On This Day

Thunderfinger

So it was Hunt who suggested Connery? That was news to me. Maybe several people had the same idea.

RichardTheBruce

March 12th

1923: Vladek Sheybal is born--Zgierz, Lódzkie, Poland. (He dies 16 October 1992 at age 69--London, England.)

Ken Russell Vladek Sheybal

http://www.iainfisher.com/russell/rusard.html

The Debussy Film Dance of the Seven Veils Billion Dollar Brain Women in Love The Boy Friend
From Russia with Love Casino Royale U.F.O. Exorcist II Smiley´s People The Apple Red Dawn

Vladek Sheybal worked with Ken Russell from the early BBC days through to the early films and the classic Russell era. As well as his work with Russell, Sheybal appeared in films ranging from the Bond film From Russia with Love to Red Dawn and television series including the sublime U.F.O. and Smiley´s People.

This interview and article is by David Del Valle and originally appeared in Psychotronic magazine. Thanks to David and Psychotronic for permission to reproduce it.

2002: The producers announce the name of BOND 20 to be Die Another Day.
2012: Local residents of Hankley Common, near Elstead in Surrey, England, report a huge (Scottish?) manor-type structure being built there.
2013: Skyfall released on DVD and Blu-ray.
2015: National Assembly for Wales rejects a request to film BOND 24 scenes in Senedd Chamber, Cardiff Bay.
2018: Work commences on the expansion of Ian Fleming International Airport, Boscobel, St. Mary, Jamaica, to make it a regional hub. Includes a police station.

RichardTheBruce

March 13th

1960: Ian Fleming dines with US Senator John F. Kennedy, shares advice to oust Cuban President Fidel Castro.

https://books.google.com/books?id=7ez-CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=%22Ian+Fleming%22+%22march+13%22+1960&source=bl&ots=qT05c2wA32&sig=mTxCO66DqbbmNs6RT6zrtcZeL5k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwics4WkkOjZAhVQaq0KHYxbCsgQ6AEIQjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Ian%20Fleming%22%20%22march%2013%22%201960&f=false

1979: The Man With the Golden Gun re-released in the Philippines.
2015: Sir Roger Moore, Daniel Craig, Michael G. Wilson, Sam Mendes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris (!), Rory Kinnear appear in a skit for Comic Relief.

jamesbondlifestyle.com/news/daniel-craig-and-sir-roger-moore-007-sketch-comic-relief

2015: The Guardian reports OO7 is credited for cleaning up Rome streets--literally.
2017: Scientific Games announces its exclusive licensing agreement for James Bond .
2019: Dynamite Entertainment's release date for James Bond: Origin #7.

ON SALE DATE: 3/13/2019
New arc! New creative team! Perfect time to jump aboard one of the best-reviewed series of 2018-19!
RUSSIAN RUSE, Part 1: A Norwegian supply ship carrying gold mysteriously sinks. A Russian crew claims the Nazis are responsible. Royal Navy Lieutenant James Bond suspects foul play.
Brought to you by JEFF PARKER (Aquaman, Fantastic Four) and superstar artist IBRAHIM MOUSTAFA (Mother Panic, The Flash)!

https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513027244707011

Cover A - Panosian

Ibrahim Moustafa cover

Christian Ward cover

RichardTheBruce

March 14th

1953: Ian and Anne Fleming depart Jamaica for London via Montego Bay, Nassau, New York City. They leave behind Mr. and Mrs. Guy Charteris, plus Lucian Freud who establishes his moment of "Goldeneye folklore".

Ian Fleming, Andrew Lycett, 1995.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yDFFAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=%22ian+fleming%22+%2214+march%22&source=bl&ots=J5lNtEwnCj&sig=VEvOS0FKkYlV4K9BTQpfc41dR-M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtr8jGnOjZAhVPcq0KHdvdDrAQ6AEIUjAH#v=onepage&q=%22ian%20fleming%22%20%2214%20march%22&f=false

After lunch the following day, March 14, Ian and Anne left Goldeneye
for Montego Bay, from where they were due to fly out to Nassau, and then
home to London, via New York. Guy Charteris was amused by the way the
members of the staff were formally lined up to bid their master and
mistress goodbye. He, his wife, and Lucien Frued stayed a bit longer, during
which time the incident occurred which became part of the Goldeneye
folklore. At dinner one evening, Violet, the housekeeper, served some
vegetables in a Pyrex dish. When Freud tried to help himself to what he
thought were sausages, he discovered they were actually Violet's fingers
on the other side of the dish.

1995: Sean Bean's first day filming BOND 17.
1998: Tomorrow Never Dies released in Japan.

RichardTheBruce

March 15th

1924: Walter Gotell is born--Bonn, Germany. (He dies 5 May 1997 at age 73--London, England.)

Obituary: Walter Gotell
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-walter-gotell-1256876.html
Tom Vallance | Friday 20 June 1997 00:02

A familiar figure of authority or menace in over 90 films and countless television shows, Walter Gotell was one of those reliable character players whose faces are well known but whose names are familiar to only a few. His balding, severe countenance made him the perfect KGB chief in several James Bond adventures, and in war films his crooked smile could quickly become a cruel sneer when he portrayed a Nazi.

Born in 1924, he went in 1943 straight from acting with a repertory company into films, which were suffering from a dearth of young actors due to the Second World War. His first films all dealt with the war - The Day Will Dawn, We Dive at Dawn, Tomorrow We Live, Night Invader (all 1943) and 2,000 Women (1944). Deciding to pursue a more secure business career, he gave up acting for several years. A man of strong intellect (he spoke five languages), he was an astute and successful businessman, but in 1950 returned to the screen with small roles in The Wooden Horse (a rare sympathetic, if enigmatic, role as a member of the French resistance), Cairo Road and Albert RN.

He was to work steadily for the next 40 years, though still combining acting with business (he ultimately became business manager of a group of engineering companies) and, in later years, farming.

In John Huston's fine film version of C.S. Forester's The African Queen (1951), Gotell was one of the German seamen who briefly capture Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn near the film's climax. Subsequent Nazi roles included Ice-Cold in Alex (1958), Sink the Bismarck! (1960, as an officer on the ill-fated battleship), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and a particularly chilling portrayal of ruthlessness in The Boys From Brazil (1978). In this last bizarre tale of Hitler clones, he was Mundt, an assassin despatched by Joseph Mengele (Gregory Peck) to kill the father of one of the clones. Recognising the victim (Wolfgang Preiss) as an old comrade from his days in the SS, he tells the man that he has a difficult assignment but lies about the identity of his intended victim. When his friend assures him that orders must be obeyed, he hurls the man over a snow-covered dam

As Morzeny, henchman of the memorable villainess Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) in the second and most distinguished James Bond film, From Russia With Love (1963), it was Gotell who, in the opening "teaser" sequence in which Bond (Sean Connery) is apparently assassinated, peels off the dead man's mask to reveal that it was merely a double being used in a lethal training exercise for a Spectre assassin.

In the first Bond film to star Roger Moore [incorrect statement], The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Gotell had a more prominent role as the KGB chief General Gogol, a role he continued to play in other Bond films, including Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985) and the first Bond to star Timothy Dalton, The Living Daylights (1987).

Gotell's prolific television work included the recurring role of Chief Constable Cullen in the popular BBC crime series Softly, Softly: Task Force, which ran for 131 episodes from 1970 to 1976. He was also featured in the mini-series The Scarlet and the Black (1983), in which Gregory Peck played his first dramatic role on television as a real-life Vatican official who aided escaped prisoners of war in Nazi-occupied Rome.

Gotell's last films included the fantasy Wings of Fame (1990) with Peter O'Toole and Colin Firth, and the hit comedy The Pope Must Die (1991). In recent years he had devoted more time to his farm in Ireland.

Walter Gotell, actor: born Bonn 15 March 1924; twice married (two daughters); died 5 May 1997.

1942: Molly Peters is born--Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk, England. (She dies 30 May 2017 at age 75.)

Molly Peters, Bond Girl in
‘Thunderball,’ Reportedly Dies
at 75
https://variety.com/2017/film/global/molly-peters-dies-dead-bond-girl-1202448700/
By Stewart Clarke

CREDIT: PIERLUIGI/REX/Shutterstock

Bond girl Molly Peters, whose risque scenes in “Thunderball” caused much comment at the time, has died, according to the official James Bond Twitter account.

Peters, 75, played Pat, a nurse tending to Sean Connery’s Bond in 1965’s “Thunderball.” She was the first Bond girl to take her clothes off onscreen in scenes that were considered racy and controversial. Several were ultimately cut from the film.

The Bond Twitter feed said: “We are sad to hear that Molly Peters has passed away at the age of 75. Our thoughts are with her family.”

Peters’ death comes barely a week after that of Roger Moore, who played the part of the suave 007 more times than any other actor.

Peters, who was also a model, had a fleeting acting career, spanning just a handful of films and series in the mid-1960s. “Thunderball” was her most notable big screen role.

Her movie career ended with the 1968 feature “Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River.” She also had parts in various 1960s series, including “Armchair Theater.”

In later life, she talked about her Bond role in 1995’s “Behind the Scenes With Thunderball” and 2000’s “Terence Young: Bond Vivant.”

The cause of death has not been announced.

1944: Fleming associate Maud Russell writes about him in her diary entry.

Spies, affairs and James Bond... The
secret diary of Ian Fleming's wartime
mistress
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/spies-affairs-james-bond-secret-diary-ian-flemings-wartime-mistress

Wednesday 15 March, 1944

This morning I heard Muriel Wright, I.’s girl, had been killed. Strange things happen. I heard in my room at the Admiralty that she’d been killed by debris flung up from a crater in the road coming through her roof and falling on her in bed. Most of the room was untouched. Appalled for I. and found it difficult to concentrate. I know he will be overcome with remorse and blame himself for not marrying her and for a thousand other things none of which he is to blame for.

1964: The Observer publishes Maurice Richardson's piece "Bondo-san and Tiger Tanaka".
1997: BOND 18 filming ahead of principal photography begins. Actors on hand include Gerard Butler.
2002: A BOND 20 press release from the producers announces: "We are thrilled that Madonna, who is recognized as the world's most exciting songwriter and performer, has agreed to compose and sing the song for the first James Bond movie of the new millennium."

https://jstor.org/stable/23418073?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

2015: The BOND 24 film crew remains past this scheduled date to continue filming the car chase in Rome.
2018: Danny Boyle is confirmed to direct BOND 25. (These plans later change.)

RichardTheBruce

March 16th

1959: Ludger Pistor is born--Recklinghausen, Germany.
1964: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian Fleming's eleventh Bond novel You Only Live Twice, the last published during his lifetime.

1965: A serialization of The Man With the Golden Gun appears in Italy's Sunday magazine "Domenica Del Corriere", with illustrations.

https://pinterest.com/pin/133348838937750638/

2016: Dynamite Entertainment releases James Bond #5 Vargr comic, in print and digital.

https://dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513024181805011

RichardTheBruce

March 17th

1925: Gabriele Ferzetti is born--Rome, Lazio, Italy. (He dies 2 December 2015 at age 90--Rome, Lazio, Italy.)

Gabriele Ferzetti obituary
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/22/gabriele-ferzetti
Charismatic Italian actor who starred in Antonioni’s L’Avventura
and played opposite George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service
Ronald Bergan | Tue 22 Dec 2015 10.41 EST | Last modified on Sun 4 Mar 2018 07.48 EST


Gabriele Ferzetti (right) with Lea Massari in Antonioni’s classic L’Avventura (1960), in which he played Sandro, a wealthy playboy searching for his missing lover. Photograph: Snap Stills/Rex Shutterstock

The Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti, who has died aged 90, was never in danger of being typecast. He played a multitude of different film roles in every known genre, over seven decades, and just about the only constant in his long career was that he was perennially handsome and charismatic without being showy.

To cinephiles, he was most memorable for his intense performance of quiet desperation as the unfulfilled wealthy playboy seeking his missing lover in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960). However, his most widely known roles, dubbed into English, were as the unscrupulous railroad baron on crutches in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and as James Bond’s father-in-law, a powerful crime boss, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the one with George Lazenby as 007.

Ferzetti was born in Rome, where he attended the Silvio d’Amico drama school before winning a scholarship to the Rome Academy of Dramatic Art. However, he was eventually expelled for appearing with a professional theatrical troupe. After his role on stage as the young shepherd Sylvius in Luchino Visconti’s 1948 production of As You Like It, designed by Salvador Dalí, Ferzetti had small roles in several films, soon becoming a leading man.

He was first noticed internationally in Mario Soldati’s The Wayward Wife (La Provinciale,1953), although the spotlight was on the ascending star Gina Lollobrigida in the title role. Ferzetti made the most of the thankless part of her husband, a bespectacled science professor who realises his wife does not love him but who wins her round in the end.

In the same year he landed the title role in the sumptuous biopic Puccini, in which he portrayed the philandering Italian opera composer from his student days to a man in his 80s, with a little help from the makeup department. He reprised the role in House of Ricordi (1954), about the music-publishing house.

Ferzetti was then cast by Antonioni in Le Amiche (The Girl Friends, 1955), which won the director the Silver Lion at the Venice film festival. Adapted from a Cesare Pavese story, the film manages to hold the 10 bourgeois characters in balance, giving almost equal weight to their individuality and the shifting pattern of relationships. Among them is Ferzetti, giving a nuanced performance as a morose, frustrated artist, envious of his more successful wife, and the cause of a woman’s suicide attempt.

It would take five years and several mediocre melodramas and epics, including the elephantine Hannibal (1959), in which Ferzetti was impressive as a Roman senator, before he was reunited with Antonioni.

L’Avventura, the film in which the director’s style reached maturity, allowed Ferzetti to play a weak and disillusioned man, a failed architect who complains, while looking around his Sicilian town: “Who needs beautiful things nowadays? How long will they last? All of this was built to last centuries. Today, 10, 20 years at the most, and then?” He later peevishly spills ink over a young man’s sketch of a church. At the film’s bitter end, not a resolution of the conventional type, he weeps pathetically out of guilt and emptiness. Nothing Ferzetti did in films subsequently equalled this.

L’Avventura led him to a number of English-language movies, including the paper-thin romance Jessica (1962) – set in Sicily, and in which he played a reclusive aristocrat who falls for a young midwife (Angie Dickinson) – and a conventional war film, Torpedo Bay (1963), in which he is a noble Italian submarine captain being stalked by a British ship commanded by James Mason. Ferzetti was suitably grim as Lot, fleeing Sodom with his daughters and wife in The Bible (1966), a bad film from the Good Book, directed by the self-proclaimed atheist John Huston.

Though dubbed, Ferzetti was convincing in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as the rail tycoon Morton, a smooth, cowardly baddie who employs a villainous hired gun, Frank (Henry Fonda), to frighten an owner into selling one of the rare pieces of land with water on it. Being disabled, Morton is vulnerable in his encounters with various unscrupulous bandits, at one stage having his crutches kicked away from him. He is last seen crawling towards a puddle of muddy water in the desert. It was Ferzetti’s favourite role.

He was Draco, a gentlemanly mafia boss in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), enticing Bond to marry his daughter (Diana Rigg), and offering to help 007 track down Blofeld. And he was chilling in Costa-Gavras’s The Confession (1970) as the head Stalinist interrogator who manages to extract a false confession from the Czech dissident Artur London (Yves Montand).

His Italian accent notwithstanding, Ferzetti was equally nasty as an ex-SS officer, now psychiatrist, intent on covering up his tracks in Liliana Cavani’s meretricious The Night Porter (1974), a study of a sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi (Dirk Bogarde) and the woman he raped in a concentration camp (Charlotte Rampling).

Ferzetti was kept busy throughout the 70s and 80s in supporting roles in mostly unremarkable Italian/French co-productions, as well as the occasional English-language film, such as the dreadful Inchon (1981), in which he played a Turkish officer in the Korean war with a miscast Laurence Olivier as General MacArthur.

In the 90s Ferzetti appeared more frequently on television, but played the Duke of Venice in Oliver Parker’s Othello on the big screen and won the Ubu prize for his performance in August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death on stage (both 1992). In 2009, aged 84, he gained much praise for playing the head of a wealthy Milanese industrial family in I Am Love (Io Sono l’Amore).

He is survived by his daughter, Anna, also an actor, from his marriage to the actor Maria Grazia Eminente, which ended in divorce, and by two granddaughters.

• Gabriele Ferzetti, actor, born 17 March 1925; died 2 December 2015

1928: Eunice Elizabeth Sargaison (Eunice Gayson) is born--Croydon, South London, England.
(She dies 8 June 2018--London, England.)

Eunice Gayson obituary
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/10/eunice-gayson-obituary
Stage and screen actor who found fame playing Sylvia Trench, the
first Bond girl, opposite Sean Connery
Toby Hadoke | Sun 10 Jun 2018 13.04 EDT | Last modified on Mon 11 Jun 2018 17.00 EDT

Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench in Dr No, 1962.
Photograph: Danjaq/Eon/UA/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Eunice Gayson, who has died aged 90, was an actor with a film, television and theatre career that spanned several decades. Despite this, she will be forever associated with her unique place in cinema history as the first Bond girl.

Exactly eight minutes into the running of the 1962 film Dr No, Sean Connery utters the words “Bond, James Bond” for the first time, in answer to a question from Gayson, whose character has introduced herself at the card table as “Trench, Sylvia Trench”. With typical efficiency, Bond adds Miss Trench to his list of conquests shortly after their casino encounter and he later finds her hitting golf balls in his apartment dressed only in his shirt. Their playful exchange is momentarily interrupted when he is summoned to Jamaica on a mission, a clear demonstration of Bond’s constant juggling of business and pleasure.

Unlike the other women on the Bond girl list, Gayson played the same character in more than one of the extremely successful franchise’s films. Trench turns up again in From Russia With Love (1963), when her afternoon punting with 007 has to be curtailed when he gets a call from headquarters. The intention was that Miss Trench would be a regular presence in the films, part of a running joke involving their assignations being cut short when espionage obligations arose at an inopportune moment. Guy Hamilton, the director of the next film in the series – Goldfinger (1964) – had other ideas however, and kiboshed the plan.

Eunice Gayson and Sean Connery in Dr No, 1962.
Photograph: Danjaq/Eon/UA/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

No matter, for by then Gayson’s claim to cinematic immortality was unimpeachable, even though her voice was not heard in either film: she was dubbed by the actor Nikki van der Zyl. No criticism of Gayson should be inferred – Van der Zyl dubbed the majority of female voices in Dr No and many others in future Bond films. Gayson’s perfectly acceptable vocal performance, playful and seductive, can still be heard on the film’s original trailer. She might have had a different slice of Bond movie immortality had the original plan – that she play the recurring role of Miss Moneypenny – gone ahead. As it was, Lois Maxwell took the role (and played it for 23 years). Nevertheless Trench was an important part – Gayson received higher billing than Maxwell in both films – and the actor helped a nervous Connery during that crucial first scene.

She was born in Streatham, south London, the elder of twin daughters and the middle of three children of John Sargaison, a civil servant, and his wife, Maria (nee Gammon). The family moved to Purley, Surrey, then Glasgow and finally Edinburgh, where Eunice enrolled at the Edinburgh Academy. A gifted soprano, she trained as an opera singer and in 1946, aged 18, made her professional debut playing a small role in Ladies Without at the Garrick theatre in London.

That Christmas, she was Princess Luv-Lee in Aladdin (Grand theatre, Derby), with the Stage describing her as a “vivacious” performer “who sings, dances and acts extremely well”. By the end of the decade she was appearing regularly on television – in music shows, revues and television pantomimes. In 1954 she was selected to be a panellist on Guess My Story, a programme in the vein of What’s My Line but featuring disguised celebrities.

Her film break had come in 1948, in My Brother Jonathan, and her other work on the big screen included Melody in the Dark (1949), Dance Little Lady (1954), Basil Dearden’s Out of the Clouds (1955) and Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), in which she played the female lead.

When she was cast in Dr No she was having success on stage playing the Baroness in the original London production (at the Palace theatre, 1962) of The Sound of Music which ran for more than 2,000 performances (she was one of its longest running cast members).

Her other theatre work included Over the Moon (Piccadilly theatre, 1953) and Uproar in the House (Whitehall theatre, 1968, taking over from Joan Sims), Victor Spinetti’s production of Duty Free (on tour 1976-77), The Grass is Greener (with Richard Todd, 1971, in Stratford-upon-Avon for the Royal Shakespeare Company), and An Ideal Husband and Kismet (both 1980, at the Connaught theatre, Worthing). One final run in the West End as the grandmother in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods (Phoenix theatre, 1990-91) was followed by pantomime in the Isle of Man in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Gaiety theatre, 1992).

Her 1953 marriage to the writer Leigh Vance was seen by three million American viewers when it was part of the television show Bride and Groom (“sponsored by Betty Crocker’s Piecrust Mix”). The marriage was dissolved six years later and in 1968 she married the actor Brian Jackson. That marriage also ended in divorce but produced a daughter, Kate, who survives her. Kate appeared in the casino scene in the Pierce Brosnan Bond film GoldenEye (1995).

• Eunice Gayson (Eunice Elizabeth Sargaison), actor, born 17 March 1928; died 8 June 2018
• This article was amended on 11 June 2018, to add further details of Eunice Gayson’s early life

1961: Life Magazine presents US President John F. Kennedy's list of his ten favorite books.
From Russia With Love places 9 out of 10.

https://books.google.com/books?id=vUUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA55&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
Lord Melbourne by David Cecil
Montrose by John Buchan
Marlborough by Sir Winston Churchill
John Quincy Adams by Samuel Flagg Bemis
The Emergence of Lincoln by Allan Nevins
The Price of Union by Herbert Agar
John C. Calhoun by Margaret L. Coit
Talleyrand by Duff Cooper
Byron in Italy by Peter Quennell
The Red and the Black by M. de Stendhal
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
Pilgrim's Way by John Buchan

2015: Spectre teaser poster takes inspiration from Live and Let Die.

RichardTheBruce

March 18th

1952: Ian Fleming shows the finished Casino Royale manuscript to ex-girlfriend Clare Blanchard.

Her advice: do not publish it. Or at least use pen name.

1959: Ian Fleming writes praise to artist Richard Chopping for the Goldfinger cover.

"As you will have gathered, the new jacket is quite as big a success
as the first one and I do think Capes have made a splendid job of it . . .
I am busily scratching my head trying to think of a subject for you again.
No-one in the history of thrillers has had such a totally brilliant artistic collaborator!"

1959: Goldfinger starts as a serial in the Daily Express, with a drawing of Goldfinger by Raymond Hawkley.
1963: On Her Majesty's Secret Service starts as a serial in the Daily Express, illustration by Robb.
1963: Richard Maibaum completes the From Russia With Love screenplay.
1968: Colonel Sun by Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis) starts as a serial in the Daily Express, illustration by Robb.
2012: Ian Fleming Publications confirms there will be no novelization of Skyfall.

thebookbond.com/2012/03/official-no-skyfall-novelization-dang.html

2014: The London Film Museum, Covent Garden, launches The Bond In Motion exhibition. In attendance: Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Ken Adam, Naomie Harris, Caterina Murino, Maryam d'Abo.

2015: A Spectre press conference in Mexico City kicks off filming of the pre-title sequence with the backdrop of Dia del los Muertos--Day of the Dead.

RichardTheBruce

March 19th

1935: Burt Metcalfe is born--Saskatchewan, Canada.
1936: Ursula Andress is born--Ostermundigen, Switzerland.
1958: Dr. No begins as a serial in the Daily Express, with an illustration by Robb. (Ends 1 April 1958.)
1962: Sports Illustrated prints Ian Fleming's article "The Guns of James Bond".

1964: The first day of filming Goldfinger for Sean Connery at Pinewood Studios, Stage D.
2001: The BBC reports a High Court jury awards Monty Norman £30,000 libel damages for a Sunday Times article stating he didn't write the James Bond theme.

Bond theme writer wins damages
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1229406.stm
Monday, 19 March, 2001, 14:25 GMT


Monty Norman: Libel case victory

Composer Monty Norman has been awarded £30,000 libel damages by a High Court jury over an article which said he did not write the James Bond theme.

"The Sunday Times always said that they were only interested in the truth -
well, now they've got the truth"
Monty Norman

Norman had sued the Sunday Times over the article in October 1997 which claimed John Barry actually wrote the distinctive twanging guitar tune - first heard in the 1962 film Dr No, starring Sean Connery.

It was described during the two-week court case in London as "one of the most famous pieces of music in the world".

Mr Norman said afterwards: "I am absolutely delighted - and vindicated. The Sunday Times always said that they were only interested in the truth. Well, now they've got the truth."


Sean Connery began his
Bond career with Dr No

He was present in court when the jury announced its unanimous verdict after some four hours' deliberation.

Mr Norman had told the court that the article, with the title "Theme tune wrangle has 007 shaken and stirred" had effectively "rubbished" his whole career.

Times Newspapers faces a costs bill unofficially estimated to be well in excess of £500,000.

A spokesman for The Sunday Times said: "This was always going to be a difficult case for a jury given the complexities of the expert musical evidence."

Awards
The court heard that apart from Dr No, Mr Norman was credited with stage and film songs such as Expresso Bongo, Songbook and Poppy.

He has won Ivor Novello, Evening Standard and Laurence Olivier awards.

Mr Norman's counsel, James Price QC, said the article damaged his client's reputation by suggesting he had dishonestly passed himself off as the creator of the Bond theme for 35 years.

Dispute
Mark Warby, for Times Newspapers, denied libel and said the newspaper article was neutral, sensibly balanced and a classic example of a report and comment piece on a live dispute.

He said the article reported only that Mr Barry was claiming to have written the tune.


The Sunday Times
alleged Barry composed
Bond tune

Mr Warby said Mr Barry had been brought in six months into the project to create a more memorable tune, because Mr Norman had run out of inspiration.

Mr Warby added: "In short, it was composed by John Barry with some input from an idea by Monty Norman."

Giving evidence, Mr Barry said that the producers of Dr. No Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli had been "unhappy" with Mr Norman's efforts at a theme tune.

Flat fee
Mr Barry said that a deal was struck whereby he would receive a flat fee of £250 and Mr Norman would receive the songwriting credit.

Mr Barry said that he had had never challenged the registration of the songwriting credit with the Performing Right Society and had no intention of doing so.

He had accepted the deal with United Artists Head of Music Noel Rogers because it would help his career - and it was a "terribly good deal because the whole Bond thing took off."

Mr Barry composed soundtracks for many other Bond films as well as Born Free, Zulu and Midnight Cowboy.

2015: BOND 24 films the helicopter sequence at Zócalo main city square, Mexico City, Mexico.

RichardTheBruce

March 20th

1942: Ian Fleming presents a paper to Admiral John Henry Godfrey recognizing successful efforts by Germans to send advance Commando forces that seized "documents, equipment, and ciphers" before they could be destroyed. He suggests a similar effort by the Allies. And later in civilian life collects important manuscripts for posterity.

https://books.google.com/books?id=yDFFAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq="ian+fleming"+"20+march"&source=bl&ots=J5lOoGuvHp&sig=rHU6qf8clmq_eqBzZFglohJBjQM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFyr-4qffZAhXiV98KHQRXDRcQ6AEIPzAE#v=onepage&q="ian fleming" "20 march"&f=false

Ian Fleming's secret memo
https://www.bbc.com/news/special/panels/13/mar/flemingdocument/img/graphic_1362485324.jpg
5 March 2013



1

Embossed emblem of Admiralty paper
2

MOST SECRET – British equivalent of the American term “top secret”
3

A.D.I.C – Assistant Director (Operational) Intelligence Centre
4

D.D.N.I – Deputy Director Naval Intelligence

D.N.I - Director Naval Intelligence - John Henry Godfrey, Fleming’s boss and said to be inspiration for M in the 007 stories

F – Ian Fleming, author of the document
5

N.I.D – Naval Intelligence Division
6

C.C.O – Chief of Combined Operations – Lord Mountbatten, Admiral of the Fleet
7

R.D.F gear – radio direction finding gear, used to determine where a radio signal is coming from
8

Operation “SLEDGEHAMMER” – plan for US troops to land at Brest or Cherbourg in France, later cancelled. But the idea evolved and Fleming’s proposed unit of commandos first deployed in Operation JUBILEE, the Dieppe raid of 19 August 1942 (operation names were always written in capitals)
9

F, N.I.D (17) – Ian Fleming’s codename, signed in pencil, of Naval Intelligence Division, dated 20 March 1942
10

Pencil note signed JHG - John Godfrey. It reads: Yes, most decidedly but we won’t “submit” [he draws arrow to (ii)] The principle be worked out in detail in collaboration with C.C.O. [Chief of Combined Operations]. He thinks the idea so good, he wants his team to keep hold of it, says historian Nick Rankin

1965: The Goldfinger soundtrack reaches #1 on the Billboard 200 charts, remaining at the top through 3 April. The LP was released in October 1964.

2002: BOND 20 films Jinx threatened by lasers.
2013: Danny Boyle declares to the press he won't direct the next Bond film based on concerns for creative control--and since he's already done a mini-Bond film for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Danny Boyle rules himself out of directing James Bond film
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/danny-boyle-rules-himself-out-of-directing-james-bond-film-8542164.html
Albertina Lloyd | Wednesday 20 March 2013 12:59


'The Queen' and James Bond parachute into the stadium ( Getty Images )

Danny Boyle says he has ruled himself out of directing the next James Bond film because he wants more creative control - and believes he has already had his 007 moment.

The Oscar-winning film-maker was creative director of the opening ceremony for the London Olympics, which featured Bond star Daniel Craig jumping out of a helicopter with the Queen.

The director of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire admitted he would not want the constraints of working on a big franchise.

Boyle, speaking at the premiere of his new film Trance, said: "It's not for me. I like working under the radar a bit more, so you can take risks.

"As we do with this film (Trance) and the perception of the characters - who's the antagonist? who's the protagonist? - it keeps changing in this film. And I love that freedom."

He added: "We did a sort of mini Bond film already, in the Olympics."

Trance - starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel - tells the story of a fine art auctioneer who gets caught up in a robbery and has to enlist the help of a hypnotherapist when he loses his memory along with a priceless painting.

The film is set in London, which Boyle said meant a lot to him.

"I love filming here. I live here and it's a city I think I know, but there's always bits of it you don't," he said.

"So going out and finding a location for a film is fantastic because you discover new parts. So it's very special to have the privilege of working here again."

Film company MGM said yesterday that it expects the 24th Bond film to be released within three years, and will announce a director "soon". Skyfall film-maker Sam Mendes has already ruled out a return in the hot seat.

PA

2018: Daniel Craig's 2014 Aston Martin Centenary Edition Vanquish, numbered 007, goes to auction for charity at Christie’s in New York.

Winning bid: $468,500.00.

RichardTheBruce

March 21st

1946: Timothy Peter Dalton is born--Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, Wales. [Or maybe 1944.]
1963: The Sydney Morning Herald publishes an interview with Sean Connery.

"I had to start from scratch": Sean Connery on
creating the original James Bond

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/i-had-to-start-from-scratch-sean-connery-on-creating-the-original-cinematic-bond-20151105-gkrwtj.html
By Special Correspondent | Updated November 5, 2015 — 7.15pmfirst published at 5.52pm

With the release of the new James Bond film, Spectre, we revisit a 1963 interview with the original 007.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on March 21, 1963

Leaning over our London luncheon table, Sean Connery said in his soft Scottish accent, "I'll be honest with you. There's not much of James Bond in me."

"Nobody knew anything about him." Sean Connery and Ursula Andress in a scene from "Doctor No" (1963). Credit: Publicity

In "Dr No" Connery has brought to the screen for the first time the British secret agent created by novelist Ian Fleming.

He was selected for the role not only because he is 6ft 2in tall, and rugged, but because he has made rapid strides as an actor in the past year.

"He's a man who makes his own rules..." Sean Connery as Bond Credit:United Artists Corporation

"The only real difficulty I found in playing Bond was that I had to start from scratch," Connery told me.

"Nobody knew anything about him, after all. Not even Fleming. Does he have parents? Where does he come from? Nobody knows. But we played it for laughs, and people seem to feel it comes off quite well."

Connery is of particular interest to Australians because he is expected here later this year to co-star with his wife, Diane Cilento, in the D'Arcy Niland story, "Call Me When the Cross Turns Over."

At our lunch, however, the actor's concern was James Bond – drawn by Mr Fleming as a pleasure-loving, woman-loving, death-dealing iconoclast.

Sean Connery and his Australian-born wife, actress Diane Cilento. Credit: William Mottram

"I don't suppose I'd really like Bond if I met him. He's a man who makes his own rules. That's fine so long as you're not plagued with doubts. But if you are – and most of us are – you're sunk," said Mr Connery

"That's why Bond appeals so much to women. By their nature, they are indecisive and a man who is absolutely sure of everything comes as a godsend."

"I suppose, too, the Walter Mitty in every man makes him admire Bond a little. That's where writer Ian Fleming is so clever.

"Fleming told me that he studied psychology in Munich before the war," Connery added.

"I don't suppose I'd really like Bond if I met him. He's a man who makes his own rules. That's fine so long as you're not plagued with doubts. But if you are – and most of us are – you're sunk."
Sean Connery

By profession the foreign manager of the London "Sunday Times", Fleming spends two months of every winter in Jamaica where he has a seaside home, and does his novel-writing there.

Connery and the rest of the unit made "Dr No" (today's Regent film), in colour, on location in Jamaica, with the author and Noel Coward as spectators.

"I'm grateful to the film for giving my career a lift like this, but I must be careful not to get too typed.

"I hope to make a completely different type of film." Connery concluded, and his Australian role should take care of that.

But Bond, who drinks champagne where Connery has a whiskey, is not giving the actor much rest.

His second Bond adventure, "From Russia With Love" goes before the United Artist cameras in London next week.

The company moves on to Istanbul in April and later scenes will be filmed in Venice.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on March 21, 1963

2001: The Guardian (quoting The Sun) says Whitney Houston could be the next Bond Girl for Pierce Brosnan.

Whitney Houston tipped as Brosnan's Bond girl
https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Exclusive/0,4029,460598,00.html
Wednesday 21 March 2001 | guardian.co.uk

Singer Whitney Houston could be in line to play Pierce Brosnan's love interest in the new James Bond production due to start filming later this year. The Grammy winner is rumoured to be keen on taking the role, though the final decision is down to Dana Broccoli, widow of longtime Bond producer Albert Broccoli.

Today's Sun newspaper quotes an unnamed studio source as saying that: "The movie bosses think Whitney would make a fantastic Bond girl and are desperately working out a deal which will be acceptable."

Houston, 37, scored a major box-office hit nine years ago with her role opposite Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, and later starred in Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife. But in recent years the diva has been dogged by bad publicity, including reports of a drug bust, rumours of marital strife and backstage gossip that suggested she was thrown off the set during last year's Oscar night rehearsals.

Another possible concern for the Bond backers is that 007 does not have an illustrious track record when it comes to mixed race liaisons. Back in 1973, Roger Moore received death threats after Bond hopped into bed with a black temptress played by Gloria Hendry in Live and Let Die. Brosnan will no doubt be hoping that times have changed since then.

2015: BOND 24 films OO7 on the balcony and across rooftops in Mexico City.
2018: Dynamite Entertainment's comic James Bond: The Body #3 (Part Three: The Gut) is published.
Rapha Lobosco, illustrator. Ales Kot, writer. Luca Casalanguida, cover illustrator.

RichardTheBruce

March 22nd

1945: Ian Fleming returns to England from Jamaica and finds Ann Charteris in better health.

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica, Matthew Parker, 2014.

In 1945, Chris (Blackwell, son of Fleming's mistress Blanche)
had been taken to England and put into Catholic
school, where he spent most of his time in the sanatorium. After that,
he attended Harrow School, but left before completing his A levels.

He always considered himself Jamaican, and that his future was to
be in Jamaica. Before he left England, he had secured himself a job as
an ADC to Sir High Foot. So he was now living at King's House,
which he loved. He adored Sir Hugh, and enjoyed the excitement of
the time when 'Bustamante and Manley and all the top politicians and
people, who were going to take over Jamaica, were coming to King's
House all the time. he was very good with them. They all really loved
Hugh Foot.' Chris remembers all the excitement of visiting
Goldeneye and hearing Fleming and Coward in mid verbal joust.
Fleming had made a good impression on him. 'In those days children were
seen and not heard,' he says, 'but Fleming always talked to me as an
adult. There was a coldness to him, but he would open up and talk to
me.'

After a short trip with Ivar Bryce to Inagua in the Bahamas, Fleming
returned to England on 22 March to find Ann in much better health. At
Enton Hall she had lost nearly five pounds and was now 'free from
pain'. Fleming, however, was suffering from sciatica and a heavy cold,
and checked himself in to the same sanatorium. Though it would
provide useful material for the scenes at 'Shrublands' in Thunderball,
it was of little use for his health, partly because he would not stick to
the regime. He went to see Dr Beal soon afterwards, who noted that
'He complains of greater exhaustion than is natural in a man of his
age.' Beal suggested a better diet and advised against any cigarettes or
alcohol. Fleming cut down to fifty Morlands a day, and switched to
bourbon, but his stepson Raymond remembers noticing that he was
'still drinking a great deal'. There then followed a return of his
agonizing kidney stones, which necessitated a stay in the London
Clink and large quantities of morphine.

1948: Noel Coward arrives at the Fleming Goldeneye estate and remarks: "It is quite perfect."

Ian Fleming, Andrew Lycett, 1995.

When Coward arrived on 22 March, his reaction was anything but
Jaundiced. "It is quite perfect," he wrote of Goldeneye in his diary; "a
large sitting-room sparsely furnished, comfortable beds and showers, an
agreeable staff, a small private coral beach with lint-white sand and warm
clear water. The beach is unbelievable." And his comment in Fleming's
visitors' book was equally positive. "The two happiest months I have ever
spent," he wrote unambiguously. When Ian was back the following year,
Coward had composed a song, which epitomized the friendly ribbing and
banter between these two unlikely friends:

Alas! I cannot adequately praise
The dignity, the virtue and the grace
Of this most virile and imposing place
Wherein I passed so many airless days.

Alas! Were I to write 'till the crack of doom
No typewriter, no pencil, nib, nor quill
Could ever recapitulate the chill
And arid vastness of the living-room.

Alas! I cannot accurately find
Words to express the hardness of the seat
Which, when I cheerfully sat down to ear,
Seared with such cunning into my behind.

Alas! However much I raved and roared
No rhetoric, no witty diatribe
Could ever, even partially, describe
The impact of the spare-room bed - and board.

1965: The Daily Express serializes The Man with the Golden Gun starting this date, with an illustration by Robb.

“Never before has there been a fiction character with the fascination
of James Bond. Wherever intelligent people meet they talk of him.
These coming days – by reading The Express – AND ONLY BY READING
THE EXPRESS – you can leap ahead in 'Bondery'.”

1971: Will Yun Lee is born--Arlington, Virginia.
2013: Trumpeter Derek Roy Watkins dies--Surrey, England. (Born 2 March 1945--Reading, England.)

Derek Watkins: Trumpeter who played on every Bond soundtrack
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/derek-watkins-trumpeter-who-played-on-every-bond-soundtrack-8550572.html
Brian Priestley | Wednesday 27 March 2013 01:00


Bell in 2004: his playing echoed Jelly Roll Morton ( PA )

It is rare for orchestral musicians to gain an independent reputation with the public, as opposed to the admiration they earn from their colleagues. In more popular styles, the same rules apply even more forcefully to backing musicians. The trumpeter Derek Watkins gained some recognition latterly, thanks to his enviable record of having performed on the soundtrack of every single James Bond film, playing for the first of these, Dr No (1962), at the age of 17.

He was seen playing and also speaking, along with the composer Thomas Newman, in a promotional video for the most recent entry, Skyfall. Newman noted that "When [the film's director] Sam Mendes went out on to the podium after we'd finished recording and acknowledged Derek, you should've heard the orchestra. He had to take two bows because people kept applauding him." By this stage, however, Watkins had been diagnosed with cancer and was fund-raising for the charity Sarcoma UK.

Watkins got off to an early start, being taught from the age of six by his father, who also conducted him in the Spring Gardens brass band in Reading, of which his grandfather had been a founding member. He played in his father's dance band at the local Majestic Ballroom before turning professional in his late teens. Working in leading London bands, he soon established himself as a freelance player capable of meeting the demands of Ted Heath, John Dankworth and Maynard Ferguson (during the Canadian trumpeter's period of British residence).

His ability in the role of "lead trumpet" required not only interpreting written music in a way that satisfied its composers or arrangers, but executing it with the authority that enabled his brass colleagues to show both unity of purpose and tonal blend. In this capacity he was hired for the 1970s European tours of a notoriously demanding Benny Goodman. When he toured the US as one of the key backing musicians for the singer Tom Jones, he was lauded by the local musicians whom he worked alongside. One of his American equivalents, Chuck Findley, has called Watkins "the greatest trumpet player I ever met in my life, and I have played with them all".

He was soon a fixture in the so-called "session" scene that saw top professionals being booked by the hour to play previously unseen music at a level of accuracy that had to be heard to be believed. As such, he contributed trumpet parts to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", and appeared, usually uncredited, on recordings by artists as different as Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Robbie Williams, Placido Domingo, U2, Dizzy Gillespie and many others. Gillespie christened Watkins "Mister Lead".

He also worked for many European-based bands, such as those of Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland, Peter Herbolzheimer, James Last, and the famous Dutch radio ensemble, the Metropole Orchestra. Among his distinctive film soundtrack appearances the opening of Chicago (2002) and the trumpet work behind Shirley Bassey's title song for Goldfinger (1964) stand out. He was the natural choice for lead trumpet when John Altman was asked to augment the St Petersburg tank chase sequence for Goldeneye (1995) and Altman recalled Watkins' role on the rumba section of Shall We Dance (2004): "The director and producers had asked us to make the chart sound more 'over the top'. I asked Derek if he minded playing his lead part an octave higher in some spots. 'Sure, no problem!' This was the first take, and he doesn't miss one super A."

Taking on such essentially background roles meant that Watkins was unlikely to become a "name" performer, although he did make two albums in his own right. Increased Demand (1988) can be fairly described as "easy listening" in the positive sense, while Over The Rainbow (1995) has a definite jazz orientation, as does Stardust (made at the same time), which paired him with the American trumpeter Warren Vaché.

Watkins was also heard in specialised contributions to recordings by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic, when playing their versions of popular music. Not surprisingly, he was also in demand as a teacher when time permitted, becoming Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music and conducting workshops when on tour in Europe or the US. In the mid-1980s he entered into a successful business partnership with the acoustician Dr Richard Smith to manufacture handmade trumpets, cornets and flugelhorns under the imprint of Smith-Watkins.

Described by all who worked with him as an unegotistical personality with an unfailing sense of humour, and the epitome of reliability, he made an impact not only on colleagues but on all who heard him. John Barry, who wrote music for the first dozen Bond films, said that Watkins "never failed to deliver the goods".

Watkins, trumpeter: born Reading 2 March 1945; married Wendy (two daughters, one son); died Claygate, Surrey 22 March 2013.

2019: Scott Walker dies at age 76--London, England. (Born 9 January 1943--Hamilton, Ohio.)

Scott Walker, Pop Singer Who
Turned Experimental, Dies at 76
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/obituaries/scott-walker-dead.html


Scott Walker with the Scottish pop singer Lulu during an awards ceremony in the late 1960s. Evoking the blue-eyed soul of the Righteous Brothers, his group, the Walker Brothers, had several hits, two of which rose to No. 1 on the British charts.
Credit Ballard/Hulton Archive

By Richard Sandomir | March 26, 2019

Scott Walker, who with his American pop group, the Walker Brothers, became a teenage idol in Britain in the 1960s, but who later immersed himself in experimental music that influenced artists like David Bowie and Radiohead, died on Friday in London. He was 76.

His record label, 4AD, said the cause was cancer. He had been living in England since the 1960s.

The Walker Brothers arrived in England in early 1965, reversing the earlier British invasion of America. There, the group — made up of Mr. Walker (his real name was Noel Scott Engel), a dramatic baritone who played bass; John Maus, a guitarist and vocalist; and Gary Leeds, the drummer, all of whom used the surname Walker — found the success that had eluded them in the United States.

Though their popularity never reached Beatlemania levels, their fans, like those of the Beatles, would scream during their performances — and, in one harrowing incident, turned over a van taking them from a concert in Dublin.

Evoking the blue-eyed soul of the Righteous Brothers, the Walker Brothers had several hits, two of which rose to No. 1 on the British charts: “Make It Easy on Yourself,” a ballad by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” which had first been recorded by Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons. Both songs also rose to the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.

Mr. Walker left the group in 1967 to start a solo career that became a rejection of his rock-star phase. In one iteration he recorded songs by the Belgian singer and songwriter Jacques Brel. But his most critical period was a retreat into the studio to create avant-garde music that was hard to categorize: ominous and clangorous, existential and electronic, with big blocks of sound, his baritone voice now used to almost operatic effect. For many years, he did not appear in concert.

Reviewing a recording on which Mr. Walker collaborated with the metal band Sunn O))) in 2014, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times described his music as “intricate puzzles of shock, indiscretion, non-resolution, theatrical uses of text and extended technique, often with a 40-piece orchestra.” He added that Mr. Walker was always looking for a “whoops factor”— “a moment of incomprehension from the listener.”
This is your last free article.

In a message on Twitter, Thom Yorke, the lead singer and main songwriter of Radiohead, wrote that Mr. Walker had shown him “how I could use my voice and words.”

“Met him once at Meltdown,” he added, referring to the annual music and art festival in England, “such a kind gentle outsider.”

Noel Scott Engel was born on Jan 9, 1943, in Hamilton, Ohio, about 30 miles north of Cincinnati, the only child of Noel and Elizabeth Marie (Fortier) Engel. His father was an oil company geologist whose job took the family to various cities. When Scott was about 6 his parents divorced, and he went to live in Denver with his mother.

They subsequently moved to New York, where in the mid-1950s Scott, still a schoolboy, began his entertainment career. He had small roles in the Broadway musicals “Plain and Fancy” and “Pipe Dream” and recorded singles, including “When Is a Boy a Man?” (1957), as Scotty Engel — hoping, without success, to break through as a teenage idol. Many of those songs were later released in the compilation album “Looking Back With Scott Walker” (1968).


Mr. Walker performing on television in an undated photo. After leaving the Walker Brothers in 1967, he began a solo career that became a rejection of his rock-star phase, eventually retreating into the studio to create avant-garde music that was hard to categorize.
Credit David Redfern/Redferns

Around 1960 he and his mother moved to Los Angeles, where he attended high school and the Chouinard Art Institute. He also played in various music groups, worked as a session bassist and, in 1964, formed the Walker Brothers with Mr. Maus (who had already been using John Walker as a pseudonym). They played at the Whisky a Go Go and other clubs along the Sunset Strip.

Although the best-known songs of his Walker Brothers period did not portend how radical his music would become, Mr. Walker began to demonstrate a willingness to free himself from the conventions of pop and rock as early as 1967, when he began releasing a series of solo albums — “Scott,” “Scott 2,” Scott 3” and “Scott 4.” He did so again on “Nite Flights” (1978), an album made during a brief reunion of the Walker Brothers.

Along the way, he found an admirer in David Bowie. Mr. Bowie, a transcendent musical experimenter, was in a relationship with a woman who had dated Mr. Walker and kept his albums. Mr. Bowie listened to the music and became so enamored that he later took the role of executive producer of “Scott Walker: 30 Century Man” (2007), a documentary directed by Stephen Kijak.

“I like the way he can paint a picture with what he says,” Mr. Bowie said in the film. “I had no idea what he was singing about. And I didn’t care.”

Mr. Walker, who worked on his albums slowly and meticulously, continued his musical evolution with “Climate of Hunter” (1984). With “Tilt” (1995) and “The Drift” (2006), he drew closer to matching his ambition to his creative visions — and to those that crept into his mind while he slept.

“I have a very nightmarish imagination,” he said in the documentary, which focuses on the recording of “The Drift.” He added: “I’ve had bad dreams all my life. Everything in my life is big, it’s out of proportion.”

“Clara,” a song on “The Drift,” reimagines the executions of Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, at the hands of Italian partisans in 1945. (It was inspired by newsreels Mr. Walker had seen as a child.) Another song, “Jesse,” imagines a conversation between Elvis Presley and Jesse, his stillborn twin brother, as a vehicle to write about the destruction of the World Trade Center.

In a plaintive, eerie vocal reminiscent of Mr. Bowie, Mr. Walker sings:

Fame is a tall, tall tower
A building left in the night
Jesse, are you listening?
It casts ruins in shadows
Under Memphis moonlight
Jesse, are you listening?

Howard Kaylan, a founding member of the Turtles, said in a 2013 interview that he had been listening to Mr. Walker since the 1960s. He was a fan of the Walker Brothers, he said, but thought of Mr. Walker’s solo music as the work of genius.

“My jaw hit the ground when I heard ‘Tilt,’ ” Mr. Kaylan told the newspaper Record Collector News. “And by the time he got to ‘Drift,’ I understood what he was doing: He is doing the most conventional pop music I ever heard. He is just doing it as if he was observing it from outer space and then trying to tell you what he saw as an alien.”

Mr. Walker’s survivors include his partner, Beverly; his daughter, Lee; and a granddaughter. Mr. Maus died in 2011.

Some of Mr. Walker’s lyrics were published last year in the book “Sundog,” with an introduction by the Irish novelist Eimear McBride, who compared Mr. Walker to James Joyce.

“Walker’s work, as Joyce’s before it, is a complex synesthesia of thought, feeling, the doings of the physical world and the weight of foreign objects slowly ground together down into diamond,” Ms. McBride wrote. “This is not art for the passive. It does not impart comfort or ease. Tempests will not be reconciled by the final bars, and no one is going home any more.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 27, 2019, on Page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Scott Walker, 76, Pop Idol Who Turned Experimental.

Scott Walker, "The Experience of Love", Soundtrack version


Scott Walker, "The Experience of Love", GoldenEye end titles

Scott Walker cover, "The Look of Love"

RichardTheBruce

March 23rd

1911: Charles Joseph Russhon is born--New York City, New York.
(He dies 26 June 1982 at age 71--Manhattan, New York City, New York.)

Through Airmen's Eyes: The
Airman and James Bond
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/109829/through-airmens-eyes-the-airman-and-james-bond/
By Rachel Arroyo, Air Force Special Operations Command Public Affairs / Published January 19, 2013


(U.S. Air Force graphic/Robin Meredith/courtesy photo)
PHOTO DETAILS / DOWNLOAD HI-RES 1 of 11

Sean Connery feigns shoving a vanilla ice cream cone in Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon’s face during the production of “Thunderball.” Russhon was the military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Russhon and Connery became friends on set. The vanilla ice cream cone had special significance to Russhon, who inspired the “Charlie Vanilla” character, an ice cream loving mister fix-it, in friend and esteemed American cartoonist Milton Caniff’s comic strip “Steve Canyon.” (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s, feigns shoving a vanilla ice cream cone in Sean Connery’s face during the production of “Thunderball.” Russhon and Connery became friends on set. The vanilla ice cream cone had special significance to Russhon, who inspired the “Charlie Vanilla” character, an ice cream loving mister fix-it, in friend and esteemed American cartoonist Milton Caniff’s comic strip “Steve Canyon.” (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, one of the original Air Commandos and military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s, hugs Claudine Auger, a Bond girl in “Thunderball” and former Miss France Monde, during the production of “Thunderball.” (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Claire Russhon, wife of Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s, poses in the Aston Martin DB5 made famous in the films. (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s, hugs Martine Beswick, an English actress cast as a Bond girl in “Thunderball” and “From Russia With Love,” during the production of “Thunderball.” Sean Connery sits in the foreground. (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Sean Connery is welcomed to the TWA Ambassadors Club during the production of “Thunderball.” Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s and friend of Sean Connery’s, is to his right. (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


This photograph from a 1945 article published in the “San Francisco Examiner” features Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon as a captain (center) after his return from Japan in the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russhon was one of the first Americans on the ground in both locations within 24 hours of the bombs being dropped on both. One of the original Air Commandos, Russhon worked as a military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s. (Photo by the "San Francisco Examiner" courtesy of Christian Russhon)


American cartoonist Milton Caniff poses with his “Steve Canyon” comic strip featuring “Charlie Vanilla,” a character inspired by his friend Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, one of the original Air Commandos and military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The signed photograph features a circled “Charlie Vanilla,” aka Russhon, and says “this guy keeps turning up!” (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon (left), military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s and one of the original Air Commandos, chats with Major General (ret) Johnny Alison, one of the fathers of Air Force special operations, and Brigadier General J. Jackson. (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)


Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Russhon, military advisor to the James Bond films in the ‘60s and ‘70s, poses with Sean Connery during the production of “Thunderball.” Russhon took Connery in tow when he arrived in New York, and they remained friends until Russhon passed away in 1982, Russhon’s wife, Claire Russhon, said. (Photo courtesy of Christian Russhon)

HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AFNS) -- (Editor's Note:This feature is part of the "Through Airmen's Eyes" series on AF.mil. These stories focus on a single Airman, highlighting their Air Force story.)

Quartermaster "Q" supplied Skyfall's 50-year anniversary James Bond with a radio and a Walther PPK handgun, but Sean Connery's 007 relied on an Special Operations Airman for some of the bigger stuff.

Retired Lt. Col. Charles Russhon, one of the founding air commandos assigned to the China-Burma-India theater in World War II, was a military adviser to the Bond films in the 1960s and 1970s.

Among the gadgets Russhon procured for filmmakers were the Bell-Textron Jet Pack and the Fulton Skyhook, both featured in the 1965 "Thunderball," as well as the explosives that were used to blow up the Disco Volante ship.

He arranged for exterior access to Fort Knox, Ky., coordinated filming locations in Istanbul, Turkey, and facilitated film participation by Air Force pararescuemen in "Thunderball."

"Roger Moore called him 'Mr. Fixit' because he seemed to be able to do or get anything in New York City," Russhon's wife, Claire, wrote in an email. "For example, suspending traffic on FDR Drive for a Bond chase scene (and that isn't done in one take)."

As special associate to the producers, Russhon, a native New Yorker, researched new technologies, locations and permissions for whatever the scripts required, she said.

Russhon, who passed away in 1982, worked on "From Russia With Love," "Goldfinger," "Thunderball," "You Only Live Twice," and "Live and Let Die."

"Mr. Fix-It"

Christian Russhon remembers his father's business card read "catalyst -- agent that brings others together."

For him, there was never a dull moment, he said.

"He was larger than life," Christian said.

The film crew commemorated the colonel's penchant for life on the set of "Goldfinger" in which they promoted him to the rank of general. In the film, a banner hung on the Fort Knox airplane hangar reads "Welcome, General Russhon."

Christian Russhon said he also remembers seeing his dad on film in "Thunderball" in which he appeared as an Air Force officer at a conference with other agents. According to the International Movie Database, Russhon is sitting to the right of "M" in the scene.

Russhon's connections with movers and shakers made him the right man for the Bond job after his retirement from active-duty service in the Air Force. His acquaintance with film producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli predated Broccoli's work on the Bond films, Claire Russhon said. He was available when Broccoli needed a man stateside to work on the films.

Russhon relied on his acquaintance with President John F. Kennedy's press secretary Pierre Salinger for access to film at Fort Knox in "Goldfinger."

He worked with his military connections to get approval for filming in Turkey in "From Russia with Love" and to arrange for pararescuemen conducting a water training jump to be featured in "Thunderball."

He was also there for a young Sean Connery when he arrived in New York City, Claire Russhon said.

"Connery was a stranger in New York, and Charles took him in tow."

When Connery was at odds with the producers, Russhon would serve as the go-between, she said.

"Despite his reputation with the girls, Sean was a man's man," she said. "They kept in touch long after working together, and Sean called me when Charles died."

Christian Russhon, who has also worked in the film industry for 30 years, remembers Sean Connery stopping by their New York apartment all the time.

"I called him Uncle Sean," he said.

The BSA Lightning motorcycle from "Thunderball," complete with rockets, also left an impression on young Christian Russhon. The motorcycle was gifted to his dad who gave it to his godson. Christian was not old enough to drive yet, so he missed out on the BSA Lightning, he recalled.

Some real spy work

Russhon not only had the connections, but he had the credentials to advise Bond filmmakers. He conducted his own top secret special operations work with the 1st Air Commando Group during World War II.

The group, led by co-commanders and then lieutenant colonels John Alison and Philip Cochran, assisted one of the fathers of irregular warfare, British Army Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate, and his ground forces, the "Chindits," as they penetrated the Burmese jungles in the fight against the Japanese.

Their mission was to provide air support to British ground forces through infiltration and exfiltration, combat resupply and medical evacuations in hostile territory using a wide variety of aircraft flying low-level, long-range missions.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Russhon worked as a sound engineer for NBC in New York City and for Hollywood-based Republic Pictures, which specialized in Westerns.

Claire Russhon said her husband's deep patriotism and education at Peekskill Military Academy, Peekskill, N.Y., motivated him to join the U.S. Army Air Corps following the attack.

As a young lieutenant, he was sent to Burma where he led the 10th Combat Camera Unit, a small group of cameramen supporting the 1st Air Commando Group.

Alison and Cochran built a rapport with Russhon based on his exemplary work as a cameraman. He later became permanently attached to the Group, said Air Force Special Operations Command historian William Landau.

"They became fast friends," Claire Russhon said. "Gen. John Alison was later best man at our wedding."

Russhon became critical to mission success in the days leading up to Operation Thursday when he was cleared by Cochran to defy Wingate's orders and conduct last minute photo reconnaissance of the three landing strips Allied forces were to use during the mission, Landau said.

Operation Thursday, a mission in which gliders were used to drop the Chindits deep behind Japanese enemy lines, marks the first time in military history that airpower was the backbone of an invasion, Landau said.

"The photo reconnaissance was used to survey and select the landing sights," he said. "By cutting it off, Wingate basically left himself open to the possibility of a nasty surprise upon landing."

Russhon got in the air with his camera. The first airstrip, Broadway, was clear. Chowringhee airstrip was clear. Piccadilly, which was to be used in the first night of operations, was strewn with teak logs locals had dragged out to the clearing to dry, he said.

"Russhon was so taken aback, he actually forgot to photograph the area," Landau said. The pilot doubled back.

He rushed to develop about 30 photographs at the nearest base of operations and had them delivered to Cochran, Alison and Wingate.

"(Russhon's photo reconnaissance) not only saved many lives. It saved the operation itself," Landau said. "If they had landed with logs and debris at Piccadilly, the mission had the potential of being a catastrophic failure."

Russhon received the British Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in August 1945. An excerpt from the citation reads: "This officer has displayed exemplary keenness and devotion to duty and was personally commended by General Wingate for his courageous action."

Russhon continued to serve as a photographer through the end of World War II.

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was among the first Americans on location documenting the destruction.

A 1945 article from the San Francisco Examiner interviewed Russhon about being on the ground in both cities within 24 hours after each bomb dropped.

"A strange, rusty-looking haze hung over Nagasaki when I flew above the city at 3,000 feet the day after it was hit by the atomic bomb," Charles Russhon told the Examiner. "It was unlike anything I've ever run into before or since. I got out of there in one hell of a hurry."

Following his active-duty career with the Air Force, Russhon entered the Air Force Reserve and began his work bringing life to Ian Fleming's Bond on the big screen.

Claire Russhon said her husband enjoyed working on all of the Bond films but that one of the most interesting was "You Only Live Twice," because it required him to return to Japan where he recalled some of his World War II experiences.

"In preparing for the Bond filming, there was a reception for the Japanese officials at which a gentleman greeted Charles and said 'you have gained weight,'" she said. "It was a Japanese general who explained that he was on the welcoming committee at Atsugi Air Base, (Japan,) when that first plane arrived (after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and Charles stepped off."

Russhon's legacy is extensive. Not only has he been immortalized on screen in the Bond films, but friend and celebrated American cartoonist Milton Caniff crafted "Charlie Vanilla" from his "Steve Canyon" comic strip after his person.

The "Charlie Vanilla" character was a mister fix-it with an affinity for vanilla ice cream who always managed to save the day, Claire Russhon said.

"The ice cream cone was fashioned after Charles's addiction to chocolate ice cream, but Caniff decided that 'Vanilla,' with the dangling vowel sounded more ominous," she said.

Beyond the life he breathed into Bond by supplying filmmakers with the cool gadgets and locations viewers remember when they watch classic movies like "Goldfinger," Russhon is immortalized in Air Commando history through his photos and his leadership.

"I get a sense of adventure. I get a sense of cunning," the AFSOC historian said. "To me, he embodied what an Air Commando more or less should be. He was fearless."

(Editor's note: This article was completed with research assistance from the Air Force Special Operations Command Historian)]/i]

1950: Corinne Cléry is born--Paris, France.
1954: US publisher Macmillan releases 4,000 copies of Casino Royale to poor sales.

1959: Ian Fleming's seventh Bond novel Goldfinger is published by Jonathan Cape. Richard Chopping cover.

1964: Peter Lorre dies at age 59--Los Angeles, California. (Born 26 June 1904--Ružomberok, Slovakia.)

Peter Lorre Dies in Hollywood; Symbol of Film Horror Was 59; Actor Who Made Debut in ‘M’ Also Portrayed ‘Mr. Moto’ —Movie Favorite 30 Years
https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/24/peter-lorre-dies-in-hollywood.html
MARCH 24, 1964
March 24, 1964, Page 35 The New York Times Archives

HOLLYWOOD, March 23 (UPI) —Peter Lorre, whose mild manner and sinister voice sent shivers up the spines of moviegoers for three decades, died of a stroke today. His age was 59.

When Peter Lorre squinted his baleful brown eyes and took a slow sinister puff on a cigarette, moviegoers throughout the world squirmed in their seats.

On the screen, the actor seemed to be the image of subsurface malevolence, and his pale, almost pasty, moonface seemed to conceal a homicidal maniac with a temporary but firm grip on himself.

From the time of his debut in the German produced “M” in 1931, through scores of Hollywood and television films, Mr. Lorre, a short (5 foot 5 inches), pudgy man, was able to dominate the screen with his own particular brand of evil.

Occasionally, he varied his roles and played humorous parts, but he was never at his best in those parts, and he always returned to the role of the sinister and smart bad man.

As one critic put it, Mr. Lorre made a reputation “by being as mean and as murderous as the Hays office [then the industry's censorship panel] would permit.” Others described him as “one of the cinema's most versatile murderers,” the “gentle‐fiend,” and a “homicidal virtuoso.”

After the terror years of Lon Chaney, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff became Hollywood's stalwarts of horror movies.

Mr. Lorre was born in Rosenburg, Hungary, on June 26, 1904. He went to school in Vienna for a while but ran away at 17 to join a touring German theatrical troupe. With the exception of a short period as a clerk in a bank, he remained an actor for the rest of his life.

After the usual tour in bit parts on the German stage, the producer Fritz Lang saw him as the perfect actor for the role of a pathological killer of little girls in “M.”

Mr. Lorre's portrayal in the film is ranked among the greatest criminal characterizations on the screen, and the film made Mr. Lorre and Mr. Lang famous.

Although he was fluent in several European languages and had made a number of films on the Continent, Mr. Lorre spoke no English when he went to Britain for a role in a film.

However, when he encountered Alfred Hitchcock, Mr. Lorre let the director do all the talking, and by smiling and nodding, convinced him that his English was adequate.

Mr. Hitchcock gave the actor a role in “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” after the one‐way interview, and Mr. Lorre later commented that it was two weeks before Mr. Hitchcock learned that he spoke no English.

By the time the film was completed, Mr. Lorre's English was nearly perfect, and in 1934 he went to Hollywood.

In his first years in Hollywood, Mr. Lorre was cast in the type of roles that had already made him famous. He was an insane doctor in “Mad Love,” and played the seriously disturbed student in Dostoevski's “Crime and Punishment.”

One of his most distinctive features was the soft, nasal quality of his voice, tinged with a European accent, which he used with chilling effectiveness.

In many of the roles, Mr. Lorre seemed to be a man of two sides, a quiet gentle man and a raving maniac.

In one film, “Island of Doomed Men,” which is not considered among his best, Mr. Lorre played a prison warden who equally enjoyed listening to Chopin and flogging prisoners.

In a series of movies, Mr. Lorre appeared as the larcenous sidekick of the late Sydney Greenstreet, a film bad man with a booming laugh that neatly complemented Mr. Lorre's nervous giggle.

Together with Humphrey Bogart, they appeared in “The Maltese Falcon,” and “Casablanca,” screen classics of the early nineteen‐forties.

Mr. Lorre also portrayed the Japanese detective “Mr. Moto” in a series of movies, but soon returned to more sinister roles.

In Hollywood, Mr, Lorre was known as a quiet, almost shy man, with a deadpan sense of humor. He had been . bothered with heart trouble in recent years, but managed to keep up a fairly busy working schedule.

Most recently, he had appeared in a number of “humorous” horror pictures. His latest film was “Muscle Beach Party,” and he recently completed a Jerry Lewis picture, “The Patsy.”

Among his other films were “Arsenic and Old Lace,” “Confidential Agent,” “Mask of Dimitrios,” “Beat the Devil” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

During the nineteen‐fifties and sixties he made frequent television appearances. He also sought more comic performances after the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1949 had warned parents to send children to bed before he appeared on a late variety show.

But Mr. Lorre had a thoroughly professional attitude toward his career.

“What do I care if I'm a villain?” he once asked. “I’ll be anything they want me to be—ghoul, goon or clown—as long as it's necessary.”

With only a few exceptions, Hollywood found it necessary—and Mr. Lorre found it profitable—for him to remain sinister.

Early in his career, Mr. Lorre worked with Bertolt. Brecht and later was considered an expert on the works of the German playwright.

An avid reader of books in several languages, Mr. Lorre was also a fan of Los Angeles's professional baseball and football teams.

The actor married three times; Cecilia Lvovsky in 1934, Karen Verne in 1945 and Annemaire Stoldt in 1953: The first two marriages ended in divorce.

A spokesman for his studio, American International Pictures, said that Mr. Lorre and his wife were separated. They have a 10‐year‐old daughter, Kathryn.

Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre in the 1954 television version of Casino Royale

RichardTheBruce

March 24th

1952: Ian Lancaster Fleming and Anne Geraldine Charteris are married--Port Smith, Jamaica.

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica, Matthew Parker, 2014.

When not partying, Ann and Ian were 'asleep by 10:30 and bathing
at sunrise, writing, painting, shooting, eating and snoozing for the rest
of the day', as Ann wrote to her brother Hugo 'from the Lotus
Islands'. 'It is frighteningly agreeable.' Ian described it as 'a
marvelous honeymoon among the hummingbirds and barracudas'.

Ann's divorce became absolute on Monday 24 March. She and Ian
married the same day at Port Maria town hall. There were only two
witnesses: Noel Coward, and his secretary Cole Lesley. Coward had
warned Violet, 'I shall wear long elbow gloves and give the bride
away. I may even cry a little at the sheer beauty of it all.' In fact,
according to Lesley, 'We took our duties very seriously; wore ties
(unheard of for Noel in Jamaica) with formal white suits, our pockets
full of rice, and to to the Town Hall early. We attracted a crowd of
six and a smiling though toothless black crone who entertained us with
some extremely improper calypsos, including one called "Belly
Lick".' (Lyrics include the line: 'Drop your pants and lie down',
Fleming refers to the song in his Jamaica novel, The Man with the
Golden Gun.)

Coward, who saw himself as the matchmaker, having assisted
during Ann's previous adulterous trips to Jamaica, remembered Ann
and Ian at their wedding as 'surprisingly timorous'. Fleming wore his
usual nautical belted blue linen shirt with blue trousers. Ann, four
months pregnant and beginning to show, was in a silk dress copied
from a Dior design by a local Port Maria seamstress. Coward noticed
that she was shaking so much the dress fluttered. 'It was an entirely
hysterical affair,' he later wrote.

Inside the parachial office, the first thing they all saw was 'an
enormous oleograph of Churchill scowling down on us with bulldog
hatred', Once married by the registrar, Mr L. A. Robinson, they
headed for Blue Harbor for strong martinis, then back to Goldeneye
for a special wedding supper prepared by Violet. Coward remembered
it as particularly bad: the black crab, which 'can be wonderful to eat if
you have a good cook, but Ian didn't have a good cook', 'tasted just
like eating cigarette ash'. To make things worse, Violet then brought
out 'a slimy green wedding cake, and dusky head peered round the
door to make sure we ate it. Ian had to because he was directly in line
of sight, but later we took the cake outside and buried it so as not to
hurt anyone's feelings.' The evening ended with a punch of Fleming's
own create - white rum poured on citrus peel then ignited.

2008: BOND 22 films the final battle at European South Observatory 'Residencia', Atacama Desert, Chile.
2013: The Jameson Empire awards honor Skyfall Director Sam Mendes for Best Director, Best Film, plus the Empire Inspiration award. (Danny Boyle is recognized for Outstanding Contribution.)

ITV Report 24 March 2013 at 8:46pm
James Bond director scoops three gongs at Empire Awards
https://www.itv.com/news/2013-03-24/james-bond-director-scoops-three-gongs-at-empire-awards/


Sam Mendes won Best Film and Best Director for Skyfall and the Empire Inspiration award in London.
Photo: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Skyfall director Sam Mendes finally had his moment of glory tonight scooping three gongs at the Jameson Empire Awards 2013.

The latest James Bond film, though a box office hit, was overlooked at the Oscars and the Baftas in the best film and best director categories.

But tonight at the star-studded ceremony at London's Grosvenor House Hotel, Mendes took home the best director and best film awards for his 007 effort Skyfall, along with the Empire Inspiration award.

Dame Helen Mirren was queen of the night, receiving the Empire Legend award.

Skyfall wins Best Film at the Empire Film Awards, picked up by Michael Wilson, Rob Wade, Barbara Broccoli, Sam Mendes and Neal Purvis. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

The 67-year-old actress was hailed for her screen career spanning five decades, including notable performances in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover, Gosford Park, The Queen and this year's Hitchcock.

Danny Boyle - who along with Mendes has already ruled himself out of directing the next Bond film - was also celebrated for his film career, presented with the Empire Outstanding Contribution award.

The British director has enjoyed a varied career of critically acclaimed films, including his dark debut Shallow Grave, the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, cult hit Trainspotting and his latest effort, thriller Trance.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe was named this year's Empire Hero, while his film The Woman In Black won the award for Best Horror.


Danny Boyle won an Outstanding Contribution award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey notched up two wins - Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film and the Best Actor award for star Martin Freeman.

Jennifer Lawrence was named Best Actress for her performance in The Hunger Games. The win is the cherry on the cake for the star, who has won a string of accolades this awards season for her role in indie comedy Silver Linings Playbook, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

The Jameson Empire Film Awards Special will be transmitted on Saturday March 30 on Sky Movies at 8.30pm.


Daniel Radcliffe picked up the Empire Hero gong. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

The Jameson Empire Awards 2013 Winners in full:

Best Male Newcomer presented by Entertainment Tonight: Tom Holland for The Impossible
Best Female Newcomer: Samantha Barks for Les Miserables
Best Comedy presented by Magic 105.4: Ted
Best Science-Fiction/Fantasy: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Best Thriller presented by Vue Entertainment: Headhunters
Best Horror presented by Cafe de Paris: The Woman In Black
The Art Of 3D presented by RealD: Dredd 3D
Best British Film presented by Tresor Paris: Sightseers
Best Director presented by Monitor Audio: Sam Mendes for Skyfall
Jameson Best Actor: Martin Freeman for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Best Actress presented by Citroen: Jennifer Lawrence for The Hunger Games
Best Film presented by Sky Movies: Skyfall
Empire Inspiration Award presented by Jameson Irish Whiskey: Sam Mendes
Empire Legend: Helen Mirren
Empire Hero: Daniel Radcliffe
Empire Outstanding Contribution: Danny Boyle

Here's some of the winners with their awards:

Samantha Barks with her award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Martin Freeman who won the Best Actor award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Jane Goldman won Best Horror Movie award, for Women in Black. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Sir Ian Mckellen with the Best Science Fiction Fantasy award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Nira Park, Steve Oram and Ben Wheatley who won the Best British Film award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Tom Holland with his award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Presenter Jonny Vegas with Ted. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Dame Helen Mirren wins the Empire Legend award. Credit: Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Last updated Sun 24 Mar 2013

RichardTheBruce

March 25th

1956: Raymond Chandler reviews the fourth Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever in The Sunday Times.

Originally shared on another forum by @Revelator.

BONDED GOODS (March 25 1956) The Sunday Times
By RAYMOND CHANDLER

Some three years ago Mr. Ian Fleming produced a thriller which was about as tough an item as ever came out of England in the way of thriller-writing, on any respectable literary level. “Casino Royale” contained a superb gambling scene, a torture scene which still haunts me, and of course a beautiful girl. His second “Live and Let Die,” was memorable in that he entered the American scene with perfect poise, did a brutal sketch of Harlem, and another of St. Petersburg, Florida. His third, “Moonraker,” was, by comparison with the first two explosions, merely a spasm. We now have his fourth book, “Diamonds are Forever,” which has the preliminary distinction of a sweet title, and of being about the nicest piece of book-making in this type of literature which I have seen for a long time.

“Diamonds are Forever” concerns, nominally, the smashing of an international diamond smuggling ring. But actually, apart from the charms and faults I am going to mention, it is just another American gangster story, and not a very original one at that. In Chapter I Mr. Fleming very nearly becomes atmospheric, and with Mr. James Bond as your protagonist, a character about as atmospheric as a dinosaur, it just doesn’t pay off. In Chapter II we learn quite a few facts about diamonds, and we then get a fairly detailed description of Saratoga and its sins, and a gang execution which is as nasty as any I have read.

Later there is a more detailed, more fantastic, more appalling description of Las Vegas and its daily life. To a Californian, Las Vegas is a cliché. You don’t make fantastic, because it was designed that way, and it is funny rather than terrifying. From then on there is some very fast and dangerous action; and of course Mr. Bond finally has his way with the beautiful girl. Sadly enough his beautiful girls have no future, because it is the curse of the “series character” that he always has to go back to where he began.

Mr. Fleming writes a journalistic style, neat, clean, spare and never pretentious. He writes of brutal things, and as though he liked them. The trouble with brutality in writing is that it has to grow out of something. The best hardboiled writers never try to be tough, they allow toughness to happen when it seems inevitable for its time, place and conditions.

I don’t think “Diamonds are Forever” measures up to either “Casino Royale” or “Live and Let Die.” Frankly, I think there is a certain amount of padding in it, and there are pages in which James Bond thinks. I don’t like James Bond thinking. His thoughts are superfluous. I like him when he is in the dangerous card game; I like him when he is exposing himself unarmed to half a dozen thin-lipped processional killers, and neatly dumping them into a heap of fractured bones; I like him when he finally takes the beautiful girl in his arms, and teaches her about one-tenth of the facts of life she knew already.

I have left the remarkable thing about this book to the last. And that is that it is written by an Englishman, The scene is almost entirely American, and it rings true to an American. I am unaware of any other writer who has accomplished this. But let me plead with Mr. Fleming not to allow himself to become a stunt writer, or he will end up no better than the rest of us.

1961: In a court hearing, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham pursue action to halt publication of Thunderball due to Ian Fleming's use of screenplay material they contributed to.

The James Bond Bedside Companion, Raymond Benson, 2012 edition.

That same month [March 1961], Kevin McClory read an advance copy of
THUNDERBALL. He found that Fleming had made no
acknowledgement to him or Jack Whittingham for what was essentially a
work of joint authorship. THUNDERBALL contained the plot that was
created over the last two years. McClory and Whittingham immediately
petitioned the high court for an injunction to hold up publication of the
book, which was set for April. At the hearing on March 25, evidence was
given that 32,000 copies of THUNDERBALL had already been shipped
to booksellers, and a hefty amount of money had already been spent on
advance publicity. The judge ruled that the book could be published, but
that in no way affected or slanted in either Fleming's or McClory's and
Whittingham's favor the result of the trial. Unfortunately, it was two
years before the case was resolved.

1964: Reuters circulates a feature on the upcoming Bond film Goldfinger.

Sean Connery & Honor Blackman Making of Goldfinger
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5xqygg
BridgetDeborah38706722
Goldfinger 1964. Guy Hamilton film.

REUTERS (25 March 1964) - Honor Blackman meets Sean Connery: She is to be the leading lady in the new James Bond Film Goldfinger.

1967: BBC 1 airs a feature called Bond Wants a Woman They Said... But Three Would Be Better!

James Bond | The changing world of 007

Whicker's World | Bond Wants a Woman They
Said... But Three Would Be Better!

From Pinewood to Japan on the trail of 'You Only Live Twice'.

CHANNEL | BBC 1
FIRST BROADCAST | 25 March 1967
DURATION | 53 minutes 23 seconds

Synopsis
Alan Whicker bounces around the set of 'You Only Live Twice' (1967) in this edition of 'Whicker's World', which takes him not only to Pinewood Studios but also to the film's exotic Japanese locations. Whicker interviews producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, chats to screenwriter Roald Dahl, learns the secrets of a successful Bond girl and experiences at first hand the sometimes bruising 'Bondomania' that attends the star, Sean Connery, wherever he happens to be.
Did you know?

'You Only Live Twice', which took $111m at the box office in worldwide sales, was the fifth film in the Bond franchise and the last to star Sean Connery before he announced his retirement from the role, although he later returned in 'Diamonds Are Forever' (1971) and 'unofficial' Bond film 'Never Say Never Again' (1983).

Contributors
Alan Whicker - Presenter
Ken Adam - Contributor
Cubby Broccoli - Contributor
Diane Cilento - Contributor
Sean Connery - Contributor
Roald Dahl - Contributor
Lewis Gilbert - Contributor
Harry Saltzman - Contributor
Fred Burnley - Producer

2002: BOND 20 films Gustav Graves chasing Bond with Icarus.
2012: BOND 23 filming at Surrey, England ("Scotland"), comes to an explosive end.

2019: BOND 25 second unit films in Nittedal, Norway.

QBranch

RichardTheBruce wrote: »

2015: BOND 25 second unit films in Norway.

If only!

RichardTheBruce

March 26th

1956: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian's Fleming's fourth Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever.

Ian Fleming is in his forties. He was educated at Eton, where
he was Victor Ludorum two years in succession, a distinction
only once equalled. He went on to Sandhurst and then entered
Reuters and served in London, Berlin and Moscow. He was a
special correspondent of The Times in Moscow in the spring of
1939, joined the Naval Intelligence Division in June and served
throughout the war as Personal Assistant to the D.N.I. with the
rank of Commander in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R.
Since the war he has organized the foreign service of the Sunday
Times and Kemsley Newspapers, of which he is Foreign Manager.
He is married and has one son.

1959: Raymond Thornton Chandler dies at age 70--La Jolla, California. (Born 23 July 1888--Chicago, Illinois.)

The Only Surviving Recording of
Raymond Chandler’s Voice, in a BBC
Conversation with Ian Fleming

“You starve to death for ten years before your publisher knows you’re any good.”

By Maria Popova


Raymond Chandler (July 23, 1888–March 26, 1959) endures as one of the most celebrated novelists and screenwriters in literary history, an oracle of insight on the written word, a lovable grump dispensing delightfully curmudgeonly advice on editorial manners, and a hopeless cat-lover. In July of 1958, to mark the publication of Chandler’s last book, Playback, BBC brought Chandler and Ian Fleming together on the air. Fleming and the BBC broadcaster producing the program picked up Chandler at 11 A.M. on the day of the interview and even though they “found his voice slurred with whisky,” the broadcast went quite well. Seven months later, Chandler died. This discussion, which covers heroes and villains — Fleming’s James Bond and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe — and the relationship between author and character, is believed to be the only surviving recording of the author’s voice. Transcribed highlights below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj6cc0T1z7I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxJJo79e00o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sS2DBBrOY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9i00flBWuQ

Chandler on the doggedness literary success (or any creative success) requires:

"How long did it take me [to become a successful writer]?
You starve to death for ten years before your publisher
knows you’re any good."

Fleming on villains:

"I find it … extremely difficult to write about villains, villains
I find extremely difficult people to put my finger on. … The
really good, solid villain is a very difficult person to build
up, I think."

Fleming and Chandler on heroes:

"Your hero, Philip Marlowe, is a real hero — he behaves in a
heroic fashion. My leading character, James Bond, I never
intended to be a hero — I intended him to be a sort of
blank instrument wielded by a government department,
who would get into bizarre, fantastic situations and more
or less shoot his way out of them, get out of them one way
or another."

Chandler on James Bond and how he differs from Marlowe:

"A man with his job can’t afford to feel tender emotions —
he feels them but he has to quell them."

Fleming, responding to Chandler’s amazement at how he can write so many James Bond books in addition to his intense editorial commitments, offers a glimpse of his creative routine and a testament to the value of discipline:

"I have two months off in Jamaica every year, in my contract
with the Sunday Times, and I sit down and a write a book
every year during those two months."

Chandler on the difference between the British and the American thriller:

"The American thriller is much faster paced."

1964: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian Fleming's eleventh Bond novel You Only Live Twice, the last during his lifetime. Richard Chopping cover.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

When Ernst Stavro Blofeld blasted into
eternity the girl whom James Bond had
married only hours before, the heart, the
zest for life, went out of Bond. Incredibly,
from being a top agent of the Secret
Service, he had gone to pieces, was even
on the verge of becoming a security risk.
M is persuaded to give him one last
chance -- an impossible mission far re-
moved from his usual duties -- and Bond
leaves for Japan.

There, coming under the orders of the
formidable 'Tiger' Tanaka, Head of the
Japanese Secret Service, the Koan-Chosa-
Kyoku, he is indeed subjected to the
shock treatment his condition demanded.

Shock treatment? The reader will also
be subjected to it in full measure in this,
perhaps the most bizarre and doom-
fraught of all James Bond's adventures.

1973: Sir Noël Peirce Coward dies at age 73--Blue Harbour, Jamaica.
(Born 16 December 1899--Middlesex, England.)

Noel Coward
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Noel_Coward
Sir Noel Coward

Birth name: Noël Peirce Coward
Date of birth: 16 December 1899
Birth location: Flag of United Kingdom Middlesex, England
Date of death: 26 March 1973 (aged 73)
Death location: Flag of Jamaica Blue Harbour, Jamaica
Academy Awards: Academy Honorary Award, 1943 In Which We Serve

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (December 16, 1899 – March 26, 1973) was an Academy Award winning English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. As well as more than 50 published plays and many albums of original songs, Coward wrote comic revues, poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance (1960) and three volumes of autobiography. Books of his song lyrics, diaries, and letters have also been published.

Contents

1 Biography
1.1 Early Life
1.2 Success
1.3 World War II
1.4 Later works
2 Legacy
3 Notes
4 References
5 External links
6 Credits

Biography
During World War II he entertained the troops but also engaged in intelligence work for the British government, for which he almost received a knighthood. In 1970—three years before his death, he finally did. His work, though often comical, has a serious streak running beneath the surface as he explores such themes as friendship, patriotism, duty and a rapidly changing world that dashed people's hopes one moment, then held out unexpected possibilities the next. His works were in tune with the aspirations especially of the generation that lived through two world wars, and feared a third.


Noel Coward in 1914

Early Life
Coward was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England to Arthur Sabin Coward, a clerk, and his wife Violet Agnes, daughter of Henry Gordon Veitch, captain and surveyor in the Royal Navy. He was the second of their three sons, the eldest of whom had died in 1898 at the age of six years old. He began performing in the West End at an young age. He was a childhood friend of Hermione Gingold, whose mother warned her against Coward.

A student at the Italia Conti Academy stage school, Coward’s first professional engagement was in the children’s play The Goldfish on January 27, 1911. After this appearance, he was sought after for children’s roles by several other professional theaters.

When he was 14 years old, he met Philip Streatfeild, a society painter who took him in and introduced him to high society through Mrs. Astley Cooper. She gathered a salon of artists and invited him to live on her property at Hambleton, Rutland, but on the farm rather than in the Hall, due to his lower social class.[1] Streatfeild died from tuberculosis in 1915.

He played in several productions with the actor Sir Charles Hawtrey, a Victorian comedian, whom he idolized and to whom Coward virtually apprenticed himself until he was 20 years old. It was from Hawtrey that Coward learned comic acting technique and playwriting. He was drafted briefly into the British Army during World War I but was discharged due to ill health. Coward appeared in the D. W. Griffith film Hearts of the World (1918) in an uncredited role. He found his voice and began writing plays that he and his friends could star in while at the same time writing revues.

Success
He starred in one of his first full-length plays, the inheritance comedy I'll Leave It To You, in 1920. The following year he completed a one-act satire, The Better Half, about a man's relationship with two women, and it enjoyed a short run at the Little Theatre in London in 1922. The play was thought to be lost until a typescript was rediscovered in 2007 in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, which at that time licensed all plays for performance in the United Kingdom, and imposed cuts or complete bans.[2]

After he enjoyed some moderate success with the George Bernard Shaw-esque play The Young Idea in 1923. The controversy surrounding his play The Vortex (1924), which contains many veiled references to drug abuse and homosexuality, made him an overnight sensation on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Coward followed this with three more major hits, Hay Fever, Fallen Angels (both 1925) and Easy Virtue (1926).

Much of Coward's best work came in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Enormous productions, such as the full-length operetta Bitter Sweet (1929) and Cavalcade (1931), a huge extravaganza requiring a very large cast, gargantuan sets and an exceedingly complex hydraulic stage, were interspersed with finely-wrought comedies such as Private Lives (1930), in which Coward himself starred alongside his most famous stage partner, Gertrude Lawrence; and the black comedy Design for Living (1932), written for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

Coward again partnered Lawrence in Tonight at 8:30 (1936), an ambitious cycle of ten short plays that were randomly "shuffled" to make up a different playbill of three plays each night. One of these plays, Still Life, was expanded into the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter. He was also a prolific writer of popular songs, and a lucrative recording contract with HMV allowed him to release a number of recordings, many now reissued on Compact Disc.

World War II
When England came into World War II in 1939 Coward was working harder than he had before. When the war started he had recently left Paris. He took some time off from writing to perform for the troops, but after a stint at this, coward was eager to return. Alongside his highly-publicized tours entertaining Allied troops, he was also engaged by the British Secret Service MI5 in intelligence work. He was often frustrated by the criticism he faced for his ostensibly glamorous lifestyle, apparently living the high life while his countrymen suffered – especially his trips to America to sway opinion formers there.[3] He was unable, however, to defend himself by revealing his association with the Secret Service.

King George VI, a personal friend, encouraged the government to award Coward a knighthood for his efforts in 1942. This was blocked by Winston Churchill, who disapproved of Coward's flamboyant lifestyle.[4] Churchill advised giving the official reason as being Coward's fine of 200 British pounds for currency offenses (he had spent 11,000 pounds on a trip to America).

Had the Germans invaded Britain, Coward would have been arrested and liquidated as his name was in the The Black Book, along with other public figures such as H. G. Wells, targeted for his socialist views. Some have argued that this attention may have been due to homosexual preferences, but recent documents have surfaced showing Coward to have been a covert operative in the Secret Service.

Coward was active in the war effort as a lyricist for some extraordinarily popular songs during the war, the most famous of which are London Pride and Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans. He complained to Churchill, his frequent painting companion, that he felt he was not doing enough to support the war effort. Reportedly, Churchill suggested he make a movie based on the career of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. The result was a naval film drama, In Which We Serve, which Coward wrote, starred in, composed the music for and co-directed, with David Lean. The film was immensely popular on both sides of the Atlantic and Coward was awarded an honorary Oscar by the American film industry.

In the 1940s, Coward wrote some of his best plays. The social commentary of This Happy Breed and the intricate semi-autobiographical comedy-drama Present Laughter (both 1939) were later combined with the hugely successful black comedy Blithe Spirit (1941) to form a West End triple-bill, which starred Coward in all three simultaneous productions. Blithe Spirit went on to make box-office records for a West End comedy that were not beaten until the 1970s, and was made into a film directed by David Lean.

Later works
Coward's popularity as a playwright declined sharply in the 1950s, with plays such as Quadrille, Relative Values, Nude with Violin and South Sea Bubble all failing to find much favor with critics or audiences. Despite this decline, he maintained a high public profile, continuing to write (and occasionally star in) moderately successful West End plays and musicals, performing an acclaimed solo cabaret act in Las Vegas, Nevada, and starring in films such as Bunny Lake is Missing, Around the World in 80 Days, Our Man in Havana, Boom!, and The Italian Job.

After starring in a number of American television specials in the late 1950s alongside Mary Martin, Coward left the UK for tax reasons. He first settled in Bermuda but later moved to Jamaica, where he remained for the rest of his life. His play Waiting in the Wings (1960), set in a rest home for retired actors, marked a turning-point in his popularity, gaining plaudits from critics, who likened it to the work of Anton Chekhov. Following that success, his earlier work realized a revival in the late 1960s, with several new productions of his 1920s plays and a number of revues celebrating his music. Coward dubbed this comeback "Dad's Renaissance."

Coward's final stage work was Suite in Three Keys (1966), a trilogy set in a hotel penthouse suite, with him taking the lead roles in all three. The trilogy gained excellent reviews and did good box office business in the Great Britain. Coward intended to star in Suite in Three Keys on Broadway but was unable to travel due to age and illness. Only two of the plays were performed in New York, with the title changed to Noel Coward in Two Keys and the lead taken by Hume Cronyn.

By now suffering from advanced arthritis and bouts of memory loss, which affected his work on The Italian Job, Coward retired from the theater. He was finally knighted in 1970, and died in Jamaica in March, 1973 of heart failure at 73 years old. He was buried three days later on the brow of Firefly Hill, Jamaica, overlooking the north coast of the island. On March 28, 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Legacy
Noel Coward never married, but he maintained close personal friendships with many women. These included actress and author Esmé Wynne-Tyson, his first collaborator and constant correspondent; the designer and lifelong friend Gladys Calthrop; secretary and close confidante Lorn Loraine; his muse, the gifted musical actress Gertrude Lawrence; actress Joyce Carey; compatriot of his middle period, the light comedy actress Judy Campbell; and (in the words of Cole Lesley) 'his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse, film star Marlene Dietrich.

He was also a valued friend of Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. He was a close friend of Ivor Novello and Winston Churchill.

He was the president of The Actors' Orphanage, supported by the theatrical industry. In that capacity he met the young Peter Collinson, who was in the care of the orphanage, becoming Collinson's godfather and helping him get started in show business. When Collinson was named as director of the The Italian Job he invited Coward to play a role in the film.

Coward was a neighbor of James Bond's creator Ian Fleming and his wife Anne in Jamaica, the former Lady Rothermere. Though he was very fond of both of them, the Flemings' marriage was not a happy one, and coward reportedly tired of their constant bickering, as recorded in his diaries. When the first film adaptation of a James Bond novel, Dr. No was being produced, Coward was approached for the role of the villain. He is said to have responded, "Doctor No? No. No. No."

The Papers of Noel Coward are held in the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

Notes

↑ The Noel Coward Story Culturevulture.net. Retrieved December 20, 2007.
↑ "Coward's long-lost satire was almost too 'daring' about women", Guardian News and Media Limited, 2008. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
↑ Winston Churchill vetoed Coward knighthood, Telegraph Media Group Limited, 2008. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
↑ Winston Churchill vetoed Coward knighthood, Telegraph Media Group Limited, 2008. Retrieved December 7, 2007.

References

Coward, Noel. Present Indicative. London: Heinemann, 1974. ISBN 9780434147236
Coward, Noel. Future Indefinite. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1980. ISBN 9780306801266
Coward, Noel. Middle East Diary. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Doran & Co, 1944. OCLC 387771
Coward, Noel, Graham Payn, and Sheridan Morley. The Noël Coward Diaries. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. ISBN 9780316695503
Lesley, Cole. Remembered Laughter The Life of Noel Coward. New York: Knopf, 1976. ISBN 9780394498164
Morley, Sheridan. A Talent to Amuse A Biography of Noël Coward. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. ISBN 9780316583718

2015: BOND 24 films helicopter action in Mexico City, Mexico.

RichardTheBruce

March 27th

1935: Julian Glover is born--London, England.
1944: Society hostess Maud Russell writes about young Ian Fleming in her diary.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/spies-affairs-james-bond-secret-diary-ian-flemings-wartime-mistress/

Monday 27 March, 1944
I. came to dinner, first time since Muriel Wright’s cruel death. We
didn’t talk about her at all. I left it to him if he wanted to but he said
nothing. But he talked about his health and that his fingers trembled.
He’s going to Scotland for a week.

1961: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian Fleming's eighth Bond novel Thunderball. Richard Chopping cover.

THUNDERBALL presents the blue-
print for a monstrous crime that could
be just around the corner in history.

James Bond is in disgrace. His
monthly medical report is critical of the
high living that is ruining his health, and
M packs him off for a fortnight to a
nature-cure clinic to be tuned-up to his
former pitch of exceptional fitness.
Furiously, Bond undergoes the shame
of the carrot juice and nut-cutlet
regime--and thereby minutely upsets
the plans of SPECTRE, a new adversary,
more deadly, more ruthless even than
SMERSH.

Who is SPECTRE ? What are its plans ?
Alas, the organization is all to realist-
ically described, its plans all to contem-
porary for comfort. Of all James Bond's
adversaries, the Chief of SPECTRE casts
the darkest shadow.

1967: Talisa Soto is born--Brooklyn, New York City, New York.
2002: Billy Wilder dies at age 95--Beverly Hills, California. (Born 22 June 1906--Sucha Beskidzka, Poland.)

Hollywood mourns loss of icon from golden era /
6-time Oscar winner shaped careers as director
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Hollywood-mourns-loss-of-icon-from-golden-era-2859144.php
By Edward Guthmann Published 4:00 am PST, Friday, March 29, 2002


Billy Wilder, the witty, puckish director of such Hollywood classics as "Some Like It Hot" and "Sunset Boulevard," died of pneumonia Wednesday night at his Beverly Hills home. He was 95.

One of the last remaining greats of Hollywood's golden era, Wilder was a master director whose films, which also include "The Apartment," "Double Indemnity" and "Sabrina," are models of intelligence, humor and tight, economic storytelling.

Although he directed his last film, "Buddy Buddy," in 1981, Wilder continued to go to his Beverly Hills office almost daily into his 90s -- answering mail and phone calls, reading the trade papers, maintaining his extensive art collection. In recent years, he suffered from poor eyesight and cancer. In April he was hospitalized with a urinary infection.

Wilder was born in Austria in 1906, came to the United States in 1934 and quickly learned the moxie, energy and rhythms of American speech -- proving the maxim that foreigners are often the best observers of the country they adopt as their own.

"There are few filmmakers who don't crave being compared to him," wrote director Cameron Crowe in his 1999 book "Conversations with Billy Wilder." "His is a tough-minded romanticism and elegance; the lack of sentimentality has left him forever relevant as an artist."

One of the most honored of Hollywood directors, Wilder was nominated for 21 Oscars and won six, two for directing "The Lost Weekend" (1945) and "The Apartment" (1960), two for producing those films and one for writing "Sunset Boulevard." He directed the late Jack Lemmon in seven movies ("He Was My Everyman") gave signature roles to Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard," Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot" and Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity, " and directed three men to Oscars: Ray Milland ("The Lost Weekend"), William Holden ("Stalag 17") and Walter Matthau ("The Fortune Cookie").

INTERVIEWED FREUD
Originally a journalist -- he interviewed Sigmund Freud, who kicked him out of his home -- Wilder broke into filmmaking as a screenwriter in Berlin, fled Hitler in 1933 and directed his first film, "Mauvaise Graine" (Bad Seed), in Paris in 1934.

"People said Hitler was a big, loud, unpleasant joke," Wilder once said. "But at the UFA building, the MGM of Berlin, the elevator boy was suddenly in a storm trooper's uniform. I had a new Graham-Paige American car and a new apartment furnished in Bauhaus, and I sold everything for a few hundred dollars. . . . I was on the train to Paris the day after the Reichstag fire," he said in an interview years ago.

LONG CAREER AS FILMMAKER
Although he hadn't directed a film since "Buddy Buddy" in 1981 -- and chafed at a system that turned its back on aging directors -- Wilder logged one of the longest careers of any filmmaker in the first century of cinema. Best known as a writer and director of comedy, he was also adept at romance ("Sabrina"), film noir suspense ("Double Indemnity"), courtroom thriller ("Witness for the Prosecution") and social satire ("One, Two, Three").

Wilder had a shrewd, penetrating eye for human vanity and greed, and he converted that view into screenplays that often portrayed people as the helpless victims of their own worst impulses: the faded movie goddess-turned- murderess in "Sunset Boulevard," the bored wife who cons an insurance man into bumping off her husband in "Double Indemnity," the sad-sack accountant who offers his flat to philandering executives and their paramours in "The Apartment."

CO-WROTE SCRIPTS
He wrote most of his scripts with a collaborator, at first with Charles Brackett and later with I.A.L. Diamond, and said that he had turned to directing only because he grew tired of directors fouling up his scripts. At one point, filmmaker Mitchell Leisen hired a police officer to keep Wilder off the set of a film he had written.

Underneath the wily, irascible exterior was a melancholic soul who lost his father at 22 and whose mother, stepfather and grandmother all died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Wilder overcame those tragedies with hard work, stoicism, a brilliant, trenchant wit and a happy, 52-year marriage to his second wife, Audrey.

Late in his life, Wilder longed to make "Schindler's List" as a memorial to his mother, but found that Steven Spielberg already owned the rights to the story. "We spoke about it," Wilder said in Crowe's book. "He was a gentleman, of course, and we acknowledged each other's strong desires. In the end, he could not give it up."

TRIALS OF A DIRECTOR
Directing, Wilder said, "is a very important job, because you commit yourself. . . . Unlike the director of a play, you cannot change it anymore, that's it. You choose the best of what you have, and it's in the picture.

"If a young man (says) he would like to be a director, he sees only the glory of it. He does not see the trouble, the fights, the things he has to swallow. . . . You feel like a very small, small man."

And yet, it was one measure of Wilder's genius that every attempt to reinterpret his work was disappointing. Sydney Pollack's 1995 remake of "Sabrina" was trounced by critics, and the Broadway musicals that were made from "Sunset Boulevard" and "Some Like It Hot" (renamed "Sugar" for the stage) were doomed to pale when stacked against their source.

"His movies are a worldwide language of love, intelligence and sparkling wit," Crowe said of his mentor yesterday. "To any fan of film or any student of how a great life is lived, all roads lead to Billy Wilder."

When Crowe asked Wilder whether he had advice for future filmmakers, he laughed and said, "I am not anchored there at some observatory, you know. I think that we're living in very, very important and interesting times. . . . But we're not even close to having an assured peace in this world.

"I don't know. I'm just very curious. That's the one thing that keeps me alive, is curiosity."

Wilder is survived by his wife, Audrey; his daughter, Victoria; and one grandchild.

BILLY WILDER FILMOGRAPHY
. -- AS WRITER

-- "People on Sunday," 1929
-- "Emil and the Detectives," 1931
-- "Adorable," 1933
-- "One Exciting Adventure," 1934
-- "Music in the Air," 1934
-- "Lottery Lover," 1935
-- "Champagne Waltz," 1937
-- "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife," 1938
-- "Midnight," 1939
-- "What a Life," 1939
-- "Ninotchka," 1939
-- "Rhythm of the River," 1940
-- "Arise My Love," 1940
-- "Hold Back the Dawn," 1941
-- "Ball of Fire," 1942
-- "A Song Is Born," 1948

"Casino Royale," 1967.

-- AS WRITER-DIRECTOR

-- "The Major and the Minor," 1942
-- "Five Graves to Cairo," 1943
-- "Double Indemnity," 1944
-- "The Lost Weekend," 1945
-- "The Emperor Waltz," 1948
-- "A Foreign Affair," 1948
-- "Sunset Boulevard," 1950
-- "Ace in the Hole (also known as 'The Big Carnival')," 1951
-- "Stalag 17," 1953
-- "Sabrina," 1954
-- "The Seven Year Itch," 1955
-- "The Spirit of St. Louis," 1957
-- "Love in the Afternoon," 1957
-- "Witness for the Prosecution," 1958
-- "Some Like It Hot," 1959
-- "The Apartment," 1960
-- "One, Two, Three," 1961
-- "Irma la Douce," 1963
-- "Kiss Me, Stupid," 1964
-- "The Fortune Cookie," 1966
-- "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," 1970
-- "Avanti! "1972
-- "The Front Page," 1974
-- "Fedora," 1978
-- "Buddy Buddy," 1981.

Source: Associated Press

2002: BOND 20 films Miranda Frost revealed as a double.
2015: Spectre teaser trailer is released.

RichardTheBruce

March 28th

1959: Bond comic strip Live and Let Die ends its run in The Daily Express. (Started 15 December 1958.)
John McLusky, artist. Henry Gammidge, writer.

Swedish 1971 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1970_1971.php3

Swedish 1986 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1986.php3


Danish 1965 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-3-eng/

1968: Jonathan Cape publishes Colonel Sun by Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis). Tom Adams cover. Sells well.

Colonel Sun
A JAMES BOND ADVENTURE
by
Robert Markham
(Kingsley Amis)

Sooner or later, as James Bond's fol-
lowers have known, certain effects of
his lifework would begin to show. The
reflexes would be just as fast; the au-
dacity as unflagging; but in a man of
Bond's intelligence and perception a
certain speculative turn of mind was
bound to develop. Inevitably, he would
begin to question not the clear neces-
sity of his work but its cost in human
lives and human values. Thus, within
the old Bond, a new Bond was des-

tined to emerge . . . within the man of
action, a man of feeling.

It's happened. Bond is pitted against
a world-menacing conspiracy engi-
neered by the malign Colonel Sun
Liang-tan of the People's Liberation
Army of China. The stakes have never
been higher, nor the dangers more
complex and terrible. His allies--the
fine-boned, tawny-haired agent of a
rival secret service and the Greek
patriot with a score to settle--are all
too quickly neutralized. Alone, un-
armed, Bond faces the maniacal de-
vices of Colonel Sun . . . an ordeal that
pushes him to the verge of his physi-
cal and moral endurance.

Robert Markham is a nom de plume
for Kingsley Amis, author of The Anti-
Death League, Lucky Jim and The
James Bond Dossier. Incredibly, he
has added to the Bond saga not only
his supple prose and marvelous sense
of place but his own imaginative im-
petus, which intensifies and deepens
the excitement, pace and glitter of a
vintage Fleming novel.

1978: At the Academy Awards Marvin Hamlisch with Sammy Davis Jr. performs a new song "Come Light the Candles" (while Aretha Franklin sings "Nobody Does It Better").

RichardTheBruce

March 29th

1928: Philip Locke is born--St. Marylebone, London, England. (Dies 19 April 2004.)

Philip Locke, actor
https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/philip-locke-actor-1-523590
Born: 29 March, 1928, in London
Died: 24 April, 2004, in London, aged 76

WITH his gaunt and invariably haggard looks, Philip Locke was ideal casting for nervy, rather saturnine villains, corrupt Mafia bosses or somewhat refined bullies. He brought an evil streak to his characters that brought them alive. However, this tall and imposing man also had a fine line in comedy.

His major cinema credit was as Vargas, the silent assassin who fell foul of James Bond’s spear-gun in Thunderball. His list of television credits was substantial and varied (The Avengers seemed to employ him as their resident baddie for a while) and he was often seen to great advantage in the theatre - especially London’s Royal Court in the Sixties.

Philip Locke trained at RADA in the Fifties and he was soon being cast in minor roles at the Royal Court, then soon to enter its golden decade. In 1959, he was in the premire of John Osborne’s The World of Paul Slickey, a musical satire about gossip columnists and critics. It was given a real pasting by the critics - indeed, Noel Coward and John Gielgud were said to have led the booing on the first night - but many still recall the satanic dance Locke performed in the second act.

From the Royal Court, he went on to play at the National Theatre and at the Royal Shakespeare Company (he was Quince in Brook’s famous Midsummer Night’s Dream). His career was to burgeon and Locke was seldom out of work: he played Horatio in Peter Hall’s production of Hamlet which opened the National Theatre in 1975 and four years later he was again directed by Hall in the premire of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. In the latter, he played Salieri’s valet and spent much of the time feeding Mozart cream buns.

Locke’s TV appearances never let up. He was much in demand for the fondly remembered Armchair Theatre plays and was often seen on the wrong side of the small screen’s best-known detectives, including Inspector Morse, Bergerac and Poirot. He also turned up in Minder, played a newspaper editor alongside Michael Caine in Jekyll and Hyde (LWT, 1990) and was a rather camp uncle in Jeeves and Wooster (Granada, 1993).

His most striking film appearance was undoubtedly in Thunderball (1965), in which he made a particularly sinister appearance in dark glasses and black polo-neck jumper. However, a few years later, he showed his lighter side in the movie version of Porridge. In a favourite scene, Ronnie Barker’s Fletcher asks how Locke can face the prison grub, and Locke laconically replies: "I was at a top English public school and the food was very similar."

Strangely, Locke was at only one Edinburgh Festival, in 1954, with the Old Vic Company in a star-studded production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Scottish National Orchestra was in the pit and Moira Shearer and Robert Helpmann were to dance within the play. It was a bold plan to fuse music, drama and dance.

Locke played Puck and although Shearer, in an article in The Scotsman in 1976, recalled that Festival with "particular surprised pleasure" she did refer to the production as "rambling". However, it filled the Empire (now the Festival Theatre) to capacity.

Locke was always a support actor, never a major star, but he had the ability to bring a certain touch of wicked style or a chilling frisson to a role. The fact that he appeared in so many high-profile and prestigious productions in a career spanning 50 years is a sure reflection of the standing he enjoyed in his profession.

Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/philip-locke-actor-1-523590

1982: Albert "Cubby" Broccoli receives the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, presented by Roger Moore. (That Oscar night, title song "For Your Eyes Only" was nominated for Best Original Song.)

1983: The choice of Rita Coolidge (a favorite of assistant director Barbara Broccoli) to sing the latest title song is confirmed. Father Cubby Broccoli hoped for popular singer Laura Branigan, with support from composer John Barry and lyricist Tim Rice.
1999: A court ruling confirms sole rights of the Bond franchise to MGM (and EON) over Sony (and McClory, who sought to produce rogue missions due to the original Thunderball complications).

Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films, Matthew Field, Ajay Chowdhury, 2015.

...An eleventh-hour settlement was made on 29 March when Sony declared themselves out of the Bond business, compensating MGM with $5 million to settle outside of court. Additionally, MGM obtained the rights to CASINO ROYALE, owned by Sony's subsidiary Columbia pictures. This news left Kevin McClory out in the cold. He vowed to persue [sic] his claim that he was owed profits for creating the cinematic James Bond independently. Unwilling to accept defeat, McClory took out an advertisement in Variety a week later proclaiming his next production: Warhead 2001 was schedule to be produced in Australia. However, nothing came to fruition.

2019: Shane Rimmer dies at age 89. (Born 28 May 1929--Toronto, Canada.)

Shane Rimmer, voice of Thunderbirds'
Scott Tracy, dies aged 89
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/29/shane-rimmer-voice-of-thunderbirds-scott-tracy-dies-aged-89

The Canadian actor had forged a lengthy career in cult TV shows
and films, appearing in three James Bond movies

Martin Belam | Fri 29 Mar 2019 10.49 EDT | Last modified on Fri 29 Mar 2019 14.15 EDT


Shane Rimmer, who has died aged 89, pictured here during a stint in ITV’s Coronation Street during the 1980s.
Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock

Actor Shane Rimmer, who voiced the character of pilot Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds, has died. The official Gerry Anderson website carried the news, saying that the death of the 89 year old had been confirmed by his widow Sheila Rimmer. Rimmer died at home in the early hours of 29 March. No cause of death has been given.

Rimmer, who was born in Toronto in 1929 and moved to the UK in the 1950s, played the leader of the Thunderbirds crew in 32 episodes produced between 1964 and 1966. The actor also contributed his voice to other Gerry Anderson projects including Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and appeared in person in the Anderson’s live action project UFO. Behind the scenes, Rimmer also wrote episodes of Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, The Secret Service and The Protectors.


Scott, Lady Penelope and Virgil in Thunderbirds
Photograph: ITV / Rex Features

As well as his work with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson he appeared in over 100 films including Dr Strangelove, Gandhi and Out of Africa. He played three different roles in three different James Bond movies, appearing in Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, and The Spy Who Loved Me.


Shane Rimmer with James Bond actor Roger Moore on the set of 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me.
Photograph: Danjaq/Eon/Ua/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

Rimmer was also regularly cast in science fiction and fantasy projects, having appeared in William Hartnell era Doctor Who story The Gunfighters, as well as in Space: 1999, and having minor roles in Star Wars and Superman movies. He also played two different characters in British soap opera Coronation Street – in 1988 as shopkeeper Malcolm Reid, and between 1967 and 1970 as Joe Donnelli, an American GI who had murdered an army colleague and eventually shot himself.

Rimmer had continued to work in his later years, and as recently as 2017 was supplying a voiceover in cult kids’ TV show The Amazing World of Gumball.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/29/shane-rimmer-voice-of-thunderbirds-scott-tracy-dies-aged-89

He told the Washington Times in 2017 that it was his Bond work he was most proud of. “That was crazy. I have no idea how it happened. I did Diamonds Are Forever first. It wasn’t much. I just came on and got into a bit of a slanging match with Sean Connery, who slangs very well. Then I did You Only Live Twice. They got rid of me up in space in that one. The third, The Spy Who Loved Me was a good one all around. It was Roger Moore’s favourite of all the ones he did. You just get a kind of intuitive thing about a movie. It worked very well.”

RichardTheBruce

March 30th

1950: Robbie Coltrane is born--Rutherglen, Scotland.
1958: Raymond Chandler reviews Dr. No in The Sunday Times.

Originally posted on another forum by @Revelator.

THE TERRIBLE DR. NO (March 30 1958)

By RAYMOND CHANDLER

Ian Fleming first attracted me for three qualities which I thought—perhaps wrongly—almost unique in English writers. The first was escape from mandarin English, the forced pretentiousness, the preoccupation with the precise and beautiful phrase, which to me is seldom precise or beautiful, since our language contains an interior magic which belongs only to those who in a sense, care nothing about themselves.

The second was daring. He was not afraid to attempt any locale anywhere. He wrote expertly of
New York’s Harlem and Florida’s St. Petersburg, in both of which he didn’t miss a trick. He wrote of Las Vegas and did miss one small trick. He forgot the glass of ice water which is always the first thing a waitress or bus boy would place on your table.

What has happened to him in “Dr. No” is what happens to every real writer. He has found that a novel, a thriller, or what you choose to call it, is a world, that it has its own depth and subtleties, and that these can be expressed in an offhand way, without calling attention to themselves, and be very much alive.

The first chapter of “Dr. No” is masterly. The atmosphere and background of the elegant Richmond Road in Kingston, Jamaica, are established with clarity and charm. They had to be, or the ruthless violence which takes place there would be in a vacuum.

The third thing that attracted me in Ian Fleming’s writing was an acute sense at pace. How far to go, when to stop, when to destroy a mood and when to regain it, when to write a scene on a postcard and when to write richly and with leisure. Some of the most honoured novels lack this completely. You have to work at them. You don’t have to work at Fleming. He does the work for you.

The story concerns itself with a strange disappearance of two British agents in Jamaica, and why they disappeared, when no possible reason seemed clear. All was peace, so why suddenly in the night are they gone? James Bond is sent to find out—a trivial matter, a vacation in the sun. Yeah?

I have a few complaints. The beautiful girl does not appear until page 91, but in return for this she is allowed to live, and the last love scene is more gentle and compassionate than Ian Fleming usually permits. My second complaint is that the long sensational business which is the heart of the book not only borders on fantasy, it plunges into it with both feet. Ian Fleming’s impetuous imagination has no rules. I could wish he would write a book with all but one of his other qualities, yet with a plot which, at least to my world, seems part of what I know to be actual. The sequence is beautifully written, there are many very good things in it, especially detailed descriptions of the locale, the birds, the fishes—Fleming seems to be in love with rare fishes, and other dwellers in the water—some interiors, and a long torture scene which I thought a bit too sadistic, as though, he liked to write this sort of thing for its own sake.

The terrible Dr. No is a strange creature, but his motives become clear and his end very original. The beautiful girl this time is no sophisticated doll from the night clubs. The ending of the book is, as I said, written with an unusual tenderness—for Ian Fleming. I’m glad of that.

1959: Bond comic strip Moonraker begins its run in The Daily Express.
[Finishes 8 August 1959. 226-339) John McLusky, artist. Henry Gammidge, writer.

Danish 1966 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no-7-1966/




Danish 1975 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no31-1975/




Swedish 1979 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1979.php3

1962: Ian Fleming collaborates with a TV producer leading to The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
1962: The Dr. No production completes 58 days of principal filming.
1966: Thunderball released in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
1985: British Hovercraft Corporation/Vickers Supermarine's Princess Margaret SR.N4 Mk (as used in Diamonds Are Forever) is blown onto a Dover breakwater killing four.

impdb.org/index.php?title=Category:British_Hovercraft_Corporation_SR.N4

1999: The Kevin McClory Warhead 2000 AD project is terminated when MGM buys the Casino Royale film rights from Sony for $10 million as a court settlement.
2019: Tania Mallet dies at age 77--England. (Born--Blackpool, Lancashire, England.)

Tania Mallet, ‘Goldfinger’ Bond
Girl, Dies at 77
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/tania-mallet-dead-dies-goldfinger-james-bond-1203177293/
By Dave McNary


CREDIT: Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

British actress and model Tania Mallet, who played Tilly Masterson in the 1964 James Bond classic “Goldfinger,” has died. She was 77.

The official James Bond Twitter account announced her death on Sunday. “We are very sorry to hear that Tania Mallet who played Tilly Masterson in ‘Goldfinger’ has passed away,” the tweet reads. “Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this sad time.”

Mallet was a first cousin to actress Helen Mirren. She was born in Blackpool, England, to British father Henry Mallet and Russian mother Olga Mironoff, a sibling of Mirren’s father.

Mallet was working as a model when she was cast as Masterson by producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. She had previously auditioned for the role of Tatiana Romanova in 1963’s “From Russia With Love,” but lost the part to Daniela Bianchi.

In “Goldfinger,” Mallet’s character portrayed the sister of Shirley Eaton’s Jill Masterson, who betrays the villain Auric Goldfinger and is killed by him through “skin suffocation” after being completely painted in gold paint. Masterson, bent on avenging her sister’s death, is subsequently killed in the movie by Goldfinger’s servant, Oddjob (played by Harold Sakata), who throws a steel-rimmed hat at her.

Mallet told the James Bond fan site MI6 in 2003 that she had always been “more comfortable” in a small studio with “just a photographer and his assistant.”

“The restrictions placed on me for the duration of the filming grated, were dreadful, and I could not anticipate living my life like that,” she added.

Mirren said in her 2007 memoir, In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures, that Mallet was a “loyal and generous person” who helped pay for for her brothers’ education with her income as a model.

Thunderfinger

This time the girl is not a sophisticated doll from the night clubs. When was she? Seems like the exaggerated misconceptions about the world of Bond was already in place years before the first film.

As for Warhead 2000, I remember that Sony had hired Roland Emmerich to help develop a rival series.

RichardTheBruce

Thunderfinger wrote: »

This time the girl is not a sophisticated doll from the night clubs. When was she? Seems like the exaggerated misconceptions about the world of Bond was already in place years before the first film.

Maybe opinion colored by the McLusky/Gammidge comic strips presenting Fleming's novels like Diamonds Are Forever.

I've added a couple entries on this page, for Shane Rimmer (29 March) and Scott Walker (22 March). And finally reacted to @QBranch's correction.

RichardTheBruce

March 31st

1922: Bob Simmons is born--Fullham, London, England. (He dies 21 October 1987 at age 65.)

Bob Simmons (stunt man)

Bob Simmons as James Bond 007 in the gun
barrel sequence featured in the movies Dr. No,
From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger

Bob Simmons (Fulham, London, England, 31 March 1922 – 21 October 1987) was an English actor and stunt man, best known for his work in many British made films, most notably the James Bond series.

Biography
Simmons was a former Army Physical Training Instructor at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst who had initially planned to be an actor, but thought a career in performing stunts would be more lucrative and interesting. Simmons first worked for Albert R. Broccoli and Irving Allen's Warwick Films on the film The Red Beret, that included future Bond film regulars director Terence Young, screenwriter Richard Maibaum and cameraman, later director of photography Ted Moore. Simmons later worked in many other Warwick Films, and worked for Allen in his The Long Ships and Genghis Khan, where he had his eye injured when kicked by a horse.

When Albert R. Broccoli began to produce the James Bond films, Simmons tested as an actor for the Bond role, but until his death in 1987, he became the stunt coordinator for every Bond film except From Russia with Love, which he joined later in the production, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Man with the Golden Gun. He appeared in the gun barrel sequence for Sean Connery in three James Bond films: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger. Simmons is the only person to officially perform the scene, while not starring in the main role as James Bond. Simmons also had a role as SPECTRE agent Jacques Bouvar in the pre-title sequence of the fourth film, Thunderball.

Simmons developed a stunt technique involving trampolines, first used in You Only Live Twice, whereby stuntmen would bounce off a trampoline in concert with a triggered explosion so as to simulate being blown into the air. This was used in many other films, including by Simmons again in The Wild Geese, where Simmons also doubled for Richard Burton.

Upon retirement, Simmons wrote an autobiography entitled Nobody Does It Better titled after the theme song for the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

Filmography

Ivanhoe (1952)
The Great Van Robbery (1957) - Peters
The Guns of Navarone (1961) - German Officer (uncredited)
Dr. No (1962) - James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (uncredited)
From Russia with Love (1963) - James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (uncredited)
The Long Ships (1964)
Goldfinger (1964) - James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (uncredited)
Thunderball (1965) - Colonel Jacque Bouvar - SPECTRE #6 (uncredited)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Shalako (1968)
The Adventurers (1969)
When Eight Bells Toll (1971)
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Live and Let Die (1973)
The Next Man (1976) - London Assassin
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) - Ivan, KGB Thug (uncredited)
The Wild Geese (1978) - Pilot (uncredited)
For Your Eyes Only (1981) - Henchman Lotus Explosion Victim (uncredited)
A View to a Kill (1985)

Nobody Does It Better, Bob Simmons, 1987.

"When you double for James Bond you do it
for real. Stunts and all. You are plunged into
fantasy where life is lived in the fast lane.

1943: Christopher Walken is born--Astoria, Queens, New York City, New York.
1958: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian Fleming's sixth Bond novel Dr. No.

DR. NO

M hasn't forgiven Bond for the
negligence on his last assignment that
nearly cost Bond his life. Brusquely,
almost contemptuously, he tosses Bond
a time-wasting, shabby little case in the
Caribbean. It will really be a holiday
on an island in the sun -- concalescence.
Angrily, Bond accepts his orders. He
flies off to Jamaica. The sun shines,
the palm trees wave, the calypsos throb.
But on the horizon a cloud forms. It is
no bigger than a man's hand -- an arti-
culated steel hand -- the hand of Dr. No!

1960: In a letter to typist Jean Frampton, Ian Fleming credits her keen mind.

Fleming's 'Moneypenny' revealed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7314336.stm

May 2008 marks the centenary of
Ian Fleming's birth

Letters written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, due to be sold at auction next month, reveal a close relationship with his typist Jean Frampton.

In one letter, dated 31 March, 1960, he asks her to use her "keen mind" to help get his novel Thunderball "into shape".

"Anything your quick eye falls upon... would be endlessly welcome," he adds.

"You can look on Mrs Frampton as Ian Fleming's Miss Moneypenny," said Amy Brenan of Duke's auctioneers in Dorset, which is offering the letters for sale.

The auction will take place on 10 April to mark the centenary year of the writer's birth.

The entire collection, which includes four signed letters by Fleming, is expected to fetch between £2,000 and £3,000.

'Helpful'
Also included are letters written by Mrs Frampton and Fleming's secretaries, Una Trueblood and Beryl Griffie-Williams.

Hired to type the manuscripts of Fleming's books, Frampton found herself called upon to offer pointers on plot and literary style.

The collection is expected to fetch up to £3,000

"Your occasional comments on the work you have done for me have been so helpful," the author writes.

Frampton, who lived in the Dorset town of Christchurch, is believed never to have actually met Fleming.

Their correspondence, however, reveals a close relationship that extended to such Bond novels as You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun.

"The collection is interesting because it details how the James Bond books were put together in the early 1960s," said Ms Brenan.

1964: Agent 007 ... ser rött (Agent 007 ... Looks Red) released in Sweden.

Sean Connery in a a new one...

2019: Bond exhibition in Bochum, Germany, finishes this date.

Bond exhibition in Bochum, Germany (1 February – 31 March 2019)
https://www.007travelers.com/events/bond-exhibition-in-bochum-germany-1-february-31-march-2019/

What: “In geheimer Mission – Der Spion, der aus Wattenscheid kam” – Bond exhibition
Where: Kortumstrasse 49, Bochum, Germany
When: 1 February – 31 March 2019

James Bond exhibition in Bochum, Germany. According to Bond author John Pearson, 007 was born in Wattenscheid, Germany on 11th of November 1920. The book where this is mentioned is “James Bond, the Authorized Biography of 007” (1973).

Wattenscheid is now part of city of Bochum and here is the new 007 exhibition between 1st of February and 31st of March 2019.

Exhibition includes Sunbeam Alpine S II from “Dr. No” (1962), the one-man helicopter Little Nellie from “You Only Live Twice” (1967), the white Lotus Esprit from” The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) and the black Yahama XJ 650 Turbo from” Never Say Never Again” (1983) and the Jet Pack from “Thunderball” (1965). In addition to the Bond mobiles, 500 square meters of costumes, screenplays and much more can be admired.

The exhibition is open daily from 1 February to 31 March, from 15:00 to 19:00 Monday to Friday and from 11:00 to 18:00 on weekends.

Admission: 8 euros, children under 14 pay 5 euros.

RichardTheBruce

April 1st

1931: George Baker is born--Varna, Bulgaria.
(He dies 7 October 2011 at age 80--West Lavington, Wiltshire, England.)

George Baker: Actor whose career
climaxed in his portrayal of the
Shakespeare-quoting DCI Wexford
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/george-baker-actor-whose-career-climaxed-in-his-portrayal-of-the-shakespeare-quoting-dci-wexford-2368541.html
Anthony Hayward | Tuesday 11 October 2011 00:00


George Baker: Actor whose career climaxed in his portrayal of the Shakespeare-quoting DCI Wexford

In 1987, two detectives from contemporary literature were transferred to television and their screen lives ran in parallel for 14 years.

While John Thaw stepped into the opera-loving shoes of Colin Dexter's Oxford sleuth Inspector Morse, George Baker had his first outing as Ruth Rendell's Shakespeare-quoting Detective Chief Inspector Wexford in "Wolf to the Slaughter".

The 6ft 4in Baker traded his crisp vowels for a regional burr in the roleof the affable, fatherly figure investigating crimes in the fictional south of England market town Kingsmarkham. With his dour sidekick, Detective Inspector Mike Burden (Christopher Ravenscroft), he plodded thoughtfully through an alarmingly high number of murder cases.

Reg Wexford was also a dependable husband and doting father, and Rendell revealed that the character traits were taken from her own father. She was so enamoured with Baker's portrayal that she admitted to writing The Veiled One, the first new Wexford novel published after the television adaptations began, with him in mind.

Following the stand-alone first mini-series, the programmes – featuring 23 stories in all and running until 2000 – were screened as The Ruth Rendell Mysteries and, occasionally, The Ruth Rendell Mystery Movie. Location filming was done in and around the Hampshire town of Romsey, not far from Baker's own home in Wiltshire.

In 1992, his second wife, the actress Sally Home, died after a three-year fight against cancer. The following year, he married Louie Ramsay – who played his screen wife, Dora, in the Wexford dramas and was a long-time friend of the couple – calling her his "soulmate" and adding: "Sally was the love of my life. With Louie, the love is quite different, but it's almost as strong." Ramsay died last March.

Baker was born at the British Embassy in Varna, Bulgaria, where his father, Frank – originally from Wetherby, West Yorkshire – was the honorary British vice-consul. A literate, cultured individual who was a writer and expert wine-taster, Baker was at pains to point out that, according to diplomatic etiquette, he was born on British soil.

When the Second World War broke out, he, his Irish mother Eva and four brothers and sisters moved to Yorkshire. Baker attended Lancing College, West Sussex, before joining Deal repertory company, in Kent, when he was just 15. During national service in Hong Kong he served with the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment. As a horse rider he was made regimental equitation officer but returned to Britain after contracting the intestinal disease sprue, and finished his Army service on a training range in Pembrokeshire.

Baker then acted in repertory theatre across Britain before making his London début as Arthur Wells in a revival of the Frederick Lonsdale drawing-room comedy Aren't We All? (Haymarket Theatre, 1953). Many roles followed in the West End, and with the Old Vic company (1959-60) and the RSC (1975). He also directed some plays himself, including The Sleeping Prince (St Martin's Theatre, 1968) and The Lady's Not for Burning (Old Vic Theatre, 1978). As artistic director, Baker launched his own provincial touring company, Candida Plays (named after his eldest daughter), in 1966.

Film casting directors spotted his matinee-idol looks early on. His first screen appearance, alongside Jack Hawkins, was in The Intruder (1953) and he followed it with a role in theSecond World War drama The Dam Busters (1955). Then came star billing in another war film, A Hill in Korea (1956), and the Civil War adventure The Moonraker (1958).

Baker's six-week affair with Brigitte Bardot while he was at Pinewood Studios filming The Woman for Joe (1955) and she was making Doctor at Sea put a strain on his marriage to the costume designer Julia Squire, which also suffered from the constant pressure of being in debt. He lived with Sally Home for 10 years before she became his second wife. His confidence was knocked by the film director Tony Richardson's description of him as the worst actor in England and another disappointment was the James Bond author Ian Fleming's assertion that Baker would make the perfect 007, before the part went to Sean Connery.

However, Baker appeared in three Bond films: as a Nasa engineer in You Only Live Twice (1967), Captain Benson in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), in which he also dubbed the voice of George Lazenby – in that actor's one screen appearance as the secret agent – for a scene in which 007 impersonates his character.

Television began to play a bigger part in Baker's career, with dramatic roles such as the second Number Two in The Prisoner (1967), Tiberius in I, Claudius (1976) and Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn in four feature-length adaptations of Ngaio Marsh's novels, made in New Zealand in 1977.

He also had some success in sitcoms. After playing Peter Craven's boss in The Fenn Street Gang (1972), Baker was spun off into his own series, Bowler (1973), in which he was seen as a spiv and petty villain trying to exude class but failing abysmally. Later, alongside Penelope Keith in the first two series of No Job for a Lady (1990-91), he played the Conservative MP Godfrey Eagan, sparring with the newly elected Labour MP Jean Price.

As a writer, Baker adapted four of the Ruth Rendell stories himself and scripted many radio dramas and the television play The Fatal Spring (1980), about the First World War poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, which won the United Nations Media Prize Award of Merit.

In 1999, Baker underwent surgery to remove his prostate gland after being diagnosed with cancer. His autobiography, The Way to Wexford, was published three years later. He also collected together recipes from his own culinary exploits in A Cook for All Seasons (1989). In 2007, Baker was made an MBE for youth club fund-raising activities in his then home village of West Lavington, Wiltshire.

George Morris Baker, actor, writer and director: born Varna, Bulgaria 1 April 1931; MBE 2007; married 1950 Julia Squire (divorced 1974, died 1989; four daughters), 1974 Sally Home (died 1992; one daughter), 1993 Louie Ramsay (died 2011); died 7 October 2011.

1944: Aliza Gur is born--Ramat Gan, Israel.
1957: From Russia With Love is serialized in The Daily Express.
1961: Goldfinger ends its run in The Daily Express. (Started 3 October 1960. 698-849.)
John McLusky, artist. Henry Gammidge, writer.

Swedish 1989 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1989.php3


Danish 1965 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk2-goldfinger-1965/

1963: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian Fleming's tenth Bond novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

ON HER MAJESTY'S
SECRET SERVICE

'It was one of those Septembers when
it seemed that the summer would never
end . . . '

But it did end and winter came in a
lethal welter of mystery. Bloodshed
and multiple death amid the snow.

This the eleventh chapter in the
biography of James Bond, is one of the
longest. It is also the most enthralling.

Really the most? Really the most.

1963: Principal filming of From Russia With Love begins.
1963: Agent 007 released in Norway.
1965: Jonathan Cape publishes Ian Fleming's twelfth and final Bond novel The Man With the Golden Gun.

1965: Goldfinger released in Japan.

1969: Gazino Royal 007 released in Turkey.
1981: Richard Marek publishes John Gardner's Licence Renewed in the US.

1990: Armchair Detective Library publishes John Gardner's Licence to Kill.

2015: Skyfall filming in Mexico comes to a close.
2016: The Daily Mail prints an exclusive--Broadchurch actress Olivia Coleman cast as first female James Bond.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3518227/Now-S-real-Bond-girl-O-O-Olivia-Coleman-lined-play-007-Broadchurch-star-set-make-history-taking-Daniel-Craig-movie.html"

2018: A remake of Moonraker is announced.

https://theworldofjamesbond.blog/2017/04/01/bond-25-the-remake-of-moonraker/

2019: MGM and Bond producers announce Season 2 for James Bond Jr.

Commander James Bond - CJB
EON annonce une saison 2 à la série James Bond Jr. !
http://www.commander007.net/2019/04/eon-annonce-saison-2-a-serie-james-bond-jr/
By Clément Feutry | - 21 heures ago | - in Actualités, Les Films 0



Original english version below.

Pinewood Studios (31 mars 2019) – MGM, Michael G. Wilson et Barbara Broccoli, producteurs des films de James Bond, annoncent aujourd’hui une seconde saison à la série d’animation JAMES BOND JR. originellement diffusée en 1991. Dans celle-ci, le neveu de l’espion international James Bond, James Bond Jr., était déterminé à suivre les traces de son oncle. James Bond Jr. et ses amis I.Q. (le petit-fils de Q) et Gordo Leiter (fils de l’agent de la CIA, Felix) s’inscrivaient à Warfield, une école préparatoire au Royaume-Uni située sur le terrain d’une ancienne base de formation au contre-espionnage. Ensemble, les camarades de classe se battaient contre S.C.U.M. (Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem), un cartel international de terroristes et de scientifiques fous. Michael G. Wilson :

Quand on a créé James Bond Jr., on voulait raconter une histoire sous un angle nouveau qui parlerait aux enfants des deux cotés de l’Atlantique, tout en rendant hommage au personnage de James Bond avec lequel les plus « grands enfants » ont grandit et ont appris à aimé. Cela fait un moment déjà que nous cherchions à relancer la série mais avions peur de rester trop similaire à l’originale. Le monde ayant bien changé depuis les années ’90, notamment grâce aux nouvelles technologies informatiques, et avec le reboot de la saga avec CASINO ROYALE, nous pensions qu’il était temps de faire revenir la série en l’actualisant à notre époque.

Collaborant avec MGM et EON, l’équipe créative de Titmouse, Inc. (The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, Half-Shell Heroes: Blast to the Past, Ballmastrz: 9009) sera en charge de l’animation et de la coécriture. Le Chief creative officer de Titmouse, Inc., Tim Kalina :

C’est un honneur de faire partie de la franchise Bond et de travailler avec les équipes prestigieuses de la MGM. Nous avons été impliqués dans le projet parce que nous avons toujours été fans de Bond, qu’étant une entreprise américaine nous pouvions plus facilement écrire pour le public américain, et surtout parce que nous avions la même idée pour relancer la série : la situer aujourd’hui. Notre série n’est pas la suite de l’originale [qui se finissait avec Bond Jr. récupérant le marteau de Thor] mais plutôt une remise à zéro, une sorte de reboot comme ils ont plus faire il y a quelques années avec les films. Les fans de la série originale ne serreront toutefois pas déçus dans la mesure où nous avons gardé le meilleur de celle-ci et la même structure. Nous avons cependant vraiment voulu nous servir de ce que Daniel Craig a apporté à la franchise en ancrant notre série dans son « ère » afin de la mettre au goût du jour.

Des changements ont ainsi été opérés pour que le jeune public puisse davantage s’identifier aux derniers films :

Notre James Bond Jr. sera blond et nous avons également penser à changer la couleur de peau de Gordo Leiter pour refléter la participation de Jeffrey Wright aux derniers films. Ce dernier personnage est très important pour nous car il s’agit de la connexion principale avec la culture et la mode américaine qui peut contraster avec celle britannique, donnant un peu de comique à l’ensemble. Dans la série originale Gordo est fan de surf mais ce sport faisant moins rêver les jeunes qu’il y a trente ans, nous avons décidé de lui donner un look « gansta » avec notamment une casquette rouge « make rap great again » afin de l’actualiser pour 2019. De même, Ben Whishaw faisant trop jeune pour être grand-père, nous avons fait de I.Q. le petit frère de Q au lieu de son petit-fils. Nous avons également supprimé le personnage de Tracy Milbanks au profit d’un nouveau : Madeleine Milbanks. Il était très important pour eux et pour nous que la série reflète les films, dit Tim Kalina.

L’une des grandes nouveautés de la série sera la présence de scènes d’action dans un univers de réalité virtuelle :

Les casques de réalité virtuelle ont envahi le marché ces dernières années et vu que notre I.Q. est une sorte de « geek » fan de jeux vidéo on s’est dit que ce serait amusant que Bond Jr. doive affronter S.C.U.M. dans des mondes virtuels crées par I.Q. et son alter ego « génie-informaticien » du camp des méchants, Boris (comme dans la série orignal nous faisons revenir des méchants emblématiques des films comme Boris ou encore Elvis). Ce qui est génial c’est que dans un monde en réalité virtuelle on peut tout faire : changer l’époque, introduire des éléments fantastiques et même abroger les lois de la physique lorsque l’on en a envie ; je pense que ça créer de superbes décors et des combats originaux jamais vus auparavant dans la saga.

Pour le producteur associé Gregg Wilson « la série s’annonce déjà encore meilleure que la précédente, j’ai récemment pu assister à une projection test avec des enfants d’un premier jet d’un épisode où le S.C.U.M. vole la Statue de la Liberté et la tour Eiffel pour demander une rançon ; les retours étaient merveilleux. Ils ne peuvent attendre que la série sorte et je pense que leurs parents aussi, qui n’auront d’ailleurs pas à s’inquiéter car la violence est très réduite et aucun personnage ne meurt à l’écran. On est partie sur un peu moins d’épisodes que la première saison, seulement une quarantaine [contre 65]. D’autant plus que cette fois il y aura un fil conducteur, cela concerne le père de Bond Jr. (le frère de James Bond), je ne peux rien dire de plus mais si vous avez vu SPECTRE, vous avez déjà une idée sur quoi vous attendre… ».


« Et puisque nous avons estimé que deux James Bond Jr. girls ne sont pas suffisantes, nous pouvons d’ores et déjà annoncer un partenariat avec Zodiak Media qui permettra à Bond Jr. de faire équipe avec les agentes secrètes des TOTALLY SPIES! au complet le temps d’un épisode. C’est l’une des nombreuses surprises qui attendent les fans de la nouvelle série ».

La saison 2 de James Bond Jr., produite par MGM et EON Production, réalisée par Titmouse, Inc., et distribuée par MGM sera diffusée début 2020 au Royaume-Uni sur BBC One et suivra peu après aux États-Unis sur NBC. Une gamme de jouets et de comics sera plus tard dévoilée dans le courant de l’année.

Source : 007.com.

Pour « fêter » ça, on se re-regardera bien le premier épisode de la série originale…



Et si l’anglais n’est pas votre tasse de thé, en VF ça donne :



La série originale avait également été adaptée en comics à l’époque…



English version :

Pinewood Studios (March 31, 2019) – MGM, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, producers of the James Bond films, announced today a second season for the animated series JAMES BOND JR. originally released in 1991. In the original, the international spy James Bond’s nephew, James Bond Jr., was determined to follow in his uncle’s footsteps. James Bond Jr. and his friends I.Q. (Q’s grandson) and Gordo Leiter (son of CIA agent Felix) enrolled in Warfield, a preparatory school located on the grounds of an old counter intelligence training base in the UK. Together, the schoolmates fought against S.C.U.M. (Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem), an international cartel of terrorists and mad scientists. Michael G. Wilson on the new series:

« When we created James Bond Jr., we wanted to tell a story from a new angle that would speak to children on both sides of the Atlantic, while paying tribute to the character of James Bond who the « older children » grew up with and have learned to love. It’s been a while since we thought about restarting the series but were afraid it’d too similar to the original. The world has changed a lot since the 90s, thanks to the computer technologies, and with the reboot of the film series, we thought it was time to bring back the series by updating it to our time.

Collaborating with MGM and EON Productions, the creative team of TITMOUSE, INC. (The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, Half-Shell Heroes: Blast to the Past, Ballmastrz: 9009) will be in charge of animation and co-writing. Chief Creative Officer of Titmouse, Inc., Tim Kalina:

« It’s an honor to be part of the Bond franchise and to work with the prestigious MGM team. We were involved in the project because we were always fans of Bond, and being an American company we could write more easily for the American public, and especially because we had the same idea to relaunch the series: to update it for audiences of today. Our series is not a continuation of the original [which ended with Bond Jr. recovering Thor’s hammer] but rather a reboot, similar to the kind of reboot they did a few years ago for the movies. Fans of the original series will not be disappointed since we took the best of the original series and kept the same structure. However, we really want to use what Daniel Craig has brought to the franchise by anchoring our series in the current ‘era’ to bring it up to date ».

Changes have been made so that young audiences can identify more with the latest films:

« Our James Bond Jr. will be blond and we changed the skin color of Gordo Leiter to reflect Jeffrey Wright’s participation in the movies. This last character is very important to us because he is the main connection with America’s culture and fashion, which can contrast with the British one, giving a little comedic style to the whole series. In the original series Gordo is a fan of surfing, but this sport is less appealing for young people than it was thirty years ago, so we decided to give him a ‘gansta’ style, especially with a red cap with the inscription « Make Rap Great Again » in order to update him for 2019. Similarly, since Ben Whishaw is too young to be a grandfather, we changed I.Q. to Q’s little brother instead of his grandson. We also changed Tracy Milbanks to Madeleine Milbanks. It is very important for MGM, EON and for us that the series reflects the current movies », says Tim Kalina.

One of the big novelties of the series will be the presence of action scenes in a world of virtual reality:

« Virtual reality headsets have invaded the market in recent years and as our I.Q. is a kind of ‘geek’ video game fan we thought it would be fun for Bond Jr. to face S.C.U.M. in virtual worlds created by I.Q. and his alter-ego ‘genius-computer scientist’ baddie, Boris (as in the original series we’re bringing back emblematic villains of the films like Boris and Elvis). The great thing is that in a world of virtual reality you can do anything: change the era, introduce fantastic elements and even do away with the laws of physics when you want to; I think that it creates beautiful scenery and original fights like never seen before in the saga ».

For Associate Producer Gregg Wilson: « The show is already looking better than the previous one, I was recently able to see a test screening with kids of an episode where S.C.U.M. steals the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower and demand a ransom; the returns were wonderful. They can’t wait for the show to come out and I think their parents won’t either. They won’t worry because the violence is very light and no characters die on the screen. We went with fewer episodes than the first season, only forty. Especially since this time there will be a common thread, it concerns the father of Bond Jr. (the brother of James Bond), I can’t say anything more but if you saw SPECTRE, you already have an idea about what to expect… »

« Since we felt that two James Bond Jr. girls are not enough, we can already announce a partnership with ZODIAK MEDIA that will allow Bond Jr. to team up with the full team secret agents of the TOTALLY SPIES! for one episode. This is one of the many surprises that awaiting fans of the new series ».

Season 2 of James Bond Jr., produced by MGM and EON Productions, directed by Titmouse, Inc. and distributed by MGM will be broadcast in early 2020 in the UK on BBC One and will follow shortly after in the USA on NBC. A range of toys and comics will be unveiled later this year.

Source : 007.com.

http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2018/1/17/licence-to-hoax

Revelator

Does the remake include a double-taking pigeon?

RichardTheBruce

April 2nd

1925: George MacDonald Fraser is born--Carlisle, Cumberland, England.
(He dies 2 January 2008 at age 82--Strang, Isle of Man, United Kingdom.)

George MacDonald Fraser, Author of Flashman Novels, Dies at 82
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/arts/03fraser.html
By MARGALIT FOXJAN. 3, 2008

George MacDonald Fraser, a British writer whose popular novels about the arch-rogue Harry Flashman followed their hero as he galloped, swashbuckled, drank and womanized his way through many of the signal events of the 19th century, died yesterday on the Isle of Man. He was 82 and had made his home there in recent years.

The cause was cancer, said Vivienne Schuster, his British literary agent.

Over nearly four decades, Mr. Fraser produced a dozen rollicking picaresques centering on Flashman. The novels purport to be installments in a multivolume “memoir,” known collectively as the Flashman Papers, in which the hero details his prodigious exploits in battle, with the bottle and in bed. In the process, Mr. Fraser cheerfully punctured the enduring ideal of a long-vanished era in which men were men, tea was strong and the sun never set on the British Empire.

The Flashman Papers include, among other titles, “Flashman” (World Publishing, 1969); “Flashman in the Great Game” (Knopf, 1975); and, most recently, “Flashman on the March” (Knopf, 2005). The second volume in the series, “Royal Flash” (Knopf, 1970), was made into a film of the same title in 1975, starring Malcolm McDowell as Flashman.

In what amounted to an act of literary retribution, Mr. Fraser plucked Flashman from the pages of “Tom Brown’s School Days,” Thomas Hughes’s classic novel of English public-school life published in 1857. In that book, Tom, the innocent young hero, repeatedly falls prey to a sadistic bully named Flashman.

In Mr. Fraser’s hands, the cruel, handsome Flashman is all grown up and in the British Army, serving in India, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now Brig. Gen. Sir Harry Paget Flashman, he is a master equestrian, a pretty fair duelist and a polyglot who can pitch woo in a spate of foreign tongues. He is also a scoundrel, a drunk, a liar, a cheat, a braggart and a coward. (A favorite combat strategy is to take credit for a victory from which he has actually run away.)


George MacDonald Fraser
Credit HarperCollins, about 2004

Last, but most assuredly not least, Flashman is a serial adulterer who by Volume 9 of the series has bedded 480 women. (That Flashman is married himself, to the fair, dimwitted Elspeth, is no impediment. She cuckolds him left and right, in any case.

Readers adored him. Today, the Internet is populated with a bevy of Flashman fan sites.

Flashman’s exploits take him to some of the most epochal events of his time, from British colonial campaigns to the American Civil War, in which he magnanimously serves on both the Union and the Confederate sides. He rubs up against eminences like Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Florence Nightingale and Abraham Lincoln.

For his work, Flashman earns a string of preposterous awards, including a knighthood, the Victoria Cross and the American Medal of Honor.

Mr. Fraser was so skilled a mock memoirist that he had some early readers fooled. Writing in The New York Times in 1969 after the first novel was published, Alden Whitman said:

“So far, ‘Flashman’ has had 34 reviews in the United States. Ten of these found the book to be genuine autobiography.”

The son of Scottish parents, George MacDonald Fraser was born on April 2, 1925, in Carlisle, England, near the Scottish border. His boyhood reading, like that of nearly every British boy of his generation, included “Tom Brown’s School Days.”

In World War II, Mr. Fraser served in India and Burma with the Border Regiment. His memoir of the war in Burma, “Quartered Safe Out Here” (Harvill), was published in 1993.


The first Flashman novel.

After leaving the military, Mr. Fraser embarked on a journalism career, working for newspapers in England, Canada and Scotland. He eventually became the assistant editor of The Glasgow Herald and in the 1960s, was briefly its editor.

Tiring of newspaper work, Mr. Fraser decided, as he later said in interviews, to “write my way out” with an original Victorian novel. In a flash, he remembered Flashman, and the first book tumbled out in the evenings after work.

“In all, it took 90 hours, no advance plotting, no revisions, just tea and toast and cigarettes at the kitchen table,” he said in an interview quoted in the reference work “Authors and Artists for Young Adults.”

Mr. Fraser’s survivors include his wife, Kathy; two sons and a daughter. Information on other survivors could not immediately be confirmed.

His other books include several non-Flashman novels, among them “Mr. American” (Simon & Schuster, 1980); “The Pyrates” (Knopf, 1984); and “Black Ajax” (HarperCollins, 1997). With Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, Mr. Fraser wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film “Octopussy,” released in 1983.

Mr. Fraser’s latest book, “The Reavers,” a non-Flashman novel, is scheduled to be published by Knopf in April.

For his work, Mr. Fraser received many honors, among them the Order of the British Empire in 1999. This award, according to every conceivable news account, was entirely genuine.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C12 of the New York edition with the headline: George MacDonald Fraser, Author of Flashman Novels, Dies at 82.

1962: Producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Salztman complete a deal with United Artists to finance Dr. No.
1965: Kingsley Amis reviews The Man With the Golden Gun in The New Statesman.

Shared by @Revelator on the MI6 Community Novel Bondathon discussion.
https://mi6community.com/discussion/comment/847292
***

M for Murder

We left James Bond in Japan, an amnesia victim after a head wound sustained while escaping by balloon from the castle he had destroyed by blocking-up the mud geyser on which it was built. He was under the impression that he was a local fisherman, and Kissy Suzuki, at that time what the newspapers call his friend, did nothing to put him right, at least not mentally. At the end of You Only Live Twice he was taking off for Vladivostok, because it was part of a country that, he sensed, he had had a lot to do with in the past. This was a promising situation. One could hardly wait for the follow-up: inevitable capture by the KGB, questionings and torturings and brainwashings, break out (aided probably by some beautiful firm-breasted female major of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate), the slaying of Colonel-General Grubozaboyschikov of SMERSH, and perhaps of Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky of RUMID for good measure, in revenge for what happened on the Orient Express in 1957, and final escape over the Wall.

Nothing of this order takes place in Bond’s latest and last exploit. He’s back in England right at the start, telephoning the Ministry of Defence and apparently set on getting his old job back. It soon emerges that he has indeed been brainwashed, and that the commission allotted him by his Russian controllers is nothing less than the assassination of M. Despite the forebodings pf Miss Moneypenny in the outer office Bond is admitted to the presence, chats briefly about the necessity of working for peace and then whips out a cyanide pistol. But M presses a button which lowers a sheet of armour-plate glass from the ceiling, and the jet of viscous brown fluid splashes harmlessly into its centre.

I lament this outcome of the attentat very much, and not only because it helps to make everything that follows seem rather small-scale. M has always seemed to me about as sinister as Captain Nash (the moon-maniac who tried to shoot Bond with a specially designed copy of War and Peace) and considerably less amiable than Dr No. The depth of Bond’s devotion to M’s keen, lined sailor’s face and clear blue sailor’s eyes remains something of a mystery. Perhaps the pitch of the old monster’s depravity is reached in the title story of For Your Eyes Only. Here he manoeuvres Bond into volunteering to murder an ex-Nazi in Vermont as a personal favour, and says absolutely nothing when Bond departs to carry out this arduous, dangerous, difficult assignment. Even Mr. Deighton’s pair of boors, Colonel Ross and Major Dalby, might in such circumstances have gone as far as to wish Bond luck or thank him. A faceful of cyanide would have done M a world of good.

He survives, however, and goes off to luncheon at Blades, just a grilled sole and a spoonful of Stilton. He used to be much greedier than this, cheerfully doing himself harm by guzzling a marrow-bone after his caviar and devilled kidneys and fresh strawberries. In the old days, too, he would go for 20-year-old clarets; he washes down his grilled sole with a bottle of Algerian red too bad to be allowed on the wine-list. We know now why Bond stepped down from broiled lobsters with melted butter in 1953 to cold roast beef and potato salad in 1963. As always, he was following M’s lead.

After luncheon, M decides to send Bond off to the West Indies to kill a certain Scaramanga, the golden-gun-toter of the title and a free-lance assassin often used by the KGB or Castro. He may well perish in the attempt, for Scaramanga is the best shot in the Caribbean, but that’s all right—to fall on the battlefield would be better than doing 20 years for having tried to kill the head of the Secret Service. Having had a bit of shock treatment at the hands of Sir James Molony, the famous neurologist, and some intensive gun practice at the Maidstone police range. Bond is judged fit for the assignment and in due course noses out Scaramanga in Jamaica. What follows is soon told. Scaramanga hires Bond as his security and trigger-man and takes him off to a half-built hotel on the coast where a ‘business conference’ is to be held. Ostensibly its subject is tourist development. Bond’s identity becomes known and Scaramanga arranges to knock him off during a small-gauge-railway excursion as a piece of light entertainment for the conferrers. But…We last see Bond refusing a knighthood: to accept one would be to aspire inadmissibly to M’s level.

It’s a sadly empty tale, empty of the interests and effects that for better or worse, Ian Fleming had made his own. Violence is at a minimum. Sex too: an old chum of Bond’s called Mary Goodnight appears two or three times, and on her first appearance puts an arm smelling of Chanel No 5 round his neck, but he gets no more out of her later than an invitation to convalesce at her bungalow. And there’s no gambling, no gadgets or machinery to speak of, no undersea stuff, none of those lavish and complicated eats and drinks, hardly even a brand-name apart from Bond’s Hofffitz safety razor arid the odd bottle of Walker’s de luxe Bourbon. The main plot, in the sense of the scheme proposed by the villain’s, is likewise thin. Smuggling marijuana and getting protection-money out of oil companies disappoint expectation aroused by what some of these people’s predecessors planned: a nuclear attack on Miami, the dissemination throughout Britain of crop and livestock pests, the burgling of Fort Knox. The rank-and-file villains, too, have been reduced in scale.

In most of the Bond books it was the central villain on whom interest in character was fixed. Moonraker, for instance, is filled with the physical presence of Huger Drax with his red hair and scarred face, bustling about, puffing cigars, playing the genial host when he isn’t working on his scheme to obliterate London. Scaramanga is just a dandy with a special (and ineffective) gun, a stock of outdated American slang and a third nipple on his left breast. We hear a lot about him early on in the 10-page dossier M consults, including mentions of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism, but these aren’t followed up anywhere. Why not?

It may be relevant to consider at this point an outstandingly clumsy turn in the narrative. Bond has always, been good at ingratiating, himself with his enemies, notably with Goldfinger, who took him on as his personal assistant for the Fort Knox project. Goldfinger, however, had fairly good reason to believe Bond to be a clever and experienced operator on the wrong side of the law. Scaramanga hires him after a few minutes’ conversation in the bar of a brothel. (At this stage he has no idea that there’s a British agent within a hundred miles, so he can’t be hiring him to keep him under his eye.) Bond wonders what Scaramanga wants with him: “it was odd, to say the least of it…the strong smell of a trap.” This hefty hint of a concealed motive on Scaramanga’s part is never taken up. Why not?

I strongly suspect—on deduction alone, let it be said—that these unanswered questions represent traces of an earlier draft, perhaps never committed to paper, wherein Scaramanga hires Bond because he’s sexually interested in him. A supposition of this kind would also take care of other difficulties or deficiencies in the book as it stands, the insubstantiality of the character of Scaramanga, just referred to, and the feeling of suppressed emotion, or at any rate the build-up to and the space for some kind of climax of emotion, in the final confrontation of the two men. But of course Ian Fleming wouldn’t have dared complete the story along those lines. Imagine what the critics would have said!

To read some of their extant efforts, one would think that Bond’s creator was a sort of psychological Ernst Stavro Blofeld, bent on poisoning British morality. An article in this journal in 1958 helped to initiate a whole series of attacks on the supposed “sex, snobbery and sadism” of the books, as if sex were bad per se, and as if snobbery resided in a few glossy-magazine descriptions of Blades and references to Aston Martin cars and Pinaud shampoos and what-not, and as if sadism could be attributed to a character who never wantonly inflicts pain. (Contrast Bulldog Drummond and Spillane’s Mike Hammer.)

These are matters that can’t be argued through in this review. But it seems clear that Ian Fleming took such charges seriously. Violent and bloody action, the infliction of pain in general, was very much scaled down in what he wrote after 1958. Many will regard this as a negative gain, though others may feel that a secret-agent story without violence would be like, say, a naval story without battles. As regards ‘sex’ and ‘snobbery’ and the memorable meals and the high-level gambling, these, however unedifying, were part of the unique Fleming world, and the denaturing of that world in the present novel and parts of its immediate forerunners is a loss. Nobody can write at his best with part of his attention on puritanical readers over his shoulder.

Ian Fleming was a good writer, occasionally a brilliant one, as the gypsy-encampment scene in From Russia, With Love (however sadistic) and the bridge-game in Moonraker (however snobbish) will suggest. His gifts for sustaining and varying action, and for holding down the wildest fantasies with cleverly synthesized pseudo-facts, give him a place beside long defunct entertainer-virtuosos like Jules Verne and Conan Doyle, though he was more fully master of his material than either of these. When shall we see another?

1997: BOND 18 films Elliott Carver's first scenes.

RichardTheBruce

April 3rd

1926: Director of photography Jean Tournier is born--Toulon, Var, France.
(He dies 5 December 2004 at age 78--Paris, France.)

Filmography:

Quai du Point-du-Jour (1960)
On n'enterre pas le dimanche (1960)
L'homme à femmes (1960)
Amélie ou le temps d'aimer (1961)
Les bras de la nuit (1961)
Les Mystères de Paris (1962)
The Train (1964)
Allez France! (1964)
Faites vos jeux, mesdames (1965)
Les Deux Orphelines (1965)
Compartiment tueurs (1965)
La bourse et la vie (1966)
Roger la Honte (1966)
Le voyage du père (1966)
Un homme de trop (1967)
Le Grand Bidule (1967)
L'Homme à la Buick (1968)
Le Petit Baigneur (1968)
L'Ardoise (1970)
Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)
Comptes à rebours (1971)
La Cavale (1971)
Le Viager (1972)
Trois milliards sans ascenseur (1972)
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Les gaspards (1974)
Les guichets du Louvre (1974)
Les Misérables (1978) TV Movie
Moonraker (1979)
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)
Trois hommes à abattre (1980)
Pour la peau d'un flic (1981)
Le Battant (1983)
Femmes de personne (1984)
Mistral's Daughter (1984) TV Mini-Series
Camille (1984) TV Movie
Target (1985)
Sins (1986) TV Mini-Series
Monte Carlo (1986) TV Mini-Series
Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987) TV Mini-Series
Bonjour l'angoisse (1988)
Les Mannequins d'osier (1989)
Les 1001 Nuits (1990)
La Neige et le Feu (1991)
Cache cash (1994)

1942: Wayne Newton is born--Roanoke, Virginia.
1964: From Russia With Love released in Austria.
1961: The Daily Express comic run of Risico begins. (Ending 24 June 1961, serials 850-921.)
John McLusky, artist. Henry Gammidge, writer.

https://mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/r.php3






Danish 1967 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/tag/risico-en/




Danish 1976 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no37-1976/



Swedish 1975 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1975.php3

1995: BOND 17 main unit filming at the Nene Valley railway, Cambridgeshire, England.
1997: Hodder & Stoughton publishes Raymond Benson's first Bond novel Zero Minus Ten.

1999: Lionel Begleiter (Lionel Bart) dies at age 68--Hammersmith, London, England.
(Born 1 August 1930--Stepney, London, England.)

Obituary: Lionel Bart
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-lionel-bart-1085282.html
Tom Vallance | Monday 5 April 1999 00:02

IF HE had written only Oliver!, the composer Lionel Bart would have earned an honoured place in the history of British musicals, but he was far from a one-show wonder. His other work included shows such as Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and Maggie May, plus many pop songs including "Living Doll" (Cliff Richard's first No 1 hit), Tommy Steele's "A Handful of Songs", Anthony Newley's "Do You Mind?" and Matt Monro's "From Russia With Love".

He epitomised the start of the Sixties in Britain, which he uniquely captured in song and spirit, and he was one of the few composers to deal uncondescendingly with the working classes, transposing their life styles and vernacular to the musical stage. "Nobody tries to be la-de-da or uppity, there's a cuppa tea for all," sings the Artful Dodger to Oliver, while Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be remains a time capsule of a world in which folk talked of their "birds" and their "manor" and dreamed of being able to afford furniture that was "contempery". It was like a musical EastEnders, but far more joyous and celebratory, without the unremitting angst suffered by the inhabitants of Albert Square.

Bart also epitomised the Sixties in a less happy way - like many who flourished in that era he was seduced by sudden success into a world of drink, drugs and hedonism, squandering his money and his youth.

Bart was one of the 11 children of an East End tailor. He was born Lionel Begleiter, in 1930, and he had no formal musical training. He displayed a flair for drawing, however, which brought him at the age of 16 a scholarship to the St Martin's School of Art in London. (His bus journey, which took him each day past St Bartholomew's Hospital, inspired him to adopt Bart as his professional surname.) He worked in a silk-screen printing works and commercial art studios before an attraction to the theatre brought him work at the left-wing Unity Theatre, where he worked as a set painter. He started writing songs in response to a sign asking for musical material for one of the theatre's productions. Unable to write music, he would tap out the melody with one finger and someone else would orchestrate it.

It was a time when popular music was undergoing a drastic transformation due to the influence of such stars as Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, and Bart was one of many musicians and singers (most of them Presley-influenced) who frequented the 2 I's coffee shop in Soho, where he met the rock singer Tommy Steele. With Michael Pratt and Steele, Bart wrote Steele's first hit, "Rock with the Caveman" (1957), and later that year Bart won three Ivor Novello Awards, presented by the Songwriters Guild, for outstanding song of the year ("A Handful of Songs"), best novelty song ("Water, Water") and outstanding film score (The Tommy Steele Story).

Another habitue of the 2 I's was a cherubic youngster named Harry Webb, and when he made his first film, Serious Charge (with his new name Cliff Richard), it was Bart who provided the songs, including "Living Doll", which topped the Hit Parade for eight weeks. (Bart claimed that he wrote the song in six minutes on a Sunday morning.) The same year Bart wrote a complete musical, Wally Pone of Soho, based on Ben Jonson's Volpone, but could not get it produced, but Joan Littlewood, who had been a producer at the Unity and was now running the enterprising Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, asked him to provide the music and lyrics for a new musical written by a former convict, Frank Norman, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be.

Bart and Norman complemented each other beautifully and produced a brash, funny, unpretentious working-class musical. Blessed with a cast aptly assembled by Littlewood, including Miriam Karlin, Barbara Windsor, James Booth, Yootha Joyce, Toni Palmer and George Sewell (who was to play Bill Sykes in Oliver!), it played to packed houses and eventually moved to the Garrick Theatre in the West End, where it ran for two years. Bart's ingratiating score included an infectious (if derivative) title tune, a Presley-type rock number "Big Time" (recorded by Adam Faith) and a plaintive lament for a prostitute, "Where Do Little Birds Go?", delivered with a show-stopping guilelessness by Windsor, who credited the number with changing her life and career.

Like Norman's libretto, Bart's songs perfectly captured a time of change - of the Wolfenden Report, massage parlours replacing street-corner pick- ups; and a time when "ordinary people" had started going to Paris for the weekend instead of Southend.

Later in 1959 Bart had another success when Lock Up Your Daughters, a musical version of Henry Fielding's Rape Upon Rape, opened at the Mermaid with lyrics by Bart to Laurie Johnson's music. He had also provided songs for Tommy Steele's film Tommy the Toreador and at the end of the year won four Novello Awards - for the year's best-selling song ("Living Doll"), the outstanding score of the year (Lock Up Your Daughters), outstanding novelty song ("Little White Bull") and a special award for "outstanding personal services to British music".

Bart was now on the threshold of the biggest success of his life. Based on a much-loved Dickens novel, and Bart for the first time providing his own libretto as well as music and lyrics, Oliver! seemed far from a certain success - a dozen managements had turned it down - but its first night at the New Theatre (now the Albery) on 30 June 1960 was something that none of us present will ever forget. Of British musicals, only Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, which premiered seven years earlier, could be said to have had such a roof-raising, rapturous reception in the last half-century.

The show received 23 curtain-calls, and Bart's score was lauded next day for its richness and variety, from rousing show-stoppers like "Consider Yourself" and "I'd Do Anything" to the character songs such as Fagin's "Pick a Pocket or Two" and "Reviewing the Situation", and Nancy's "It's a Fine Life" and the torchy ballad "As Long As He Needs Me". (Bart later said that, when composing his songs, he always thought of Judy Garland singing them.) It won Novello Awards for outstanding score of the year, outstanding song of the year and best-selling song (the last two both for "As Long As He Needs Me"). Oliver! ran for 2,618 performances in London, and was a hit on Broadway where it opened in 1963 and ran for 774 performances, winning Bart a Tony Award.

Bart was said to be earning pounds 16 a minute from Oliver! in 1960 and his life style reflected his wealth. He entertained vigorously, his friends including Noel Coward, Brian Epstein, Judy Garland, Alma Cogan and Shirley Bassey, and he spent weekends in Mustique with Princess Margaret, who was later, according to Bart, to call him a "silly bugger" for mis-handling his finances. Bart himself would later place some of the blame on his upbringing. "My father gambled," he said, "and there were endless arguments about it. I hated money and had no respect for it. My attitude was to spend it as I got it."

Though there may be some truth in this, Bart's friends attest to his constantly altering the facts of his childhood and frequently taking liberties with the truth. When he was looking for a writer to help ghost his memoirs, several noted authors turned him down, one of them telling me bluntly, "He's such a liar!"

The American composer Richard Rodgers, who had not found a permanent lyricist partner since the death of Oscar Hammerstein, asked Bart to collaborate with him, but Bart refused and for his next show chose a subject close to his heart, the way East Enders coped with air-raids in World War II. Blitz! (Bart had a fondness for exclamation points in his titles) was a gargantuan production which never quite jelled (Bart directed the show) and its score was less inspired than that of Oliver!, though it had a show-stopping children's chorus, "Mums and Dads", and Bart persuaded Vera Lynn to record for the production his cod-wartime ballad "The Day After Tomorrow". Its strongest talking-point was the massive set by Sean Kenny (who had also done sterling work on Oliver!) which literally self- destructed during a bombing raid.

For his old friend Joan Littlewood, Bart next composed a title song and theme music for her film Sparrows Can't Sing (1963) starring Barbara Windsor and James Booth, and he had a hit with the title song for the James Bond film From Russia With Love (1964), recorded by Matt Monro.

Bart wrote the music and lyrics for his next stage musical, Maggie May (1964), but collaborated on the book with Harvey Orkin. Starring Rachel Roberts and Kenneth Haigh, it was a moderate success but produced no major song hits, though Judy Garland recorded four of the songs for an EP and it won the Novello Award as outstanding score of the year and the Critics' Poll as best new British musical.

Bart was by now experimenting with LSD and other drugs and was drinking heavily. By the late Seventies his drinking had brought on diabetes and by the time he managed to quit alcohol it had destroyed one-third of his liver. Much of his income was being dissipated, according to his friends, by his generosity to hangers-on and by the ease with which casual sex partners could rob him. (Though known in the profession to be gay, it was not until the Nineties that Bart described himself as "out at last".) His career reached a low point in 1965 with his musical about Robin Hood which he backed with a fortune of his own money. Twang! was a short-lived disaster and to finance it Bart had rashly sold his rights to Oliver! He later estimated that relinquishing those rights lost him over a million pounds.

In 1968 Carol Reed's film verion of Oliver! opened and was a huge success, winning several Oscars including Best Picture, plus nominations for Ron Moody (the original Fagin repeating his fine performance) and Jack Wild (as the Artful Dodger). Bart's score was kept virtually intact, and the soundtrack album was a best-seller. Columbia, the studio financing the film, had wanted an internationally known star (Peter Sellers) in the lead, but Reed and Bart fought to keep Moody. Their choice of Shirley Bassey to play Nancy was vetoed by the studio, who felt that if Bill Sykes was shown killing a black girl it could offend some audiences.

Four years after Twang! a new show by Bart was produced. Based on the Fellini film La Strada, it was staged on Broadway where it ran for only one night, though Bart never gave up on it and was working on plans for a revival at the time of his death.

He also wrote the score for a television version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Kirk Douglas (never shown in Britain) and an unproduced stage musical, Quasimodo! based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In a 1995 interview with The Independent, Bart recalled that he sent some of the script for Quasimodo! to Noel Coward, who said, "Brilliant, dear boy, but were you on drugs when you wrote it? It seems a bit abstract here and there." "I suppose it was," said Bart.

In 1972 Bart declared himself bankrupt - he had debts totalling pounds 73,000. In 1975 he was banned for a year for driving under the influence of drink, and in 1983 banned again for two years. Regarding the changes in the style of musical theatre, he told the musical historian Mark Steyn that he would never have written a through-sung musical because in my case it would be slightly pretentious. I'm not a composer, I just make tunes and sing them, and I sing harmonies, and some of my chord progressions are not logical, but often they work. For Oliver! I thought in terms of people's walks. The Oliver theme was really the Beadle's walk, a kind of dum-de-dum . . . Fagin's music was like a Jewish mother clucking away. But I don't want to get high-falutin' about it. Music is important, fair enough. But just to have some kind of drab tune fitted to even more drab dialogue seems rather pointless to me.

Though Bart's final years were unproductive (a 30-second commercial for the Abbey National Building Society was his most notable achievement of the last decade), and he could be exasperatingly demanding of his friends, he was equable about his change in fortunes - he once had homes in London, New York, Malibu and Tangiers but had been living in a small flat in Acton. Cameron Mackintosh, who successfully revived Oliver! at the London Palladium in 1994 and gave him a percentage of the profits, said,

Of all the people I know in this business who have had ups and downs, Lionel is the least bitter man I have ever come across. He regrets it but, considering that everyone else has made millions out of his creations, he's never been sour, never been vindictive.

Andrew Lloyd Webber said, "Lionel's genius has in my view never been fully recognised by the British establishment. The loss to British musical theatre caused by his untimely death is incalculable."

Tom Vallance

Lionel Begleiter (Lionel Bart), composer, lyricist and playwright: born London 1 August 1930; died London 3 April 1999.

2015: Robert Rietty dies at age 92: London, England. (Born 8 February 1923--London, England.)

RichardTheBruce

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Revelator

RichardTheBruce wrote: »

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Shouldn't that go in the Bond 25 title thread?