On This Day

RichardTheBruce

December 22nd

1962: Ralph Fiennes is born--Ipswich, Suffolk, England.
1964: Bosley Crowther reviews Goldfinger in The New York Times.

GOLDFINGER

See the complete article here:

http://www.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: Thunderball released in the US.

https://illustrated007.blogspot.com/2014/01/us-thunderball-posters.html

1965: Bosley Crowther reviews Thunderball in The New York Times.

Screen: 007's Underwater Adventures:Connery Plays Bond in 'Thunderball'

See the complete article here:

http://www.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.

1965: Tony Mastroianni reviews Thunderball in the Cleveland Press.

Thunderball Improves on Bond's Technique

See the complete article here:

http://www.clevelandmemory.org/mastroianni/tm364.html

Cleveland Press December 22, 1965

By now the James Bond films are pure formula and Bond fans wouldn't want them any other way. It is the fantasy world in which the super-hero finds all villains beatable, all women willing, and no situation hopeless.

This latest Bond film, "Thunderball," is better than "Goldfinger" and though sex still is a major part, it is not nearly so vulgar.

Again there is an attempt at humor but in this respect, "From Russia With Love," number two in the series, remains the best.

Bond's dryly-delivered cliches at the end of an escapade, the purely Bondsian flourish (stopping to toss flowers on the body of a man he has just killed while his pursuers are breaking in a door), the Bond elegance (ordering the right wine at dinner) -- all are still there but are growing thin.

Where "Thunderball" triumphs is in its special effects, its gadgets, its underwater scenes. The lengthiest of these is an underwater battle in which two armies -- the forces of SPECTRE in black, American aqua-paratroopers in orange -- advance and meet head-on.

THERE ARE underwater sleds that pull a man through water, the front of it armed with spear guns. There is a two-man sub that can carry an H-bomb, a yacht that breaks apart into a speedy hydrofoil.

In a prologue, Bond seems hopelessly trapped on the balcony of a building, but escapes by going straight up -- thanks to a jet power pack he has strapped to his back.

In "Thunderball'' the international crime syndicate known as SPECTRE has hijacked a NATO plane carrying two atom bombs, demands a ransom from the Western world with the threat of destroying two major cities unless paid $2,800,000.

BOND AND ALL the other agents with a double-0 prefix on their number (it indicates a license to kill) spread out around the world to find the bombs. Bond, agent 007, ends up in the Bahamas where there are villains, girls in bikinis, sharks, girls in bikinis, the bombs and girls in bikinis.

It's not much of a plot for two hours and 10 minutes but the writers and producers pad it out with alternating fights and love scenes.

One of the latter occurs underwater and where fireworks once indicated this sort of thing, it's now done with a burst of bubbles rushing to the surface.

SEAN CONNERY plays Bond with a greater air of detachment than ever, as though his conquests -- amorous and otherwise -- were all in a day's work. It's the proper spirit for the part.

The movie publicity doesn't say so but the man who did all the underwater scenes in the Bond role is a fellow whose name is Frank Cousins. He deserves plenty of credit.

Adolfo Celi is sinister as the heavy, the number two man in SPECTRE. The newest Bond girl is Claudine Auger and lesser Bond girls are Luciana Paluzzi and Molly Peters, all of whom seem to have the proper dimensions.

Short Subjects... Ursula Andress, who appeared in the first James Bond film, will be in another. She has been cast in "Casino Royale," a Bond film being made by a rival company. In it Peter Sellers is Bond.

1967: Casino Royale released in Spain, Finland, and France.
1967: James Bond 007 - Casino Royale released in Italy.

1967: James Bond 007 - Casino Royale! released in Sweden.

1969: 007 al servicio secreto de su Majestad (007 To His Majesty's Secret Service) released in Spain.

1971: Diamantes para la eternidad (Diamonds for Eternity) released in Spain. (Diamants per a l'eternitat, Catalan title.)

1973: Τζέημς Μποντ, πράκτωρ 007: Ζήσε κι άσε τους άλλους να πεθάνουν (James Bond, Agent 007: Live and Let the Others Die) released in Greece.

https://dpikeas.wordpress.com/2019/06/08/james-bond-live-and-let-die/

1973: Leva och låta dö released in Sweden.

http://www.jamesbond-shop.com/Live_and_Let_Die.htm

1982: Octopussy films OO7 hunted and hissing off.
1983: Jamais plus Jamais; Never Again Never) released in Belgium.

1985: 007 뷰 투 어 킬 (byoo too uh keel; 007 View to a Kill) released in the Republic of Korea.

1995: GoldenEye released in Luxembourg and Malaysia.

2006: Casino Royale released in Panama.

2014: Richard Graydon dies at age 92--England.
(Born 12 May 1922--London, England.)

Richard Graydon - obituary

Richard Graydon was an amateur jockey turned stuntman whose daredevil
feats in 10 James Bond films made audiences gasp

See the complete article here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11316314/Richard-Graydon-obituary.html

Richard Graydon at home in Surrey in 2000 Photo: REX FEATURES

5:30PM GMT 29 Dec 2014

Richard Graydon, who has died aged 92, was a former amateur jockey who became one of the most celebrated stuntmen in the business, keeping cinemagoers on the edges of their seats in some of the most hair-raising sequences in the James Bond canon.

Graydon’s first outing as “007” came in 1969 when he doubled for George Lazenby, tobogganing down the Cresta Run at breakneck speed in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In one terrifying sequence, in which Bond effects his escape from Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s mountaintop eyrie, Graydon was required to slide down, using a piece of chain, to a cable-car dangling over the abyss. “The drop was about 80 feet,” he recalled. “The only safety devices I had were two hooks in the palm of my hand attached to my safety belt. The difficulty was that ice had formed on the cable.”

The scene was filmed without mishap and 10 years later Graydon was again to be found atop a cable-car, this time suspended hundreds of feet above the ground in Rio de Janeiro, doubling for Roger Moore in the scene in Moonraker (1979) where Bond fights the steel-toothed “Jaws” (fellow stuntman Martin Grace). On this occasion things nearly came unstuck when Graydon slipped and was left hanging from the cable-car by just one hand without any safety hooks. “One slip and it would have been certain death,” he said, recalling the episode as “the nastiest moment of my career”.

Graydon performed in 10 Bond films in total. In You Only Live Twice (1967), he was seen abseiling down into a volcano and made a brief appearance as a Russian cosmonaut. In Octopussy he replaced Martin Grace (who had been injured on the second day of filming) as Roger Moore’s stunt double for much of the sequence in which Bond makes his way along the roof of a moving train, fighting off henchmen of the arch villain Kamal Khan, with the action taking place on top, hanging on to the side and even under the train. He also played the part of “Francisco the Fearless” – the man who gets shot out of a cannon at Octopussy’s circus.

Martin Grace described Graydon as the most courageous stuntman he had ever worked with: “He treated hanging in the rafters of a volcano 120 feet up, and on top of the cable car in Rio as if he was having a coffee down at Piccadilly Circus in London. He made what other stuntmen claimed as too dangerous and impossible look like a walk in the park.”

Inevitably such daredevilry came at a cost. Graydon broke an arm in four places when the horse he was riding in Waltz of the Toreadors (1962, with Peter Sellers) collided with a camera car. Worse was to come at a stunt show in Sweden in the 1970s, when a guide wire snapped as he was launching himself off the top of a tall tower. He broke his back and both legs and was in hospital for 14 weeks.

Richard Graydon was born on May 12 1922 into a theatrical family. His grandfather owned the Middlesex Music Hall (now the New London Theatre) in Drury Lane and his father was an agent and manager for such stars as Maurice Chevalier.

By contrast, after leaving Stowe Richard Graydon began his career as a gentleman jockey working for trainers – an occupation which, he later observed, provided an excellent grounding in stunt work and also brought him his first injuries. On one occasion he broke his neck and a leg riding for Boggy Whelan in a novice chase at Wye. The nearest he got to success on the turf was coming third on Squire’s Mount in the amateur riders’ Carnarvon Cup at Salisbury.

Graydon on top of a cable-car above Rio de Janeiro in Moonraker (REX FEATURES)

Graydon continued to ride out for trainers as he embarked on his showbusiness career, first as a dancer at the Windmill and other London theatres. Partially blinded in one eye following a childhood accident, he was turned down for wartime service in the RAF, though he performed with Ensa in India.

His first screen credit came in 1952 when he played one of Robin Hood’s Merrie Men in the Disney film of that name. His stunt career began with James Bond’s second big screen adventure, From Russia with Love, in 1963, and he appeared, uncredited, in Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965).

Graydon’s experience and knowledge of horsemanship also led to work as a stunt coordinator. He taught horses to fall without injuring themselves in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and – ignoring the advice of experts that it could not be done – taught camels to jump a low wall in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He also worked as stunt coordinator in the horse racing drama Champions (1984).

He earned more than 30 credits for stunt work in such productions as Where Eagles Dare (1968); When Eight Bells Toll (1971); Don’t Look Now (1973); Royal Flash (1975); The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); The Duellists (1977); Star Wars (1977); The Wild Geese (1978); International Velvet (1978); Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); Batman (1989); and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) in which he played a butler.

In 1970 Richard Graydon married Hermione Bedford, who survives him. There were no children of the marriage.

Richard Graydon, born May 12 1922, died December 22 2014

Richard Graydon (1922–2014)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0337040/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

Filmography

Stunts (44 credits)

1998 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (stuntman)
1997 Pie in the Sky (TV Series) (stunts - 1 episode)
- The Apprentice (1997) ... (stunts)
1993 Doctor Finlay (TV Series) (stunts)
1992 Gøngehøvdingen (TV Series) (stunt coordinator - 1 episode)
- Død mand ønskes (1992) ... (stunt coordinator)
1991 Boon (TV Series) (stunt performer - 1 episode)
- Bad Pennies (1991) ... (stunt performer)

1989 Batman (stunts)
1989 The Littlest Viking (stunts)
1988 Willow (stunts)
1987 Pathfinder (stunts)
1986 Pirates (stunts - uncredited)
1986 Dream Lover (stunt coordinator: UK)
1985 A View to a Kill (additional stunts - uncredited)
1985 Ladyhawke (stunt coordinator)
1984 A Passage to India (stunt coordinator - uncredited)
1984 Champions (stunt coordinator)
1984 Ordeal by Innocence (stunts)
1983 Octopussy (stunts - uncredited)
1981 For Your Eyes Only (additional stunts - uncredited)
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark (stunts - uncredited)
1980 ffolkes (stunts - uncredited)

1979 Moonraker (stunt double: Roger Moore, cable car sequence - uncredited) / (stunts)
1979 The Lady Vanishes (stunt arrangements)
1979 The Passage (stunts - uncredited)
1978 International Velvet (stunt coordinator)
1978 The Wild Geese (stunts - uncredited)
1977 Death or Freedom (horse master)
1977 The Spy Who Loved Me (stunts - uncredited)
1977 Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (second stunt guard at cellblock AA-23 - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1977 The Duellists (horsemaster)
1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth (stunt coordinator - as Dickie Graydon)
1975 Royal Flash (stunt arranger)
1974 11 Harrowhouse (stunts - uncredited)
1974 Dead Cert (stunts - uncredited)
1973 Don't Look Now (stunt coordinator - as Richard Grayden)
1971 When Eight Bells Toll (stunts - uncredited)

1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service (stunt double: George Lazenby - uncredited)
1968 Where Eagles Dare (stunts - uncredited)
1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade (stunt coordinator - uncredited)
1967 You Only Live Twice (stunts - uncredited)
1965 Thunderball (stunts - uncredited)
1964 Goldfinger (stunts - uncredited)
1963 From Russia with Love (stunts - uncredited)
1962 Lawrence of Arabia (stunt coordinator - uncredited)
1962 Waltz of the Toreadors (stunts - uncredited)

Actor (24 credits)

1997 Shooting Fish - Racehorse Trainer (as Dickie Graydon)
1993 Between the Lines (TV Series) - Edmonds
- Some Must Watch (1993) ... Edmonds
1990 The Fool - 1990 Wings of Fame

1989 London's Burning (TV Series) - Old Man
- Episode #2.6 (1989) ... Old Man
1985 Déjà Vu - Captain Wilson
1983 Octopussy - Francisco the Fearless
1982 Jockey School (TV Mini-Series) - Reggie Sheaton
- Episode #1.2 (1982) ... Reggie Sheaton
1981 Eye of the Needle - Home Guard Private
1980 ffolkes - Rasmussen

1979 Moonraker - Space Fighter (uncredited)
1979 Love and Bullets - Antonio
1977 The Duellists - Cossack / Hussar
1974 Dead Cert - Jockey (uncredited)
1974 The Fortunes of Nigel (TV Mini-Series) - Groom
- Part 5 (1974) ... Groom
1971 The Last Valley - Yuri (uncredited)

1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Draco's Driver (uncredited)
1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade - Lord Bingham
1967 You Only Live Twice - Astronaut - Russian Spacecraft
1966 The Avengers (TV Series) - George Reed
- Honey for the Prince (1966) ... George Reed
1965 Thunderball - Largo's Henchman (uncredited)

1959 The Unseeing Eye (Short) - Eddie Brown (as Dick Graydon)
1953 Wicked Wife - Chandler (as Richard Grayden)
1952 The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men - Merrie Man

Miscellaneous Crew (5 credits)

1997 Shooting Fish (animal handler)
1991 Robin Hood (horse master)
1985 Ladyhawke (horse master)
1984 Champions (horse master)
1977 Death or Freedom (horse master)

Self (12 credits)

2006 Moonraker: Ken Adam's Production Films (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Inside 'A View to a Kill' [/b](Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Inside 'From Russia with Love' (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Inside 'Moonraker' (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Inside 'Octopussy' (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Inside 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Inside 'You Only Live Twice' (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Double-O Stunts (Video documentary short) - Himself
2000 Terence Young: Bond Vivant (Video documentary short) - Himself
1992 30 Years of James Bond (TV Movie documentary) - Himself
1982 Stuntman Challenge (TV Movie) - Himself
1979 Film 2017 (TV Series) - Himself
- Episode dated 27 May 1979 (1979) ... Himself

Archive footage (1 credit)

2009 À l'abordage - L'aventure de pirates (Video documentary) - Himself

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Moonraker


Octopussy

2016: Ian Fleming Publications sends Season's Greetings.

http://www.jamesbondthesecretagent.com/2016/12/christmas-card-from-ian-fleming.html

James Bond hunts Santa

2021: MI6 share their Christmas Card in The Times.

From MI6 with love, a Bond-style
Christmas card with a licence to
chill

See the complete article here:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/from-mi6-with-love-a-bond-style-christmas-card-with-a-licence-to-chill-6w8vzkxjc

George Sandeman | Wednesday December 22 2021, The Times

The MI6 Christmas card parodies the James Bond opening sequence

The head of MI6 said this year that the legend of James Bond was a double-edged sword. His attitude seems to have softened, however, with a nod to the fictional spy in the secret service’s Christmas card.

It adopts the image featured in the opening sequences of the 007 films where Bond, dressed in dinner jacket and bow tie, turns and shoots towards the camera. Instead of the dapper spy, a tubby Father Christmas points a red and white striped candy cane skywards.

The card was produced by one of the overseas intelligence agency’s officers.

Richard Moore, who was appointed chief of the service last year, told The Times in April that he enjoyed the films depicting Ian Fleming’s character but they were a far...

[MORE]

2023: Ian Fleming Publications shares Season's Greetings.