peugeot 504s. The scene was shot across twelve days, with stunt driver Rémy Julienne – who would remain in the series up until GoldenEye – driving the Citroën. Four 2CVs were used, with modifications for the stunts – all had more powerful flat-four engines, and one received a special revolving plate on its roof so it could get turned upside down.

In October filming moved to other Greek locations, including Metéora and the Achilleion. In November, the main unit moved to England, which included interior work in Pinewood, while the second unit shot underwater scenes in The Bahamas. On 1 January 1981, production moved to Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy, where filming wrapped in February. Since it was not snowing in Cortina d'Ampezzo by the time of filming, the producers had to pay for trucks to bring snow from nearby mountains, which was then dumped in the city's streets.

Many of the underwater scenes, especially involving close-ups of Bond and Melina, were actually faked on a dry soundstage. A combination of lighting effects, slow-motion photography, wind, and bubbles added in post-production, gave the illusion of the actors being underwater. Actress Carole Bouquet reportedly had a pre-existing health condition that prevented her from performing actual underwater stunt work. Actual aquatic scenes were done by a team led by Al Giddings, who had previously worked on The Deep, and filmed in either Pinewood's tank on the 007 Stage or an underwater set built in the Bahamas. Production designer Peter Lamont and his team developed two working props for the submarine Neptune, as well as a mock-up with a fake bottom.

Roger Moore was reluctant to film the scene of Bond kicking a car, with Locque inside, over the edge of a cliff, saying that it "was Bond-like, but not Roger Moore Bond-like." Michael G. Wilson later said that Moore had to be persuaded to be more ruthless than he felt comfortable. Wilson also added that he and Richard Maibaum, along with John Glen, toyed with other ideas surrounding that scene, but ultimately everyone, even Moore, agreed to do the scene as originally written.

A monastery stands atop a large mountain.
The Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Meteora served as a location

For the Meteora shoots, a Greek bishop was paid to allow filming in the monasteries, but the uninformed Eastern Orthodox monks were mostly critical of production rolling in their installations. After a trial in the Greek Supreme Court, it was decided that the monks' only property were the interiors – the exteriors and surrounding landscapes were from the local government. In protest, the monks remained shut inside the monasteries during the shooting, and tried to sabotage production as much as possible, hanging their washing out of their windows and covering the principal monastery with plastic bunting and flags to spoil the shots, and placing oil drums to prevent the film crew from landing helicopters. The production team solved the problem with back lighting, matte paintings, and building both a similar scenographic monastery on a nearby unoccupied rock, and a monastery set in Pinewood.

Roger Moore said he had a great fear of heights, and to do the climbing in Greece, he resorted to moderate drinking to calm his nerves. Later in that same sequence, Rick Sylvester, a stuntman who had previously performed the pre-credits ski jump in The Spy Who Loved Me, undertook the stunt of Bond falling off the side of the cliff. The stunt was dangerous, since the sudden rope jerk at the bottom could be fatal. Special effects supervisor Derek Meddings developed a system that would dampen the stop, but Sylvester recalled that his nerves nearly got the better of him: "From where we were [shooting], you could see the local cemetery; and the box [to stop my fall] looked like a casket. You didn't need to be an English major to connect the dots." The stunt went off without a problem.

Bond veteran cameraman and professional skier Willy Bogner, Jr. was promoted to director of a second unit involving ski footage. Bogner designed the ski chase on the bobsleigh track of Cortina d'Ampezzo hoping to surpass his work in both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Spy Who Loved Me. To allow better filming, Bogner developed both a system where he was attached to a bobsleigh, allowing to film the vehicle or behind it, and a set of skis that allowed him to ski forwards and backwards to get the best shots. In February 1981, on the final day of filming the bobsleigh chase, one of the stuntmen driving a sleigh, 23-year-old Paolo Rigon, was killed when he became trapped under the bob.

The pre-credits sequence used a church in Stoke Poges as a cemetery, while the helicopter scenes were filmed at the abandoned Beckton Gas Works in London. The gas works were also the location for some of Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film, Full Metal Jacket. Director John Glen got the idea for the remote-controlled helicopter after seeing a child playing with an RC car. Since flying a helicopter through a warehouse was thought to be too dangerous, the scene was shot using forced perspective. A smaller mock-up was built by Derek Meddings' team closer to the camera that the stunt pilot Marc Wolff flew behind and this made it seem as if the helicopter was entering the warehouse. The footage inside the building was shot on location, though with a life-sized helicopter model which stood over a rail. Stuntman Martin Grace stood as Bond when the agent is dangling outside the flying helicopter, while Roger Moore himself was used in the scenes inside the model.


Diamonds Are Forever is a 1971 British spy film and the seventh in the James Bond series to be produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth and final Eon film to star Sean Connery, who returned to the role as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, for the first time since You Only Live Twice (1967), having declined to reprise the role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

The film is based on Ian Fleming's 1956 novel of the same name, and is the second of four James Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond impersonating a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring, and soon uncovering a plot by his old nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld to use the diamonds to build a space-based laser weapon. Bond has to battle his nemesis for one last time, to stop the smuggling and stall Blofeld's plan of destroying Washington, D.C., and extorting the world with nuclear supremacy.

After George Lazenby left the series, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli tested other actors, but studio United Artists wanted Sean Connery back, paying a then-record $1.25 million salary for him to return. The producers were inspired by Goldfinger; as with that film, Guy Hamilton was hired to direct, and Shirley Bassey performs vocals on the title theme song. Locations included Las Vegas, California, Amsterdam and Lufthansa's hangar in Germany. Diamonds Are Forever was a commercial success, but received criticism for its humorous camp tone. The film marked the final appearance of the SPECTRE organization (though not by name) in Eon's Bond films until the 2015 film of the same name.

Plot

James Bond—Agent 007—pursues Ernst Stavro Blofeld out of revenge for the death of his wife, hunting down SPECTRE operatives across the world. He eventually finds him at a facility where Blofeld look-alikes are being created through plastic surgery. Bond kills a test subject, and later the "real" Blofeld, by drowning him in a pool of superheated mud.

While assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd systematically kill several diamond smugglers, M suspects that South African diamonds are being stockpiled to depress prices by dumping, and orders Bond to uncover the smuggling ring. Disguised as professional smuggler and assassin Peter Franks, Bond travels to Amsterdam to meet contact Tiffany Case. The real Franks shows up on the way, but Bond intercepts and kills him, then switches IDs to make it seem as though Franks is Bond. Case and Bond then go to Los Angeles, smuggling the diamonds inside Franks' corpse.

At the airport Bond meets his CIA ally Felix Leiter, then travels to Las Vegas. At a funeral home, Franks' body is cremated and the diamonds are passed on to another smuggler, Shady Tree. Bond is nearly killed by Wint and Kidd when they put him into a coffin and send it to a cremation oven, but Tree stops the process when he discovers that the diamonds in Franks' body were fakes planted by Bond and the CIA.

Bond tells Leiter to ship him the real diamonds. Bond then goes to the Whyte House, a casino-hotel owned by the reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte, where Tree works as a stand-up comedian. Bond watches Tree's act and afterwards goes to his dressing room, where he discovers there that Tree has been killed by Wint and Kidd, who did not know that the diamonds were fake.

At the craps table Bond meets the opportunistic Plenty O'Toole; after gambling, he brings her to his room. Gang members ambush them, throwing O'Toole out of a window and into a pool. Bond spends the rest of the night with Tiffany Case, instructing her to retrieve the real diamonds at the Circus Circus casino.

Tiffany reneges on her deal to meet back with Bond and instead flees, passing off the diamonds to the next smuggler. However, seeing that O'Toole was killed after being mistaken for her, Tiffany changes her mind. She drives Bond to the airport, where the diamonds are given to Whyte's casino manager, Bert Saxby, who is followed to a remote facility. Bond enters the apparent destination of the diamonds: a research laboratory owned by Whyte, where a satellite is being built by Professor Metz, a laser refraction specialist. Bond fakes Metz by telling him he is Klaus Hergersheimer, a technician he met in the facility. His cover is blown when the real Hergersheimer shows up. Bond attempts to remain hidden, but is seen by a technician. He manages to evade the security guards by stealing a moon buggy and reunites with Tiffany. The laboratory report Bond's activity to the sheriff's office. Bond and Tiffany make their way back to Las Vegas; they are seen there by the Las Vegas police, who engage in a car chase, but Bond manages to evade all the cars.

Bond later scales the walls to the Whyte House's top floor to confront Whyte. He is instead met by two identical Blofelds, who use an electronic device to sound like Whyte. Bond kills one of the Blofelds, which turns out to be a look-alike. The real Blofeld pulls a gun on Bond, and instructs him into a elevator, where he is knocked out by gas. He is picked up by Wint and Kidd, and taken out to Las Vegas Valley, where he is placed in a pipeline and left to die. The pipeline is buried the next morning.

Bond escapes and calls Blofeld, using a similar electronic device made by Q to pose as Saxby. He finds out Whyte is kept at his summer house outside the city and goes there with Felix and the CIA. After a brief battle with Whyte's female bodyguards Bambi and Thumper, they rescue Whyte. Saxby attempts to kill Bond outside the summer house, but is fatally shot during the ensuring gunfight. In the meantime, Blofeld abducts Case. With the help of Whyte, Bond raids the lab and uncovers Blofeld's plot to create a laser satellite using the diamonds, which by now has already been sent into orbit. With the satellite, Blofeld destroys nuclear weapons in China, the Soviet Union and the United States, then proposes an international auction for global nuclear supremacy.

Whyte identifies an oil platform off the coast of Baja California as Blofeld's likely base of operations. After Bond's attempt to change the cassette containing the satellite control codes fails due to a mistake by Tiffany, a helicopter attack on the oil rig is launched by Leiter and the CIA.

Blofeld tries to escape in a midget submarine, but Bond gains control of the submarine's launch crane and crashes the sub into the control room, causing both the satellite control and the base to be destroyed. Bond and Tiffany then head for Britain on a cruise ship, where Wint and Kidd pose as room-service stewards and attempt to kill them with a hidden bomb. Bond turns the tables on them, causing Kidd to hurl himself overboard after being set aflame and Wint to detonate with the bomb after being thrown overboard. Tiffany then asks James Bond a sensitive question: "How the hell do we get those diamonds down again?"

The obvious cause of the question is the diamonds in the satellite, which can be seen by Bond and Tiffany as a speck in the night sky.

Cast

Production

The producers originally intended to have Diamonds Are Forever re-create commercially successful aspects of Goldfinger, including hiring its director, Guy Hamilton. Peter R. Hunt, who had directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service and worked in all previous Bond films as editor, was invited before Hamilton, but due to involvement with another project could only work on the film if the production date was postponed, which the producers declined to do.

Writing

While On Her Majesty's Secret Service was within its post-production stages, Richard Maibaum wrote initial treatments and a script for Diamonds Are Forever as a revenge-themed sequel with Irma Bunt and Marc-Ange Draco returning, and Bond mourning his deceased wife Tracy while Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" played in the background. When George Lazenby departed from the role prior to the film's release, a complete rewrite was requested, in addition to Maibaum's script failing to impress Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. Following this, an original plot had as a villain Auric Goldfinger's twin, seeking revenge for the death of his brother. The plot was later changed after Broccoli had a dream, where his close friend Howard Hughes was replaced by an imposter. So the character of Willard Whyte was created, and Tom Mankiewicz was chosen to rework the script. Mankiewicz says he was hired because Broccoli wanted an American writer to work on the script, since so much of it was set in Las Vegas "and the Brits write really lousy American gangsters" — but it had to be someone who also understood the British idiom, since it had British characters. David Picker from United Artists had seen the stage musical Georgy! written by Mankiewicz, and recommended him; he was hired on a two-week trial and kept on for the rest of the movie. Mankiewicz later estimated the novel provided around 45 minutes of the film's final running time.

The adaptation eliminated the main villains from the source Ian Fleming novel, mobsters called Jack and Seraffimo Spang, but used the henchmen Shady Tree, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd.

Maibaum's original idea for the ending was a giant boat chase across Lake Mead, with Blofeld being pursued by Bond and all the Las Vegas casino owners, who would be sailing in their private yachts. Bond was to rouse the allies into action with a spoof of Lord Nelson's famous cry, "Las Vegas expects every man to do his duty." Maibaum was misinformed; there were no Roman galleys or Chinese junks in Las Vegas, and the idea was too expensive to replicate, so it was dropped.

Maibaum may have thought the eventual oil-rig finale a poor substitute, but it was originally intended to be much more spectacular. Armed frogmen would jump from the helicopters into the sea and attach limpet mines to the rig's legs (this explains why frogmen appear on the movie's poster). Blofeld would have escaped in his BathoSub and Bond would have pursued him, hanging from a weather balloon. The chase would have continued across a salt mine, with the two mortal enemies scrambling over white hills of salt before Blofeld would fall to his death in a salt granulator. Permission was not granted by the owners of the salt mine. It also made the sequence too long. Further problems followed when the explosives set up for the finale were set off too early; fortunately, a handful of cameras were ready and able to capture the footage.

Casting

George Lazenby was originally offered a contract for seven Bond films, but declined and left after just one, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, on the advice of his agent. Producers contemplated replacing him with John Gavin (though Batman star Adam West and Burt Reynolds had also been considered); Reynolds and West had stated that Bond should be not be played by an American actor. Michael Gambon rejected an offer, telling Broccoli that he was "in terrible shape." United Artists' chief David Picker was unhappy with this decision and made it clear that Connery was to be enticed back to the role and that money was no object. When approached about resuming the role of Bond, Connery demanded the fee of £1.25 million. To entice the actor to play Bond once more, United Artists offered to back two films of his choice. After both sides agreed to the deal, Connery used the fee to establish the Scottish International Education Trust, where Scottish artists could apply for funding without having to leave their country to pursue their careers. Since John Gavin was no longer in the running for the role, his contract was paid in full by United Artists. The first film made under Connery's deal was The Offence, directed by his friend Sidney Lumet. The second was to be an adaptation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, using only Scottish actors and in which Connery himself would play the title role. This project was abandoned because Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth was already in production.

Charles Gray was cast as villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, after playing a Bond ally named Dikko Henderson in You Only Live Twice (1967). David Bauer, who plays Morton Slumber, had also previously appeared in that film, uncredited, as an American diplomat.

Jazz musician Putter Smith was invited by Harry Saltzman to play Mr. Kidd, after a Thelonious Monk Band show. Musician Paul Williams was originally cast as Mr. Wint. When he couldn't agree with the producers on compensation, Bruce Glover replaced him. Glover said he was surprised at being chosen, because at first producers said he was too normal and that they wanted a deformed, Peter Lorre-like actor.

Film star Bruce Cabot, who played the part of Bert Saxby, died the following year; Diamonds turned out to be his final film role. Jimmy Dean was cast as Willard Whyte after Saltzman saw a presentation of him. Dean was very worried about playing a Howard Hughes pastiche, because he was an employee of Hughes at the Desert Inn.

Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway were considered for the role of Tiffany Case. Jill St. John had originally been offered the part of Plenty O'Toole, but landed the female lead after Sidney Korshak, who assisted the producers in filming in Las Vegas locations, recommended his client St. John, who became the first American Bond girl. Lana Wood was cast as Plenty O'Toole, following a suggestion of screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz. Denise Perrier, Miss World 1953, played "Marie", the woman in the bikini who is forced by Bond to disclose the location of Blofeld.

A cameo appearance by Sammy Davis, Jr. playing on the roulette table was filmed, but his scene was eventually deleted.

Filming

Sean Connery during the filming in Amsterdam, 31 July 1971.

Filming began on 5 April 1971, with the South African scenes actually shot in the desert near Las Vegas, and finished on 13 August 1971. The film was shot primarily in the US, with locations including the Los Angeles International Airport, Universal City Studios and eight hotels of Las Vegas. Besides the Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, other places in England were Dover and Southampton. The climactic oil rig sequence was shot off the shore of Oceanside, California. Other filming locations included Cap D'Antibes in France for the opening scenes, Amsterdam and Lufthansa's hangar at Frankfurt Airport, Germany.

Filming in Las Vegas took place mostly in hotels owned by Howard Hughes, since he was a friend of Cubby Broccoli. Getting the streets empty to shoot was achieved through the collaboration of Hughes, the Las Vegas police and shopkeepers association. The Las Vegas Hilton doubled for the Whyte House, and since the owner of the Circus Circus was a Bond fan, he allowed the Circus to be used on film and even made a cameo. The cinematographers said filming in Las Vegas at night had an advantage: no additional illumination was required due to the high number of neon lights. Sean Connery made the most of his time on location in Las Vegas. "I didn't get any sleep at all. We shot every night, I caught all the shows and played golf all day. On the weekend I collapsed – boy, did I collapse. Like a skull with legs." He also played the slot machines, and once delayed a scene because he was collecting his winnings.

The site used for the Willard Whyte Space Labs (where Bond gets away in the Moon Buggy) was actually, at that time, a Johns-Manville gypsum plant located just outside Las Vegas. The home of Kirk Douglas was used for the scene in Tiffany's house, while the Elrod House in Palm Springs, designed by John Lautner, became Willard Whyte's house. The exterior shots of the Slumber mortuary were of the Palm Mortuary in Henderson, Nevada. The interiors were a set constructed at Pinewood Studios, where Ken Adam imitated the real building's lozenge-shaped stained glass window in its nave. During location filming, Adam visited several funeral homes in the Las Vegas area, the inspiration behind the gaudy design of the Slumber mortuary (the use of tasteless Art Nouveau furniture and Tiffany lamps) came from these experiences. Production wrapped with the crematorium sequence, on 13 August 1971.

Since the car chase in Las Vegas would have many car crashes, the filmmakers had an arrangement with Ford to use their vehicles. Ford's only demand was that Sean Connery had to drive the 1971 Mustang Mach 1 which serves as Tiffany Case's car. The Moon Buggy was inspired by the actual NASA vehicle, but with additions such as flailing arms since the producers didn't find the design "outrageous" enough. Built by custom car fabricator Dean Jeffries on a rear-engined Corvair chassis, it was capable of road speeds. The fibreglass tires had to be replaced during the chase sequence because the heat and irregular desert soil ruined them.

Hamilton had the idea of making a fight scene inside a lift, which was choreographed and done by Sean Connery and stuntman Joe Robinson. The car chase where the red Mustang comes outside of the narrow street on the opposite side in which it was rolled, was filmed over three nights on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. The alleyway car roll sequence is actually filmed in two locations. The entrance was at the car park at Universal Studios and the exit was at Fremont Street, Las Vegas. It eventually inspired a continuity mistake, as the car enters the alley on the right side tires and exits the street driving on the left side During the car chase where the police are chasing Bond in a small parking lot the Mustang was to jump a small ramp over several cars. Bill Hickman (Bullitt fame) did this stunt; the hired stunt driver they had couldn't perform this and wrecked two or three cars. The stunt team had only one automobile left so they called Hickman – who drove for hours to the location, jumped into the Mustang, and did the stunt in one take. While filming the scene of finding Plenty O'Toole drowned in Tiffany's swimming pool, Lana Wood actually had her feet loosely tied to a cement block on the bottom. Film crew members held a rope across the pool for her, with which she could lift her face out of the water to breathe between takes. The pool's sloping bottom made the block slip into deeper water with each take. Eventually, Wood was submerged but was noticed by on-lookers and rescued before actually drowning. Wood, being a certified diver, took some water but remained calm during the ordeal, although she later admitted to a few "very uncomfortable moments and quite some struggling until they pulled me out."

Music

"Diamonds Are Forever", the title song, was the second James Bond theme to be performed by Shirley Bassey, after "Goldfinger" in 1964. In an interview for the television programme James Bond's Greatest Hits, composer John Barry revealed that he told Bassey to imagine she was singing about a penis. Bassey would later return for a third performance for 1979's Moonraker.

The original soundtrack was once again composed by John Barry, his sixth time composing for a Bond film.

With Connery back in the lead role, the "James Bond Theme" was played by an electric guitar in the somewhat unusual, blued gunbarrel sequence accompanied with prismatic ripples of light, in the pre-credits sequence, and in a full orchestral version during a hovercraft sequence in Amsterdam.

Release and reception

Diamonds are Forever premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square. It was released on 14 December 1971. It grossed $116 million worldwide, of which $43 million was from the United States.

Reviews were mixed, and the camp tone had a mostly negative reaction. The film currently has a 67% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Connery was applauded by Kevin A. Ranson of MovieCrypt and Michael A. Smith of Nolan's Pop Culture. Critic Roger Ebert noted, in a positive review, the irrelevance of the plot and "moments of silliness", such as Bond finding himself driving a moon buggy with antennae revolving and robot arms flapping. He praised the Las Vegas car chase scene, particularly the segment when Bond drives the Mustang on two wheels. Twenty-five years after its release, James Berardinelli criticised the concept of a laser-shooting satellite and the performances of Jill St. John, Norman Burton and Jimmy Dean. Christopher Null called St. John "one of the least effective Bond girls – beautiful, but shrill and helpless". Steve Rhodes said, "looking and acting like a couple of pseudo-country bumpkins, they (Putter Smith and Bruce Glover) seem to have wandered by accident from the adjoining sound stage into the filming of this movie." But he also extolled the car chase as "classic". According to Danny Peary, Diamonds are Forever is "one of the most forgettable movies of the entire Bond series" and that "until Blofeld's reappearance we must watch what is no better than a mundane diamond-smuggling melodrama, without the spectacle we associate with James Bond: the Las Vegas setting isn't exotic enough, there's little humour, assassins Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint are similar to characters you'd find on The Avengers, but not nearly as amusing – and the trouble Bond gets into, even Maxwell Smart could escape." IGN chose it as the third worst James Bond film, behind only The Man with the Golden Gun and Die Another Day. Total Film listed Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, and Bambi and Thumper, as the first and second worst villains in the Bond series (respectively). The film was more positively received by Xan Brooks of the Guardian, who said it was "oddly brilliant, the best of the bunch: the perfect bleary Bond film for an imperfect bleary western world."

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound for Gordon McCallum, John W. Mitchell and Al Overton.


On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a 1969 British spy film and the sixth in the James Bond series to be produced by Eon Productions. It is based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. Following Sean Connery's decision to retire from the role after You Only Live Twice, Eon Productions selected an unknown actor and model, George Lazenby, to play the part of James Bond. During the making of the film, Lazenby announced that he would play the role of Bond only once.

In the film, Bond faces Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who is planning to hold the world ransom by the threat of sterilising the world's food supply through a group of brainwashed "angels of death". Along the way Bond meets, falls in love with, and eventually marries Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg).

It is the only Bond film to be directed by Peter R. Hunt, who had served as a film editor and second unit director on previous films in the series. Hunt, along with producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, decided to produce a more realistic film that would follow the novel closely. It was shot in Switzerland, England, and Portugal from October 1968 to May 1969. Although its cinema release was not as lucrative as its predecessor You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was still one of the top performing films of the year. Critical reviews upon release were mixed, but the film's reputation has improved greatly over time.

Plot

In Portugal, James Bond – agent 007, sometimes referred to simply as '007' – saves a woman on the beach from committing suicide by drowning, and later meets her again in a casino. The woman, Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo, invites Bond to her hotel room to thank him, but when Bond arrives he is attacked by an unidentified man. After subduing the man, Bond returns to his own room and finds Tracy there, who claims she didn't know the attacker was there. The next morning, Bond is kidnapped by several men, including the one he fought with, who take him to meet Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the European crime syndicate Unione Corse. Draco reveals that Tracy is his only daughter and tells Bond of her troubled past, offering Bond one million pounds if he will marry her. Bond refuses, but agrees to continue romancing Tracy if Draco reveals the whereabouts of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE.

Bond returns to London, and after a brief argument with M at the British Secret Service headquarters, heads for Draco's birthday party in Portugal. There, Bond and Tracy begin a whirlwind romance, and Draco directs the agent to a law firm in Bern, Switzerland. Bond investigates the office of Swiss lawyer Gumbold, and learns that Blofeld is corresponding with London College of Arms' genealogist Sir Hilary Bray, attempting to claim the title 'Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp'.

Posing as Bray, Bond goes to meet Blofeld, who has established a clinical allergy-research institute atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. Bond meets twelve young women, the "Angels of Death", who are patients at the institute's clinic, apparently cured of their allergies. At night Bond goes to the room of one patient, Ruby, to seduce her. At midnight Bond sees that the 12 ladies go into a sleep-induced hypnotic state while Blofeld gives them audio instructions for when they return home. In fact, the women are being brainwashed to distribute bacteriological warfare agents throughout the world.

Bond tries to trick Blofeld into leaving Switzerland so that MI6 can arrest him without violating Swiss sovereignty. Blofeld refuses and Bond is eventually caught by henchwoman Irma Bunt. Blofeld reveals that he identified Bond after his attempt to lure him out of Switzerland, and tells his henchmen to take the agent away. Bond eventually makes his escape by skiing down Piz Gloria while Blofeld and his men give chase. Arriving at the village of Lauterbrunnen, Bond finds Tracy and they escape Bunt and her men after a car chase. A blizzard forces them to a remote barn, where Bond professes his love to Tracy and proposes marriage to her, which she accepts. The next morning, as the flight resumes, Blofeld sets off an avalanche; Tracy is captured, while Bond is buried but manages to escape.

Back in London at M's office, Bond is informed that Blofeld intends to hold the world to ransom by threatening to destroy its agriculture using his brainwashed women. Apart from money, Blofeld demands amnesty for all past crimes and to be recognised as Count de Bleuchamp. M tells 007 that the ransom will be paid and forbids him to mount a rescue mission. Bond then enlists Draco and his forces to attack Blofeld's headquarters, while also rescuing Tracy from Blofeld's captivity. The facility is destroyed, and Blofeld escapes the destruction alone in a bobsleigh, with Bond pursuing him. The chase ends when Blofeld becomes snared in a tree branch and injures his neck. Bond and Tracy marry in Portugal, then drive away in Bond's Aston Martin. When Bond pulls over to the roadside to remove flowers from the car, Blofeld (wearing a neck brace) and Bunt open fire on the couple's car. Bond survives, but Tracy is killed in the attack. When a police officer arrives to help, a tearful Bond cradles Tracy's body and says: "It's all right. It's quite all right, really. She's having a rest. We'll be going on soon. There's no hurry you see, we have all the time in the world."

Cast

  • George Lazenby as James Bond – MI6 agent, codename 007.
  • Diana Rigg as Countess Tracy di Vicenzo – A vulnerable countess and Marc-Ange Draco's daughter, who captures Bond's heart. Like Honor Blackman in Goldfinger before her, Rigg had come to the notice of Eon Productions through her work on The Avengers, where she played Emma Peel from 1965–68.
  • Telly Savalas as Ernst Stavro Blofeld aka Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp – Bond's nemesis, leader of SPECTRE and in hiding. Savalas had appeared in The Dirty Dozen in 1967, leading to Broccoli suggesting him to director Peter Hunt, for the role, in place of Donald Pleasence, who had appeared in You Only Live Twice. Both Broccoli and Hunt felt Pleasence was unsuited to the more physical side of the Blofeld role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
  • Gabriele Ferzetti as Marc-Ange Draco – Head of the Union Corse, a major crime syndicate and Tracy's father (uncredited voice by David de Keyser).
  • Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt – Blofeld's henchwoman who assists in the attempts to eliminate Bond, and although they fail to finish him off Bunt eventually manages to kill Tracy. Said to be the most successful piece of casting in the film, the Bunt character did not appear in the film You Only Live Twice, although she did appear in the novel. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was Steppat's last role: the 52-year-old died of a heart attack on 22 December 1969, four days after the film premiered.
  • Bernard Lee as M – Head of the British Secret Service.
  • Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.
  • George Baker as Sir Hilary Bray – Herald in the London College of Arms, whom Bond impersonates in Piz Gloria. Baker also provided the voice of Bond while he was imitating Bray.
  • Yuri Borienko as Grunther – Blofeld's brutish chief of security at Piz Gloria. In his role as a stuntman, Borienko was one of the people assisting with Lazenby's audition: Lazenby accidentally broke his nose, which helped him get the part of Bond.
  • Bernard Horsfall as Shaun Campbell – 007's colleague who tries to aid Bond in Switzerland as part of Operation Bedlam. Campbell has been called the film's "Official Sacrificial Lamb".
  • Desmond Llewelyn as Q.
  • Virginia North as Olympe – Draco's lover. Nikki van der Zyl provided the uncredited voice for Olympe, making On Her Majesty's Secret Service her sixth Bond film in succession.
  • Geoffrey Cheshire as Toussaint
  • Irvin Allen as Che Che
  • Terry Mountain as Raphael
  • James Bree as Gumbold
  • John Gay as Hammond

Blofeld's Angels of Death

The Angels of Death are twelve beautiful women from all over the world being brainwashed by Blofeld under the guise of allergy or phobia treatment to spread the Virus Omega. A number appeared in the representative styles of dress of their particular nation. Their mission is to help Blofeld contaminate and ultimately sterilise the world's food supply.

Production

The novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service was first published after the film series started and contains "a gentle dig at the cinematic Bond's gadgets, Broccoli and Saltzman had originally intended to make On Her Majesty's Secret Service after Goldfinger and Richard Maibaum worked on a script at that time. However, Thunderball was filmed instead after the ongoing rights dispute over the novel were settled between Fleming and Kevin McClory. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was due to follow that, but problems with a warm Swiss winter and inadequate snow cover led to Saltzman and Broccoli postponing the film again, favouring production of You Only Live Twice.

Between the resignation of Sean Connery at the beginning of filming You Only Live Twice and its release, Saltzman had planned to adapt The Man with the Golden Gun in Cambodia and use Roger Moore as the next Bond, but political instability meant the location was ruled out and Moore signed up for another series of The Saint. After You Only Live Twice was released in 1967, the producers once again picked up with On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Peter Hunt, who had worked on the five preceding films had impressed Broccoli and Saltzman enough to earn his directorial debut as they believed his quick cutting had set the style for the series; it was also the result of a long-standing promise from Broccoli and Saltzman for a directorial position. Hunt also asked for the position during the production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and he brought along with him many crew members, including cinematographer Michael Reed. Hunt was focused on putting his mark – "I wanted it to be different than any other Bond film would be. It was my film, not anyone else's." On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the last film on which Hunt worked in the series.

Writing

Screenwriter Richard Maibaum, who had worked on all the previous Bond films bar You Only Live Twice, was responsible for On Her Majesty's Secret Service's script. Saltzman and Broccoli decided to drop the science fiction gadgets from the earlier films and focus more on plot as in From Russia With Love. Peter Hunt asked Simon Raven to write some of the dialogue between Tracy and Blofeld in Piz Gloria, which was to be "sharper, better and more intellectual"; one of Raven's additions was having Tracy quoting James Elroy Flecker. When writing the script, the producers decided to make the closest adaptation of the book possible: virtually everything in the novel occurs in the film and Hunt was reported to always enter the set carrying an annotated copy of the novel.

With the script following the novel more closely than the other film adaptations of the eponymous source novels, there are several continuity errors due to the film taking place in a different order, such as Blofeld not recognising Bond, despite having met him face-to-face in the previous film You Only Live Twice. In the original script, Bond undergoes plastic surgery to disguise him from his enemies; the intention was to allow an unrecognisable Bond to infiltrate Blofeld's hideout and help the audience accept the new actor in the role. However, this was dropped in favour of ignoring the change in actor. To make audiences not forget it was the same James Bond, just played by another actor, the producers inserted many references to the previous films, some as in-jokes. These include Bond breaking the fourth wall by stating "This never happened to the other fellow", the credits sequence with images from the previous instalments, Bond visiting his office and finding objects from Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball, and a caretaker whistling the theme from Goldfinger.

Casting

In 1967, after five films, Sean Connery resigned from the role of James Bond and—during the filming of You Only Live Twice—was not on speaking terms with Albert Broccoli. The confirmed front runners were Englishman John Richardson, Dutchman Hans De Vries, Australian Robert Campbell, Englishman Anthony Rogers and Australian George Lazenby.

Broccoli and Hunt eventually chose Lazenby after seeing him in a Fry's Chocolate Cream advertisement. Lazenby dressed the part by sporting several sartorial Bond elements such as a Rolex Submariner wristwatch and a Savile Row suit (ordered for, but uncollected, by Connery), and going to Connery's barber at the Dorchester Hotel. Broccoli noticed Lazenby as a Bond-type man based on his physique and character elements, and offered him an audition. The position was consolidated when Lazenby accidentally punched a professional wrestler, who was acting as stunt coordinator, in the face, impressing Broccoli with his ability to display aggression. Lazenby was offered a contract for seven films; however, he was convinced by his agent Ronan O'Rahilly that the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s, and as a result he left the series after the release of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969.

For Tracy Draco, the producers wanted an established actress opposite neophyte Lazenby. Brigitte Bardot was invited, but after she signed to appear in Shalako opposite Sean Connery the deal fell through, and Diana Rigg—who had already been the popular heroine Emma Peel in The Avengers—was cast instead. Rigg said one of the reasons for accepting the role was that she always wanted to be in an epic film. Telly Savalas was cast following a suggestion from Broccoli, and Hunt's neighbour George Baker was offered the part of Sir Hilary Bray. Baker's voice was also used when Lazenby was impersonating Bray, as Hunt considered Lazenby's imitation not convincing enough. Gabriele Ferzetti was cast as Draco after the producers saw him in an Italian Mafia film, but Ferzetti's heavy Italian accent also led to his voice being redubbed by English actor David de Keyser for the final cut.

Filming

A restaurant in a snowy environment. Mountains can be seen in the background.
Piz Gloria, Switzerland.

Principal photography began in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland, on 21 October 1968, with the first scene shot being an aerial view of Bond climbing the stairs of Blofeld's mountain retreat to meet the girls. The scenes were shot at the now famous revolving restaurant Piz Gloria, located atop the Schilthorn near the village of Mürren. The location was found by production manager Hubert Fröhlich after three weeks of location scouting in France and Switzerland. The restaurant was still under construction, but the producers found the location interesting, and had to finance providing electricity and the aerial lift to make filming there possible. Various chase scenes in the Alps were shot at Lauterbrunnen and Saas-Fee, while the Christmas celebrations were filmed in Grindelwald, and some scenes were shot on location in Bern. Production was hampered by weak snowfall which was unfavourable to the skiing action scenes. The producers even considered moving to another location in Switzerland, but it was taken by the production of Downhill Racer. The Swiss filming ended up running 56 days over schedule. In March 1969, production moved to England, with London's Pinewood Studios being used for interior shooting, and M's house being shot in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. In April, the filmmakers went to Portugal, where principal photography wrapped in May. The pre-credit coastal and hotel scenes were filmed at Hotel Estoril Palacio in Estoril and Guincho Beach, Cascais, while Lisbon was used for the reunion of Bond and Tracy, and the ending employed a mountain road in the Arrábida National Park near Setúbal. Harry Saltzman wanted the Portuguese scenes to be in France, but after searching there, Peter Hunt considered that not only were the locations not photogenic, but were already "overexposed".

A view of mountain slopes, heavily laden with snow.
The slopes in the Saas Fee area in which the ski sequences were shot.

While the first unit shot at Piz Gloria, the second unit, led by John Glen, started filming the ski chases. The downhill skiing involved professional skiers, and various camera tricks. Some cameras were handheld, with the operators holding them as they were going downhill with the stuntmen, and others were aerial, with cameramen Johnny Jordan – who had previously worked in the helicopter battle of You Only Live Twice — developing a system where he was dangled by an 18 feet (5.5 m) long parachute harness rig below a helicopter, allowing scenes to be shot on the move from any angle. The bobsledding chase was also filmed with the help of Swiss Olympic athletes, and was rewritten to incorporate the accidents the stuntmen suffered during shooting, such as the scene where Bond falls from the sled. Blofeld getting snared with a tree was performed at the studio by Savalas himself, after the attempt to do this by stuntman on location came out wrong. Glen was also the editor of the film, employing a style similar to the one used by Hunt in the previous Bond films, with fast motion in the action scenes and exaggerated sound effects.

The avalanche scenes were due to be filmed in co-operation with the Swiss army who annually used explosions to prevent snow build-up by causing avalanches, but the area chosen naturally avalanched just before filming. The final result was a combination of a man-made avalanche at an isolated Swiss location shot by the second unit, stock footage, and images created by the special effects crew with salt. The stuntmen were filmed later, added by optical effects. For the scene where Bond and Tracy crash into a car race while being pursued, an ice rink was constructed over an unused aeroplane track, with water and snow sprayed on it constantly. Lazenby and Rigg did most of the driving due to the high number of close-ups.

"One time, we were on location at an ice rink and Diana and Peter were drinking champagne inside. Of course I wasn't invited as Peter was there. I could see them through the window, but the crew were all outside stomping around on the ice trying to keep warm. So, when she got in the car, I went for her. She couldn't drive the car properly and I got in to her about her drinking and things like that. Then she jumped out and started shouting 'he's attacking me in the car!' I called her a so-and-so for not considering the crew who were freezing their butts off outside. And it wasn't that at all in the end, as she was sick that night, and I was at fault for getting in to her about it. I think everyone gets upset at one time."
George Lazenby

For the cinematography, Hunt aimed for a "simple, but glamorous like the 1950s Hollywood films I grew up with", as well as something realistic, "where the sets don't look like sets"] Cinematographer Michael Reed added he had difficulties with lighting, as every set built for the film had a ceiling, preventing spotlights from being hung from above. While shooting, Hunt wanted "the most interesting framings possible", which would also look good after being cropped for television.

Lazenby said he experienced difficulties during shooting, not receiving any coaching despite his lack of acting experience, and with director Hunt never addressing him directly, only through his assistant. Lazenby also declared that Hunt also asked the rest of the crew to keep a distance from him, as "Peter thought the more I was alone, the better I would be as James Bond.] Allegedly, there also were personality conflicts with Rigg, who was already an established star. However, according to director Hunt, these rumours are untrue and there were no such difficulties—or else they were minor—and may have started with Rigg joking to Lazenby before filming a love scene "Hey George, I'm having garlic for lunch. I hope you are!" Hunt also declared that he usually had long talks with Lazenby before and during shooting. For instance, to shoot Tracy's death scene, Hunt brought Lazenby to the set at 8 o'clock in the morning and made him rehearse all day long, "and I broke him down until he was absolutely exhausted, and by the time we shot it at five o'clock, he was exhausted, and that's how I got the performance." Hunt said that if Lazenby had remained in the role, he would also have directed the successor film, Diamonds Are Forever, and that his original intentions were concluding the film with Bond and Tracy driving off following their wedding, saving Tracy's murder for the pre-credit sequence of Diamonds Are Forever. The idea was discarded after Lazenby quit the role.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the longest Bond film until Casino Royale was released in 2006. Despite that, two scenes were deleted from the final print: Irma Bunt spying on Bond as he buys a wedding ring for Tracy, and a chase over London rooftops and into the Royal Mail underground rail system after Bond's conversation with Sir Hilary Bray was overheard.

Music

The soundtrack for On Her Majesty's Secret Service has been called "perhaps the best score of the series." It was composed, arranged and conducted by John Barry; it was his fifth successive Bond film. Barry opted to use more electrical instruments and a more aggressive sound in the music – "I have to stick my oar in the musical area double strong to make the audience try and forget they don't have Sean ... to be Bondian beyond Bondian."

Barry felt it would be difficult to compose a theme song containing the title "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" unless it were written operatically, in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan. Leslie Bricusse had considered lyrics for the title song but director Peter R. Hunt allowed an instrumental title theme in the tradition of the first two Bond films. The theme was described as "one of the best title cuts, a wordless Moog-driven monster, suitable for skiing at breakneck speed or dancing with equal abandon."

Barry also composed the love song "We Have All the Time in the World", with lyrics by Burt Bacharach's regular lyricist Hal David, sung by Louis Armstrong] It is heard during the Bond–Tracy courtship montage, bridging Draco's birthday party in Portugal and Bond's burglary of the Gebrüder Gumbold law office in Bern, Switzerland.  Barry recalled Armstrong was very ill, but recorded the song in one take. The song was re-released in 1994, achieving the number three position during a 13-week spell in the UK charts. A Hal David song entitled "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?" performed by Danish singer Nina also featured in the film in several scenes.

The theme, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", is used in the film as an action theme alternative to Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme", as with Barry's previous "007" themes. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was covered in 1997 by the British big beat group, the Propellerheads for the Shaken and Stirred album. Barry-orchestrator Nic Raine recorded an arrangement of the escape from Piz Gloria sequence and it was featured as a theme in the trailers for the 2004 Pixar animated film The Incredibles

Release and reception

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was released on 18 December 1969 with its premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. Lazenby appeared at the premiere with a beard, looking "very un-Bond-like", according to the Daily Mirror. Lazenby claimed the producers had tried to persuade him to shave it off to appear like Bond, but at that stage he had already decided not to make another Bond film and rejected the idea. The beard and accompanying shoulder-length hair "strained his already fragile relationship with Saltzman and Broccoli". As On Her Majesty's Secret Service had been filmed in stereo, the first Bond film to use the technology, the Odeon had a new speaker system installed to benefit the new sounds.

Because Lazenby had informed the producers that On Her Majesty's Secret Service was to be his only outing as Bond and because of the lack of gadgets used by Bond in the film, few items of merchandise were produced for the film, apart from the soundtrack album and a film edition of the book. Those that were produced included a number of Corgi Toys, including Tracey's Cougar, Campbell's Volkswagen and two versions of the bobsleigh—one with the 007 logo and one with the Piz Gloria logo. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was nominated for only one award: George Lazenby was nominated in the New Star of the Year – Actor category at the 1970 Golden Globe Award ceremony, losing out to Jon Voight.

Box office

The film topped the North American box office when it opened with a gross of $1.2 million. The film closed its box office run with £750,000 in the United Kingdom (the highest-grossing film of the year), $64.6 million worldwide, half of You Only Live Twice's total gross, but still one of the highest-grossing films of 1969. It was one of the most popular movies in France in 1969, with admissions of 1,958,172.  Nonetheless this was a considerable drop from You Only Live Twice. After re-releases, the total box office was $82,000,000 worldwide.

Contemporary reviews

The majority of reviews were critical of either the film, Lazenby, or both, while most of the contemporary reviews in the British press referred to George Lazenby at some point as "The Big Fry", a reference to his previous acting in Fry's Chocolate advertisements. Derek Malcolm of The Guardian was dismissive of Lazenby's performance, saying that he "is not a good actor and though I never thought Sean Connery was all that stylish either, there are moments when one yearns for a little of his louche panache." For all the criticism of Lazenby, however, Malcolm says that the film was "quite a jolly frolic in the familiar money-spinning fashion". Tom Milne, writing in The Observer was even more scathing, saying that "I ... fervently trust (OHMSS) will be the last of the James Bond films. All the pleasing oddities and eccentricities and gadgets of the earlier films have somehow been lost, leaving a routine trail through which the new James Bond strides without noticeable signs of animation."

Donald Zec in the Daily Mirror was equally damning of Lazenby's acting abilities, comparing him unfavourably to Connery: "He looks uncomfortably in the part like a size four foot in a size ten gumboot." Zec was kinder to Lazenby's co-star, saying that "there is style to Diana Rigg's performance and I suspect that the last scene which draws something of a performance out of Lazenby owes much to her silken expertise." The New York Times critic AH Weiler also weighed in against Lazenby, saying that "Lazenby, if not a spurious Bond, is merely a casual, pleasant, satisfactory replacement."

One of the few supporters of Lazenby amongst the critics was Alexander Walker in the London Evening Standard who said that "The truth is that George Lazenby is almost as good a James Bond as the man referred to in his film as 'the other fellow'. Lazenby's voice is more suave than sexy-sinister and he could pass for the other fellow's twin on the shady side of the casino. Bond is now definitely all set for the Seventies." Judith Crist of New York Magazine also found the actor a strong point of the movie, stating that "This time around there's less suavity and a no-nonsense muscularity and maleness to the role via the handsome Mr. Lazenby".

The feminist film critic Molly Haskell also wrote an approving review of the film in the Village Voice: "In a world, an industry, and particularly a genre which values the new and improved product above all, it is nothing short of miraculous to see a movie which dares to go backward, a technological artefact which has nobly deteriorated into a human being. I speak of the new and obsolete James Bond, played by a man named George Lazenby, who seems more comfortable in a wet tuxedo than a dry martini, more at ease as a donnish genealogist than reading (or playing) Playboy, and who actually dares to think that one woman who is his equal is better than a thousand part-time playmates." Haskell was also affected by the film's emotional ending: "The love between Bond and his Tracy begins as a payment and ends as a sacrament. After ostensibly getting rid of the bad guys, they are married. They drive off to a shocking, stunning ending. Their love, being too real, is killed by the conventions it defied. But they win the final victory by calling, unexpectedly, upon feeling. Some of the audience hissed, I was shattered. If you like your Bonds with happy endings, don't go."

Reflective reviews

Critical response to On Her Majesty's Secret Service has become much more positive in recent years. Film critic James Berardinelli summed this up in his review of the movie: "with the exception of one production aspect, [it] is by far the best entry of the long-running James Bond series. The film contains some of the most exhilarating action sequences ever to reach the screen, a touching love story, and a nice subplot that has agent 007 crossing (and even threatening to resign from) Her Majesty's Secret Service. The problem is with Bond himself ... George Lazenby is boring, and his ineffectualness lowers the picture's quality. Lazenby can handle the action sequences, but that's about all he masters."

The American film reviewer Leonard Maltin has suggested that if it had been Connery in the leading role instead of Lazenby, On Her Majesty's Secret Service would have epitomised the series. On the other hand, Danny Peary wrote, "I'm not sure I agree with those who insist that if Connery had played Bond it would definitely be the best of the entire Bond series ... Connery's Bond, with his boundless humor and sense of fun and self-confidence, would be out of place in this picture. It actually works better with Lazenby because he is incapable of playing Bond as a bigger-than-life hero; for one thing he hasn't the looks ... Lazenby's Bond also hasn't the assurance of Connery's Bond and that is appropriate in the crumbling, depressing world he finds himself. He seems vulnerable and jittery at times. At the skating rink, he is actually scared. We worry about him ... On Her Majesty's Secret Service doesn't have Connery and it's impossible to ever fully adjust to Lazenby, but I think that it still might be the best Bond film, as many Bond cultists claim." Peary also described On Her Majesty's Secret Service as "the most serious", "the most cynical" and "the most tragic" of the Bond films.

Brian Fairbanks differed in his opinion of Lazenby, saying that the film "gives us a James Bond capable of vulnerability, a man who can show fear and is not immune to heartbreak. Lazenby is that man, and his performance is superb." Fairbanks also thought On Her Majesty's Secret Service to be "not only the best Bond, it is also the last truly great film in the series. In fact, had the decision been made to end the series, this would have been the perfect final chapter."

The filmmaker Steven Soderbergh writes that "For me there's no question that cinematically On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the best Bond film and the only one worth watching repeatedly for reasons other than pure entertainment ... Shot to shot, this movie is beautiful in a way none of the other Bond films are"  The director Christopher Nolan also saw On Her Majesty's Secret Service as his favourite Bond film; in describing its influence on his own film, Inception, Nolan said, "What I liked about it that we've tried to emulate in this film is there's a tremendous balance in that movie of action and scale and romanticism and tragedy and emotion."

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 82% rating based on 44 reviews. IGN ranked On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the eighth best Bond film, Entertainment Weekly as the sixth, and Norman Wilner of MSN, as the fifth best. The film also became a fan favourite, seeing "ultimate success in the home video market". In September 2012 it was announced that On Her Majesty's Secret Service had topped a poll of Bond fans run by 007 Magazine to determine the greatest ever Bond film. Goldfinger came second in the poll and From Russia With Love was third.




The Man with the Golden Gun was the fourth and final film in the series directed by Guy Hamilton. The script was written by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz. The film was set in the face of the 1973 energy crisis, a dominant theme in the script. Britain had still not yet fully overcome the crisis when the film was released in December 1974. The film also reflects the then popular martial arts film craze, with several kung fu scenes and a predominantly Asian location, being set and shot in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Macau. Part of the film is also set in Beirut, Lebanon, but it was not shot there.

The film saw mixed reviews. Christopher Lee's performance as Scaramanga, intended to be a villain of similar skill and ability to Bond, was praised, but reviewers criticized the film as a whole, particularly the comedic approach, and some critics described it as the lowest point in the canon up to that time. Although the film was profitable, it is the fourth lowest grossing Bond film in the series. It was also the last film to be co-produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, with Saltzman selling his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the parent company of Eon Productions, after the release of the film.

Plot

In London, a golden bullet with James Bond's code "007" etched into its surface is received by MI6. It is believed that it was sent by the famed assassin Francisco Scaramanga, who uses a golden gun to intimidate the agent. Because of the perceived threat to the agent's life, M relieves Bond of a mission revolving around the work of the solar energy scientist named Gibson, thought to be in possession of information crucial to solving the energy crisis with solar power. Bond sets out unofficially to locate Scaramanga.

After retrieving a spent golden bullet from a belly dancer in Beirut and tracking its manufacturer to Macau, Bond encounters Andrea Anders, Scaramanga's mistress, collecting the shipment of golden bullets at a casino. Bond follows her to Hong Kong and, in her Peninsula Hotel room, pressures Anders to expose information about Scaramanga, his appearance and his plans; she directs him to the Bottoms Up Club. The club proves to be the location of Scaramanga's next hit, Gibson, from whom Scaramanga's dwarf henchman Nick Nack steals the "Solex agitator", a key component of a solar power station. Before Bond can assert his innocence in Gibson's death, he is taken away by Lieutenant Hip and transported to meet M and Q in a hidden headquarters in the wreck of the RMS Queen Elizabeth in the harbour. M assigns Bond to retrieve the Solex.

Bond then travels to Bangkok to meet Hai Fat, a wealthy Siamese entrepreneur suspected of arranging Gibson's murder. Bond poses as Scaramanga, but his plan backfires because unbeknown to him, Scaramanga himself is operating at Hai Fat's estate. Bond is captured and placed in Fat's martial arts academy, where the students are instructed to kill him. After escaping with the aid of Hip and his nieces, Bond speeds away on a motorized sampan along the river and reunites with his assistant, Mary Goodnight. Scaramanga subsequently kills Hai Fat and assumes control of his empire, taking the Solex with him.

Anders visits Bond, revealing that she sent the bullet to London and wants Bond to kill Scaramanga. In payment, she promises to hand the Solex over to him at a Muay Thai venue the next day. At the match, Bond discovers Anders dead and meets Scaramanga. Bond observes the Solex on the floor and is able to smuggle it away to Hip, who passes it to Goodnight. When Goodnight attempts to place a homing device on Scaramanga's car, she becomes trapped in the trunk. Bond discovers Scaramanga driving off and steals an AMC showroom car to give chase, coincidentally with vacationing Sheriff J.W. Pepper seated within it. Bond and Pepper follow Scaramanga in a car chase across Bangkok, which concludes when Scaramanga's car transforms into a plane, which flies himself, Nick Nack and Goodnight away from Bond.

Picking up Goodnight's tracking signal, Bond flies a seaplane into Red Chinese waters and lands at Scaramanga's island. Scaramanga welcomes and shows Bond the solar power plant operation that he has taken over, the technology for which he intends to sell to the highest bidder. While demonstrating the equipment, Scaramanga uses a powerful energy beam to destroy Bond's plane.

Scaramanga then proposes a pistol duel with Bond on the beach; the two men stand back to back and are officiated by Nick Nack to take twenty paces, but when Bond turns and fires, Scaramanga has vanished. Nick Nack leads Bond into Scaramanga's Funhouse where Bond stands in the place of a mannequin of himself; when Scaramanga walks by, Bond outwits and kills him. Goodnight kills Scaramanga's security chief Kra, sending his body into one of the temperature control vats. His body heat raises the helium of the solar plant, which begins to spiral out of control. Bond retrieves the Solex unit just before the island is destroyed, and they escape unharmed in Scaramanga's Chinese junk. Bond then fends off a final attack by Nick Nack, who smuggled himself aboard, placing Nick Nack in a wicker basket on the mainmast of the ship. Bond and Goodnight celebrate their mission by romancing each other.

Cast

  • Roger Moore as James Bond: An MI6 agent who receives a golden bullet, supposedly from Scaramanga, indicating that he is a target of Scaramanga.
  • Christopher Lee as Francisco Scaramanga: The main villain and assassin who is identified by his use of a golden gun; he also has a 'superfluous papilla', or supernumerary nipple. Scaramanga plans to misuse solar energy for destructive purposes. Lee was Ian Fleming's step-cousin and regular golf partner. Scaramanga has been called "the best-characterised Bond villain yet."
  • Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight: Bond's assistant. Described by the critic of the Sunday Mirror as being "an astoundingly stupid blonde British agent". Ekland had previously been married to Peter Sellers, who appeared in the 1967 Bond film Casino Royale.
  • Maud Adams as Andrea Anders: Scaramanga's mistress. Adams described the role as "a woman without a lot of choices: she's under the influence of this very rich, strong man, and is fearing for her life most of the time; and when she actually rebels against him and defects is a major step." The Man with the Golden Gun was the first of three Bond films in which Maud Adams appeared; she played a different character, Octopussy, in the 1983 film of the same name, and would later have a cameo as an extra in Roger Moore's last Bond film, A View to a Kill.
  • Hervé Villechaize as Nick Nack: Scaramanga's dwarf manservant and accomplice. Villechaize was later known to television audiences as Tattoo in the series Fantasy Island.
  • Richard Loo as Hai Fat: A Thai millionaire industrialist who was employing Scaramanga to assassinate the inventor of the "Solex" (a revolutionary solar energy device) and steal the device.
  • Soon-Tek Oh as Lieutenant Hip: Bond's local contact in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Soon-Tek Oh trained in martial arts for the role, and his voice was partially dubbed over.
  • Clifton James as Sheriff J.W. Pepper: A Louisiana sheriff who happens to be on holiday in Thailand. Hamilton liked Pepper in the previous film, Live and Let Die, and asked Mankewicz to write him into The Man with the Golden Gun as well. Pepper's inclusion has been seen as one of "several ill-advised lurches into comedy" in the film.
  • Bernard Lee as M: The head of MI6.
  • Marc Lawrence as Rodney: An American gangster who attempts to outshoot Scaramanga in his funhouse. Lawrence also appeared in Diamonds Are Forever.
  • Desmond Llewelyn as Q: The head of MI6's technical department.
  • Marne Maitland as Lazar: A Portuguese gunsmith based in Macau who manufactures golden bullets for Scaramanga.
  • Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.
  • James Cossins as Colthorpe: An MI6 armaments expert who identifies the maker of Scaramanga's golden bullets. The first draft of the script originally called the role Boothroyd until it was realised that was also Q's name and it was subsequently changed.
  • Carmen du Sautoy as Saida: A Beirut belly dancer. Saida was originally written as overweight and wearing excessive make-up, but the producers decided to cast a woman closer to the classic Bond girl.

Production

Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman intended to follow You Only Live Twice with The Man with the Golden Gun, inviting Roger Moore to the Bond role. However, filming was planned in Cambodia, and the Samlaut Uprising made filming impractical, leading to the production being cancelled. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was produced instead with George Lazenby as Bond. Lazenby's next Bond film, Saltzman told a reporter, would be either The Man with the Golden Gun or Diamonds Are Forever. The producers chose the latter title, with Sean Connery returning as Bond.

Broccoli and Saltzman then decided to start production on The Man with the Golden Gun after Live and Let Die. This was the final Bond film to be co-produced by Saltzman as his partnership with Broccoli was dissolved after the film's release. Saltzman sold his 50% stake in Eon Productions's parent company, Danjaq, LLC, to United Artists to alleviate his financial problems.[17] The resulting legalities over the Bond property delayed production of the next Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, for three years.

The novel is mostly set in Jamaica, a location which had been already used in the earlier films, Dr. No and Live and Let Die; The Man with the Golden Gun saw a change in location to put Bond in the Far East for the second time. After considering Beirut, where part of the film is set, Iran, where the location scouting was done but eventually discarded because of the Yom Kippur War, and the Hạ Long Bay in Vietnam, the production team chose Thailand as a primary location, following a suggestion of production designer Peter Murton after he saw pictures of the Phuket bay in a magazine. Saltzman was happy with the choice of the Far East for the setting as he had always wanted to go on location in Thailand and Hong Kong. During the reconnaissance of locations in Hong Kong, Broccoli saw the wreckage of the former RMS Queen Elizabeth and came up with the idea of using it as the base for MI6's Far East operations.

Writing and themes

Tom Mankiewicz wrote a first draft for the script in 1973, delivering a script that was a battle of wills between Bond and Scaramanga, who he saw as Bond's alter ego, "a super-villain of the stature of Bond himself." Tensions between Mankiewicz and Guy Hamilton and Mankiewicz's growing sense that he was "feeling really tapped out on Bond" led to the re-introduction of Richard Maibaum as the Bond screenwriter.

Maibaum, who had worked on six Bond films previously, delivered his own draft based on Mankiewicz's work. Much of the plot involving Scaramanga being Bond's equal was sidelined in later drafts. For one of the two main aspects of the plot, the screenwriters used the 1973 energy crisis as a backdrop to the film, allowing the MacGuffin of the "Solex agitator" to be introduced; Broccoli's stepson Michael G. Wilson researched solar power to create the Solex.

While Live and Let Die had borrowed heavily from the blaxploitation genre, The Man with the Golden Gun borrowed from the martial arts genre that was popular in the 1970s through films such as Fist of Fury (1972) and Enter the Dragon (1973). However, the use of the martial arts for a fight scene in the film "lapses into incredibility" when Lt Hip and his two nieces defeat an entire dojo.

Casting

Originally, the role of Scaramanga was offered to Jack Palance, but he turned the opportunity down. Christopher Lee, who was eventually chosen to portray Scaramanga, was Ian Fleming's step-cousin and Fleming had suggested Lee for the role of Dr. Julius No in the 1962 series opener Dr. No. Lee noted that Fleming was a forgetful man and by the time he mentioned this to Broccoli and Saltzman they had cast Joseph Wiseman in the part. Due to filming on location in Bangkok, his role in the film affected Lee's work the following year, as director Ken Russell was unable to sign Lee to play Specialist in the 1975 film Tommy, a part eventually given to Jack Nicholson.

Two Swedish models were cast as the Bond girls, Britt Ekland and Maud Adams. Ekland had been interested in playing a Bond girl since she had seen Dr. No, and contacted the producers about the main role of Mary Goodnight. Hamilton met Adams in New York, and cast her because "she was elegant and beautiful that it seemed to me she was the perfect Bond girl". When Ekland read the news that Adams had been cast for The Man with the Golden Gun, she became upset, thinking Adams had been selected to play Goodnight. Broccoli then called Ekland to invite her for the main role, as after seeing her in a film, Broccoli thought Ekland's "generous looks" made her a good contrast to Adams. Hamilton decided to put Marc Lawrence, whom he had worked with on Diamonds Are Forever, to play a gangster shot dead by Scaramanga at the start of the film, because he found it an interesting idea to "put sort of a Chicago gangster in the middle of Thailand".



James Bond

James Bond is a fictional character created by novelist Ian Fleming in 1953, whose works were adapted into many spy films. Bond is a British secret agent working for MI6 who also answers by his codename, 007. He has been portrayed in twenty-six films by actors Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. Only two films were not made by Eon Productions. Eon now holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.

In 1961 producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman joined forces to purchase the filming rights to Fleming's novels. They founded the production company Eon Productions and, with financial backing by United Artists, began working on Dr. No, which was directed by Terence Young and featured Connery as Bond. Following Dr. No's release in 1962, Broccoli and Saltzman created the holding company Danjaq to ensure future productions in the James Bond film series. The series currently encompasses twenty-four films, with the most recent, Spectre, released in October 2015. With a combined gross of nearly $7 billion to date, the films produced by Eon constitute the Fourth -highest-grossing film series, behind Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Accounting for the effects of inflation the Bond films have amassed over $14 billion at current prices. The films have won five Academy Awards: for Sound Effects (now Sound Editing) in Goldfinger (at the 37th Awards), to John Stears for Visual Effects in Thunderball (at the 38th Awards), to Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers for Sound Editing, and to Adele and Paul Epworth for Original Song in Skyfall (at the 85th Awards), and to Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes for Original Song in Spectre (at the 88th Awards). Additionally, several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die", Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" and Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only". In 1982, Albert R. Broccoli received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

When Broccoli and Saltzman bought the rights to existing and future Fleming titles, it did not include Casino Royale, which had already been sold to producer Gregory Ratoff, with the story having been adapted for television in 1954. After Ratoff's death, the rights were passed on to Charles K. Feldman, who subsequently produced the satirical Bond spoof Casino Royale in 1967. A legal case ensured that the film rights to the novel Thunderball were held by Kevin McClory as he, Fleming and scriptwriter Jack Whittingham had written a film script upon which the novel was based. Although Eon Productions and McClory joined forces to produce Thunderball, McClory still retained the rights to the story and adapted Thunderball into 1983's Never Say Never Again. The current distribution rights to both of those films are held by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio which distributes Eon's regular series.

Pre-production work for the third James Bond film starring Timothy Dalton, fulfilling his three-film contract, began in May 1990. The project eventually entered development hell caused by legal problems between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, parent company of the series' distributor United Artists, and Danjaq, owners of the Bond film rights] Dalton's contract had expired when the lawsuits were settled in 1992. Pierce Brosnan was brought in to become the new Bond, and his 1995 debut, GoldenEye, also marked the first film in the series not produced by Albert R. Broccoli: his deteriorating health (Broccoli died seven months after the release of GoldenEye) led daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael G. Wilson to take over the series. Brosnan had two more films that decade, Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 and The World Is Not Enough in 1999.

Pierce Brosnan had signed a deal for four films when he was cast in the role of James Bond. This was fulfilled with the production of Die Another Day in 2002. Afterwards Eon decided to reboot the series with a younger actor. Daniel Craig was eventually cast as Bond in Casino Royale (an adaptation of the first James Bond novel), released in 2006. It was followed by Quantum of Solace in 2008.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) is the eighteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, with the screenplay written by Bruce Feirstein, the film follows Bond as he attempts to stop Elliot Carver, a power-mad media mogul, from engineering world events to initiate World War III.

The film was produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and was the first James Bond film made after the death of producer Albert R. Broccoli, to whom the movie pays tribute in the end credits. Filming locations included France, Thailand, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Tomorrow Never Dies performed well at the box office and earned a Golden Globe nomination despite mixed reviews. While its performance at the domestic box office surpassed that of its predecessor, GoldenEye, it was the only Pierce Brosnan Bond film not to open at number one at the box office, as it opened the same day as Titanic, but instead at number two.