On This Day

RichardTheBruce

October 13th

1923: Cyril Leonard Shaps is born--London, England.
(He dies 1 January 2003 at age 79--London, England.)

Cyril Shaps (1923–2003)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0788670/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Actor

The son of a tailor, Cyril studied at the London School of Broadcasting aged 12 years. His first professional appearance, at 12, came on Radio Lyons and Radio Luxembourg in such commercials as O.K. Sauce and Quaker Oats. After demob from the Army, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art which was followed by Guildford rep and the West End. He worked in Hollywood for two years with Radio Netherland as English announcer,scriptwriter and producer of programmes. Then came BBC Radio Drama Rep. for two years (1952 - 54). Cyril, whose forebearers were Polish, was the father of three children, Michael, Simon and Sarah.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary P. Rose

1960: Richard Sammel is born--Heidelberg, Germany.
1968: EON announce Diana Rigg as the lead female role of Teresa di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

1972: Live and Let Die films a boat chase on the Irish Bayou, Louisiana.

1997: Sony Pictures Entertainment Company and partner Kevin McClory announce their plan to remake Thunderball. Again. Rumored title: Warhead 2000.

2008: Benjamin Pratt's book Ian Fleming's Seven Deadlier Sins & 007's Moral Compass published in paperback.

2009: Sir Ken Adam appears on In Conversation with Shumon Basar.

ADAM, Sir Ken
'In Conversation' with Sir Ken Adam

https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1163

Series:
Date: Tuesday 13 October 2009
Time: 15:01
Venue:
Running time: 71 mins

Sir Ken Adam is one of the most important production designers of the 20th century. In this illustrated conversation with AACP Director Shumon Basar, Adam will discuss highlights from an extraordinary career stretching back over 60 years: the transition from architecture to film, the origins of his iconic James Bond sets and the unique relationship he developed with legendary director Stanley Kubrick.

Sir Ken Adam (b. 1921) originally trained in architecture and interior design. In 1962 he designed the first James Bond film, Dr No, and six subsequent Bonds until Moonraker in 1979. Adam’s design for the war room in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1962) became an icon of Cold War paranoia, and his minutely detailed period sets for Barry Lyndon (1974) and The Madness of King George (1994) both earned him Academy Awards.

All lectures are open to members of the public, staff and students unless otherwise stated.

RichardTheBruce

October 14th

1927: Roger Moore is born--Stockwell, London.
(He dies 23 May 2017 at age 89--Crans-Montana, Mollens, Valais, Switzerland.)

Roger Moore: A Matter of Class, Biography, 1995.

Roger Moore (I) (1927–2017)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000549/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Actor (97 credits)

Astrid Silverlock (filming) - Narrator (voice)
Troll Hunters (filming) - Leif (voice)
2017 The Saint (TV Movie) - Jasper
2016/I The Carer - Roger Moore
2015 GivingTales (Video Game)
Narrator - The Princess and the Pea; The Steadfast Tin Soldier (voice, as Sir Roger Moore)
2014 The Life of Rock with Brian Pern (TV Series) - Sir Roger Moore
- The Day of the Triffids (2014) ... Sir Roger Moore (as Sir Roger Moore)
2013 Incompatibles - Roger Moore
2011 A Princess for Christmas (TV Movie) - Edward Duke of Castlebury
2011 The Lighter (Short) - George Boreman (voice)
2010 Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore - Tab Lazenby (voice)

2009 De vilde svaner - Archbishop (voice)
2008 Agent Crush - Burt Gasket (voice)
2005 Foley & McColl: This Way Up (TV Short) - Butler (as Sir Roger Moore)
2005 Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie (Video) - January Q. Irontail (voice)
2004 The Fly Who Loved Me (Short) - Father Christmas (voice, as Sir Roger Moore)
2002 Boat Trip - Lloyd Faversham
2002 Tatort (TV Series) - Celebrity actor
- Schatten (2002) ... Celebrity actor
2002 On Our Own Vesna - Roger Moore
2002 Alias (TV Series) - Edward Poole
- The Prophecy (2002) ... Edward Poole
2001 The Enemy - Supt. Robert Ogilvie

1999 The Dream Team (TV Series) - Desmond Heath
- El Conquistador (1999) ... Desmond Heath
- Diplomatic Immunity (1999) ... Desmond Heath
- Merchant of Death (1999) ... Desmond Heath
- The Team (1999) ... Desmond Heath
1997 Spice World - Chief
1997 The Saint - Car Radio Announcer (voice)
1996 The Quest - Lord Edgar Dobbs
1994 The Man Who Wouldn't Die (TV Movie) - Thomas Grace / Inspector Fulbright
1993 Stakka Bo: Living It Up (Video short)
1991 Bed & Breakfast - Adam
1990 Bullseye! - Gerald Bradley-Smith / Sir John Bavistock
1990 Fire, Ice & Dynamite - Sir George

1987 The Magic Snowman - Lumi Ukko, the Snowman (voice)
1985 A View to a Kill - James Bond
1984 The Naked Face - Dr. Judd Stevens
1983 Curse of the Pink Panther - Chief Insp. Jacques Clouseau (as Turk Thrust II)
1983 Octopussy - James Bond
1981 For Your Eyes Only - Ian Fleming's James Bond 007
1981 The Cannonball Run - Seymour
1980 Sunday Lovers - Harry Lindon (segment "An Englishman's Home")
1980 The Sea Wolves - Captain Gavin Stewart
1980 ffolkes - Ffolkes

1979 Moonraker - James Bond
1979 Escape to Athena - Major Otto Hecht
1978 The Wild Geese - Lt. Shawn Fynn
1977-1978 Laugh-In (TV Series) - Guest Performer
- Episode #1.6 (1978) ... Guest Performer
- Episode #1.4 (1977) ... Guest Performer
- Episode #1.3 (1977) ... Guest Performer
- Episode #1.2 (1977) ... Guest Performer
1977 The Spy Who Loved Me - James Bond
1976 Sherlock Holmes in New York (TV Movie) - Sherlock Holmes
1976 Shout at the Devil - Sebastian Oldsmith
1976 Street People - Ulisse
1975 That Lucky Touch - Michael Scott
1974 The Man with the Golden Gun - James Bond
1974 Gold - Rod Slater
1973 Live and Let Die - James Bond
1971-1972 The Persuaders! (TV Series)
Lord Brett Sinclair / The General / The Admiral / ...
- Read and Destroy (1972) ... Lord Brett Sinclair
- Nuisance Value (1972) ... Lord Brett Sinclair
- A Death in the Family (1972) ... Lord Brett Sinclair / The General / The Admiral / ...
- Element of Risk (1971) ... Lord Brett Sinclair
- The Ozerov Inheritance (1971) ... Lord Brett Sinclair
... 24 episodes
1970 The Man Who Haunted Himself - Pelham
1969-1970 Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (TV Series) - Guest Performer
- Episode #3.16 (1970) ... Guest Performer (uncredited)
- Episode #3.13 (1969) ... Guest Performer (uncredited)

1969 Crossplot - Gary Fenn
1962-1969 The Saint (TV Series) - Simon Templar
- The World Beater (1969) ... Simon Templar
- Portrait of Brenda (1969) ... Simon Templar
- The Man Who Gambled with Life (1969) ... Simon Templar
- The Ex-King of Diamonds (1969) ... Simon Templar
- Vendetta for the Saint: Part 2 (1969) ... Simon Templar
...118 episodes
1969 Vendetta for the Saint - Simon Templar
1968 The Fiction-Makers - The Saint
1965 The Trials of O'Brien (TV Series) - Roger Taney
- What Can Go Wrong (1965) ... Roger Taney
1962 No Man's Land - Enzo Prati
1961 Romulus and the Sabines - Romulus
1961 The Roaring 20's (TV Series) - 14 Karat John
- Right Off the Boat: Part 2 (1961) ... 14 Karat John
- Right Off the Boat: Part 1 (1961) ... 14 Karat John
1959-1961 Maverick (TV Series) - Beauregarde Maverick / John Vandergelt
- Red Dog (1961) ... Beauregarde Maverick
- Flood's Folly (1961) ... Beauregarde Maverick
- Diamond Flush (1961) ... Beauregarde Maverick
- Dutchman's Gold (1961) ... Beauregarde Maverick
- The Cactus Switch (1961) ... Beauregarde Maverick
...
1959-1961 77 Sunset Strip (TV Series)
Roger Moore / Radio Announcer
- Tiger by the Tail (1961) ... Roger Moore
- Vacation with Pay (1959) ... Radio Announcer (voice, uncredited)
1961 Gold of the Seven Saints
Shaun Garrett
1961 The Sins of Rachel Cade - Paul Wilton
1959-1960 The Alaskans (TV Series) - Silky Harris
- The Devil Made Fire (1960) ... Silky Harris
- The Ballad of Whitehorse (1960) ... Silky Harris
- White Vengeance (1960) ... Silky Harris
- Sign of the Kodiak (1960) ... Silky Harris
- Calico (1960) ... Silky Harris
...

1959 The Miracle - Captain Michael Stuart
1959 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series) - Inspector Benson
- The Avon Emeralds (1959) ... Inspector Benson
1959 The Third Man (TV Series) - Jimmy Simms
- The Angry Young Man (1959) ... Jimmy Simms
1958-1959 Ivanhoe (TV Series) - Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe / Trumper
- The Devil's Dungeon (1959) ... Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe
- The Circus (1958) ... Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe
- The Fledgling (1958) ... Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe
- The Princess (1958) ... Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe
- The Swindler (1958) ... Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe
Show all 39 episodes
1957 Matinee Theatre (TV Series) - Old Man / Randolph Churchill
- Avenging of Anne Leete (1957) ... Old Man
- The Remarkable Mr. Jerome (1957) ... Randolph Churchill
- The Importance of Being Earnest (1957)
1957 Lux Video Theatre (TV Series) - Gavin
- The Taggart Light (1957) ... Gavin
1957 Assignment Foreign Legion (TV Series) - Legionnaire Paul Harding
- The Richest Man in the Legion (1957) ... Legionnaire Paul Harding
1956 Goodyear Playhouse (TV Series) - Patrick Simmons
- A Murder Is Announced (1956) ... Patrick Simmons
1956 Ford Star Jubilee (TV Series) - Billy Mitchell
- This Happy Breed (1956) ... Billy Mitchell
1956 Diane - Prince Henri
1955 The King's Thief - Jack
1955 Interrupted Melody
Cyril Lawrence
1954 The Last Time I Saw Paris - Paul
1954 The Motorola Television Hour (TV Series)
- Black Chiffon (1954)
1953 Black Chiffon (TV Movie)
1953 Julius Caesar (TV Movie)
1953 The Clay of Kings (TV Movie) - Josiah Wedgwood
1953 Robert Montgomery Presents (TV Series) - French Diplomat
- The Wind Cannot Read (1953)
- World by the Tail (1953) ... French Diplomat
1951 Honeymoon Deferred - Ornithologist on a Train (uncredited)
1951 One Wild Oat - Man Watching Elevator Repair (uncredited)
1950 Drawing-Room Detective (TV Movie)

1949 The Interrupted Journey - Soldier in Paddington Café (uncredited)
1949 The Gay Lady - Stage Door Johnny (uncredited)
1949 Paper Orchid - Bit Part
1949 A House in the Square (TV Movie) - John Anstruther
1949 The Governess (TV Movie) - Bob Drew
1946 Piccadilly Incident - Guest Sitting at Pearson's Table (uncredited)
1946 Showtime - Member of the Audience (uncredited)
1945 Caesar and Cleopatra - Roman Soldier (uncredited)
1945 Vacation from Marriage - Soldier (uncredited)

Miscellaneous Crew (2 credits)
2017 And the Winner Isn't (Documentary) (additional filming)
1971-1972 The Persuaders! (TV Series) (clothes - 24 episodes)
- Read and Destroy (1972) ... (clothes: Lord Sinclair)
- Nuisance Value (1972) ... (clothes: Lord Sinclair)
- A Death in the Family (1972) ... (clothes: Lord Sinclair)
- Element of Risk (1971) ... (clothes: Lord Sinclair)
- The Ozerov Inheritance (1971) ... (clothes: Lord Sinclair)
...

Producer (12 credits)
2017 The Saint (TV Movie) (co-producer)
1994 The Man Who Wouldn't Die (TV Movie) (executive producer)
1991 Bed & Breakfast (producer - uncredited)
1987 CBS Summer Playhouse (TV Series) (co-producer - 1 episode)
- The Saint in Manhattan (1987) ... (co-producer - uncredited)
1978 Return of the Saint (TV Series) (producer - uncredited)
1975 Hugo the Hippo (executive producer - uncredited)
1973 Night Watch (executive producer - uncredited)
1973 A Touch of Class (executive producer - uncredited)
1971 The Persuaders! (TV Series) (co-producer - 1 episode)
- Overture (1971) ... (co-producer - uncredited)
1969 Crossplot (co-producer - uncredited)
1969 The Saint (TV Series) (co-producer - 1 episode)
- Vendetta for the Saint: Part 1 (1969) ... (co-producer - uncredited)
1968 The Fiction-Makers (co-producer - uncredited)

Director (2 credits)
1971 The Persuaders! (TV Series) (2 episodes)
- The Long Goodbye (1971) ... (directed by)
- The Time and the Place (1971) ... (directed by)
1964-1968 The Saint (TV Series) (9 episodes)
- Where the Money Is (1968)
- Invitation to Danger (1968)
- Escape Route (1966)
- The House on Dragon's Rock (1966)
- The Old Treasure Story (1965)

Soundtrack (2 credits)

1980 The Muppet Show (TV Series) (performer - 1 episode)
- Roger Moore (1980) ... (performer: "Talk to the Animals" - uncredited)
1971 The Persuaders! (TV Series) (performer - 1 episode)
- Greensleeves (1971) ... (performer: "Greensleeves" - uncredited)

Writer (1 credit)

1962 The Saint (TV Series) (uncredited)

1959: Ian Fleming writes Ivar Bryce about Kevin McClory with budget concerns.

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.

With the financial aspects of the production under such serious
discussion, once again Fleming raised doubts over McClory. Not his
inexperience this time, but whether he would be able to keep proper rein on
the budget. He wrote Bryce 14 October: "There's a great difference between
the sorf of Bobo Commando (meaning McClory) that has been running
hitherto and the hard working, professional units like the Boulting Brothers
and such like who get down to work on tight schedules and simply have to
stick to their budget. I think such a unit might be got together under Kevin,
but I regard it as absolutely essential that you should sit over his head
be prepared to command the team."

For some time now Fleming had grown concerned about his friend
ploughing money into a film whose script hadn't even been written yet, and
that he really ought to take a tougher stance. "You will have to be a fairly firm
hand on top of the whole thing and not just a horn of plenty paying the bills."

Again, McClory saw this kind of intervention as Fleming "obviously using
his influence upon Bryce, my co-partner, gradually to edge me out of the
projected company and the partnership."

1971: De Rusia Con Amour re-released in Argentina.

1975: James Bond comic strip Till Death Do Us Apart ends its run in The Daily Express.
(Started 7 July 1975 - October 14, 1975 2898-2983) Yaroslav Horak, artist. Jim Lawrence, writer.

https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/tddup.php3




http://www.impulsegamer.com/james-bond-omnibus-005-review/


Swedish Semic Comic 1977
https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1977.php3

Kontraspionaget Slår Till: Intrig På Balkan!
(Till Death Do Us Part)

Danish 1978 https://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no45-1978/

James Bond Agent 007 no. 45: “Till Death Do Us Part” (1978)
"Ballade på Balkan" [Trouble in the Balkan]

1980: Ben Whishaw is born--Clifton, Bedfordshire, England.

1997: Studio head John Calley announces that Sony Pictures Entertainment division, Columbia Pictures, plans its own James Bond motion picture franchise using Kevin McClory's rights to film Thunderball. They plan a 1999 release date, McClory producing.

2005: Official announcement introduces Daniel Craig as the sixth actor to play Bond for EON at naval training facility HMS President on the Thames.

Craig crowned as new James Bond

See the complete article here:

https://www.screendaily.com/craig-crowned-as-new-james-bond/4024739.article

By Robert Mitchell13 October 2005 [Event happened on the 14th]

After taking $3.6bn worldwide, 43 years, 20 films, 58 girls and 18 Martinis, James Bond has a sixth face - English actor Daniel Craig.

The 37-year-oldactor was officially announced as the new James Bond today at a London news conference held at HMS President, a naval training facility, on the River Thames.

Craig arrived at the venue on a speedboat. "it's a huge challenge and life is about challenges. It's an iconic figure in movie history and these things don't come along very often," he said.

Craig will take on the world famous role in Casino Royale, due for worldwide release through Sony Pictures from November 2006. The film is based on author Ian Fleming's first Bond title, the only Bond book never adapted by producer Cubby Broccoli and the first film since 1987's The Living Daylights to be based on work originated by Fleming.

Only the second English Bond (after Roger Moore, the actor who remained in the role longest with seven official films) Craig has been building his international profile with lead supporting roles in films such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Road To Perdition (2002). He will also be seen in Steven Spielberg's Munich at the end of this year. He has also seen critical acclaim in recent years from a variety of leads in British films including The Mother, Sylvia, Enduring Love and Layer Cake.

Director Martin Campbell will return to the Bond helm with Casino Royale for the first time since introducing Pierce Brosnan to the role with 1995's Goldeneye. [sic]

2009: Entertainment Weekly ranks James Bond #1 of ”The 20 All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture” claiming “Without 007, the action-hero genre as we know it would not exist.”

2012: "Skyfall" rises to #2 on the UK Singles Chart, tying "A View to a Kill" by Duran Duran for Bond theme success.
2019: Tristan Rutherford writes about "007 on the Silver Meteor" in The Daily Telegraph.

Rutherford & Tomasetti Travel Writers

007 on the Silver Meteor, by Tristan Rutherford

See the complete article here:

https://www.rutherfordtomasetti.com/james-bond-silver-meteor-telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/rail-journeys/new-york-to-miami-silver-meteor/

Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/October/getty-new-york.jpg?imwidth=1400
New York is the starting point of the iconic Silver Meteor train Credit: Getty

In 1943 an Allied conference was planned in Kingston, Jamaica to assuage Nazi U-boat threats to the Caribbean. In attendance was Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Ian Fleming. The trip so inspired Fleming that the ‘Train Of Tomorrow’ that carried him from New York to the Jamaica-bound aircraft in Florida featured in several Bond novels: the Silver Meteor.

Fleming would still recognise the gunmetal grey leviathan. Like an endless airstream, today’s Silver Meteor is taller, broader, longer and stronger than any European train. Its double-diesels hum in readiness to thwack the 1,389 miles down to the Miami sun. The 28-hour route allows for holiday stops in 33 cities across 11 states. My wife and I booked with Great Rail Journeys - but tickets for Bond and escaping siren Solitaire were sorted by Felix Leiter: “Pennsylvania Station. Track 14. Very luxurious. Car 245. Compartment H. Ticket’ll be in the name of Mr and Mrs Bryce.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/October/silver-meteor.jpg?imwidth=1240
The Silver Meteor is celebrating 80 years in service Credit: Getty

Our Silver Meteor sways out of New York’s Penn Station like a dancing heavyweight. Skyscrapers are obscured by cloud. Interstates ribbon like ticker tape. We charge through a backdrop of Americana with a pummelling gait. Baseball diamonds. School buses. Marshalling yards (“Freight Can’t Wait”). Junk crushers (“New York Collision Center”). There’s Republican and Democrat. Anti-Trump signs and stars’n’stripes. Clapperboard houses and lonely ghettos. Black and white. Rich and poor. The train bolts undescrimatingly through it all.

Every 10 miles brings the continent a day forward: there’s more sunshades and less jackets as we plough relentlessly south. A pageant of boats paddle in the Susquehanna River after Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Atlantic-going yachts ply the lakes near Wilmington, Delaware. Fortunately Amtrak’s Viewliner bedrooms offer panoramic windows. Plus ensuite showers, a double-bed day sofa and another single that unfolds from the roof.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/October/GettyImages-514391113.jpg?imwidth=1240
The Susquehanna river is visible from the train's panoramic windows Credit: Getty

Our cabin attendant introduces herself and unclips the swing-out armchair. “There’s coffee and apple juice in the hall, y’all.” The dining car forms a glass frame around a green and pleasant Maryland. The glorious thing is that the Silver Meteor’s route is far lengthier than board-at-night, disembark-at-dawn European sleepers. That means we have hours to tuck in.

Better still, cabin passengers like us eat for free. There's black angus steak grilled under a flat iron. A Norwegian salmon with rice pilaf. Sadly all is served with plastic forks on plastic plates. Boldly named portraits of other Amtrak greats line the dining car, summoning a bygone era of railroad style (The Southwest Chief to Albuquerque and Flagstaff; The Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle).

Outside street signs spotlight the quickening night. “We Pay Cash”. “Kennys Gym”. “Mason-Dixon Line.” Sunset ushers last drinks. In a 1955 postcard of theSilver Meteor the lounge complement is all caucasion, barring an African-American waiter. Now an entire continent offers reasons to railroad along the Eastern Seaboard. There’s the lady from Wilmington with airplane phobia. The family decamping to Jacksonville with 50kg of luggage - each. Plus a Mormon couple on a proselytising mission south. Two single travellers, of differing race and sex, mix over $16.50 half-bottles of Californian Merlot.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/October/212615972_Getty Images Contributor_USA Washington Union Station.jpg?imwidth=1240
Menu in the Silver Meteor's dining car Credit: Getty

Yet outside a blood red sky reflects into the Potomac River at Washington, DC. This ring of fire encircles the Capitol Building, home of the US Congress, as if its divisive politics seethe from within. During the 20-minute stretch-your-legs stop at DC’s beaux-arts Union Station it’s tempting to stroll to the National Mall. Equally alluring are the crisp sheets of our freshly made double bed, towards Richmond, Virginia - where a cigarette break is scheduled in Philip Morris country.

Now the Silver Meteor snorts and fumes like a mustang. The sleeping cars buck and rattle with an untamed fury that would put a Deutsche Bahn techniker off his bratwurst. The water in our washbasin swings like the Bay of Biscay. We need earplugs too. But the thumping rattle rings with the vivid dreams of a thousand other occupants as we gun past Selma, Fayetteville and into the Deep South. Like 007, aboard the fictionalised Silver Phantom in Live and Let Die, we sleep deeply: “The great train snaked on through the dark...the long shaft of its single searchlight ripping the black calico of the night.”

Service at the brand new Amtrak terminus at Charleston, South Carolina, is suffused by languorous Deep South fug. It’s one of two stops we’ve planned enroute to Miami. Speech here is slower. Highfalutin’ manners and blasphemous cusses are best left in New York. Grammar at our breakfast diner is questionable: “Employees Must “Wash Hands” Before Returning To Work”. But our breakfast of chicken and waffles and coffee-rubbed bacon, served by the team of Leslee, Bree, Raquel and Cheree, is a Southern classic.

Named after Charles II of England, this Atlantic city is one of America’s oldest and most gorgeous. A House Museums tour with the Historic Charleston Foundation showcases preserved anglo-tropical mansions - alongside garden yields that include a pipe from Cornwall, a plate from the Potteries and a 6-pound cannonball from the Royal Navy. Among the finest pre-Civil War mansions is the Aiken-Rhett House, former home of William Aiken Jr, a Governor of South Carolina. His papa, William Aiken, laid the city’s wealthy foundations by building America’s first steam powered, scheduled passenger train here in 1833. Although like much else the Charleston track was built using slave labour; between one-half and two-thirds of African slaves entered the United States via Charleston’s port.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/October/charleston-church.jpg?imwidth=1240
Charleston Credit: Getty

The following morning early birds commute one state south to Savannah, Georgia. The Silver Meteor’s café car - as opposed to the ritzy sleeper diner - is burnt coffee and blue collar. Outside a glorious sunrise highlights a Kalahari safari of ochre sand ripening to emerald forest. From Savannah’s art deco station the city looks pretty from the taxi window. “That’s ‘cause it’s the only place that General Sherman don't burn,” says the driver. Although the Civil War ended over 150 years ago, resentment burns hotter than the Deep South sun.

Yet Savannah is another dazzling showcase of Southern charm. Drooping oaks that recall British royals and French Huguenots form a guard of honour over every piazza. Other trees planted for seasonal scents - sweet gum, magnolia, crepe myrtle - promise a revolving carousel of tropical bloom. One restaurant warns: “Kitchen Closes One Hour Before, Folks!” Another: “My Oh My, We Got Key Lime Pie!” Lunch is a $10 blowout of clam chowder and snow crab. On sultry afternoons Christian sects promise salvation from stone benches studded with oyster shells. Each one is shaded by Spanish moss and palmettos. It’s a fine place to be a Jehovah’s Witness.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/October/GettyImages-549099011.jpg?imwidth=1240
Savannah: a dazzling showcase of Southern charm Credit: Getty

Riding a sleeping car by day is an uproarious treat. We take in our final state of Florida - advertised in vintage Silver Meteor posters by orange orchards and pink flamingos - from the comfort of a bed on wheels. Our attendant confirms a cheeky sleeper is a popular treat for business people. “They can sleep off work while avoiding them crowds, sir.” Yet unlike the latest trains in continental Europe, Amtrak offers no push-button waiter service nor at-seat movies. Our attendant is shocked that Italy’s two largest cities are connected by train quicker, and faster, than by air. The speed on Amtrak’s flagship route from New York to Boston averages 68mph. In China, Beijing to Shanghai tops 200mph. The Silver Meteor is a comely cruise through the American soul, not a rocketship to the stars.

James Bond was in a hurry at Jacksonville, our next station stop. After cheating Mr Big in Live and Let Die he rejoined the train for views of swampy lakes and - had he been travelling today - Orlando for Walt Disney World, Tampa for St Petersburg and Winter Haven for Legoland. Then a cross-state saunter through an urban jungle of swimming pools and shopping malls: “Dental Excellence”. “Worship Center”. “Do Not Feed The Alligators.” We arrive in Miami on time. In place of historical legacy, there’s galleries, rollercoasters, Cuban sandwiches and golden sands. Indeed before theSilver Meteor arrived in 1939 Florida’s population was under two million. Now it’s 22 million. It’s neither North nor South, just a sunny state of mind.

Fleming rode the Silver Meteor a final time in 1953. However by then there were BOAC flights from London to Jamaica on the Boeing Stratocruiser via Lisbon, the Azores and Bermuda.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2019/September/miami-beach.jpg?imwidth=1240
The final destination: sunny Miami Credit: Getty

Now it’s far quicker and cheaper to fly across the USA, but the train still unites a disparate, welcoming and intensely vast nation. Furthermore, Bond remained a fan. After outwitting Auric Goldfinger at a Miami Hotel in his 1959 novel, 007 railroaded north. “Book me a compartment on the Silver Meteor to New York tonight. Have a bottle of vintage champagne on ice in the compartment and plenty of caviar sandwiches.” Make it a Taittinger, James.

How to do it
Train journey expert GRJ Independent (01904 734486; greatrail.com/grj-independent) offers New York-Miami Silver Meteor sleeping tickets for £605pp, based on two sharing and including a stay at Moxy NYC Times Square and the Hyatt Regency Miami.  BA (0844 493 0787; ba.com) runs open-jaw returns from London to New York, returning via Miami, from £298pp.

For a grander trip, Great Rail Journeys (01904 527180; greatrail.com) operates a 20-day coast-to-coast tour from £4,395pp including a New York harbour cruise, Amtrak rides on the Capitol Limited and California Zephyr, and Durango and Silverton heritage railways.

Virgin Trains is coming to America
It may come as a surprise to train travellers in Britain, but Floridians have cause to be excited about Virgin Trains. The firm led by Sir Richard Branson, currently the country’s only private intercity rail operator, is expanding its current route from Miami to West Palm Beach. By 2022 some 170 miles (274km) of new track will lead to Orlando.

When completed, the line’s trains will whizz along the Florida seaside at 125mph. That’s not all. Next year Virgin Trains USA will begin construction of a track that will connect Los Angeles with Las Vegas. The duration? As little as 75 minutes. It could be operational by 2023.


Tristan Rutherford writes about great train journeys for The Daily Telegraph
https://www.rutherfordtomasetti.com/travel-journalist-global-tourism

RichardTheBruce

October 15th

1955: Victoria Leigh Blum (Tanya Roberts) is born--The Bronx, New York City, New York.

1964: Kinematograph Weekly (an early doubter of Bond, later reporting on the success of From Russia With Love) reports "staggering figures" for Goldfinger's box office.
1967: Götz Otto is born--Dietzenbach, Hesse, Germany.

1975: Bond comic strip The Torch-Time Affair begins its run in The Daily Express. (Ends 15 January 1976. 2984-3060.)
Yaroslav Horak, artist. Jim Lawrence, writer.

https://spyguysandgals.com/sgLookupComicStrip.aspx?id=1016


Swedish Semic Comic 1977 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1977.php3

En Enkel, Acapulco!
(The Torch-Time Affair)

Danish 1979 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no47-1979/

James Bond Agent 007 no. 47: “The Torch-Time Affair” (1979)
"En enkelt Acapulco"
[One-way to Acapulco]

1978: The Los Angeles Times reports Albert R. Broccoli confirming NASA's assistance with research and script approval for Moonraker.

1982: Octopussy films OO9's arrival at the British Embassy.
1984: A View To A Kill films Stacy getting fired by Mr. Howe and OO7 dropping the F-bomb.

Deleted scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIRxhoUbW_Q

1987: 007: Su nombre es peligro (007: His Name is Danger) released in Peru.

2005: Rik Van Nutter dies at age 76--West Palm Beach, Florida.
(Born 1 May 1929--Los Angeles, California.)

Rik Van Nutter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rik_Van_Nutter
Born: Frederick Allen Nutter - May 1, 1929 - Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Died: October 15, 2005 (aged 76) - West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.

Nationality American
Years active 1959-1979
Spouse(s) Anita Ekberg (1963-1975)

Rik Van Nutter (May 1, 1929 – October 15, 2005) was an American actor who appeared in many minor films and the James Bond picture Thunderball.

Career

He is best known for playing the third version of Felix Leiter in the James Bond film Thunderball (1965). He also had a role alongside Peter Ustinov in Romanoff and Juliet (1968), and his later films included Foxbat (1977) with Henry Silva and Vonetta McGee and the Jim Brown WW2 adventure Pacific Inferno (1979).

Personal life
Van Nutter was married to film actress Anita Ekberg from 1963 until 1975. They lived in Spain and Switzerland and started a shipping business together.

Death
Van Nutter died on October 15, 2005 at the age of 76.

Rik Van Nutter (1929–2005)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0887607/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Actor (14 credits)

1979 Pacific Inferno - Dennis
1977 Foxbat - Crays

1968 A Stroke of 1000 Millions - Fraser
1967 Joe l'implacabile - 'Dynamite Joe' Ford
1965 Thunderball - Felix Leiter
1965 Seven Hours of Gunfire - Buffalo Bill Cody (as Clyde Rogers)
1965 The Revenge of Ivanhoe - Ivanhoe (as Clyde Rogers)
1962 Tharus figlio di Attila - Oto
1961 A noi piace freddo...! - German Officer
1961 Romanoff and Juliet - Freddie (as Rik Von Nutter)
1960 The Passionate Thief (as Rik Von Nutter)
1960 Assignment: Outer Space - Ray Peterson (IZ41) (as Rik Von Nutter)

1959 Guardatele ma non toccatele - Charlie (as Rick Van Nutter)
1959 Uncle Was a Vampire - Victor (uncredited)

Writer (1 credit)

1971 Casting Call (as Clyde Rogers)

Self (1 credit)

1965 Thunderball: James Bond Follows Beatles in Filming in the Bahamas (Documentary short)

2005: From Russia With Love video game published by Electronic Arts in the US for PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, and PlayStation Portable.

From Russia with Love (2005 Video Game)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455566/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

This game follows the storyline of the novel and 1963 movie, with adding in new scenes to make the game more action-oriented, as well as changing the affiliation of the main villains.

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)
Bruce Feirstein
Ian Fleming ... (novel)
Nuno Miranda ... (translation and adaptation)

Cast (in credits order)
Sean Connery ... James Bond (voice) (as Sir Sean Connery)
Natasha Bedingfield Natasha Bedingfield ... Elisabeth Stark (voice)
JB Blanc ... Kerim Bey / Additional Voices (voice)
Brian McCole ... Red Grant / Additional Voices (voice)
Maria Menounos ... Eva Adara (voice)
Phil Proctor ... Q / Bartender / Party Guests (voice)
Peter Renaday ... M / Party Guests (voice)
Karly Rothenberg ... Rosa Klebb / Miss Moneypenny / Party Guests (voice)
Kari Wahlgren ... Tatiana / Additional Voices (voice)
Gabriel Alaverdashvili ... Additional Voices (voice)
Steve Blum ... International Thugs (voice) (as Steven Jay Blum)
Dimitri Diatchenko ... Additional Voices (voice)
Grant George ... Various Russian Henchmen (voice)
Leslie Hedger ... Additional Voices (voice)
David Anthony Pizzuto ... Octopus Commando / Radio Voice (voice)
Dorota Puzio ... Additional Voices (voice)
Lloyd Sherr ... Additional Voices (voice)
André Sogliuzzo ... Additional Voices (voice)
Sylvio Sumavaski Sylvio Sumavaski ... Additional Voices (voice)
Jim Ward ... Additional Voices (voice) (as James Kevin Ward)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Pedro Armendáriz ... Kerim Bey (archive footage) (as Pedro Armendariz)
Fred Haggerty ... Krilencu (archive footage)
Bernard Lee ... M (Vice Admiral Sir Miles Messervy KCMG) (archive footage)
Lotte Lenya ... Rosa Klebb (archive footage)
Desmond Llewelyn ... Q (archive footage)
Kimani Ray Smith ... James Bond
Joseph Wiseman ... Dr. No (archive footage)
Paul Lazenby ... Various (uncredited)
Bob Simmons ... James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (archive footage) (uncredited)

2017: Pinewood Studios designates The Roger Moore Stage in honor of the late Bond actor.

Roger Moore stage opened at Pinewood Studios

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41641574
16 October 2017


Sir Roger had had his own office at Pinewood since 1970 [??]

A soundstage named after the late Sir Roger Moore has been opened by the Countess of Wessex at Pinewood Studios.

Dame Joan Collins, Sir Michael Caine and Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli were among the attendees at Sunday's private event.

Lady Moore and the star's three children paid an emotional tribute, saying how proud Sir Roger would be.

Sir Roger, who played secret agent James Bond in seven films, died from cancer in May at the age of 89.

It would have been his 90th birthday on Saturday.

Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli were among the speakers at the celebration

Other guests included Stephen Fry, Sir Tim Rice, Stefanie Powers and David Walliams, representing Unicef.

Sir Roger acted in more than 40 productions at Pinewood in Buckinghamshire and also had an office there.

Sir Michael Caine, Sir Tim Rice, Dame Joan Collins and David Walliams were also present

Moore's Bond movies

Live and Let Die (1973)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Moonraker (1979)
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Octopussy (1983)
A View to a Kill (1985)

RichardTheBruce

October 16th

1924: Alan Hume is born--London, England.
(He dies 13 July 2010 at age 85--Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England.)

Alan Hume: Cinematographer who
switched between James Bond and the
Carry On films

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/alan-hume-cinematographer-who-switched-between-james-bond-and-the-carry-on-films-2104788.html

Anthony Hayward | Wednesday 13 October 2010 00:00

In 1976, Alan Hume was standing on a snow-covered, 3,000ft-high rock on Baffin Island, north of Canada. As the second-unit director of photography on the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), he had to capture the breathtaking, pre-title, ski-jump sequence.

For three weeks, Hume and the crew lived in tents on this freezing, far-flung peninsula while they waited for the cloud to lift. When it finally did, they sprang into action, capturing the spectacular sight of 007's stunt double, Rick Sylvester, skiing over the edge and, finally, opening his Union Jack parachute. Being a one-take sequence, there were three cameras shooting the action, one of them with Hume in a helicopter.

It was an example of the dedication that this veteran of more than 100 feature films gave to his job, and it led to his becoming the fully fledged director of photography on the Bond pictures For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985). This signalled a change of gear for Hume, although he had already been earning his living as a director of photography – establishing the look of films and lighting them appropriately – for almost 20 years.

He took that role on many of the Carry On productions, whose low budgets and tight schedules – in contrast to the resources he enjoyed with the 007 pictures – taught him to work quickly. Carry On Cabby (1963) presented particular challenges. "There were a lot of close-ups in taxi cabs," recalled Hume. "When they were travelling along, I was often hanging outside the cab with the camera or fixing cameras on the front bonnet or inside looking forward. It was difficult lining the shot up and getting the actors to look as if they were driving the taxi. While driving one of the cabs, Charlie Hawtrey banged into my car in the car park and made a dent. Not only did he do that, but he knocked my scooter down as well, making a few dents in that, too."

George Alan Hume was born in Putney, south London, in 1924. His father worked on track maintenance for London Underground and found him a job in its stores on leaving school. The teenager then moved to Olympic Film Laboratories, in Acton, often picking up the daily "rushes" of film footage from Denham Studios.

When Hume heard of a vacancy for a clapper loader there, he left Olympic and found himself working on the wartime picture The First of the Few (1942), the story of the real-life Spitfire designer RJ Mitchell, directed by and starring Leslie Howard. Because there were several other people at the studios called George, he became known by his middle name, Alan.

His next film was In Which We Serve (1942), directed by David Lean and its screenwriter, Noël Coward, who also played the ship's captain in the patriotic tale of a British Second World War destroyer and its crew. Within a year, Hume had been promoted to focus puller on The Yellow Canary (1943), featuring Anna Neagle as a British wartime spy. In this capacity, he also worked on Lean's definitive version of Oliver Twist (1948).

His career was briefly interrupted when, in 1944, he was called up and joined the Fleet Air Arm, working as a photographer. On his return to Denham Studios two years later, Hume continued as a focus puller but had his first opportunity as a camera operator with the second unit working on Lean's Great Expectations (1946), notable for its stark, atmospheric, black-and-white photography.

It was another seven years before he became a fully fledged camera operator, on the comedy Our Girl Friday (1953), starring Joan Collins as a woman stuck on a Pacific island with three love-hungry men. He was soon much in demand in his new role, working on several films a year, including the black comedy The Green Man (1956), starring Alastair Sim and George Cole.

Then, in 1958, came the call from the producer-director team of Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas to shoot Carry On Sergeant, the first of the long-running comedy series featuring stars such as Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey and, from Carry On Constable (1960, the fourth in the series), Sid James.
Independent news email

Hume was camera operator on all of the first four, then graduated to director of photography on Carry On Regardless (1961) and another 15 of the 30 films, including the final one, Carry On Columbus (1992).

In between, he was director of photography on many other films, such as Return of the Jedi (1983, later retitled Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Shirley Valentine (1989), as well as 26 episodes of the television fantasy series The Avengers (1965-68).

Before his retirement in 1998, Hume spent the last few years of his career working in television, on programmes such as the Gerry Anderson-produced, live-action drama Space Precinct (1994-95), Tales from the Crypt (1996), and a feature-length version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997).

Hume, whose autobiography, A Life Through the Lens: memoirs of a film cameraman, was published in 2004, was president of the British Society of Cinematographers from 1969 to 1971. In retirement, he continued to attend Carry On and James Bond conventions and other events.

All four of his children followed him into the film industry: Lindsey, who died in a car crash in 1967, aged 21, was an assistant editor; Martin is a camera operator; Pauline is a titles designer; and Simon is a focus puller. Simon's son Lewis is a camera assistant.

George Alan Hume, cinematographer: born London 16 October 1924; married 1946 Sheila Nevard (two sons, one daughter, and one son deceased); died Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire 13 July 2010.

Alan Hume (I) (1924–2010)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0401727/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

1959: Kevin McClory praises Ian Fleming's second screen treatment for Thunderball

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.

McClory responded positively to Fleming's second treatment. "Very
exciting," he called it in a letter dated 16 October. "Although a great deal of
work has to be done on it, and I am not as yet convinced that we have the full
story, but I think this will come in the next few script conferences."

1967: Sólo se vive dos veces (We Only Live Twice) released in Spain.

1984: A View to a Kill films Zorin murdering Howe and framing OO7.

1992: Vladek Sheybal dies at age 69--London, England.
(Born 12 March 1923--Zgierz, Lódzkie, Poland.)

Vladek Sheybal Online

https://www.vladeksheybal.com/

In 1963, Vladek was offered a small part in the second James Bond film
From Russia With Love but was reluctant to take the part and turned
it down. Eventually he was persuaded by Sean Connery (who was by now
a close friend) to take the role of the villainous chess master "Kronsteen."
Vladek played the part as usual, to perfection; creating a character so
elegantly arrogant that "Kronsteen" is one of the more memorable
Bond villains of the genre to date.

Here is an interview with Vladek Sheybal which originally appeared in issue #8 (December 1992) of FAB, the magazine produced by the official Gerry Anderson fan club Fanderson. This interview was conducted by Tim Mallett and Glenn Pearce, and is reproduced here with permission from Fanderson.
https://ufoseries.com/magazines/fab08.html

THE FAB INTERVIEW
VLADEK SHEYBAL
UFO - DOCTOR DOUG JACKSON

Wladislaw Sheybal was born in March 1923, into a Catholic family at Zgierz, near Lodz in Poland, the son of a university professor. Imprisoned in a concentration camp during the war, Sheybal escaped only to be captured and to escape once again. During each spell in prison, he was forced to face a mock execution as part of the Nazi 'punishment by terror'.

As an actor, Sheybal's first major role came in 1957 with a part in Andrzej Wajda's Kanal, a film about the Polish Resistance and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, but the increasingly Soviet face of his native country dismayed Sheybal, and in 1958 he fled his homeland and re-established his career in Britain. He arrived almost destitute, unable to speak a word of English and knowing no-one.

His first employment in London was as a dish-washer in the kitchens of a drama college, where he eventually began to teach acting to the students who recognised him from Kanal. He learnt English and gradually involved himself in the London theatrical world, staging Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina for the Oxford University Opera Club. This led to a job with the BBC, directing opera for television, and in 1960, he became joint director of a theatre company based at the Little Theatre, Bromley, where his first production - Donald Howarth's All Good Children - was promoted to Hampstead Theatre Club.

Sheybal had originally wanted to be a romantic actor, but the course of his acting career was laid down by his friend Bette Davis, whom he met in Hollywood. She told him, "Just be the bitch, darling. You'll never stop working then." In 1962, on Sean Connery's request, he took the role of the villainous Kronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia With Love, and this led to a career of similarly creepy roles as middle-European or Soviet villains, in episodes of The Man In Room 17 (twice), The Saint, Danger Man, Strange Report and The Champions.

In the cinema, he was particularly liked by Ken Russell who used him in the award-winning film of D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love (1970), in which he played the artist-sculptor cavorting in the snow with Glenda Jackson; The Music Lovers (1970); and The Boyfriend (1971), in which he played the film director Cecil B. de Thrill. Russell had previously 'discovered' Sheybal in the BBC canteen in 1961, and hired him to play Debussy in his television production Strauss. Sheybal also appeared in John Boorman's Leo The Last, in which he played a political schemer in the entourage of Marcello Mastroianni's Italian prince.

However, it was his role as the Eurosec physician Dr. Beauville in Gerry Anderson's Doppelganger, that led to his being cast as Dr Doug Jackson in the UFO episode Exposed. Vladek reprised the role on an episode-by-episode basis during the first production block (he was not contracted for the whole series) as his character was required, more often than not as a replacement to Maxwell Shaw's Dr Shroeder when Shaw became seriously ill during production. This resulted in an intriguing character whose real loyalties were uncertain, and whose area of expertise enabled him to function in a variety of roles for both SHADO and the International Astrophysical Commission. For the second block, Jackson's function within SHADO was more clearly defined as a psychiatrist, and Vladek became a more permanent member of the cast.

Following UFO, Vladek appeared in such films as Puppet On A Chain (1971), in which he played the smuggler pursued by Interpol along the canals of Amsterdam, and The Wind And The Lion (1975) as Sean Connery's brother, while on television he made a brief return to the Anderson fold as Sandor Karolean in The Protectors episode Brother Hood, and also made a memorable guest appearance as the bird-man Zacardi in The New Avengers episode Cat Amongst The Pigeons.

More recently, Sheybal had forged a second acting career for himself in France. Leaving his villainous roles behind him, he found a niche playing middle-aged romantics in love with much younger women. His last screen appearance was in The Bill episode Sympathy For The Devil in September 1992, while his last interview was with Fanderson for The UFO Documentary. He died suddenly of an abdominal haemorrhage at his home in London on October 16th, 1992.

How did you come to get the part of Dr. Jackson in UFO?

"I started playing UFO in...1969? Yes, 1969. So long ago, I can't believe it. And I can't believe that it became a cult film all over the world! It's incredible. Anyway, Sylvia Anderson, who was very beautiful and looked like a film star, with big eyelashes, asked through my agent, "Would I be interested at all to play a Dr Jackson?" and she didn't elaborate at all. Well, I got the (script of the) first episode, I learned my lines and I went to the studio where Sylvia Anderson - with the big eyelashes and a very beautiful hairdo - was there, and I met all these friends afterwards from UFO for the very time, including Gabrielle Drake. You remember Gabrielle Drake? She was my pupil at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art - I once was teaching acting there and she was my pupil, and I was very surprised when she was there in the studio.

"Anyway, to cut a long story short, I didn't know who this Dr Jackson was and Sylvia Anderson, after we had finished - or maybe it was while we were filming? - she said, "Would you be at all interested if we feed a script in with Dr Jackson, because we like very much the way that you are doing it." And then I asked her, "Who is this Dr Jackson?". "We don't know," she said. And that is what happened, so from time to time when they wanted to write in Dr Jackson they would ask my agent if I would be free for, let's say, next week for ten days to come to the studio to play Dr Jackson.

"And then I started forming my opinion about the character, and I came to the conclusion that he's got lots of colours and whatever, and I think that I developed it while I was playing it. But I wasn't a regular of UFO like the others - I was only from time to time, whenever I was free and whenever they wanted to write in Dr Jackson."

Jackson spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent, which seemed at odds with the character's ordinary Anglo-Saxon name, leading to speculation that perhaps the character was using an assumed name to hide a secret in his life before SHADO?

"Lots of things happen in films that we don't understand. You know, I have been in about 35 films as an 'international film actor' - as I am called - and believe it or not, in one, which was called The Wind And The Lion, they asked me to play the brother of Sean Connery. Can you imagine that? I was looking up at him and we had completely different hair colour, completely different accents and yet I was his brother. So it is unpredictable.

"You see, my name is Sheybal, which is not Polish name, which is not Armenian name, which comes from Scotland as a matter of fact. And I was brought up in about four or five languages. I was brought up in a terribly international family - as a matter of fact, I don't have a drop of Polish blood. I am mostly Armenian, a little bit of Scottish, a little bit of Austrian, and yet I am Polish actor and I arrived into this country as Polish actor, and (yet) I was lucky enough to have been (cast) in several cult films - Women In Love with (director) Ken Russell and Glenda Jackson, then with Marcello Mastroianni in John Boorman's Leo The Last, then Puppet On A Chain with Barbara Bach, and then UFO of course - and it's incredible really.

"I never aimed at it, I never thought that these sort of things would happen to me, but everything in my career was always the unexpected and coincidence and I was never pushing it or anything - just things were happening."

Prior to UFO, you were best-known for your role as the sinister chess-master and SPECTRE agent Kronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia With Love.

"It was the second James Bond film. I first of all started my career in this country as a teacher in drama school and as a director in television. I had done quite a lot for BBC Television and suddenly, quite by chance, I was seated in the canteen at BBC Television eating my lunch and a man came up to me and he said, "My name is Ken Russell and I do short artistic films and I would like you to play a part because I saw you in the Polish film Kanal." It was a film about Debussy, the composer, and this was Oliver Reed, who was not yet Oliver Reed and Vladek Sheybal when he was not yet Vladek Sheybal. And then, you know, Harry Saltzman was one of the producers, I think, of James Bond, and he telephoned my agent, my first agent, and he said, "I saw you in Ken Russell's film and I would like you to play a part in From Russia With Love."

"I said to my agent that I would like to read the script and he gave me the script and I just thought, 'No, I'm not going to be bothered about that - one scene in the beginning, one scene in the middle and then Lotte Lenya kills me with that spiked shoe!' I thought this was just ridiculous. I was very serious actor before I started acting in films and I just said to my agent, "This is ridiculous. Why should I bother to play this part? I was just playing a leading part in Ken Russell's film for television!", and he said, "Look, listen! It was Sean Connery who asked personally that you accept the part!" Why did Sean Connery ask me to accept the part? Because I met Sean Connery as well when he wasn't Sean Connery. He was the boyfriend of Diane Cilento, who was an actress and I was directing a television (play) with her, and he was always coming to the rehearsal room to pick her up and the three of us would go for a drink and then Diane Cilento would try to sell him to me. She would say, "Look at him! Isn't he sexy? Doesn't he have star quality? Do you have a part for him?", because nobody wanted him. And two years later he was James Bond and Diane Cilento went into decline or whatever - this happens. And then Sean Connery wanted me to play The Wind And The Lion as well, as his brother, because he thought this would be a good bit of fun.

"So, anyway, when I refused flatly to play this part, suddenly there was a telephone call from Sean Connery saying, "Look, listen! This is something which is going to change the world! It's a new series - 'James Bond' - and it's going to be next episode and next episode, and if you take a part in it you are in cult thing." So I signed to do it. He was very kind because he was waiting personally for me at the doorstep of the studio and he said, "Welcome to From Russia With Love."

"But during the filming there was an incident which shows my tempestuous character, or my honest character perhaps - that I can't be bought for the money. Harry Saltzman, the producer, started interfering in my scenes, in the way I was acting the scene. So I said to Harry Saltzman, "This is the director Terence Young and he doesn't want me to play the part in any different way. Why should I do what you say?" "Because I am the producer," he said. So I said, "You mean that you represent money?" and he said, "Yes."

"Lotte Lenya supported me very much and I played it my way and then Harry Saltzman became completely unbearable so I just said, "I've had enough of it!" I just walked off the studio, not being a star or whatever - later I learned that only the stars walk off the studio! But perhaps I was born a star? I always felt like a star. So I walked off the studio. They followed me (saying), "What are you doing? What are doing?" I went to the dressing room, I started taking off my make-up and I said, "Get away with you! I go back home!" and I went home!

"And in the evening, Terence Young rings me up and he says, "Vladek, I promise that Harry Saltzman won't be in the studio tomorrow. Will you come and finish the part?" So I came in and finished it."

After your role in From Russia With Love, you found yourself playing a string of memorable villainous roles in series such as The Man In Room 17, The Saint, Danger Man, Strange Report, The Champions and The New Avengers. Did you find that you were becoming typecast?

"Not necessarily, but this happens in the acting profession, that if you chisel for yourself a niche, then you're in. If you can't be identified immediately with your voice, without your villain-ness, with your looks or whatever, then you are in my position when I was completely unknown actor in this country and the western world. I had an accent - I didn't have any chance at all.

"I didn't know anything about it until one fantastic person, great friend of mine for several years, who was Bette Davis, and she said to me, "Honey, you have no chance whatsoever. You're ugly - everything is against you. I think that you should start playing threatening things and everybody will remember you." And I said, "How do I play threatening things? I'm such a loveable character." and she said, "You just narrow your eyes, you lower your voice and just whisper and make long pauses." So that was the trick and I started doing it, and she said, "Just look at me when I'm playing the bitch. I narrow my eyes like that and lower my voice and whisper and make long pauses." And so she launched me - and I'm ever grateful to her - into the part of playing the villains or frightening people.

"But later on, I was playing quite a number of parts in which I wasn't the villain at all, and people will say, "How villainous you were!" People don't want to remember. Once they establish you in a niche, they just want you to stick to this, so I gave them what they wanted.

"But a few years ago, I started playing fringe theatres here in London, and I found I was playing the 'greats' such as Gustav Mahler and Frederick Nietzsche, and I realised that I had to use exactly the same trick to play the 'greats' - whisper, make long pauses and narrow your eyes - so what is the difference between the villain and the 'great', you know?"

More recently, you have been cast in more varied roles both in England and abroad, and have made extensive film appearances in France and Germany. What sort of roles do you prefer to play?

"I have lived, for several years now, partly in France, in Paris mainly, and I have started playing in French films. You know, I had the same trouble, because I thought, 'If I'm going to launch myself into French films, then I've got to find a niche.' But they didn't cast me as villains in France. They cast me as aging men who are madly in love with very young girls and then rejected. So I decided to play them as unhappy, with long pauses as well because it helps, and speaking very fluently, but very softly, and it took off. Here, I'm turning down quite a lot of things, because, quite simply, after so many years now having acted in so many things, I couldn't be bothered playing the same character.

"You see, we actors, we always say that any part which could give you the material to build a character on it in your own way, your own interesting way, is a good part - whether this is cameo part, or larger part, or medium part, or just one close up or whatever. So I think that all actors are multi-character people and that's why they enjoy everything.

"I think I'm no different in being an actor than anybody else. I like playing these unhappy elderly men in France."

Vladek Sheybal (1923–1992)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0792996/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Le Chiffre's Representative

2007: Deborah Jane Trimmer aka Deborah Kerr CBE dies at age 86--Botesdale, England.
(Born 30 September 1921--Helensburgh, Scotland.)

Deborah Kerr

See the complete article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/oct/19/guardianobituaries.obituaries1

Graceful and versatile British star whose work across four decades made her a Hollywood icon
Brian Baxter | Thu 18 Oct 2007

Many Hollywood stars of the wartime generation ended their careers in cameo roles or cult movies, even schlock horror or, worst of all, television soaps. But Deborah Kerr, who has died of Parkinson's disease aged 86, escaped that. Her health would not allow such a route, but it seems unlikely that such an innately graceful and consummately professional actor would have chosen it. The theatre at Chichester perhaps, but not movie Grand Guignol.

She worked steadily, averaging one film a year, with directors of stature, and often opposite chums such as David Niven, Robert Mitchum and Cary Grant. The result was a career that sailed on rather majestically, like an elegant ocean liner, only occasionally hitting a squall or rough passage. There was little to interest gossip columnists or to shock the public and, at least on the surface, she seemed rather serene in the midst of such a frantic profession.

It is impossible not to admire the performances and the performer herself. She achieved fame when barely 20, in a star-laden version of Major Barbara (1941), followed rapidly by four further movies, and for 45 years remained at or near the pinnacle of her profession. Within a period of 12 years, she received six Oscar nominations but did not receive the statuette until 1994, when an honorary Academy award was given for her lifetime's work.

By the late 1980s, in poor health, she had effectively retired from acting, gravitating from her home in Switzerland to Spain with her second husband, the writer Peter Viertel (whose screen credits include The African Queen). Much later still, she was to return to England. Her rare public appearances reminded us of her great popularity in such contrasted roles as the governess in The King and I (1956) and the adulterous wife in From Here to Eternity (1953). She was greatly admired by her fellow actors and always brought a touch of class to the most mundane of roles.

Kerr was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, the daughter of a first world war officer, and educated at Northumberland House, in the Bristol suburb of Clifton. She dabbled in acting during her teens, including radio work for the BBC West Region in Bristol, and in amateur theatricals. She moved to London to study at the Sadler's Wells ballet school, making her debut in Prometheus in 1939. That year too saw her in a small role in Much Ado About Nothing at the Regent's Park open air theatre, and from 1939 to 1940 she worked with the Oxford Repertory. An abortive screen debut as a cigarette girl in Contraband (1940), ended on the editing-room floor. But the directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were soon to remedy that unkind cut.

Kerr's break came when the ebullient Gabriel Pascal, who had the confidence of George Bernard Shaw, cast her in Major Barbara, in which she gave a touching performance as Jenny Hill. Under contract to Pascal, she was given the lead in 1941 in Love on the Dole and rapidly followed this excellent movie with Penn of Pennsylvania and then a plum role as Robert Newton's downtrodden daughter in the melodramatic Hatter's Castle - where she encountered her first husband, fighter pilot Tony Bartley, who was involved in the nearby filming of The First of the Few. All this in that same year, followed by The Day Will Dawn (1942), opposite Ralph Richardson.

In a piece of casting that Martin Scorsese has justly described as audacious, Powell and Pressburger gave the then 21-year-old the triple roles of driver, governess and wife/nurse, the women who appear throughout Blimp's story in their monumental The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). The film did not receive official approval or the critical acclaim now accorded it, and Kerr's film career paused as she toured and then went into the West End in Heartbreak House. She also worked for the forces' entertainment organisation Ensa throughout Europe, and again met Bartley. They married in 1945.

That year she returned to the screen, opposite Robert Donat in Perfect Strangers, where they play - delightfully - a couple transformed and humanised by their wartime experiences. She moved on to an interesting role in I See a Dark Stranger (1946) as an Irish girl who, through hatred of the English, spies for the Germans. Her love for a British officer (Trevor Howard) reforms her. Her only other screen work that year was in a short in aid of the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund. The best was yet to come.

In 1947, Kerr was reunited with Powell and Pressburger for a heady masterwork, Black Narcissus. She played the pivotal role of Sister Clodagh, an insecure nun in charge of a Catholic missionary school (Pinewood stood in - remarkably - for the Himalayas). Jealousy, passion, frustration and death become the order of the day in this timeless work. A blend of repression, gentleness and inner turmoil was to feature in many later, often inferior, films but this remains a benchmark in her career.

Meanwhile, Pascal had sold her contract to MGM and Kerr found herself in a postwar drama, The Hucksters (1947), opposite Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. A modestly successful Hollywood debut was soon followed by If Winter Comes (1947). She was subsequently directed by one of the studio's top names, George Cukor, in a rather stodgy version of Robert Morley's stage success, Edward My Son (1948). Despite fine credits and the presence of the screen's greatest actor, Spencer Tracy, the film fails to ignite.

The studio began to use Kerr as decorative contract fodder opposite sturdy leading men and costume became the order of the day in such movies as King Solomon's Mines (1950), Quo Vadis (1951) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1952). She had the small role of Portia in Julius Caesar, but this movie - the best-ever screen treatment of Shakespeare - is remembered for Marlon Brando and John Gielgud, and not the refined Miss Kerr. The MGM period ended dismally with Young Bess (1953).

That year was, however, to prove a highlight, if not a turning point in her fortunes. She extricated herself from the MGM straitjacket and landed the controversial role opposite Burt Lancaster in Fred Zinneman's From Here to Eternity. Cast against her seemingly fragile type, she was formidable as the sexually rapacious officer's wife who has an affair with an NCO, played by Lancaster, at the time of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Today, the famous beach scene - indeed the whole adaptation of James Jones's brutal novel - seems somewhat tame. Not so in the early 1950s.

Adultery was a theme of a rather greater book, Graham Greene's The End of the Affair (1954), which brought Kerr back to England. An underrated film, it suffers from a miscast, rather lightweight Van Johnson as the writer, but she and a fine British cast save the day.

An attempt was made to revamp Eternity, with William Holden replacing Lancaster, in The Proud and the Profane (1956) before she went on to her biggest popular success: a lacklustre version of The King and I. Kerr and Yul Brynner redeemed Walter Lang's rather staid direction and thanks to dubbing from Marni Nixon on the difficult passages and high notes, Kerr sang, danced and acted herself into a third Oscar nomination, and a box office smash.

In 1957 she was reunited with friend Cary Grant in the romantic drama, An Affair to Remember and donned her nun's habit in the popular Heaven Knows, Mr Allison for a favourite director, John Huston. This virtual two-hander reworks Huston's great success, The African Queen, with Robert Mitchum as the reprobate marine who meets his match in the seemingly demure nun. Together they tackle the Japanese just as missionary Katharine Hepburn and drunk Humphrey Bogart had scuppered the Germans in the earlier movie.

There were better parts and higher salaries than in the MGM days and Kerr moved on to Bonjour Tristesse (1957) and another spinster role in the botched version of Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables (1958). Only her old friend David Niven emerged with modest credit from this fiasco. Three duff movies followed before Zinnemann gave her a wonderfully rich part - opposite Robert Mitchum - in The Sundowners (1960). It proved one of the director's most relaxed and commercially successful films.

Kerr joined Mitchum and Grant again in a conventional reworking of the stage hit, The Grass is Greener (1960), followed by an altogether less happy experience. At best The Naked Edge (1961) was a routine thriller, made painful by Gary Cooper, already ill with cancer, in his last role and the last year of his life.

The highlight of this British period came the same year when she again played a governess - this time in Jack Clayton's version of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Transformed into a handsome CinemaScope film as The Innocents, it showed that Kerr was as good as the material allowed and often better. Her role as the haunted and taunted governess gave perfect rein to her upright demeanour and hidden depths.
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After a dull version of The Chalk Garden (1963), she was rescued by John Huston and cast as the poet spinster in the steamy The Night of the Iguana (1964). After this she sank without trace in a Frank Sinatra vehicle, Marriage on the Rocks (1965), and then made a trio of films opposite Niven, her Swiss-based neighbour.

They failed to salvage the thriller Eye of the Devil (1966), but had some fun working with Huston again on the chaotic James Bond spoof, Casino Royale (1967). This was followed by a dated comedy, Prudence and the Pill (1968).

Two big movies in 1969 offered Kerr dull parts - with Burt Lancaster in the sky drama The Gypsy Moths and Kirk Douglas in The Arrangement. They proved only that she was still in demand opposite heavyweight actors. But the films, one lugubrious, the second overwrought, were not to her taste and she effectively retired from Hollywood.

A handful of made-for-television films kept her occupied - Witness for the Prosecution (1982), Reunion at Fairborough (1985) and Hold the Dawn (1986) among them.

Her greatest stage success had been in the once controversial Tea and Sympathy, in a role as a schoolteacher who seduces a pupil who believes himself to be gay. She filmed it in 1956, but the screen version was even milkier than the Broadway success. Her other stage successes included Separate Tables, Candida and The Last of Mrs Cheyney, among many others.

But it is as a screen actor that Kerr will be best remembered, since she had the beauty, the reserve and the inner quality that the camera loves. By a happy chance, her farewell to the big screen utilised those attributes.

In The Assam Garden (1985) Kerr played an isolated middle-class widow who befriends an Indian woman (Madhur Jaffrey) from a nearby council estate. A modest two-hander, it gave her an intriguing, somewhat unglamorous role that perfectly suited her subtle technique and quiet dignity.

Visiting her on location in the Forest of Dean, I was touched by her commitment to the film and her determination to complete what was proving to be an extremely demanding role. She clearly missed her home comforts and had been greatly pleased by the film's attentive publicist - who brought her caviar from his London trips.

The location, charming though it was, and the budget were a far cry from her Hollywood heyday, but the film turned out to be a success and she ended her screen career on a personal high note. She received a spontaneous ovation at the 1994 Oscar ceremony and few actors can so richly have deserved the award.

In 1998 she was made a CBE, but said that she felt too frail to travel to London to receive it personally. In 45 films, in as many years, she seldom, if ever, gave a weak performance and certainly never gave a less than professional one.

Her marriage to Tony Bartley ended in divorce in 1959. He died in 2001. She married Viertel in 1960. He survives her, as do two daughters from her first marriage and three grandsons.

· Deborah Jane Kerr (Deborah Kerr Viertel), actor, born September 30 1921; died October 16 2007

Deborah Kerr

(I) (1921–2007)
Actress | Soundtrack
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000039/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

The King and I

Agent Mimi (Alias Lady Fiona). Casino Royale

2012: Eurocom's North American release of first-person shooter video game 007 Legends, published by Activision.

2012: Globe Pequot Press publishes Bond On Bond by Roger Moore.

2020: A new Penfold Heart golf ball comes available.

https://www.jamesbondlifestyle.com/product/penfold-heart-golf-ball


https://www.penfoldgolfusa.com/shop

PENFOLD HEART

See the complete article here:

https://www.penfoldgolfusa.com/shop/penfold-heart

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Goldfinger, Ian Fleming, 1995.
Chapter 9 - The Cup and the Lip

Goldfinger came up. His face was glistening with triumph. 'Well, thanks for the game. Seems I was just too good for you after all.'

'You're a good nine handicap,' said Bond with just sufficient sourness. He glanced at the balls in his hand to pick out Goldfinger's and hand it to him. He gave a start of surprise. 'Hullo!' He looked sharply at Goldfinger. 'You play a Number One Dunlop, don't you?'

'Yes, of course.' A sixth sense of disaster wiped the triumph off Goldfinger's face. 'What is it? What's the matter?'

'Well,' said Bond apologetically.' "Fraid you've been playing with the wrong ball. Here's my Penfold Hearts and this is a Number Seven Dunlop.' He handed both balls to Gold-finger. Goldfinger tore them off his palm and examined them feverishly.

https://www.michaelmay.online/2014/08/goldfinger-comic-strip.html

RichardTheBruce

Also check out the Penfold Heart development on the 16th.

October 17th

1959: Ivar Bryce is impressed by Fleming's second screen treatment for Thunderball, though he shares criticisms.

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.

Bryce was likewise impressed, though in a letter dated 17 October made
these criticisms to Fleming: "Be careful not to take Domino off the scene for
too long. Also, is it necessary to bump off poor Felix? You will need him again
you know -- a problem you have already had once. I should like to do Live and
Let Die one day." Bryce also mentioned Ernest Cuneo's positive reaction.
"Although he is worried by all Italian names of Mafia villains, and fears
resentment in Italian minority here, but I cannot go along with that." Nor did
Fleming pay much credence in Cuneo's suggestion that using the Mafia would
infuriate America's Italian population. "Don't agree with Ernie about the Italian
names," Fleming wrote back. "The Mafia is a villainous organisation and if the
Italians don't like it, they ought to suppress it."

In his letter Bryce also referred to a recent news incident of an American
bomber that collided with a tanker plane and crashed. It was carrying two A-
bombs, which did not explode. "Of interest for your script?" Is Bryce
suggesting that this would be a more realistic way of bring the aircraft down,
of getting the villains to orchestrate a mid-air collision that would look to the
authorities like an accident? If it was, it was never followed up in any of the
subsequent scripts.

1962: A review of Dr. No in Variety says "As a screen hero James Bond is clearly here to stay. He will win no Oscars but a heck of a lot of enthusiastic followers."

Original 31 December 1961 review.

Dr. No

https://variety.com/1961/film/reviews/dr-no-1200420202/
December 31, 1961

First screen adventure of Ian Fleming's hardhitting, fearless, imperturbable, girl-loving Secret Service Agent 007, James Bond, is an entertaining piece of tongue-in-cheek action hokum. Sean Connery excellently puts over a cool, fearless, on-the-ball, fictional Secret Service guy. Terence Young directs with a pace which only occasionally lags.

With: Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord, Bernard Lee, Zena Marshall

First screen adventure of Ian Fleming’s hardhitting, fearless, imperturbable, girl-loving Secret Service Agent 007, James Bond, is an entertaining piece of tongue-in-cheek action hokum. Sean Connery excellently puts over a cool, fearless, on-the-ball, fictional Secret Service guy. Terence Young directs with a pace which only occasionally lags.

The hero is exposed to pretty (and sometimes treacherous) gals, a poison tarantula spider, a sinister crook, flame throwers, gunshot, bloodhounds, beating up, near drowning and plenty of other mayhem and malarkey, and comes through it all with good humour, resourcefulness and what have you.

Connery is sent to Jamaica to investigate the murder of a British confidential agent and his secretary. Since both murders happen within three or four minutes of the credit titles the pic gets away to an exhilarating start. He becomes involved with the activities of Dr. No, a sinister Chinese scientist (Joseph Wiseman) who from an island called Crab Key is using a nuclear laboratory to divert off course the rockets being propelled from Cape Canaveral.

Among the dames with whom Connery becomes involved are easy-on-the-eye Ursula Andress, who shares his perilous adventures on Crab Key, and spends most of her time in a bikini; Zena Marshall, as an Oriental charmer who nearly decoys him to doom via her boudoir; and Eunice Gayson, whom he picks up in a gambling club in London and who promises to be the biggest menace of the lot.

Dr. No

UK

Production: Eon/United Artists. Director Terence Young; Producer Harry Saltzman, Albert R. Broccoli; Screenplay Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, Berkely Mather; Camera Ted Moore; Editor Peter Hunt; Music Monty Norman; Art Director Ken Adam

Crew: (Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1962. Running time: 110 MIN.

With: Sean Connery Ursula Andress Joseph Wiseman Jack Lord Bernard Lee Zena Marshall

1966: You Only Live Twice films OO7 flying Little Nellie.

1983: People Magazine features Sean Connery promoting Never Say Never Again.

After a 12-Year Leave, Sean Connery Is
Back as 007 but Willing to Say Never Again

See the complete article here:

https://people.com/archive/after-a-12-year-leave-sean-connery-is-back-as-007-but-willing-to-say-never-again-vol-20-no-16/

Jesse Birnbaum
October 17, 1983 12:00 PM

His name is Bond. James Bond. And he has a problem: lower back pain and a slight paunch. It’s mid-life crisis for 007. And now—of all times—his superiors want to pluck him form semiretirement for the toupee-raising assignment of saving the world from nuclear holocaust. Dispatched ingloriously to a health clinic, he must work out, lift weights and sweat himself into top spy form. Is he getting older, or better?

This clever, thoroughly ingratiating setup for Never Say Never Again is pointedly ironic: The real high-stakes issue is whether the star, after 12 years in retirement from the high-tech spy biz, can carry the film. His name is Connery. Sean Connery. And he has a problem. At 53, Connery is no longer the slim young Scot who began it all with Dr. No in 1962 and five more through Diamonds Are Forever in 1971. Still, he is back as Bond for one last hurrah.

“I may be 20 years older,” admits Connery, who once aspired to the Mr. Universe title. But, he adds confidently, “The age factor is no crisis.”

Not now, anyway. Onscreen he rides horseback, fights live sharks in scuba gear and mauls all manner of assailants in hand-to-hand combat. In bed (with girlie magazine co-stars Kim Basinger and Barbara Carrera), he proves that if he’s gained a pound or two across his brawny torso, he hasn’t lost a step on his bygone Bonds.

The thing is—it didn’t come easy. Connery trained hard, keeping barbells in his location trailers through the grueling eight-month shoot in England, France and the Bahamas. He did many stunts and most fight scenes himself, he says. Somehow, his short-cropped toupee never budged. “He was fabulous underwater,” says a very impressed Basinger, who also did her own swimming stunts. “You couldn’t tell Sean from the stunt divers.” She says Connery helped production on land as well. “He took things lightly, instead of panicking. He would tell jokes all day.”

Some stunts were no joke. “I dived 50 feet underwater into a sunken wreck,” says Sean. “I hated that; it’s claustrophobic.”

So why do it at all? That Connery has long expressed his boredom with the character he created and helped make into the longest-running major series in movie history is the joke behind the film’s title. Connery will only say that his wife encouraged him to do it. Other reasons might be the lack of success of his last films (Wrong Is Right, Five Days One Summer).

But pride is also at stake. Connery’s disenchantment with the series began when his character began to give way to gimmickry and gags. But Roger Moore’s six flashy Bonds have been huge hits anyway, eclipsing the memory of Connery in some quarters. Never’s producer Jack Schwartzman thinks audiences might want to see a 007 who is “not a cardboard figure.”

Connery won’t compare himself to Moore, 55, a longtime pal. But some criticism does slip in. “I think the trap with Roger’s way is that one is a bit overwhelmed with the hardware,” says Connery. “You get the feeling they dream up the stunt first, then write the story around it. I try for a more realistic, credible film, within the realm of possibility.”

To keep his life the same way, Connery and his second wife, Micheline Roquebrune, 48, a French artist he married in 1975, shuttle in tax exile between a villa in Marbella, on Spain’s southern coast, and a home in the Bahamas, where he golfs (eight handicap) and plays tennis. British tax laws make it impossible to spend more than 90 days a year in his homeland without going broke. His proudest investment may well be son Jason, 20, by his first wife, actress Diane (Tom Jones) Cilento. The lad made his film debut in Lords of Discipline this year. Though Connery’s own truckdriver father is deceased and his mother bedridden, Sean is atypically emotional about home and hearth. His suntanned arms are emblazoned with two tattoos: One says, “Scotland Forever,” the other, “Mum and Dad.”

Still, coming home to Bond is another matter. For Connery, Never Say Never Again is a movie title, not a promise. “Why do it again,” he says. “I’m too old.”

2004: Julius Harris dies at age 81--Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.
(Born 17 August 1923--Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.)

Julius Harris, 81; Broke Stereotypes of Movie Roles for Black Actors

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-oct-22-me-harris22-story.html

By Dennis McLellan, Times Staff Writer
Oct. 22, 2004

Julius Harris, the deep-voiced stage and screen actor who played the villainous Tee Hee in the James Bond film Live and Let Die and Ugandan President Idi Amin in the TV movie “Victory at Entebbe,” has died. He was 81.

Harris, a former member of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City, died of heart failure Sunday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills.

In an acting career that spanned four decades, Harris appeared in more than 70 film and television productions.

He played such diverse roles as a preacher who headed a slave group in the 1982 Civil War miniseries “The Blue and the Gray” and a gangster in the 1972 blaxploitation film classic “Superfly.”

“Even today, if I am walking in a black neighborhood, people call me by my ‘Superfly’ name -- Scatter,” Harris told The Times last October before being honored with a tribute by the Next Generation Council of the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Legacy Film Series at the Directors Guild of America Theatre.

“His work helped African Americans break out of stereotypical movie roles and be seen as dynamic heroes and fully realized human beings,” actress Halle Berry said in a taped introduction to Harris’ film work.

A Philadelphia native whose mother was a Cotton Club dancer and whose father was a musician, Harris served as an Army medic during World War II. After leaving the service in 1950, he found work as an orderly and eventually became a nurse before moving to New York City.

As a regular at a Greenwich Village bar, he became friends with James Earl Jones, Yaphet Kotto, Al Freeman, Louis Gossett Jr. and other actors, whom he teased for being out of work.

“I would say to them, ‘You bums. You are always broke. What kind of actors are you? ... I can do your job with my arms tied behind my back,’ ” he recalled in The Times interview.

To back up his claim, he landed the small role of Ivan Dixon’s drunk, defeated father in “Nothing but a Man,” a critically acclaimed 1964 film about black life in the South starring Dixon and Abbey Lincoln.

“Not knowing the business, feeling I had to be in character, I got me a pint of bourbon, some of the worst rotgut stuff I could get,” Harris said.

When he arrived on the set, the producer and director took one look at him and said, “We can’t do anything with you today, Julius, but if you are the man we think you are, you’ll come back tomorrow.”

Harris said: “I was so embarrassed. So I went back home, sobered up and came back the next day and did the master [shot] in [one] take and close-ups in two [takes] and went home.”

In his review of the film, The Times’s Kevin Thomas deemed Harris’ performance superb.

He is survived by his children, Kimberly and Gideon.

A private memorial service will be held.

Julius Harris (1923–2004)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0364918/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

2008: David Arnold's Quantum of Solace soundtrack album released by J.

2018: Dynamite releases James Bond: The Body Vol. 1, including Parts One through Four (The Body, The Gut, The Brain, The Heart).

James Bond: The Body (2018) Vol. 1

https://www.comixology.co.uk/James-Bond-The-Body-2018-Vol-1/digital-comic/704425?ref=Y29taWMvdmlldy9kZXNrdG9wL3NsaWRlckxpc3Qvc2VyaWVz

"As Bond undergoes a post-mission medical examination, he relays the story of his previous mission to the examiner. Each cut, bruise, and broken bone connected to a specific event of the mission. A connection is made between two people with different purposes: one to save lives, the other to take them. PART TWO - THE BRAIN James Bond leads the interrogation of a scientist who allowed a lethal virus to be stolen. But when the investigation takes a surprising turn, Bond begins to question whether he is enough. PART THREE - THE GUT One sauna. Twenty Neo-Nazis. One Bond. James Bond. This weapons deal won't go according to plan. PART FOUR - THE HEART On the run from a lethal antagonist, weaponless and wounded deep in the Highlands, Bond finds solace with a woman who exchanged her job as a doctor and a life in the city for a cottage and solitary life of a writer. Can Bond find a quiet peace unlike he has known before or will his life choices catch up with him? AND MORE…"

2019: Gloria Hendry sings jazz versions of Bond title songs and other standards on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

https://www.007travelers.com/events/007-event-songs-of-bond-feat-gloria-hendry-and-the-jimmy-mcconnell-18-piece-orchestra-17-october-2019/


http://jamesbondradio.com/event-report-gloria-hendrys-jazz-tribute-to-the-songs-of-james-bond-by-matthew-chernov/

RichardTheBruce

October 18th

1898: Lotte Lenya (Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blaumauer) is born--Vienna-Penzing, Austria Hungary.
(She dies 27 November 1981 at age 83--New York City, New York.)

Lotte Lenya

See the complete article here:

https://masterworksbroadway.com/artist/lotte-lenya/[/center]

Award-winning Austrian actress and singer Lotte Lenya (b. Vienna-Penzing, Austria-Hungary, October 18, 1898; d. New York City, November 27, 1981), transplanted to the United States for the latter part of her career, is best remembered by music-lovers for her interpretations of songs by her husband Kurt Weill (1900–1950), and by moviegoers for her performances in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and From Russia With Love (1963). She was nominated for an Academy Award® for the former film; from her Broadway performances, which spanned over three decades, she had one Tony Award® (The Threepenny Opera 1957) and was nominated for another (Cabaret 1967).

Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer was born into a working class family in an outlying district of Vienna. At the age of sixteen she moved to Zurich in Switzerland, where she studied classical ballet, singing, and acting, and made a stage debut under the name of Lotte Lenja. In 1921, against the cosmopolitan but precarious backdrop of the Weimar Republic, she moved to Berlin and began rounds of theatrical auditions. In 1924, through playwright Georg Kaiser, she met composer Kurt Weill – actually he had played the piano for her at an audition two years earlier but she had taken no notice of him – and they married early in 1926.

In collaboration with Bertholt Brecht, Weill wrote the leading part of Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) as a vehicle specifically for Lenya, and the first performance in 1928 was a big breakthrough for both of them. Soon she was very busy in the theatre, especially in works created by the Weill-Brecht team: Happy End (1929), Der Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny 1930), and Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins 1933), produced in exile in Paris.

In 1933, with the rise of Nazism and the banning of Weill’s works in Germany, both Lenya and Weill fled to France – although they were now estranged and going through a divorce (Weill was a workaholic and not especially communicative). Weill began work on an unprecedentedly ambitious spectacle-opera with text by Franz Werfel entitled Der Weg der Verheißung (The Promised Road), in the midst of which, in 1935, Lenya and Weill came to be reconciled. They emigrated together to the United States and were married again in 1937.

Lenya sang the roles of Miriam and the Witch of Endor in Weill’s new opus, now called The Eternal Road, for 153 performances at the Manhattan Opera House in early 1937. The cast included 245 actors and singers, wearing a total of 1,772 costumes, and the show – a frightening depiction of Jews hiding from a pogrom in a synagogue that included several generous slices of Biblical history – lasted over six hours. It has not been staged since.

Two successful musicals, Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), with book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson and introducing the immortal “September Song,” and Lady in the Dark (with Ira Gershwin, 1941) established Kurt Weill’s reputation on Broadway, and the couple was able to move upstate to New City in Rockland County. Their marriage would last until Weill’s death in 1950.

Lenya meanwhile appeared in Anderson’s Candle in the Wind (1941). Her next role was in a Weill “operetta,” The Firebrand of Florence (1945), that was such a box-office disaster that Lenya decided to quit the stage. But in 1951, a little more than a year after her husband’s death, she returned as Xantippe in Maxwell Anderson’s short-lived Barefoot in Athens.She starred again as Jenny in the English-language revival of The Threepenny Opera (1954, 1955), winning the 1956 Tony® for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

Lotte Lenya’s American film career began when she was sixty-three, with The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961), and hit a high point in 1963 when she played Rosa Klebb, the Spectre agent with poisoned blades in the toes of her boots, in From Russia with Love. She played the title role in Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder on German television in 1965, and the Gypsy in Tennessee Williams’s sleeper Ten Blocks on the Camino Real on National Education Television in 1966. The same year on Broadway she originated the role of Fräulein Schneider in Kander and Ebb’s musical Cabaret.

Lenya was married three more times in the thirty-one years between Weill’s death and her own. She established the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, which is still active in the promotion of Weill music and theatre, in 1962. Cancer was the cause of her death in 1981; she is entombed alongside Weill in a mausoleum in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. A musical play, Lovemusik, a meditation on the relationship of these two musical and theatrical greats, was produced on Broadway in 2007.

– LEC

Lotte Lenya (1898–1981)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0502322/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Actress (10 credits)
1980 Mahagonny (voice)

1977 Semi-Tough - Clara Pelf
1974 CBS Daytime 90 (TV Series) - Rosa Harcourt
- Trio for Lovers (1974) ... Rosa Harcourt
-
1969 The Appointment - Emma Valadier
1966 Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (TV Movie) - The Gypsy
1965 Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder - Eine Chronik aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg (TV Movie) - Mutter Courage
1964 Bertolt Brecht: Übungstücke für Schauspieler (Short)
1963 From Russia with Love - Rosa Klebb
1961 The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone - Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales

1931 The 3 Penny Opera - Jenny (as Lotte Lenja)

Soundtrack (6 credits)

2017 Popular Voices at the BBC (TV Mini-Series) (performer - 1 episode)
- Truth Tellers at the BBC (2017) ... (performer: "Alabama Song")
2016 Uncle Howard (Documentary) (performer: "September Song")
2007 The Savages (performer: "Salomon-Song")
2001 Guileless Guile (Short) (performer: "Denn wie Man sich bettet")

1997 Seven Years in Tibet (performer: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer/The Ballad of Mack the Knife")

1952 Because of My Hot Youth (performer: "Die Seeräuber-Jenny. Ur Die Dreigroschenoper")

1916: Anthony Dawson is born--Edinburgh, Scotland. (He dies 8 January 1992 at age 75--Sussex, England.)

Anthony Dawson

See the complete article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Dawson

Dawson as Professor Dent in the James Bond film Dr. No

Born Anthony Douglas Gillon Dawson, 18 October 1916, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland
Died 8 January 1992 (aged 75), Sussex, England
Nationality British
Alma mater RADA
Occupation Actor
Years active 1940–1991

Anthony Douglas Gillon Dawson (18 October 1916 – 8 January 1992) was a Scottish actor, best known for his supporting roles as villains in British films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954) and Midnight Lace (1960), as well as playing Professor Dent in the James Bond film Dr. No (1962). He also appeared as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in From Russia with Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965).

Life
Dawson was born in Edinburgh, the son of Ida Violet (Kittel) and Eric Francis Dawson.

Career
Following RADA training and WW II service, he made his film debut in 1943's They Met in the Dark. He went on to appear in such classic British films as The Way to the Stars (1945), The Queen of Spades (1948) and The Wooden Horse (1950), before moving to America in the early 1950s.

It was while there that he appeared on Broadway in the play, and then the subsequent Alfred Hitchcock film of Dial M for Murder (1954), playing C. A. Swann/Captain Lesgate.[5][6] In the film, he is blackmailed by Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) into murdering his wife Margot (Grace Kelly). In his unpublished memoirs, Rambling Recollections, Dawson reminisced about getting the part:

... I had never met Hitchcock before, and yet he was about to do me the most fantastic good turn I could imagine. In that wonderful fat man's Cockney voice, he said, slowly, drooping every word separately, as though he had all day: 'Tony, I just called to let you know that I want you for this picture, so you're quite safe to make yourself a nice deal.' What could I say? I mumbled my thanks and put the phone down, feeling rather dazed, electrified, stunned; all of these. The full impact of this call from Hitch was very soon to come home to me.

He had two other memorable roles on his return to Britain, including the evil Marques Siniestro in Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) and henchman Professor Dent in the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).[7]

Throughout his career he could often be found in the films of director Terence Young, including the aforementioned Dr. No, They Were Not Divided (1950), Valley of Eagles (1951), The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), Triple Cross (1966), Red Sun (1971), Inchon (1982) and The Jigsaw Man (1983). Young also cast him as the physical presence of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in his Bond films From Russia with Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965), stroking the ubiquitous white cat. His face was never seen, however, and Blofeld's voice was provided by Eric Pohlmann. Dawson appeared alongside fellow Bond veterans Adolfo Celi, Lois Maxwell and Bernard Lee in the Italian Bond knockoff O.K. Connery.

After the early 1960s, his roles got progressively smaller, but he continued to act until his death.

Death
He died in Sussex of cancer at the age of 75 in January 1992.

Anthony Dawson (I) (1916–1992)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0206060/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Filmography

Actor (81 credits)

1991 Selling Hitler (TV Mini-Series) - Marquess of Bath
- Episode #1.3 (1991) ... Marquess of Bath
1990 The Gamblers - Roy

1988 Run for Your Life - Colonel Moorcroft
1987 Ghoulies II - Priest
1986 Pirates - Spanish Officer
1983 The Jigsaw Man - Vicar
1981 Inchon - Gen. Collins

1975 The Count of Monte-Cristo (TV Movie) - Noirtier De Villefort
1973 Massacre in Rome
1973 The Big Game - Burton (uncredited)
1972 Cool Million (TV Series) - Prefect
- Mask of Marcella (1972) ... Prefect
1972 The Valachi Papers - Federal Investigator
1971 Red Sun - Hyatt (as Tony Dawson)
1970 Deadlock - Anthony Sunshine, der alte Killer
1970 Rosolino Paternò, soldato... - Italian General

1969 The Battle of Neretva - Morelli
1968 A Sky Full of Stars for a Roof - Samuel Pratt (as Anthony M. Dawson)
1967 Dirty Heroes - American Colonel (as Anthony M. Dawson)
1967 Hell Is Empty - Paul Grant
1967 Your Turn to Die - Dr. Evans
1967 The Rover - Captain Vincent
1967 Death Rides a Horse - Burt Cavanaugh
1967 Operation Kid Brother - Alpha
1966 Triple Cross - Major Stillman (as Tony Dawson)
1966 Kaleidoscope - English Casino Manager (uncredited)
1965 Change Partners - Ben Arkwright
1965 Thunderball - Ernst Stavro Blofeld (uncredited)
1964-1965 Secret Agent (TV Series) - Simpson / Lucas
- A Very Dangerous Game (1965) ... Simpson
- Don't Nail Him Yet (1964) ... Lucas
1965 The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre (TV Series) - Ben Arkwright
- Change Partners (1965) ... Ben Arkwright
1965 The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders - Officer of Dragoons
1964 The Yellow Rolls-Royce - Mickey (uncredited)
1964 Espionage (TV Series) - Colonel Nathan
- We the Hunted (1964) ... Colonel Nathan
1963 From Russia with Love - Ernst Stavros Blofeld (as ?)
1963 Zero One (TV Series) - Harris
- Key Witness (1963) ... Harris
1962 Seven Seas to Calais - Lord Burleigh
1962 The Saint (TV Series) - Floyd Vosper
- The Arrow of God (1962) ... Floyd Vosper
1962 Dr. No - Professor Dent
1961 The Devil Inside - James Dawson
1961 Naked City (TV Series) - Mike Grundy
- A Kettle of Precious Fish (1961) ... Mike Grundy
1961 'Way Out (TV Series) - George Frobisher
- I Heard You Calling Me (1961) ... George Frobisher
1961 The Curse of the Werewolf - The Marques Siniestro
1960 Danger Man (TV Series) - Martin / Security Officer
- The Leak (1960) ... Martin
- The Sisters (1960) ... Security Officer
1960 Midnight Lace - Ash
1960 Interpol Calling (TV Series) - Clouston
- Ascent to Murder (1960) ... Clouston
1960 The Valley of Decision (TV Movie)
1960 International Detective (TV Series) - Gilles Porret
- The Dennison Case (1960) ... Gilles Porret

1959 The Flying Doctor (TV Series) - Al Vintner
- The Conspiracy (1959) ... Al Vintner
1959 Rendezvous (TV Series) - Stranger
- Markheim (1959) ... Stranger
1959 Libel - Gerald Loddon
1959 Tiger Bay - Barclay
1958 The Haunted Strangler - Supt. Burk
1958 Dial M for Murder (TV Movie) - Captain Lesgate (Swann)
1958 Ivanhoe (TV Series) - Sir Maurice
- Wedding Cake (1958) ... Sir Maurice
- Freeing the Serfs (1958) ... Sir Maurice
1957 Action of the Tiger - Security Officer
1957 Hour of Decision - Gary Bax
1957 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series) - Count Victor Mattoni
- I Killed the Count: Part 3 (1957) ... Count Victor Mattoni
- I Killed the Count: Part 2 (1957) ... Count Victor Mattoni
- I Killed the Count: Part 1 (1957) ... Count Victor Mattoni
1956 Assignment Foreign Legion (TV Series) - Captain Pierre Cordier
- The Debt (1956) ... Captain Pierre Cordier
1956 The Buccaneers (TV Series) - Captain Flask
- The Hand of the Hawk (1956) ... Captain Flask
1956 The Adventures of Robin Hood (TV Series) - Lucas
- Blackmail (1956) ... Lucas
1956 BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (TV Series) - Archduke Johann Salvator
- The Mayerling Affair (1956) ... Archduke Johann Salvator
1955 London Playhouse (TV Series) - Adrian Childe
- Area Nine (1955) ... Adrian Childe
1955 That Lady - Don Inigo
1955 The Elgin Hour (TV Series) - German
- The Bridge (1955) ... German
1954 Dial M for Murder - Charles Swann
1951-1953 Studio One in Hollywood (TV Series)
- Beyond Reason (1953)
- Colonel Judas (1951)
1951-1952 Robert Montgomery Presents (TV Series) - - Of Lena Geyer (1952)
- Claire Ambler (1952)
- Top Secret (1951)
1952 The King's Author (TV Movie) - Lord Chamberlain
1951 Repertory Theatre (TV Series) - - A Little Night Music (1951)
- Women of Intrigue (1951)
1951 Valley of the Eagles - Sven Nystrom
1951 The Long Dark Hall - The Man
1951 Lucky Nick Cain - Secret Agent (uncredited)
1950 Five Angles on Murder - Inspector Wilson (uncredited)
1950 The Wooden Horse - Pomfret
1950 They Were Not Divided - Michael

1949 The Queen of Spades - Fyodor
1947 Meet Me at Dawn - First Duelling Opponent (uncredited)
1946 Secret Flight - Flt. Lt. Norton
1946 Beware of Pity - Lt. Blannik
1945 Johnny in the Clouds - Bertie Steen
1943 They Met in the Dark - 2nd Code Expert
1940 Charley's (Big-Hearted) Aunt - Student (uncredited)

Writer (2 credits)

1961 Ghost Squad (TV Series)
1958 The Snorkel (from "The Snorkel" by)

1939: Earl Jolly brown is born--Houston, TExas.
(He dies 26 August 2006 at age 66--Las Vegas, Nevada.)
(Born 18 October 1939--Houston, Texas.)

Earl Jolly Brown

See the complete article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Jolly_Brown

Earl Jolly Brown
Born Edwin Earl Brown - October 18, 1939 - Houston, Texas
Died August 26, 2006 (aged 66) - Clark County, Las Vegas, Nevada
Occupation Actor
Years active 1973-1990

Edwin Earl "Jolly" Brown (October 18, 1939 – August 26, 2006) was an American actor.

Brown's best known role was as Whisper, a henchman in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. Other film appearances include Black Belt Jones (1974), Truck Turner (1974) and Linda Lovelace for President (1975). He was also active on television, with credits including Perry Mason, The Odd Couple, and Laverne and Shirley.

Filmography
Year Title Role Notes
1973 Live and Let Die - Whisper
1974 Black Belt Jones - Jelly
1974 Truck Turner - Overweight Bar Patron Uncredited
1975 Linda Lovelace for President - Polmes
1984 Beverly Hills Cop - Bar Patron Uncredited

Earl Jolly Brown (1939–2006)

Actor
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0113484/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t12

1979: Moonraker released in Belgium.

1985: Od nišana do smrti (Serbian, Croatian) and Od tarče do smrti (Slovenian) released in Yugoslavia.

2008: The "Quantum of Solace" single charts at #15 on the Canadian Hot 100, mostly on downloads.

2017: Dynamite Comics publishes James Bond Kill Chain #4 (of 6).

JAMES BOND: KILL CHAIN #4
(OF 6)

https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513026017804011

Cover A: Greg Smallwood
Writer: Andy Diggle
Art: Luca Casalanguida
Genre: Action/Adventure, Media Tie-In
Publication Date: October 2017
Format: Comic Book
Page Count: 32 Pages
ON SALE DATE: 10/18

As 007 closes in on rogue agent Rika Van De Havik, a deadly drone attack strikes at the heart of Europe. Russia's covert ops agency SMERSH is plotting to split NATO - by pitting Britain's MI6 against the CIA!

2020: The London Cabaret Club, Bloomsbury, continues their revamped Bond show London Never Dies.

15 Things to Do this Weekend in
London: 16-19 October 2020

See the complete article here:

https://www.theresident.co.uk/london-culture-events/things-to-do-this-weekend-in-london-16-19-october-2020/

Victoria Purcell on 12th October 2020

8
London Never Dies at London Cabaret Club, Bloomsbury
From 17 October
London Never Dies is a new, re-vamped show from The London Cabaret Club. The James Bond-themed show – the name of which also seems profoundly apt during this time of crisis for the hospitality industry – returns with a host of brand new surprises, from beautifully choreographed dance routines to gravity defying acrobats, iconic tracks from the Bond movies and pioneering 4-D special effects. The show will be accompanied by a fine dining menu created by new head chef Burim Asllanaj, a talented culinary expert with over 20 years of experience working for exclusive private clients, along with LCC’s signature cocktails and martini’s galore. Channel your inner Bond girl or super-spy as some of the capital’s most talented West-End performers immerse you in a glamorous world of romance and espionage. Tickets from £45.

The Bloomsbury Ballroom, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, Holborn WC1B 4DA;
thelondoncabaretclub.com

2020: Q the Music has a one night only show at Adelphi Theatre, West End.

The James Bond Concert Spectacular

See the complete article here:

https://www.whatsonstage.com/shows/west-end-theatre/the-james-bond-concert-spectacular_222517

Adelphi Theatre, West End
Concert/Event

About this show
Bringing the fabulous and iconic music of James Bond to you in a stunning concert, this show has been a huge success at theatres with its energetic and exciting performance by some of the UK’s leading musicians.

The popular Q The Music Show is coming to the UK and they will be bringing the fabulous and iconic music of James Bond to you in a stunning concert. Fresh from the West End, this show has been a huge success all around the world with its energetic and exciting performance by some of the UK’s leading musicians.

Featuring all the songs from the 007 movies, you can hear the greats like Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Skyfall, Thunderball, Live And Let Die, Goldeneye and Licence To Kill amongst all the others.

With top musicians, stunning dancers and an informative compere – who appeared in the films herself, this show has everything you could want for a fabulous night out – and one that you will be talking about for years to come.

Formed in 2004, Q The Music Show have established a worldwide reputation for their authentic covers, orchestral sound and fabulous hair-raising vocalists. The show has been popular abroad at events in Monte Carlo, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Guernsey, Prague and many others.

In 2017 they were asked to perform at Sir Roger Moore’s official memorial event in front of Royalty and the who’s who of the British film industry including Sir Michael Caine, Dame Joan Collins and David Walliams.

Show Details

Dates One Night Only: 18 October 2020
Location: Adelphi Theatre, West End

RichardTheBruce

October 19th

1931: Ian Fleming begins his association with Reuters.

Ian Fleming, Andrew Lycett, 1995.

...On 7 October Ian travelled along
the Thames to the Reuters office on the Embankent at the end of
Carmelite Street, close to Blackfriars Bridge. There, on the first floor, he
was interviewed again, and then by Cecil Fleetwood May, a wireless technician
who, following the introduction of the City ticker-tape three years earlier,
was beginning to develop the business information side of the service.
Both were impressed by the young man's qualities. Rickatson-Hiatt, a
former Coldstream Guards officer, with a clipped moustache and a
monacle, had worked with Associated Press in the United States and was
keen to introduce AP's speed and efficiency to European news-gathering
operations. He reported to Jones that Ian was "quite the right type and
seemed most intelligent". He added, "After leaving Eton, he went to
Sandhurst. He will therefore know the value and importance of discipline."
Rickatson-Hiatt suggested that Ian should be hired initially on a trial basis
for one month without pay.

The aspiring young journalist started work at Reuters on Monday, 19
October 1931. In the circumstances, Ian was particularly anxious to do
well and within a couple of days Rickatson-Hiatt was commending the
new recruit to Sir Roderick. His only negative comment was that Ian
suffered from a slight Foreign Office "bum". He promised, however, that
"you can depend on us to put some pep into him before many days have
gone by." The Reuters chef also had Ian's praises heaped on him from
another source. Ever mindful of her maternal duties, Eve Fleming wrote
to thank him for taking her son on, gushing, "He has great character and
is supposed to be very intelligent, though I ought not to say so!" She
dissembled slightly when she said she was disappointed that Ian was
not trying again for the Forein Office since he had never been expected
to get in first time round.

After his month's trial, Ian was judged a success and offered a permanent
post at a salary of £150 a year. ...

1931: Spy novelist John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) is born--Poole, Dorset, England.

1964: Comic strip for Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang begins it run in The Daily Express. (Ends 23 October.)
1966: You Only Live Twice films Bond getting married.

1988: Licence to Kill films villain Sanchez explaining his caper.

2005: IGN interviews Martin Campbell on Casino Royale.

Interview: Campbell on Casino
Royale
The director talks Bond!

https://uk.ign.com/articles/2005/10/19/interview-campbell-on-casino-royale
By Jeff Otto | 19 Oct 2005 2:48 pm

The James Bond news machine is heating up with the recent announcement (finally!) of the lead actor to portray Bond in Casino Royale, Daniel Craig. The film is to begin shooting soon and the release date is now set for November 17, 2006.

This weekend IGN FilmForce had the chance to question Royale helmer Martin Campbell at the press day for his latest film, the upcoming Sony sequel Legend of Zorro, which releases on the 28th of this month.

Though Campbell and everyone else involved is still remaining tight-lipped about the specifics of James Bonds' 21st big screen adventure (not counting the original Casino Royale or Never Say Never Again), Campbell answered as many questions as he could this weekend and shed at least a bit of light on the upcoming spy flick.

Q: Did you have any input in the selection of Mr. Craig?

MARTIN CAMPBELL: Oh, yeah.
[img]https://moviesmedia.ign.com/movies/image/article/658/658547/craig-bond1_1129321022-001.jpg?fit=bounds&width=640&height=480[.img] Craig as Bond[/img]Q. Is there going to be anything of the novel in the movie?

CAMPBELL: A lot of it, yeah.

Q: How are you going to handle the genital flogging scene from the book?

CAMPBELL: Very interesting. You're the second person who's asked that. I think I'll do it in close up. (Laughs) There are a lot of women who will love that. I've got to get PG-13, so it's a very interesting dilemma.

Q: Every time they have gone from a popular Bond and replaced him, the films have not been as successful. How do you avoid that?

CAMPBELL: I dunno. You just do the best movie you can make. It's as simple as that.

Q: Why do you think Craig will make a great Bond?

CAMPBELL: Because, first of all, he's a great actor. And I think it's in Casino Royale, where Fleming said he looked like Hoagie Carmichael, which is a very interesting comparison. And he's a very interesting looking guy and I think he has all the attributes to make a grittier and tougher bond. A much more interesting – just different and more interesting in my view.

Q[/b]: It seems every time they say that the story is overwhelmed by all those gadgets.

CAMPBELL: Well, first of all there are no gadgets in the first one. So, how about that?

Q: So is it mostly the title being used and the basic plot rather than specifics from the book?

CAMPBELL: The only thing you can't use from the book – I don't know how many of you have read it – it was written in 1953 [and] was set against the Cold War. In fact, it was the first one that involves Smersh, and we've obviously had to change that. But, essentially the book remains pretty much in tact. The whole game takes place. La Chiffre is the bad guy, who was the bad guy there. Your genital whacking scene, whomever came up with that, that all remains. So, it's pretty much the last 2/3rds of the movie will be like the book. And Bond will fall in love with Vesper Lynd, as he does in the book. He's just got his 007 stripes when he gets into the story so he's got some rough edges on him to begin with and hopefully, by the end of it, he'll become the 007 we all know and love.

Martin Campbell on the set of
the first Zorro with Anthony Hopkins
and Antonio Banderas

Q: Does it restart the franchise?

CAMPBELL: Yeah, I guess so.

Q: Does this mean you start remaking the other movies?

CAMPBELL: That's exactly the same question I asked them. When's the point you start re-making Dr. No? Who knows? No, this is the last book they are filming. Because, all the rest have been done.

Q: Do you think the re-start of Batman Begins had to do with this?

CAMPBELL: No, I think they always wanted to get the book and they never have been able to till just recently. Now they have the book. I think Cubby, Barbara, said Cubby always wanted to make the book. They made one. Not a good movie. A spoof with five bonds, which Ursula Andress was one, by the way.

Q: Have you cast any of the new Bond girls?

CAMPBELL: Not yet. We were more worried about casting Bond…

Q: Is there a chance Judi Dench will return as M?

CAMPBELL: Yeah, we're discussing that at the moment. Yeah, maybe.

Q: Did you talk to Pierce about coming back?

CAMPBELL: No, that wasn't my choice. That was over before I came into those discussions as they were.

Q: When is it going to start?

CAMPBELL: End of January. I hope!

Q: Do they have a release date?

CAMPBELL: Yes, November.

2008: BBC airs the documentary Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began.

2009: Joseph Wiseman dies at age 91--Manhattan, New York City, New York.
(Born 15 May 1918--Montreal, Quebec, Canada.)

Joseph Wiseman obituary

See the complete article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/20/joseph-wiseman-obituary

Versatile character actor best remembered on screen as James
Bond's adversary Dr No
Ronald Bergan | Tue 20 Oct 2009 13.33 EDT

‘I thought it might be just another grade-B Charlie Chan mystery,’ said Wiseman of his role in Dr No.

Despite the fact that Joseph Wiseman, who has died aged 91, appeared in dozens of movies and countless TV series and had only 20 minutes of screen time in Dr No (1962), it is for his performance in that film, as the eponymous adversary to James Bond in the first movie of the series, based on the books by Ian Fleming, that he will best be remembered.

Dressed in a white Nehru jacket with a pair of shiny black, prosthetic hands, the result of a "misfortune", Wiseman was cool and calculating as the half-German, half-Chinese arch enemy of 007, played by Sean Connery, and one of the most effective of Bond villains. Dr Julius No is a member of Spectre – the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, Extortion. "The four great cornerstones of power headed by the greatest brains in the world," he explains. "Correction. Criminal brains," says Bond. "A successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be," retorts Dr No.

Wiseman was fortunate that Noël Coward, a friend and neighbour of Fleming's in Jamaica, where the film was set, turned the role down, saying, "Doctor No? No. No. No." Of his most famous role, Wiseman said: "I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I had no idea it would achieve the success it did. I know nothing about mysteries. I don't take to them. As far as I was concerned, I thought it might be just another grade-B Charlie Chan mystery."

Wiseman was born in Montreal, Canada, and his family subsequently moved to the US. He started his acting career on stage in his late teens, making his Broadway debut as part of the ensemble in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938), with Raymond Massey in the title role. There followed parts in three plays by Maxwell Anderson: Journey to Jerusalem (1940), Candle in the Wind (1941) and Joan of Lorraine (1946), and he was the eunuch Mardian in Antony and Cleopatra (1947), directed by and starring Kathleen Cornell.

But it was his role on stage in Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story (1949) that launched his film career, during which he typically played slightly crazy off-beat characters. Wiseman, in a loud striped suit, was both sleazy and comic as the lowlife burglar, becoming hysterical when interrogated by overzealous policeman Ralph Bellamy. He repeated the role in William Wyler's 1951 film version, starring Kirk Douglas, without toning down his manic stage performance.

This coiled-up energy proved to be highly effective in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952), in which he played the opportunistic journalist and agent provocateur who finally betrays Emiliano Zapata (Marlon Brando). He continued to steal scenes in two rather risible biblical epics, as an imposing priest in The Silver Chalice (1954), Paul Newman's debut picture, and as a wily beggar in The Prodigal (1955). Around the same time, Wiseman was able to reveal more of his talent on stage. He played Edmund to Louis Calhern's King Lear; the gangster Eddie Fuselli in a revival of Clifford Odets's Golden Boy (1952), and The Inquisitor in Jean Anouih's The Lark (1955), with Julie Harris as Joan of Arc.

In 1960, returning to movies, Wiseman had a typically flashy role as a one-eyed, deranged itinerant evangelist armed with the "Sword of God" in John Huston's western The Unforgiven. Then, in 1962, came The Happy Thieves, in which, third-billed after Rita Hayworth and Rex Harrison, he seemed to have some fun as a master forger, and the infamous Dr No. It was six years before Wiseman made another movie.

Making up for lost time, he appeared in seven films within a few years. Apart from playing ruthless Italian gangsters in Stiletto (1969) and The Valachi Papers (1972), Wiseman created a niche for himself portraying a variety of Jewish characters. In The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968), Wiseman is the bemused Jewish owner of the notorious burlesque theatre, who disapproves of his son's introducing striptease.

Bye Bye Braverman (1968) saw him as a pedantic lecturer on his way to a friend's funeral. Of his performance, Time magazine wrote that Wiseman "wears an expression of perpetual disgust, as if he were forever smelling fried ham … What picture there is for stealing is burgled by Wiseman with his portrayal of a stereotypical littérateur … As lofty as Edmund Wilson, he pronounces Jehovah-like judgments on literature and humanity."

Back in Canada for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), Wiseman played a Trotskyite owner of a blouse factory, who calls his nephew (Richard Dreyfuss) "a pushy Jewish boy".

On Broadway, Wiseman originated the role of LeDuc, a Jewish psychotherapist, in Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1964), who asserts that "the Jew is only the name we give to that stranger within everyone". Also on Broadway was his Drama Desk award-winning performance in the title role of In the Matter of J Robert Oppenheimer (1969).

Wiseman continued to be active on television throughout his career, notably in Crime Story (1986-88) as the menacing gang boss Manny Weisbord. In his later years, Wiseman would often give readings of Yiddish writers, and his last stage performance was in 2002 at a gala concert called Yiddish in America at the New York town hall. His last Broadway appearance had been the previous year, as a prosecution witness in Abby Mann's stage adaptation of his film drama Judgment at Nuremberg.

Wiseman's first marriage, to Nell Kennard, ended in divorce, and he is survived by his daughter, Martha, by that marriage, and his sister Ruth. His second wife, the dancer, teacher and choreographer Pearl Lang, died last February.

•Joseph Wiseman, actor, born 15 May 1918; died 19 October 2009

Joseph Wiseman (1918–2009)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0936476/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Actor (95 credits)

1996 Law & Order (TV Series) - Seymour Bergreen
- Family Business (1996) ... Seymour Bergreen
1994 A Passover Seder (Video short) - Grandfather
1994 L.A. Law (TV Series) - Isidore Schoen
- Finish Line (1994) ... Isidore Schoen
1992 Civil Wars (TV Series) - Julius Schiff
- For Better or Perverse (1992) ... Julius Schiff

1989 MacGyver (TV Series) - Joe Catano
- The Battle of Tommy Giordano (1989) ... Joe Catano
1988 Lady Mobster (TV Movie) - Victor Castle
1986-1988 Crime Story (TV Series) - Manny Weisbord
- The Hearings (1988) ... Manny Weisbord
- Last Rites (1988) ... Manny Weisbord
- Little Girl Lost (1987) ... Manny Weisbord
- Shockwaves (1987) ... Manny Weisbord
- Atomic Fallout (1987) ... Manny Weisbord
... 18 episodes
1986 Seize the Day - Dr. Adler
1985 The Equalizer (TV Series) - Eddie Vanessi
- The Confirmation Day (1985) ... Eddie Vanessi
1984 The A-Team (TV Series) - Zeke Westerland
- The Bells of St. Mary's (1984) ... Zeke Westerland
1984 American Playhouse (TV Series) - Judge Leopold Wapter
- The Ghost Writer (1984) ... Judge Leopold Wapter
1983 Rage of Angels (TV Movie) - Antonio Granelli
1983 Magnum, P.I. (TV Series) - Dr. Albert Tessa
- Birdman of Budapest (1983) ... Dr. Albert Tessa
1981 The Greatest American Hero (TV Series) - James J. Beck
- Don't Mess Around with Jim (1981) ... James J. Beck
1981 Masada (TV Mini-Series) - Jerahmeel, Head Essene
- Part IV (1981) ... Jerahmeel, Head Essene
- Part III (1981) ... Jerahmeel, Head Essene
- Part II (1981) ... Jerahmeel, Head Essene
- Part I (1981) ... Jerahmeel, Head Essene
1980 Freebie and the Bean (TV Series) - Dr. Dorf
- Health Nuts (1980) ... Dr. Dorf

1979 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (TV Series) - Carl Morphus
- Vegas in Space (1979) ... Carl Morphus
1979 Jaguar Lives! - Ben Ashir
1979 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - King Draco
1978 The Betsy - Jake / Angelo's uncle
1977 Murder at the World Series (TV Movie) - Sam Druckman
1976 The Streets of San Francisco (TV Series) - Barbado
- The Thrill Killers: Part 2 (1976) ... Barbado
- The Thrill Killers: Part 1 (1976) ... Barbado
1975 Journey Into Fear - Colonel Haki
1975 Zalmen: or, The Madness of God (TV Movie) - Rabbi
1974 QB VII (TV Mini-Series) - Morris Cady
- Part One & Two (1974) ... Morris Cady
1974 The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Uncle Benjy
1974 The Suicide Club (TV Movie)
1974 Men of the Dragon (TV Movie) - Balashev
1974 The Magician (TV Series) - Hon Chi Kai
- The Illusion of the Lost Dragon (1974) ... Hon Chi Kai
1973 If I Had a Million (TV Movie)
1971-1973 The F.B.I. (TV Series) - Gilford / Big Julio
- The Pay-Off (1973) ... Gilford
- Bitter Harbor (1971) ... Big Julio
1973 Nightside (TV Movie) - Grudin
1973 The Wide World of Mystery (TV Series) - Mr. Silverado
- Suicide Club (1973) ... Mr. Silverado
1972 Pursuit (TV Movie) - Dr. Nordman
1972 McCloud (TV Series) - Paul Rudell / Stephen Rudensky
- Fifth Man in a String Quartet (1972) ... Paul Rudell / Stephen Rudensky
1972 O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (TV Series) - Armand Pringle
- Operation: White Fire (1972) ... Armand Pringle
1972 The Valachi Papers - Salvatore Maranzano
1971 Lawman - Lucas
1970 Night Gallery (TV Series) - Jacob Bauman (segment "Room with a View")
- Room with a View/The Little Black Bag/The Nature of the Enemy (1970) ... Jacob Bauman (segment "Room with a View")
1970 NET Playhouse (TV Series) - Lev
- They Have Taken Over (1970) ... Lev
1970 The Mask of Sheba (TV Movie) - Fandil Bondalok

1969 Stiletto - Emilio Matteo
1968 The Night They Raided Minsky's - Louis Minsky
1968 The Counterfeit Killer - Rajeski
1968 Bye Bye Braverman - Felix Ottensteen
1967 The Outsider (TV Movie) - Ernest Grimes
1967 Coronet Blue (TV Series) - Rudi Nateseh
- The Presence of Evil (1967) ... Rudi Nateseh
1966 T.H.E. Cat (TV Series) - Prince Nicky Cavalcante
- The System (1966) ... Prince Nicky Cavalcante
1966 Preview Tonight (TV Series) - Pharaoh
- Great Bible Adventures: Seven Rich Years and Seven Lean (1966) ... Pharaoh
1966 Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (TV Series) - Rajeski
- The Faceless Man (1966) ... Rajeski
1966 The Legend of Jesse James (TV Series) - Captain Hammel
- The Last Stand of Captain Hammel (1966) ... Captain Hammel
1964 Wagon Train (TV Series) - Jim Case
- The Santiago Quesada Story (1964) ... Jim Case
1963-1964 Quest (TV Series) - Eli Peck
- Eli, the Fanatic (1964) ... Eli Peck
- Eulogy (1963)
1962 Dr. No - Dr. No
1962 The New Breed (TV Series) - Clayton Grimes
- Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo? (1962) ... Clayton Grimes
1962 The Twilight Zone (TV Series) - Paul Radin
- One More Pallbearer (1962) ... Paul Radin
1961 The Happy Thieves - Jean Marie Calbert
1961 Festival (TV Series) - Prisoner / Messenger
- The Police (1961) ... Prisoner
- The Dybbuk (1961) ... Messenger
1960-1961 The Untouchables (TV Series) - Russell Shield / Albert Maris
- The Antidote (1961) ... Russell Shield
- The Tommy Karpeles Story (1960) ... Albert Maris
1961 General Electric Theater (TV Series) - Manson
- A Possibility of Oil (1961) ... Manson
1960 The Westerner (TV Series) - 'Serafin'
- Ghost of a Chance (1960) ... 'Serafin'
1958-1960 Shirley Temple's Storybook (TV Series) - Lurgan / Sorcerer
- Kim (1960) ... Lurgan
- The Wild Swans (1958) ... Sorcerer
1960 The Unforgiven - Abe Kelsey
1960 CBS Repertoire Workshop (TV Series) - Anton
- Tessie Malfitano and Anton Waldek (1960) ... Anton

1959 Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (TV Series) - Lepke Buchalter
- Lepke (1959) ... Lepke Buchalter
1959 Adventures in Paradise (TV Series) - Torok
- The Derelict (1959) ... Torok
1956-1959 The Joseph Cotten Show: On Trial (TV Series) - Max Gebler / Antonio
- False Alarm (1959) ... Max Gebler
- Twice in Peril (1956) ... Antonio
1959 The Loretta Young Show (TV Series) - Dr. Newland
- Mr. Wilson's Wife: Part 2 (1959) ... Dr. Newland
- Mr. Wilson's Wife: Part 1 (1959) ... Dr. Newland
1958 Rendezvous (TV Series) - - Alone (1958)
1958 Schlitz Playhouse (TV Series) - Max Gebler
- False Alarm (1958) ... Max Gebler
1958 Matinee Theatre (TV Series) - Hosea
- The Prophet Hosea (1958) ... Hosea
1957 Suspicion (TV Series)
- The Deadly Game (1957)
1957 The Garment Jungle - George Kovan
1957 Studio 57 (TV Series)
- You Take Ballistics (1957)
1956 Three Brave Men - Jim Barron
1956 Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre (TV Series) - Will Prentiss
- The Marked Bullet (1956) ... Will Prentiss
1955 Producers' Showcase (TV Series)
- Darkness at Noon (1955)
1954-1955 Ponds Theater (TV Series) - Death
- Billy Budd (1955)
- Death Takes a Holiday (1954) ... Death
- Arrowsmith (1954)
1955 The Prodigal - Carmish
1954 The Silver Chalice - Mijamin
1954 Justice (TV Series) - Vincent Wilbec
- Terror on the Tracks (1954) ... Vincent Wilbec
1954 Inner Sanctum (TV Series) - Insurance Inspector
- Ghost Mail (1954) ... Insurance Inspector
1954 Medallion Theatre (TV Series)
- Contact with the West (1954)
1950-1954 Suspense (TV Series)
- The Fourth Degree (1954)
- Criminals Mark (1950)
1953 The Motorola Television Hour (TV Series) - Baroff
- Brandenburg Gate (1953) ... Baroff
1953 Armstrong Circle Theatre (TV Series)
- Tour of Duty (1953)
1953 Champ for a Day - Dominic Guido
1953 Danger (TV Series)
- Circus Story (1953)
1953 Tales of Tomorrow (TV Series)
- Lazarus Walks (1953)
- The Squeeze Play (1953)
1952 Frontiers of Faith (TV Series)
- As a Wind That Blows (1952)
1952 Les Miserables - Genflou
1951-1952 Lights Out (TV Series) - The Croupier
- Man in the Dark (1952)
- The Deal (1951) ... The Croupier
1952 Viva Zapata! - Fernando Aguirre
1951 Detective Story - Charley Gennini
1950 With These Hands - Mike Deleo

[/quote
]

2010: Clement Graham Crowden dies at age 87--Edinburgh, Scotland.
(Born 30 November 1922--Edinburgh, Scotland.)

Graham Crowden (1922–2010)

Actor | Soundtrack
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0189561/

2010: During pre-production, writer Peter Morgan exits the BOND 23 project leaving an unfinished film treatment.

2016: Dynamite Comics releases James Bond #11 Eidolon Chapter 5.

JAMES BOND #11

https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513024181811011
Cover: Dom Reardon
Writer: Warren Ellis
Art: Jason Masters
Genre: Action/Adventure, Media Tie-In
Publication Date: October 2016
Format: Comic Book
Page Count: 32 pages
ON SALE DATE: 10/19

EIDOLON, CHAPTER 5: Eidolon have M and Moneypenny, in a remote safehouse, with no hope of backup, no aid on the way, and no sign of James Bond. Fear and paranoia and the collapse of governmental structure are in sight. Britain is going back to the Dark Ages and SPECTRE, finally, have won.

RichardTheBruce

October 20th

1955: Thomas Newman is born--Los Angeles, California.
1956: Danny Boyle is born--Radcliffe, Bury, Greater Manchester, England.
1959: Ian Fleming writes to fan Eunice Jenkins in Hong Kong.

Sale 2543 - Lot 188

See the complete article here:

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/FLEMING-IAN-Typed-Letter-Signed-to-Bond-fan-Eunice-Jenkins-o?saleno=2543&lotNo=188&refNo=769390]

1957: The Sunday Times ends its six week serialization of Ian Fleming's The Diamond Smugglers, started 15 September.

1997: Ronald Lawrence Morisco-Tarr (Ron Tarr) dies at age 60--Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England
(Born 14 November 1936--Municipal Borough of Willesden, Middlesex, England.)

Ron Tarr (1936–1997)

Actor | Miscellaneous Crew
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0850611/

1999: Garbage introduces "The World Is Not Enough" during a University of Denver concert. The same day MTV screens its documentary Making the Video, then premieres it.

Garbage, Making the World Is Not Enough, 1999

The World Is Not Enough - Official Video, 1999

2001: Geoffrey Boothroyd dies--UK.
(Born 1925--Blackpool, England.)

Geoffrey Boothroyd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Boothroyd

Geoffrey Boothroyd (1925 – 20 October 2001) was a British firearms expert and author of several standard reference works on the subject. He gave weapons advice to James Bond author Ian Fleming, who named the character Major Boothroyd after him as a result. He was born in Blackpool. Beginning with A Guide to Gun Collecting and Guns Through the Ages (both 1961) to The British Over and Under Shotgun co-authored with Susan Boothroyd (2004), Boothroyd was a prolific author on the subject of firearms.

Whilst employed with Imperial Chemical Industries, an ammunition manufacturer, Boothroyd wrote a letter to Fleming professing admiration for the character of James Bond, but not his choice of weapons, particularly the .25 calibre Beretta. Fleming responded to Boothroyd, and their correspondence about weaponry has been reprinted in various places. As a result of the correspondence Fleming gave Bond a 7.65mm Walther PPK pistol in Dr. No and created a character named "Major Boothroyd" in the novel (the real Boothroyd held no such rank). Prior to the correspondence Fleming is reported to have thought the subject of guns to be rather dull and uninteresting. Boothroyd advised Fleming on the use of silencers and suggested various firearms for use by Bond and other characters.

Boothroyd provided illustrator Richard Chopping with his own .38 Smith & Wesson snubnosed revolver, modified with one third of the trigger guard removed, to meet Fleming's wish for a design incorporating a pistol and a rose for the first edition cover of From Russia, with Love. Boothroyd had to assist the police with their enquiries when a similar weapon was used in a triple murder in Glasgow explaining that his weapon had been posted to Ian Fleming for a book cover. Peter Manuel was later arrested, convicted and executed for the murder.

In the first Bond film, Dr. No, Major Boothroyd, portrayed by Peter Burton, recreates the scene from the novel. Geoffrey Boothroyd appeared as himself in a short film The Guns of James Bond available on the Dr. No Ultimate Edition DVD.

Geoffrey Boothroyd

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2508719/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Self (1 credit)

1964 The Guns of James Bond (Documentary short) - Himself

Archive footage (2 credits)

2015 Timeshift (TV Series documentary) - Himself - Armourer 'Q'
- Looking for Mr Bond: 007 at the BBC (2015) ... Himself - Armourer 'Q'
2008 Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began (TV Movie documentary) - Himself

1964 Time Out - The Guns of James Bond

2008: "Another Way to Die" single released in Europe.

2012: The "Skyfall" single enters the Billboard Hot 100 at #8.

RichardTheBruce

October 21st

1945: Everett McGill is born--Miami Beach, Florida.

1954: The CBS anthology series Climax! airs the live television production of Casino Royale featuring American CIA Agent Jimmy Bond, British Agent Clarence Leiter, and Bond Girl Valerie Mathis.

Casino Royale

William H. Brown... Director
Ian Fleming ... source novel
Antony Ellis, Charles Bennett... writers for television

Cast
Barry Nelson ... James Bond
Peter Lorre ... Le Chiffre
Linda Christian ... Valerie Mathis
Michael Pate ... Clarence Leiter
William Lundigan ... Himself - Host
Music by Jerry Goldsmith

1959: Ivar Bryce gives feedback to Fleming on his not being present for future filming.

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.
Chapter 10 - Money Problems

Bryce's response to Fleming's revelations that he might not be on hand for
the shooting arrived on 21 October. "The time you are essential is obviously
during preparation of the script. Even if Whittingham writes every word, you
really must be within reach for overall decisions. I think once that is over, you
needn't be there at all, expect for fun. I personally think the Nassau shooting
should be from mid-April to June, when the weather is much the most reliable,
and when Nassau costs of living are quart of 'season' costs."

Whittingham, too was expecting to work closely with Fleming and was
more than surprised when he instead grabbed a portable typewriter, visas and a
round-the-world suit with concealed money pockets and hopped on a BOAC
Comet bound for Hong Kong to begin a five-week tour round the world. The
Sunday Times wanted Fleming to write series entitled "The Six Wicked
Cities - observations on places like Las Vegas, Tokyo and Las Angeles.
Fleming confessed to being the world's worst sightseer and that he had "often
advocated the provision of roller-skates at the doors of museums and art
galleries." But his editor argued that such a trip would be a perfect opportunity
to pick up material for future Bond stories. Indeed Fleming's Tokyo visit, his
first, led to an enthusiasm, for Japan and his decision to later use it as the
location for You Only Live Twice.

1965: Original premiere date planned for Thunderball at the Odeon. Leicester Square. (Postponed due to delays in post-production.)
1968: Principal photography begins at Piz Gloria, Canton of Bern, Switzerland. With the restaurant still under construction, the production paid for electricity, airlifts, and the construction of the helipad.

1972: James Bond comic strip Isle of Condors finishes its run. (Started 12 June 1972. 1952–2065)
Yaroslav Horak, artist. Jim Lawrence, writer.

https://www.popoptiq.com/isle-of-condors/



https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/ioc.php3


Swedish Semic Comic
https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1974.php3?s=comics&id=01800

Kondorernas ö
(Isle of Condors)

Swedish Semic Comic
https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1981.php3

Kondorernas ö
(Isle of Condors)

Danish http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no-28-1974/

James Bond Agent 007 no. 28:
“Isle of Condors” (1974)
"Kondorernes ø"

1976: Andrew Scott is born--Dublin, Ireland.

1984: Marc Zinga is born in Likasi, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1987: Bob Simmons dies at age 65--Fullham, London, England. (Born 31 March 1922.)

Bob Simmons (stunt man)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.

Bob Simmons (I) (1922–1987)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0799689/

Filmography

Stunts (49 credits)

1987 Going Bananas (stunt coordinator - as Robert Simmons)
1985 A View to a Kill (stunt team supervisor)
1983 Octopussy (action sequences arranger)
1982 The Final Option (stunts - uncredited)
1982 The Wall (TV Movie) (stunt coordinator)
1981 For Your Eyes Only (action sequences arranger) / (stunts - uncredited)
1980 The Sea Wolves (stunts - uncredited)

1979 All Quiet on the Western Front (TV Movie) (action arranger)
1979 Moonraker (action sequence arranger) / (stunts - uncredited)
1979 Zulu Dawn (stunt coordinator - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1978 The Wild Geese (stunt double: Richard Burton - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1977 Mister Deathman (stunt coordinator)
1977 The Spy Who Loved Me (action arranger) / (stunts - uncredited)
1975 De dwaze lotgevallen van Sherlock Jones (fight instructor)
1975 The Man Who Would Be King (stunts - uncredited)
1975 Happy Days Are Here Again (stunt coordinator)
1975 Paper Tiger (action arranger)
1975 The Wilby Conspiracy (stunts)
1974 Caravan to Vaccares (stunts: fight sequence)
1973 Live and Let Die (stunts co-ordinator)
1973 A Touch of Class (stunt and fight arranger)
1973 The Offence (stunts - uncredited)
1972 Lady Caroline Lamb (fight arranger)
1971 Diamonds Are Forever (stunt arranger) / (stunts - uncredited)
1971 When Eight Bells Toll (stunt coordinator - uncredited) / (stunt double: Anthony Hopkins - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1971 Murphy's War (stunt arranger)
1970 The Adventurers (stunts - uncredited)

1968 Shalako (action sequences arranger)
1967 You Only Live Twice (action sequences) / (stunt double - uncredited) / (stunt double: Sean Connery - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1965 Thunderball (stunt double: Guy Doleman - uncredited) / (stunt double: Sean Connery - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1965 Genghis Khan (action sequences)
1964 Goldfinger (action sequences by) / (stunt double: Harold Sakata - uncredited) / (stunt double: Michael Mellinger - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1963 From Russia with Love (stunt double - uncredited) / (train fight double: Sean Connery - uncredited)
1962 Dr. No (stunt arranger - uncredited) / (stunt double - uncredited) / (stunt double: Sean Connery - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1962 Night Creatures (fight sequence staged by)
1961 The Hellions (stunt double: Lionel Jeffries - uncredited)
1961 The Secret Ways (stunt supervisor)
1961 The Guns of Navarone (stunt coordinator - uncredited) / (stunt double: Gregory Peck - uncredited) / (stunts - uncredited)
1961 Fury at Smugglers' Bay (stunt coordinator - uncredited)
1960 Exodus (stunts - uncredited)
1960 Scent of Mystery (stunt double: Denholm Elliott - uncredited)

1958 Tom Thumb (stunt double: Peter Sellers - uncredited)
1957 Action of the Tiger (stunts - uncredited)
1957 Fire Down Below (stunts - uncredited)
1956 Zarak (stunts)
1954 The Black Knight (stunt double: Alan Ladd - uncredited)
1953 Paratrooper (stunts - uncredited)
1952 Ivanhoe (stunts - uncredited)
1939 Jamaica Inn (stunts - uncredited)

Actor (25 credits)

1981 For Your Eyes Only - Henchman Lotus Explosion Victim (uncredited)

1978 The Wild Geese - Pilot (uncredited)
1977 The Spy Who Loved Me - KGB Thug #2 (uncredited)
1976 The Next Man - London Assassin
1976 Montana Trap
1971 The Persuaders! (TV Series) - Jeep Driver / Card Player
- Chain of Events (1971) ... Jeep Driver (uncredited)
- To the Death, Baby (1971) ... Card Player (uncredited)
1971 Murphy's War - member of German sub crew (uncredited)

1966 The Saint (TV Series) - Fake Limo Driver
- The Queen's Ransom (1966) ... Fake Limo Driver (uncredited)
1965 Thunderball - Colonel Jacques Bouvar - SPECTRE #6 (uncredited)
1964 Goldfinger - James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (uncredited)
1963 From Russia with Love- James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (uncredited)
1963 Sparrows Can't Sing
Pub Patron (uncredited)
1962 Dr. No - James Bond in Gunbarrel Sequence (uncredited)
1962 The Road to Hong Kong - Astronaut (uncredited)
1961 The Guns of Navarone - German Soldier on Navarone (uncredited)
1961 Fury at Smugglers' Bay - Carlos, a pirate
1960 Exodus - Man of arms (uncredited)
1960 And the Same to You - Perce's Opponent

1959 Great Van Robbery - Peters
1958 The Vise (TV Series) - Brading
- The Man Who Was Twice (1958) ... Brading
1958 Tank Force (aka No Time To Die) - Mustapha
1955 Tangier Assignment - Peter Valentine (as Robert Simmons)
1953 The Sword and the Rose - French Champion
1953 Bad Blonde - Booth Man (uncredited)

1939 Reform School - Johnny

Miscellaneous Crew (16 credits)

1982 The Final Option (action arranger)
1980 The Sea Wolves (action arranger)

1978 The Wild Geese (action arranger)
1975 The Man Who Would Be King (master of horse)
1973 The Man Called Noon (action supervisor)
1971 Catlow (action sequence coordinator)
1970 The Adventurers (action sequences arranger: second unit)

1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade (action arrangements)
1967 You Only Live Twice (action sequences by)
1965 Thunderball (action sequences by)
1964 Goldfinger (body double: James Bond, in opening sequence - uncredited)
1964 The Long Ships (action sequences)
1963 From Russia with Love (body double: James Bond, in opening sequence - uncredited)
1962 Dr. No (body double: James Bond, in opening sequence - uncredited)
1962 The Pirates of Blood River (horse master) / (master at arms)
1961 The Naked Edge (fight arranger)

Camera and Electrical Department (2 credits)

George & Mildred (TV Series) (lighting director - 3 episodes, 1977 - 1978) (lighting - 2 episodes, 1979)
- The Twenty Six Year Itch (1979) ... (lighting)
- A Military Pickle (1979) ... (lighting)
- I Believe in Yesterday (1978) ... (lighting director)
- The Right Way to Travel (1977) ... (lighting director)
- All Around the Clock (1977) ... (lighting director)
1977 The Upchat Line (TV Series) (lighting director - 1 episode)
- Accommodation Address (1977) ... (lighting director)

Art department (1 credit)

1987 Promised Land (storyboard artist)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director (1 credit)

1966 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (second unit director)

Producer (1 credit)

1973 The Man Called Noon (associate producer)

2019: Liam Gallagher "jokes" he's available for the next Bond theme song.

Liam Gallagher: 007 bosses can give me a call
for Bond tune

See the complete article here:

21 October 2019, 11:40 |

Liam Gallagher. Picture: Press

The former Oasis rocker has teased he wouldn't say no to being approached for the upcoming No Time To Die film.

Liam Gallagher has expressed an interest in singing the next Bond theme tune.

The former Oasis frontman has revealed he'd be happy to record the soundtrack for Daniel Craig's last outing as the famous spy.

Speaking of the forthcoming film, which is entitled No Time To Die, Gallagher joked: "The new James Bond one, it's all about dying innit.

"Die not next week, can't be arsed dying today, might die f***ing next month, there's a lot of death going on. "But you know they can give us a call, why not."

Speaking to Ireland's Today FM, the Manchester legend also said he thought that his Gone track would work for a Quentin Tarantino film.

"Tarantino, he's pretty good, isn't he? There's a lot of him in Gone," mused the rocker.

"But we don't write music to go, 'Right let's put it in a film,' but if people pick up on it then they're welcome to it.

So far, a few artists have been rumoured for the new Bond soundtrack, including Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa, as well as Sam Smith and Adele - who have both previously performed on Bond themes and won Academy Awards for 2015's Writing's On The Wall and 2012's Skyfall respectively.

No Time To Die is set for release in April 2020.

2019: Naomie Harris says Moneypenny spinoff film in discussion.

Naomie Harris Says 'Conversation Has Started' for
'James Bond' Spin-Off film as Miss Moneypenny!

See the complete article here:

http://www.justjared.com/2019/10/21/naomie-harris-says-conversation-has-started-for-james-bond-spin-off-film-as-miss-moneypenny/

Mon, 21 October 2019 at 12:10 pm

Naomie Harris is ready for her very own stand-alone James Bond film!

While making an appearance on Good Morning America on Monday (October 21) in New York City, the 43-year-old actress opened up about her Moonlight director Barry Jenkins wanting to do a spin-off film for her Bond character, Miss Moneypenny.

“He’s wanted to do a bad ass, kick-ass kind of action thing with Moneypenny which I’m all for actually,” Naomie revealed. “I got together with Barbara Broccoli, our producer, and I was like let’s make this happen but she wasn’t so down with it – but maybe one day it should. Who knows.”

“The conversation has started at least and we’re continuing it here so who knows,” Naomie concluded.

Naomie Harris also talked about her role as a police officer in the new action film Black and Blue, which will be released on October 25 – Watch the trailer here!

RichardTheBruce

October 22nd

1918: James Duncan (Jim) Lawrence is born--Detroit, Michigan.
(He dies 19 March 1994 at age 75--Summit, New Jersey.)

Lawrence, Jim

See the complete article here:

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lawrence_jim

April 03, 2020

Working name of US teacher and author James Duncan Lawrence (1918-1994), active from 1941 until the 1980s; he was one of the main authors in the Second Series of Tom Swift books (see Children's SF), comprising the Tom Swift Jr sequence as by Victor Appleton II (see Victor Appleton); Lawrence's contributions begin with #5: Tom Swift and his Atomic Earth Blaster (1954) and end with #30: Tom Swift and his G-Force Inverter (1968), all as by Victor Appleton II (for list of titles by other authors see Tom Swift). Lawrence also revised various Hardy Boys titles as by Franklin W Dixon for 1960s reissue: see John Button for an example of mild genre interest. His remaining sf output consists of the unremarkable, mildly erotic Man from Planet X sequence – The Man from Planet X #1: The She-Beast (1975), The Man from Planet X #2: Tiger by the Tail (1975) and The Man from Planet X: The Devil to Pay (1975), all as by Hunter Adams – and two novels tied to Shared-World franchises: ESP McGee and the Haunted Mansion (1983 chap) for the ESP McGee series, and The Cutlass Clue (1986) for the A.I. Gang series. [JC]
James Duncan Lawrence

born Detroit, Michigan: 22 October 1918

died Summit, New Jersey: 19 March 1994

https://www.markcarlson-ghost.com/index.php/2019/09/12/friday-foster/

1959: Ivar Bryce by letter lectures Kevin McClory on spending.

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.
Chapter 11 - The Search for James Bond

What rankled the most with Bryce was McClory's passion for touring The
Boy and the Bridge around the European film festival circuit, all at great cost (in
Venice, McClory chartered a luxury yacht to live on), but with little effect on
the box office. "I'm afraid the very thought of festivals infuriates me," he wrote
McClory on 22 October. "We simply cannot go on spending money faster than
it is coming in. Unless we stop spending, and start collecting some of the
proceeds, it is obvious not only shall I never get back my $400,000, but
neither of us will ever have any profits to divide."

1964: Jonathan Cape publishes Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car, the first of three volumes, illustrated by John Burningham. Ian Fleming writes this for son Caspar.

1964: Desde Rusia con amor released in Uruguay.

1981: Τζέημς Μποντ, πράκτωρ 007: Για τα μάτια σου μόνο (James Bond, Agent 007: For Your Eyes Only) released in Greece.

1995: Sir Kingsley Amis CBE dies at age 73--London, England.
(Born 16 April 1922--Clapham, London, England.)

Obituary: Sir Kingsley Amis

]See the complete article here:

[centerhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sir-kingsley-amis-1579017.html[/center]

David Lodge | Monday 23 October 1995 01:02

Kingsley Amis was the most gifted of the British novelists who began publishing in the 1950s and were grouped together - by the media rather than by their own volition - as "Angry Young Men". He also proved himself to be the one with the most stamina and capacity for development.

Amis was a key figure in the history of British post-war fiction, but his originality was not always fully appreciated because it did not manifest itself in any obvious novelty of form. Indeed the literary new wave of the Fifties, in which Amis played a leading role (its poetic wing, to which he also contributed, was known as "The Movement"), was an aesthetically conservative force, consciously setting itself against modernist experimentation. A passage in a review Amis contributed to the Spectator in 1958 is representative in both its sentiments and the down-to-earth blokeishness of its manner:

The idea about experiment being the life-blood of the English novel is one that dies hard. "Experiment" in this context boils down pretty regularly to "obtruded oddity", whether in construction - multiple viewpoints and such - or in style. It is not felt that adventurousness in subject matter or attitude or tone really count.

This is a thinly disguised manifesto for Amis's own early fiction, but it is as obscuring as it is revealing. It is true that Lucky Jim (1954) and its successors dealt with what was then new or neglected social territory (for example, the provincial university) from unhackneyed perspectives (for example, the upwardly mobile young professional who is unimpressed by the values and lifestyle of the bourgeoisie). This is presumably what Amis meant by adventurousness of subject matter, attitude and tone. And it is also true that these novels were very traditional in form - the specific tradition to which they belonged being that of the English comic novel, in which satirical comedy of manners and robust farce are combined in an entertaining and easily assimilable story. Fielding, Dickens, Wodehouse and Waugh are some of Amis's obvious precursors. But it is also true that Amis's novels are triumphs of "style" - a way of using language that, if not obtrusively "odd", is highly original, and wonderfully expressive.

Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens [of scholarly articles] like it, but his own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance. "In considering this strangely neglected topic," it began. This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what?

Lucky Jim (1954)
Feeling a tremendous rakehell, and not liking myself much for it, and feeling rather a good chap for not liking myself much for it, and not liking myself at all for feeling rather a good chap, I got indoors, vigorously rubbing lipstick off my mouth with my handkerchief.

That Uncertain Feeling (1955)
All that type of stuff, dying and so on, was a long way off, not such a long way off as it had once been, admitted, and no doubt the time when it wouldn't be such a long way off as all that wasn't such a long way off as all that, but still. Still what?

Take a Girl Like You (1960)
There is nothing quite like this in English fiction before Amis (though a good deal afterwards, for other writers were quick to learn his tricks). It is a kind of English equivalent to the prose of Samuel Beckett (though Amis would have spluttered derisively at the comparison). In each case, language, denied the luxury of metaphysical affirmation and romantic afflatus, coils back upon itself, mocking its own pretensions as well as the follies and foibles of human behaviour. Both writers use repetition and bathos to marvellous effect, eschewing "elegant variation" and "fine writing" except for purposes of parody. The effort is always to be scrupulously exact, honest and undeceived. It was of course carried to a bleaker, more challenging and subversive extreme by Beckett.

Amis's fundamental scepticism is actually quite dark and disturbing, but it is cushioned or concealed by the conventions of the well-made novel. Some critics have seen this as an evasion or betrayal of artistic integrity, a kind of refusal to be "serious". Amis himself would have taken his stand on the writer's responsibility to entertain as well as instruct. The career of Kingsley Amis crystalises, without resolving, a perennial debate about the contemporary English novel: whether, by remaining faithful to the native realistic tradition and refusing the legacy of modernism, it ensures its own authenticity or fails to be significant in a Hegelian "world-historical sense".

Kingsley Amis was born, ironically enough, in 1922, the year in which the great masterpiece of modernist fiction, James Joyce's Ulysses, was published. He was brought up in a dull outer suburb of south London called Norbury, the only child of respectable lower- middle-class parents, and won a scholarship to the City of London School, to which he commuted daily like his father, a clerk in a commercial office. From this school, of which he always spoke highly, Amis went up to Oxford in 1941, as an Exhibitioner of St John's College, to read English. Here he met Philip Larkin, and formed the basis of a lifelong friendship. The two young men had similar backgrounds, tastes, and sensibilities, and fertilised each other's imaginative development. In this chance conjunction lay the seeds of the literary revolution of the 1950s.

After only a year at Oxford, Amis was called up for military service and served in the Royal Signals in Normandy, Belgium and Germany from 1944 to 1945, an experience which left surprisingly little overt trace in his work apart from a few early short stories. After the Second World War he returned to Oxford, graduating with a First Class degree in 1947, and began research towards a BLitt which he never completed. In this period he kept in touch with Larkin, now a librarian at University College, Leicester, and met another young undergraduate who shared his admiration for Larkin's verse, John Wain. The nucleus of the Movement was beginning to form.

In 1947 Amis published his first "slim volume" of verse, Bright November, and later, along with Larkin and Wain, was one of the contributors to Robert Conquest's anthology New Lines (1956), which marked the arrival of the Movement on the English poetic scene, and its displacement of the late modernist mode epitomised by Dylan Thomas (memorably parodied in That Uncertain Feeling). Amis continued to write poetry, not very prolifically, throughout his life. In this department he was always somewhat overshadowed by Larkin, to whom he paid the homage of imitation, but he was an excellent exponent of light verse, especially of a satirical and ribald kind.

Amis married Hilary Bardwell in 1948, and the following year took up a post as lecturer in English Literature at the University College of Wales, Swansea. He settled down in that pleasant but deeply provincial seaside town to teach, write, and raise a family of three children, one of whom was called Martin. From this congenial but humdrum and materially somewhat pinched existence, Amis was catapulted to fame by the publication of Lucky Jim (dedicated to Larkin) in January 1954. It became a bestseller and a cult book - not surprisingly, for it was a sublimely funny novel which also put its finger very accurately on certain changes which had taken place in post-war British culture and society. Although Amis himself belonged to a small elite of pre-war scholarship boys, he articulated through his hero, Jim Dixon, the feelings of a much larger number of people in the next generation (my own) who were products of the 1944 Education Act and the Welfare State. Through the comedy of Jim's private fantasies and accidental breaches of social decorum, Amis gave us, as it were, permission not to be overawed by the social and cultural codes of the class to which we had been elevated by education. It was enormously liberating.

Measured on a simple laugh-out-loud scale, Lucky Jim was probably the funniest novel Amis wrote, and for some readers his career was therefore downhill all the way. But in spite of his talent for comedy, Amis was, in the words of Larkin's poem, always surprising in himself a hunger to be more serious, and in the novels that followed he combined amusing social satire with a thoughtful and sometimes uncomfortable investigation of the moral life, especially in the sexual sphere. Take A Girl Like You (1960) was a particularly interesting response to the first intimations of the Permissive Society.

Because of the antiestablishment stance of the early novels, Amis was identified with the Left, and in 1957 he declared his allegiance to the Labour Party in a Fabian pamphlet. Ten years later, however, he announced his conversion to Conservatism, in an essay entitled "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right". Henceforward he adopted a combatively right-wing stance on the political issues of the day - Vietnam, nuclear arms, the expansion of higher education and women's liberation.

There was always an element of deliberate provocation and self-parody in this stance, as in the case of Evelyn Waugh (whom Amis came to resemble more and more, in all kinds of ways, as he got older), but there is no reason to doubt the fundamental sincerity of his views. The young Amis's identification with the party of the Welfare State was always emotional rather than ideological, and Lucky Jim was a rebel rather than a revolutionary. As soon as left-wing attitudes became trendy, as they did in the late 1960s, Amis's innate scepticism was turned upon them and their proponents.

One does have the impression, however, that in an increasingly unsympathetic cultural climate Amis became less certain of his constituency, and of his own literary identity, than he had been in the heyday of the Movement. This may have been connected with change and upheaval in his private life. In 1961 he had moved from Swansea to Cambridge, to teach English as a Fellow of Peterhouse, but the notoriously factious English Faculty was not very welcoming. Dr Leavis was reported to have described his new colleague as "a pornographer", a failure in close reading if nothing else, for Amis's novels, though much concerned with sex, are notable for their reticence about the sexual act. He resigned his fellowship after three years to become a full-time writer. At about the same time his marriage broke up, and he married the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard.

In the late Sixties and Seventies he experimented a good deal with "genre" fiction: science fiction (The Anti-Death League, 1966, and The Alteration, 1976), the James Bond thriller (Colonel Sun, 1968), the classic detective story (The Riverside Villas Murder, l973) and the ghost story (The Green Man, 1969). These forms perhaps attracted him as ways of escaping the constraints of the realistic novel and the expectations of an audience who kept hoping he would repeat Lucky Jim. In some of them he addressed himself to weighty philosophic and religious themes, such as the nature of evil.

In spite of having had an essentially secular upbringing, Amis always took a lively, though pugnaciously sceptical, interest in Christian doctrine. An essay boldly entitled "On Christ's Nature" reveals an impressive familiarity with the New Testament, and a characteristic refusal to be awed. (A representative passage raises "the question why, if God wanted human beings to have religion, he did not simply give it to them, instead of arranging the world in one way and then sending someone along to explain that really the whole set-up was quite different").

Amis's best novel after Take A Girl Like You was arguably Ending Up (1974), a black comic tale of a group of retired people failing to cope with the afflictions of old age. "I suppose", says one of their young relatives to another in the course of a particularly joyless Christmas, "I suppose with luck we might get a couple of weeks between the last of them going and us being in their situation." The brilliantly titled Jake's Thing (1978) brought the same mordant scrutiny to bear on male impotence and sex therapy, often to wonderfully comic effect, though without the elegant economy of its predecessor. Both these novels were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

There followed something of a lull in Amis's creativity. But in the late Eighties he enjoyed a kind of second spring, producing in quick succession Stanley and the Women (1984), The Old Devils (1986), Difficulties with Girls (1988) and The Folks that Live on the Hill (1990). The first of these achieved some notoriety as a misogynist tract, and it was rumoured that a feminist cabal in the New York publishing world significantly delayed its publication in America. Amis's distrust of the female psyche was evident, for those who had eyes to see, as early as Lucky Jim, in the characterisation of the hysterical and devious Margaret. Stanley and the Women caused particular offence perhaps because it is cunningly constructed to catch the unwary liberal reader in its narrative trap. In Difficulties with Girls, however, Amis made some amends with a sympathetic portrait of Jenny Bunn, the heroine of Take a Girl Like You, coping with marriage to the compulsively unfaithful Patrick Standish.

These late novels are notable for their intricate if uneventful narrative structures and frequent shifts of point of view, which require considerable powers of concentration and inference from the reader. The best of them was The Old Devils, for which Amis was deservedly awarded the Booker Prize in 1986. This is another fictional study of old age. The setting in Amis's old haunts in south Wales lends the book an affectionate, nostalgic glow which is deceptive; an appalling abyss of pain, despair and anxiety gradually opens up beneath the novel's comic surface. But Amis is in total command of his material and his unique narrative style. The reader knows he is in for a treat from the first few pages describing Malcolm's cautious negotiation of breakfast:

He had not bitten anything with his front teeth since losing a top middle crown on a slice of liver-sausage six years earlier, and the right-hand side of his mouth was a no-go area, what with the hole in the lower lot where stuff was always apt to stick and a funny piece of gum that seemed to have got detached from something and waved about whenever it got the chance.

Kingsley Amis's second marriage broke up in 1983 and in later life he happily shared a house in Hampstead with his first wife, Hillie, and her second husband, Lord Kilmarnock - a twist in his biography that might have come from one of his own late novels. He took pride in the literary success of his son Martin, who occupies much the same key position among the British novelists who came of age in the 1970s as Kingsley did among those of the 1950s - a dynastic succession unprecedented in the annals of English literature. In spite of the differences of tone and ideology that divide them, it is a fascinating critical exercise to track the stylistic gene that unites these two novelists.

It would be an understatement to say that Kingsley Amis enjoyed a drink. He was an opinionated connoisseur of wine, and an unsurpassed observer of bar-room speech and behaviour. In later life he was a habitue of the Garrick Club, in London. He was appointed CBE in 1981, was granted the freedom of the City of London in 1989, and knighted in 1990. In many ways he became a pillar of the Establishment that he had once tilted at. He did not care for foreign travel, and apart from a spell in Portugal to spend the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1955 (which he was awarded for Lucky Jim), and a couple of visiting professorships in America a few years later, "Abroad" made little impact on his life or work. The title of the book inspired by the visit to Portugal was I Like It Here, and "here" meant England. He exploited the English prejudice that foreigners speak funny to marvellous comic effect - witness the overseas students solemnly interrogating the hero of I Like It Here about Grim Gin, Ifflen Voff, Zumzit Mum, Shem Shoice, and that popular classic Sickies of Sickingdom by Edge-Crown.

In 1991 Amis published his Memoirs, consisting mainly of amusing, scandalous and sometimes cruel anecdotes about his literary contemporaries, many of whom were now dead, including Philip Larkin. The two men kept a wary distance from each other in later years, communicating mainly by letter, as if conscious they could never recover the easy intimacy of youthful friendship. "He was my best friend and I never saw enough of him or knew him as well as I wanted to," Amis wrote, rather sadly, in the Memoirs.

This year, Eric Jacobs published a biography, with Amis's collaboration. It revealed (as literary biographies tend to do) a closer correspondence between the life and the fiction than one might have supposed, especially as regards difficulties with women. It also revealed a surprisingly vulnerable person behind the bluff, blimpish public mask, and the poised, sardonic prose stylist: a rather timid man, fearful of flying, unable to drive a car or perform the simplest domestic tasks, needing a regular and repetitive daily routine to keep the black dog of depression at bay: work, club, pub, telly. Work was the most important of these resources. In spite of increasing physical debility, Amis kept writing up till the end of his life. You Can't Do Both (1994) was generally well received and is perhaps the most openly autobiographical of his novels. If The Biographer's Moustache, published earlier this year, was not the biographee's revenge that many reviewers had hoped for, it still had more than a touch of past mastery.

In That Uncertain Feeling the hero is accosted one evening in the street of a small Welsh town by two lascars, one of whom seems to ask him:

"Where is pain and bitter laugh?" This was just the question for me, but before I could smite my breast and cry, "In here, friend", the other little man had said: "My cousin say, we are new in these town and we wish to know where is piano and bit of life, please?"

That is one of my favourite quotations from Amis because it seems to epitomise his art. He did not dodge the pain of existence and his laughter was sometimes bitter, but he always retained the liberating, life- enhancing gift of comic surprise.

Kingsley Amis, writer: born London 16 April 1922; CBE 1981; Kt 1990; books include A Frame of Mind 1953, Lucky Jim 1954, That Uncertain Feeling 1955, A Case of Samples 1956, I Like it Here 1958, Take a Girl Like You 1960, New Maps of Hell 1960, My Enemy's Enemy 1962, One Fat Englishman 1963, The Egyptologists 1965, (with Robert Conquest) The James Bond Dossier 1965, The Anti-Death League 1966, The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 1966, A Look Round the Estate 1967, Colonel Sun 1968, I Want it Now 1968, The Green Man 1969, What Became of Jane Austen? 1970, Girl, 20 1971, On Drink 1972, The Riverside Villas Murder 1973, Ending Up 1974, Rudyard Kipling and His World 1975, The Alteration 1976, Jake's Thing 1978, Collected Poems 1944-79 1979, Russian Hide-and-Seek 1980, Collected Short Stories 1980, Every Day Drinking 1983, How's Your Glass? 1984, Stanley and the Women 1984, The Old Devils 1986, (with J. Cochrane) Great British Songbook 1986, The Crime of the Century 1987, Difficulties with Girls 1988, The Folks that Live on the Hill 1990, We are All Guilty 1991, Memoirs 1991[/i], The Russian Girl 1992, Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories 1993, You Can't Do Both 1994, The Biographer's Moustache 1995; married 1948 Hilary Bardwell (two sons, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1965), 1965 Elizabeth Jane Howard (marriage dissolved 1983); died London 22 October 1995.

Kingsley Amis
(Kingsley William Amis)

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/kingsley-amis/
(1922 - 1995) Father of Martin Amis, husband of Elizabeth Jane Howard

aka Robert Markham, William Tanner

Sir Kingsley Amis, who died in October 1995, was born in London in 1922. In 1954 his first novel, 'Lucky Jim', burst onto the literary scene with extraordinary force, gaining him instant fame and notoriety as one of the most prominent of the so-called 'angry young men'. He went on to write over twenty novels (winning the Booker Prize in 1986 for 'The Old Devils'), and many volumes of poetry and non-fiction. He was knighted in 1991. His last novel, 'The Biographer's Moustache', was published in September 1995.

Genres: Literary Fiction, Thriller

Series
Jim Dixon
Lucky Jim (1954)
That Uncertain Feeling (1955)
I Like it Here (1958)
Lucky Jim's Politics (1968)

Jenny Bunn
1. Take a Girl Like You (1960)
2. Difficulties with Girls (1988)

Novels
My Enemy's Enemy (1962)
One Fat Englishman (1963)
The Egyptologists (1965) (with Robert Conquest)
The Anti-Death League (1966)
I Want It Now (1968)
The Green Man (1969)
Girl, 20 (1971)
Dear Illusion (1972)
The Riverside Villas Murder (1973)
Ending Up (1974)
The Crime of the Century (1975)
The Alteration (1976)
The Darkwater Hall Mystery (1978)
Jake's Thing (1978)
Russian Hide-and-Seek (1980)
Stanley and the Women (1984)
The Old Devils (1986)
The Folks That Live On the Hill (1990)
We Are All Guilty (1991)
The Russian Girl (1992)
The Biographer's Moustache (1995)

Omnibus
A Kingsley Amis Omnibus (1980)

Collections
Bright November (poems) (1947)
A Frame of Mind (poems) (1953)
Poems: Fantasy Portraits (poems) (1954)
A Case of Samples (poems) (1956)
Poems (poems) (1962)
A Look Round the Estate (poems) (1967)
Collected Poems 1944-1979 (poems) (1979)
Collected Short Stories (1980)
Mr Barrett's Secret (1993)
Complete Stories (2011)

Series contributed to
James Bond Non Fiction
The Book of Bond (1965) (as by William Tanner)
The James Bond Dossier (1965)

James Bond Fiction
James Bond (as by Robert Markham)
Colonel Sun (1968)

Anthologies edited
Spectrum (1962) (with Robert Conquest)
Spectrum 2 (1962) (with Robert Conquest)
Spectrum 3 (1963) (with Robert Conquest)
Spectrum 4 (1965) (with Robert Conquest)
Spectrum 5 (1966) (with Robert Conquest)
The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse (1978)
The Faber Popular Reciter (1978)
The Golden Age of Science Fiction (1981)
The Amis Anthology (1988)
The Pleasure of Poetry (1990)
The Amis Story Anthology (1992)

Non fiction
New Maps of Hell (1960)
What Became of Jane Austen? (1970)
Tennyson (1972)
On Drink (1972)
Rudyard Kipling and his World (1975)
Harold's Years (1977)
An Arts Policy? (1979)
Every Day Drinking (1983)
How's Your Glass? (1984)
The Great British Songbook (1986) (with James Cochrane)
The Amis Collection (1990)
Memoirs (1991)
Kingsley Amis in Life and Letters (1991)
You Can't Do Both (1994)
The King's English (1997)
The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2000)
Conversations with Kingsley Amis (2010)
Raising A Smile (2019)

Anthologies containing stories by Kingsley Amis
The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories (1967)
Best SF: 1974 (1975)
aka The Year's Best Science Fiction 8
The Road to Science Fiction 5 (1998)

Short stories
My Enemy's Enemy [short story] (1955)
Court of Inquiry (1956)
The 2003 Claret (1958)
Moral Fibre (1958)
Hemingway in Space (1960)
Something Strange (1960)
All the Blood Within Me (1962)
I Spy Strangers (1962)
The Friends of Plonk (1964)
Dear Illusion [short story] (1972)
Mason's Life (1972)
Too Much Trouble (1972)
Who or What Was It? (1972)
The Darkwater Hall Mystery [short story] (1978)
The House on the Headland (1979)
To See the Sun (1980)

Awards
The Man Booker Prize Best Novel nominee (1974) : Ending Up
John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel winner (1977) : The Alteration
The Man Booker Prize Best Novel nominee (1978) : Jake's Thing
The Man Booker Prize Best Novel winner (1986) : The Old Devils

Books about Kingsley Amis
The Anti-Egotist (1996) by Paul Fussell
Lucky Him (2001) by Richard Bradford

Kingsley Amis recommends
The Bell (1958). Iris Murdoch.
"A distinguished novelist of a rare kind."
The Other Side of the Sky (1958), Arthur C Clarke.
"Science fiction of the finest quality: original, imaginative, disturbing."
Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1959), Brian Aldiss.
"...Takes us far from the here-and-now into regions of sharply-flavoured eeriness."
The Drowned World (1962), J G Ballard.
"Ballard is one of the brightest new stars in post-war fiction. This tale of strange and terrible adventure in a world of steaming jungles has an oppressive power reminiscent of Conrad."
Day Million (1970), Frederik Pohl.
"The most consistently able writer science fiction, in the modern sense, has yet produced."
The Xanadu Talisman (1981). (Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, book 9) Peter O'Donnell.
"One of the great partnerships in fiction, bearing comparison with that of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson."
The Alternative Detective (1993) (Hob Draconian, book 1), Robert Sheckley.
"Always he crackles with ideas."

2002: Warner Bros. and Maverick Records release the "Die Another Day" single (delayed from 10 October due to a radio station leak). The video premieres worldwide on MTV the same day--a first for the music channel.

2008: Jessica Fellowes' piece "Necklace with a starring role" appear on The Telegraph online.

Necklace with a starring role

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG3365680/Necklace-with-a-starring-role.html
BY Jessica Fellowes | 22 October 2008

In Quantum of Solace, it's not a gizmo or Q invention that holds the key to the plot, but a piece of jewellery.

Having designed two sets of earrings and a loveknot necklace for Eva Green's Vesper Lynd (above) to wear in the casino scene for Casino Royale, jeweller Sophie Harley was called upon once again. In Quantum of Solace, the beginning of which is set an hour after the climax of Casino Royale, the necklace makes another appearance.

"Obviously, the producers were very strict about revealing the plot," says Sophie, "But they told me that the necklace is the only thing that Bond has left of Vesper Lynd's. In the trailer there is a shot of the necklace on a table just as Camille (Olga) asks Bond: "Do you love someone?". "I do," he replies.

Is this the end of Bond as we knew him? Has he at last found "enduring love" or will he stay true to form and give the necklace to another girl?

"The producers did indicate that the necklace would be worn again in Quantum," says Sophie.

The original loveknot necklace can be bought for £1,939, as can the original garnet drop earrings (£323 and £384) but there are also cheaper designs based on the same shape, from £135. www.sophieharley.com ; 020 7430 2070.

2012: The Italian Cultural Institute at St. George’s Square, Valletta opposite The Palace (Malta’s Parliament house, next door to the Attorney General’s Office) hosts The Science of James Bond. Free.

The Science of James Bond (22 Oct.)

See the complete article here:

https://www.um.edu.mt/newsoncampus/eventscommunity/archive/the_science_of_james_bond_22_oc/center]

To celebrate James Bond's fiftieth anniversary and in anticipation of the forthcoming SkyFall in local cinemas, Euro Media Forum, Science is Culture in conjunction with Eden Cinemas are organising The Science of James Bond event taking place on Monday 22 October at 1900hrs at the Italian Cultural Institute, St George’s Square, Valletta opposite The Palace (Malta’s Parliament house) and next door to the Attorney General’s Office. Entrance is free.

Are 007’s gadgets science fact or fiction? From Bond’s first gadget – the stylish briefcase that featured hidden ammunition, gold coins and an AR7 folding sniper’s rifle with infrared telescopic sight, a teargas cartridge disguised as a tin of talcum powder. The lethal luggage was only the prelude to the world’s most famous car - the sleek Aston Martin DB5 that shoots bullets, has revolving number plates, a rear bullet proof screen and had Connery’s Bond in awe with its ejector seat that’s handy at disposing of passengers at the push of a button. The science and technology of Q’s gadgets played by the late Desmond Llewellyn, the legendary gadget master of MI6 has thrilled movie audiences and kept gadget enthusiasts guessing for five decades as to whether these gadgets are indeed truly possible.

The Science of James Bond will take the audience on a fascinating journey through the science that underlies Bond’s most fantastic missions. Bond Gadget enthusiast, scientist David Pace and film researcher Justin Camilleri will provide a highly entertaining, informative look at the real-world science behind Bond’s gadgets, such as the Omega Seamaster laser watch that cuts through steel, the White Lotus Esprit car that turns into a submarine, the ever popular rocket firing cigarette and last but not least the Aston Martin Vanquish that turns invisible. Bond villains’ gadgets will also be examined such as how the first watch gadget in From Russia With Love was not issued to Bond but Robert Shaw’s villain Red Grant. Whether Jaws’ (Richard Kiel) steel teeth qualify as a gadget and how Rosa Klebb’s dagger shoe was so influential that it would be used by Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. The late Q’s ingenious inventions which have accompanied Bond through his astonishing battles beneath the earth, sea, skies and outer space, will be analysed ,as well as the new Q for the Facebook generation played by Ben Whishaw who supplies Daniel Craig’s Bond with his first ever fingerprint recognition Walter PPK in the upcoming SkyFall.

The audience is invited to participate and put forward to the panel their questions regarding their favourite James Bond or villain gadget. The speakers promise an interesting debate and fantastic entertainment, seeking to answer the questions about the limits of science and technology in James Bond movies, the laws of nature, and the future of gadget spy technology.

To spice up the evening there will also be James Bond memorabilia exhibition on display and a 007 quiz, where the first winner will win an all inclusive package – two cinema tickets, a bowling game for two persons and free parking. The second winner will win two cinema tickets and free parking. The third winner will win two cinema tickets. So quiz participants keep your eyes open on the clues behind the science, gadgets, exploits, and enemies of the world's greatest spy!

2012: University of Leeds Political and International Studies (POLIS) hosts a workshop discussion of The Politics of James Bond.

For Staff
Research and innovation news archive - October 2012
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/news?mmyyyy=102012&categoryID=30389&page=2
The politics of James Bond
22 October 2012

James Bond matters! As the films enter their 50th year, POLIS is hosting a half-day workshop to discuss the Politics of James Bond (in the broadest sense of the word).

Posted in: Research and innovation

2012: Sky launches a James Bond HD channel in Belgrade, Serbia.
2012: David Arnold and Thomas Newman are interviewed at Classic FM Studios, London.

James Bond: The Music of 007
22 October 2012, 12:35

Listen to James Bond's music and get to know the challenges of writing a 007 soundtrack in our exclusive interview with Bond score composers Thomas Newman and David Arnold.

It's not every evening we see two Hollywood legends spend the evening at the Classic FM studios. Thomas Newman, composer of the soundtrack to the new Bond film, Skyfall, was joined by David Arnold, who wrote the scores for the last five Bond films, for a live interview with movie music expert Tommy Pearson. This special programme was recorded in front of a live studio audience a little earlier this month – and you can listen to it again below.

With such a massive film franchise, there's a lot of pressure on soundtrack composers to deliver, but Arnold revealed it's an honour to be able to use the iconic Bond theme: "It's a moment of great joy. Whenever we did the Bond theme at a recording session that was the one where everyone wanted to attend, the one where we had the most people and everyone sat on the edge of their seats a little bit more."

[link expired]

3:25 excerpt

2015: The Sydney Morning Herald reports unanimous raves in the UK for Spectre.

EntertainmentMovies

Spectre movie reviews: James Bond's latest gets unanimous raves in the UK

See the complete article here:

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/spectre-movie-reviews-james-bonds-latest-gets-unanimous-raves-in-the-uk-20151022-gkfmkk.html

By Karl Quinn - 22 October 2015 — 9:01pm, first published at 1:06pm

The first reviews of Spectre have landed from the UK, and they are uniformly raves.

The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian have all lavished the 24th James Bond film with five-star ratings, while The Sun and the London Evening Standard raved without rating the film, dubbing their assessments "first impressions".

https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_1,$multiply_1,$ratio_1.777778,$width_971,$x_451,$y_21/t_crop_custom/w_780/t_sharpen,q_auto,f_auto/0ce5800e77fa2d87abf6d06bd0e095c1ddfdb9c5
Monica Bellucci with Daniel Craig in Spectre.

At any rate, the unanimous praise almost guarantees a monster opening in the UK for the fourth film starring Daniel Craig as 007 this weekend.

In Spectre, Bond comes face to face with a ghost from his past in the form of Christoph Waltz's Franz Oberhauser, head of the secretive and up-to-no-good organisation SPECTRE (the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion).

https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_780,$height_439/t_crop_fill/t_sharpen,q_auto,f_auto/e06cb094eb164a925992edf97eff12d6823901c8
Cool as cucumber, sharp as ice: Daniel Craig in the 24th Bond film Spectre.

In The Telegraph, Robbie Collin wrote that "ghosts of Bond films past come gliding through the film, trailing shivers of pleasure in their wake". He praised the film's director Sam Mendes, who also made 2012's Skyfall, the most successful film in the long-running franchise with global box office of more than $US1.1 billion ($A1.38 billion), for what he described as "a swaggering show of confidence".

Kate Muir of The Times said the fourth outing for Daniel Craig as James Bond "is achingly cool, as sleek and powerful as the silver Aston Martin DB10 that races through the movie".

She added that Mendes and Craig now seemed so comfortable with the terrain "that a relaxed wit percolates almost every scene. Their recipe, like the car, now seems to be bulletproof".

For The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw described the film as "pure action mayhem with a real sense of style" and called it "a terrifically exciting, spectacular, almost operatically delirious 007 adventure".

Could the latest Bond film shatter the record set by the last, 2012's Skyfall?

The Evening Standard's Ben Travis said "director Sam Mendes has, against all the odds, delivered a film that at least matches, and perhaps even betters, Skyfall", while The Sun's showbiz reporter Ed Dyson effused that "all the classic elements fans expect from Bond await in Spectre – and then some", adding that "we were expecting you to deliver Mr Bond... and you certainly didn't disappoint".

What does disappoint, though, is the fact that Australia will have to wait until November 12 for its chance to similarly froth in collective excitement.

Hurry up, Mr Bond. We've been expecting you.

2015: BBC News reports on 5-star reviews of Spectre.

Spectre: Five-star reviews greet new Bond movie

See the complete article here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34600980

22 October 2015
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/E93A/production/_86260795_spectre1.jpg
Daniel Craig in Spectre image copyright MGM/Columbia/Eon
Daniel Craig makes his fourth big-screen appearance as Bond in the eagerly awaited film

Critics have given the new James Bond film an enthusiastic welcome, with one saluting it as "pure action mayhem".

Spectre, The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw continued in his five-star review, is "terrifically exciting, spectacular [and] uproariously entertaining".

The Times said Sam Mendes' film was "achingly cool", while The Independent said it was "every bit the equal of its predecessor", 2012 release Skyfall.

Critics were shown Spectre on Wednesday ahead of its release next week.

The film sees Daniel Craig return as British spy James Bond, aka 007, in a globe-trotting blockbuster named after a sinister criminal syndicate.

Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, French actress Lea Seydoux and Italy's Monica Bellucci also appear in the 24th official entry in the long-running series.

'Jaw-dropping'

According to the Daily Mirror, Spectre is "an adventure right up there with the superspy's best" featuring "moments of jaw-dropping stuntwork".

The Sun's reviewer concurred, saying the film contains "all the classic elements fans expect", including a "jaw-dropping opening sequence".

Variety also singled out this "expensively ludicrous opening sequence, set in Mexico City on the Day of the Dead," saying it "ranks among the great 007 intros".

Other industry papers were less effusive, though, with the Hollywood Reporter saying it "ultimately feels like a lesser film than Skyfall, falling back on cliche and convention."

Screen International, meanwhile, said the film "falls back on the formula to deliver a slightly flat, old-fashioned 007 by the numbers".

RichardTheBruce

October 23rd

1959: Ian Fleming writes an enthusiastic letter to Ivan Bryce on the Bond film project.

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.
Chapter 11 - The Search for James Bond

While the growing rift widened between Xanadu's principal players,
Fleming remained as positive as ever about the Bond picture. "I'm personally
of the opinion that we have a financial winner in this film," he wrote excitedly
to Bryce on 23 October. "Whether done in colour or monochrome, so long as
we have a couple good stars, though Jean de la Bruyere should remember
that Bond must be an Englishman." This of course refers to Bruyere's earlier
suggestion that an American actor be chosen. This flies in the face of Fleming's
previous suggestions of a Welsh-born Burton and his acceptance of James
Stewart donning a tuxedo. Nor was Fleming much interested in going into
partnership with Columbia, or indeed anyone else, but keeping the Bond film
solely as a Xanadu production, keeping it, as he says, "in the family." So
confident was he that they had the right team "with Kevin as producer, X as
director. Whittingham as script writer and you as general organizer, assisted as
much as possible by me, I don't see why the vehicle shouldn't roll."

1968: On Her Majesty's Secret Service films the Angels of Death at Piz Gloria.

1986: From Russia With Love re-released in Norway.

2012: Skyfall premieres at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

2015: The Telegraph explains the meaning of 13 Bond film titles.

13 James Bond film titles explained

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/james-bond-spectre/titles-explained-goldfinger-quantum-goldeneye/

Sean Connery in Goldfinger, the title of which was named after
Ian Fleming's golf partner's cousin, who sued him
Credit: Everett/REX[/1]

Patrick Smith 23 October 2015 • 11:17am

Which Bond film owes its title to a typo? Who was Goldfinger? And what's a quantum? Ahead of the SPECTRE release, we reveal the meanings of previous 007 titles

1. Goldfinger (1964)
The first James Bond film to win an Oscar took its title from a man 007 creator Ian Fleming used to know called Ernő Goldfinger. He was the cousin (by marriage) of Fleming’s golf partner, John Blackwell, and threatened to sue over the use of his name. The matter was settled out of court.

2. You Only Live Twice (1967)
Fleming was inspired by the 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, who wrote these words more than 300 years before they were used as the title for the 12th Bond novel.

Sean Connery and Donald Pleasance in 1967's You Only Live Twice,
the title of which came from Japanese poetry
Credit: MGM/Everett/REX

3. Diamonds are Forever (1971)
In 1947, copywriter Frances Gerety coined the phrase "A Diamond Is Forever" in an advertising campaign for De Beers. It seems inconceivable that Fleming wouldn’t have been directly influenced by this.

4. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Unlike the film, The Spy Who Loved Me novel is told in the first person by a young Canadian woman, Vivienne Michel, and Bond doesn’t appear until two thirds of the way through. The title makes a lot more sense when you think about it that way.

5. Octopussy (1983)
The 1983 movie takes its name from a coracle Ian Fleming received from his neighbour – and lover – in Jamaica, Blanche Blackwell (the small boat was called Octopussy).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/film/spectre/storyboardscostumes/octopussybargepeterlamont.jpg?imwidth=1240
Peter Lamont's concept for Octopussy's barge. The film, incidentally,
shared its name with one of Ian Fleming's boats
Credit: 1984 Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Studios inc, and Danjaq LLC.

6. A View To A Kill (1985)
This grammatically suspect title comes from an unrelated Fleming short story called "From A View To a Kill". The film attempts to make some sort of sense of it with the following lines of dialogue from villain Zorian (Christopher Walken) and his henchwoman May Day (Grace Jones): Her: "What a view." Him: "To a kill!"

7. Licence to Kill (1989)
Timothy Dalton’s second Bond outing was originally titled Licence Revoked, which makes perfect sense given that in the film M suspends 007 after he refuses to give up the hunt for the person who fed his friend Felix Leiter to a shark. However, because polled American audiences said the phrase reminded them of confiscated driving licences, it was changed to Licence to Kill – absurd, really, when you consider it’s the only film he’s not legally allowed to shoot people.

8. GoldenEye (1995)
Pierce Brosnan made his Bond debut in this 1995 film, named after Ian Fleming’s estate in Jamaica. The novelist claimed a number of origins for the name of the estate, including Carson McCullers’s Reflections in a Golden Eye and Operation Goldeneye, a plan he developed during the Second World War for maintaining communication between Britain and Gibraltar. Goldeneye is also a type of duck …

GoldenEye, which was named after Fleming's Jamaican estate, is also a type of duck
Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

9. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The film was originally supposed to be called Tomorrow Never Lies – a reference to the (fictional) newspaper, Tomorrow, run by the villainous Elliot Carver (played by Jonathan Pryce). Word has it, however, that when the title was faxed to MGM, there was a typo, and the marketing department preferred the incorrect version. The title for Tomorrow Never Lies, meanwhile, came to scriptwriter Bruce Feirstein while he was listening to The Beatles’ trippy song, "Tomorrow Never Knows".

10. The World Is Not Enough (1999)
This phrase, believed to originate from Alexander the Great’s epitaph, appeared in the 1963 Bond novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as the family motto of Sir Thomas Bond, whose Coat of Arms 007 is shown while on assignment.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/film/spectre/storyboardscostumes/ohmssblofeldc.jpg?imwidth=1240
Syd Cain's designs for Blofeld's coat of arms in On Her Majesty's Secret Service,
the film in which Bond learns his own family motto
Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Studios inc, and Danjaq. LLC.

11. Die Another Day (2002)
There’s a 1896 poem by AE Housman called A Shropshire Lad, which features the line “But since the man that runs away / Lives to die another day”. That’s the only explanation for this terrible title for an equally terrible film.

12. Quantum of Solace (2008)
After this title was announced in 2008, many struggled to understand its meaning – including the film's screenwriter, Paul Haggis. "I have no idea," he admitted when asked. "It's not my title." Indeed, it's the title of a Fleming short story about Bond meeting a cuckolded husband, and more inquiring minds were quick to point out that "quantum" is the smallest possible amount of a physical property. For Daniel Craig, it was about relationships: "When they go wrong, when there's nothing left, when the spark has gone, when the fire's gone out, there's no quantum of solace," he clarified. But perhaps comedian Adam Buxton explained it best in his alternative Quantum of Solace theme song: “I want a quantum of solace, but just a quantum / I know they do big bags of solace, but I don’t want ‘em.”

13. SPECTRE (2015)
SPECTRE is a fictional terrorist organisation that featured in both the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming and the films adapted from them. Fleming originally pitted Bond against SMERSH, the arm of the KGB set up by Stalin as an equivalent of the Gestapo. Believing the Cold War to be coming to an end, and fearing a recurring Soviet enemy would make his novels look dated, the author told Playboy in 1964 that he created this network of spies and assassins to replace the Soviets as natural enemies for the British Secret Service.


Franz Oberhauser: SPECTRE's number one in the new film

The organisation's name is an acronym for SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. It made its first appearance in Fleming's 1961 novel Thunderball, and on screen in the first Bond film, Dr No (1962). It is headed by the franchise's ultimate villain, the cat-stroking Ernst Stavro Blofeld, whose name was inspired by a boy Fleming knew at Eton, Thomas Blofeld – father of the cricket commentator Henry "Blowers" Blofeld.

2015: Capital releases "Writing's on the Wall" as a CD single.

2015: Universal Music Classics releases the Spectre soundtrack by Thomas Newman in the UK.

RichardTheBruce

October 24th

1943: Martin Campbell is born--Hastings, New Zealand.

1984: A View to a Kill films OO7 and Stacey showering. Plus the robot.

2005: The Design Museum showcases iconic Robert Brownjohn contributions.

Robert Brownjohn at the Design Museum

See the complete article here:

http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/1804

Many of the most memorable images of the Sixties are on show as part of
the Design Museum's Robert Brownjohn restrospective.

From the top floor windows of the museum on the exhibition's opening day it was possible to watch Daniel Craig arrive by speed boat on the far bank where he was revealed as the latest actor to play James Bond.

In the exhibition we learn that it was Brownjohn's work which helped to make the James Bond legend so enduring. His opening title sequences for the 1963 Bond film From Russia With Love and the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger, which required exacting attention to detail in a pre-digital age, can be enjoyed on a screen. Almost as important is the poster depicting Sean Connery and Honor Blackman which had such impact.

Also playing are his Midland Bank cinema commercials which received standing ovations at the Cannes Film Festival.

Brownjohn's arresting Fifties' graphic art includes a Harper's cover drawing featuring red skull caps surrounding a single white one. This was to illustrate the article on the new Pope John XXIII who was the first pontiff to make a global impact.

Other early work, before the artist's move from New York to Britain in 1960, is a pleasing use of letterpress for festival posters. In America he had come under the influence of Andy Warhol as his collection of slides confirms.

Two years before his death in London he designed the artwork for the Rolling Stones' album Let It Bleed.



The exhibition is curated by Emily King who to coincide with the Design Museum show has written a book Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography (Laurence King Publishing £25). This is closely related to the exhibition making it both a worthwhile souvenir as well as a fascinating overview of Robert Brownjohn's work and influence.

In a foreword Alan Fletcher of Pentagram writes: "Bj was the right man, in the right job, in the right place."

Robert Brownjohn is at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, daily 10am-5.45pm until Sunday 26 February; admission £7 (conc £4; child under 12 free)

2005: John Murray publishes James Bond: The Man And His World by Henry Chancellor.

http://commanderbond.net/2831/james-bond-the-man-and-his-world.html

2012: Digital Spy reports on Daniel Craig crying.

Daniel Craig: 'I cried when I first heard
Adele's Skyfall'

See the complete article here:

https://www.digitalspy.com/music/a433007/daniel-craig-i-cried-when-i-first-heard-adeles-skyfall/

The James Bond actor says that the song was what he wanted from the beginning.
BY MAYER NISSIM
24/10/2012
Daniel Craig has admitted that he cried when he first heard Adele's 'Skyfall'.

The James Bond actor said that the theme for the 23rd 007 movie perfectly fitted the on-screen action.

"I cried," Craig told Yahoo! Movies

"From the opening bars I knew immediately, then the voice kicked in and it was exactly what I'd wanted from the beginning.

"It just got better and better because it fitted the movie. In fact the more of the movie we made, the more it fitted it."

blob:https://www.digitalspy.com/8a534606-8a2b-4c53-9c5f-80e7e687d851
Adele - 'Skyfall' preview video
by Digital Spy GB

Skyfall director Sam Mendes added of Adele: "She came in very early before we started shooting and her main concern was, 'I write songs about myself, how can I make a 'Bond' song?'

"My answer was, 'Just write a personal song!' Carly Simon's 'Nobody Does it Better' was a love song."

Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson have maintained that Adele was always their first choice to record the theme for the movie.

'Skyfall' has been covered by Jedward and Willow Smith since its release.

Skyfall will open in UK cinemas on October 26 and November 9 in the US.

Watch the Adele 'Skyfall' lyric video below:


This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

RichardTheBruce

October 25th

1936: Terrance Mountain is born--Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England.

1965: Mathieu Amalric is born--Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.

1972: James Bond comic The League of Vampires begins its run in The Daily Express.
(Ends 28 February 1973. 2066–2172) Yaroslav Horak, artist. Jim Lawrence, writer.

https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/tlov.php3





https://www.popoptiq.com/the-league-of-vampires/



Swedish Semic Comic 1982 https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1982.php3

Vampyrligan
(The League of Vampires)

Danish 1975 https://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-dk-no32-1975/

James Bond Agent 007 no. 32:
“The League of Vampires”
"Vampyrligaen"

1977: Eileen Alderton reviews the Christopher Wood novelization James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me in The Australian Women's Weekly..

Books
reviewed by Eileen Alderton

JAMES BOND LOVES ON

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51275146

ENTIRELY different from the late
Ian Fleming's original story The
Spy Who Loved Me is Christopher
Wood's JAMES BOND, THE
SPY WHO LOVED ME.

Published by Jonathan Cape ($9.95) it is
a gutsy, punchy novel written under licence
(from the owners of Ian Fleming's
copyrights) from the script Christopher
Wood and Richard Maibaum produced for
the latest Bond film.

Ian Fleming made his indestructible
Bond immortal - and here he is again, a
woman chaser, charming, ironic, decadent,
ruthless, with a constitution that stands up
to any amount of bashing and bruising.
In this thriller British and Russians get
together because a nuclear-powered
submarine is missing. There is, of course, a
beautiful girl called Anya with the rank of a
major in the Russian army, deadly villains
and as much action as anyone could take.

1982: Octopussy films Magda seducing OO7 for the egg.

1995: David Healy dies at age 66--London, England.
(Born 15 May 1929--New York City, New York.)

David Healy (actor)

See the complete article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Healy_(actor)

David Healy (I) (1929–1995)

Actor
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0372242/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

2012: The Scotsman reviews the new James Bond film Skyfall.

Film review: The new James Bond film ‘Skyfall’

https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/film-and-tv/film-review-the-new-james-bond-film-skyfall-1-2597521/amp

Skyfall starring Daniel Craig as James Bond
Published: 02:35 Thursday 25 October 2012

In Skyfall, Sam Mendes has given us a James Bond for the 21st century and also made a film with genuine heart. Alistair Harkness is bowled over

WITH the traditional hype and hoopla surrounding the release of the latest Bond film Skyfall reaching fever pitch over the past month or so, it’s been impossible to ignore the fact that the world’s longest running film franchise is also celebrating its 50th anniversary. That’s partly down to Skyfall itself making a virtue of celebrating its heritage. Directed by Sam Mendes and once again starring Daniel Craig as cinema’s most conspicuous secret agent, Craig’s third outing is both a playful tribute to the entire history of Bond on the big screen and a worthy modern-day action movie that finally advances 007 into the 21st century with the panache one might expect from a character whose chief appeal has always been his penchant for sophistication, insouciance and ruthless violence.

Skyfall starring Daniel Craig as James Bond

Those traits were, of course, present almost from the first moment a tuxedoed Sean Connery, cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, uttered the immortal words “Bond, James Bond” in Dr No. That film’s release on 5 October 1962, the same day as The Beatles’ first single "Love Me Do" – and a mere ten days before the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of disaster – has elevated Bond’s cinematic origins to near mythical status, so much so that it’s hard to deny that this weird confluence of seismic cultural and political events has played an important role in shaping and defining an entire era.

As such, the release of a new Bond film can never simply be dismissed as just another movie. Twenty-two “official” films on from Dr No (and with rogue entries into the canon in the form of the star-stuffed 1967 Casino Royale spoof and Sean Connery’s contentious rival outing Never Say Never Again), the very existence of Skyfall is testament to the resilience of Ian Fleming’s original creation. Sure, there have been some lean years (Timothy Dalton’s brief tenure in the role), some creaky years (Roger Moore’s later efforts), and some increasingly silly years (Pierce Brosnan’s invisible car; Madonna’s cameo as a fencing instructor), but the character’s remarkable gift for reinvention and resurrection has enabled him to survive the ravages of time surprisingly well with each new iteration.

As it happens, it is precisely those ravages that form the primary thematic concerns of Bond 23. Even though it barely feels like yesterday that Craig’s blond, bloodied, brutal and, let’s face it, ludicrously buff take on the character radically reinvented him for an age in which Jason Bourne already seemed to have shown him the door, the otherwise soporific Casino Royale is now six years old and its frenetic follow-up Quantum of Solace is already four. For those paying close attention to Craig’s more rooted-in-reality approach, that means his Bond is already starting to feel the punishing effects of being a double-0 agent, effects Roger Moore would likely have dismissed with an arched eyebrow jutting into his wrinkly forehead, but which Mendes and his team of writers (regulars Neal Purvis and Robert Wade; Scorsese collaborator John Logan) smartly weave into the main body of the story.

That story kicks off in typically spectacular style with Bond being accidentally shot and left for dead by MI6 (a sequence that ends with him floating away into a hauntingly illustrated title sequence to the strain’s of Adele’s instant classic Bond theme). When he re-emerges from the shadows – after M (Judi Dench) has written his obituary – his physical prowess has largely deserted him, but his ailments are symptomatic of a wider concern percolating down through the security services: namely that Bond’s cold-blooded methodology – and the practices of MI6’s entire double-O branch – is outdated and irrelevant, especially in an age of cyber-terrorism where, as Ben Wishaw’s new Q surmises, more damage can be done with a laptop while drinking a cup of Earl Grey than by Bond with an entire arsenal of gadgets.

Skyfall starring Daniel Craig as James Bond

Though Bond films have periodically commented on their imminent obsolescence – in GoldenEye, M famously scolded Pierce Brosnan’s 007 for being “a sexist misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War”), Skyfall feels as if Mendes is genuinely trying to engage with who the character is and what his function should be, especially at a time when audiences want the old-school excitement of a Bond film but with an ever greater degree of verisimilitude.

Mendes negotiates that tricky path by effectively turning Skyfall into a comment on its own creation. The 50th anniversary, for instance, gives him licence to spoon-feed fans a number of treats in the form of overt references to past films, but he’s careful not to abuse that privilege and works some more subtle ones in, too. In fact, the biggest influence is probably On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which may feature the least-loved 007 (George Lazenby, making his sole outing in the role) but, thanks to its dazzling technical achievements and jaw-dropping emotional beats, now seems like the most accomplished of all the Bond films.

Mendes has certainly absorbed a lot from it, using its acknowledgment of the Scottish parentage Fleming subsequently furnished the character with in tribute to Connery’s definitive performance for a fantastic third act sojourn to the Highlands, where the titular significance of Skyfall comes into play. But he also uses its influence to land some moments of real poignancy, giving the film the emotional kick Bond’s doomed romance with Vesper Lynd in the much-praised Casino Royale sorely lacked.

What’s particularly thrilling about Skyfall is that Mendes has reconfigured the tropes of the series so that Bond is once again out in front, setting the template anew for what a Bond film can really do. That’s something that’s made clear early on courtesy of a rooftop fight sequence in which Mendes (working with genius cinematographer Roger Deakins) frames Bond in silhouette against Shanghai’s neon-lit night sky as he battles an assassin. As action sequences go it’s as gorgeous as it is gutsy, and works as a real statement of intent for the film.

The other big piece of the Bond pie that Mendes gets right – aside from finally using the Monty Norman theme properly (there’s both a reassuring two-second blast of it at the start of the film and reprise later on to accompany a typically iconic moment) – is Javier Bardem’s deliciously outré villain, Raoul Silva. A former agent with a personal vendetta against M, Silva is certainly a memorable throwback to Bond villains of old: he’s both an irrational megalomaniac and as camp as Diamonds are Forever’s Mr Kidd and Mr Wint. The difference is he’s progressive and transgressive with it. In their most intimate exchange, Silva taps into the hitherto unexplored homoerotic side of Bond, something the movie thoroughly embraces by giving Bond his funniest comeback in the film. It’s a further sign of how far the Bond films have come and also works as a belated acknowledgment of one of the more subversive aspects of Craig’s Bond: his willingness to be objectified.

As a result, it makes sense that Bond girls in the classic sense barely feature, with only Naomi Harris’s Eve sticking in the memory beyond the end credits. That’s perhaps also because over three films it has become clear that the only woman Craig’s Bond really has space for in his life is M, and it’s their relationship that provides Skyfall with something that Bond films have consistently lacked: genuine heart. If that sounds sappy then so be it: Skyfall is the kind of film that makes it easy to love Bond the way you probably did as a kid. When “James Bond will return” flashes up ahead of the end credits, it’s hard not to hold out hope for his next 50 years.

• Skyfall is on general release from tomorrow.

2019: The original planned release date for BOND 25, delayed since Danny Boyle's departure in August.

Bond 25 'will miss 2019 release date' after Danny Boyle exit

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-45294809
24 August 2018

Boyle was originally confirmed as the director of Bond 25 in May

The release date of the next James Bond film is widely expected to be put back following Danny Boyle's abrupt decision to exit the currently untitled project.

"Bond 25" is scheduled to arrive in UK cinemas on 25 October 2019 and open in US cinemas two weeks later.

But the film may not now be released "until late 2020", according to the Hollywood Reporter's unnamed sources.

The Oscar-winning director's shock departure earlier this week was attributed to "creative differences".

According to The Telegraph, those may have included Boyle's purported wish to cast Polish actor Tomasz Kot as the film's main Russian villain.

Kot, 41, can currently be seen in Pawel Pawlikowski's film Cold War, which had its premiere at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The Telegraph also claimed the film's producers had concerns over the script's focus on current political tensions with Russia.

A spokeswoman for Trainspotting screenwriter John Hodge, author of the script in question, confirmed this week that he was also no longer involved.

MGM and Eon, who produce the Bond films, declined to comment.


Boyle reportedly wanted Tomasz Kot to play the film's villain

Filming had been due to start in December at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, with Daniel Craig reprising his role as Ian Fleming's iconic spy.

David Mackenzie, Yann Demange and Joe Wright are among the film-makers who have been tipped to take over the director's chair.

With the exact reasons for Boyle's departure still unclear, people previously involved in the Bond films are being asked for their thoughts on the situation.

These include actor Jonathan Pryce, who is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that the producers parted company with Boyle because "they obviously couldn't take a socialist Bond".

"There are the Dannys of this world and then there are people who do the blockbusters," continued Pryce, who played the villainous Elliot Carver in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies.

Boyle has never concealed his left-leaning sympathies, though he declined to identify himself as a socialist in a 2013 interview.

His opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics featured a Bond-based short and a set-piece tribute to the National Health Service.

RichardTheBruce

October 26th

1959: Ian Fleming to Ivan Bryce counters Jean de la Bruyere's suggestion for the title of the first Bond film.

The Battle for Bond, Robert Sellers, 2007.
Chapter 12 - The First James Bond Screenplay

Since its inception, the 007 project had simply been known as "James Bond." No suitabkle title had yet been found. Jean de la Bruyere's suggestion it be
called "The Right to Kill" (which Bryce liked) caused Fleming to hurriedly
think of an alternativeand he wrote to Bryce on 26 October. "Regarding
name for the film. I suggest 'James Bond of the Secret Service.' He is well
enough known now to bring the customers in and the titles like 'The Right to
Kill"' are all too common."

1967: Men leeft slechts tweemaal (Flemish, also in French On ne vit que deux fois) released in Brussels, Belgium.

1972: Live and Let Die films the jazzy death of Agent Hamilton in New Orleans.

2012: Skyfall released in the UK, United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, UK, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Iraq, Iceland, Jordan, South Korea, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malta, Norway, Oman, Poland, Palestine, Qatar, Sweden, and Slovakia.
2012: 007 - Operação Skyfall released in Brazil.

2012: 007 Skyfall released in France and Portugal. Bérénice Marlohe promotes the premiere in France.

2012: 007: Coordonata Skyfall (007: Skyfall Coordinate) released in Romania.

2012: 007: Координаты Скайфолл released in Russia.

2015: Spectre London premiere at Royal Albert Hall.

2015: Spectre general release for the UK and Ireland.

2015: BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime airs the first installment of Trigger Mortis, read by Rupert Penry-Jones.
2015: Sam Smith expresses then denies regret for writing the theme to Spectre.

Sam Smith: ‘I Have to Grab My Balls’ to
Sing ‘James Bond’ Theme

See the complete article here:

https://www.spin.com/2015/10/sam-smith-james-bond-spectre-grab-my-balls/

The singer says he "almost regrets" the very high track
James Grebey | October 26, 2015 - 10:40 am

Sam Smith’s renown for his angelic voice, but sometimes even he needs, um, a little bit extra to hit those really high notes. Such is the case for “Writing’s on the Wall,” his theme song to the upcoming James Bond film, Spectre. Speaking to Graham Norton ahead of his first live performance of the tune on the host’s show this past weekend, Smith explained that it’s a bitch to sing. “I’ve only actually sang the song once really. I did the demo in the studio, and they used it,” he said. “It’s horrible to sing. Horrible. I almost regret — no, I don’t regret… It’s just so high.” Then he went a step further: “I have to grab my balls, it’s awful.”

So when you’re sitting in a movie theater, enjoying the opening credits to Spectre, remember — Sam Smith’s balls took one for the team. (h/t NME)

RichardTheBruce

October 27th

1915: Harry Saltzman is born--Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
(He dies 28 September 1994 at age 78-- Paris, France.)

Obituaries
Harry Saltzman, 78, Bond-Film Producer

See the complete article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/29/obituaries/harry-saltzman-78-bond-film-producer.html

SEPT. 29, 1994

Harry Saltzman, who with Albert R. Broccoli produced early James Bond films like "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger," died yesterday at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb. He was 78 and lived in a village near Versailles.

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Adriana.

He was born on Oct. 27, 1915, in New Brunswick, Canada, and was brought to the United States as an infant. He entered the film business in the mid-1940's and made his name in Britain with hard-hitting social dramas, including "Look Back in Anger" in 1958 and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" in 1960.

Mr. Saltzman and Mr. Broccoli rounded up the screen rights to practically all of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and began the film series in the early 1960's. The two struck it rich with the highly profitable movies, most of which starred Sean Connery as Agent 007. Their Bond films included "From Russia With Love," "Thunderball," "Diamonds Are Forever" and "The Man With the Golden Gun." The partnership ended in the mid-1970's.

Among Mr. Saltzman's other productions were "The Entertainer," "The Ipcress File," "Funeral in Berlin" and "The Battle of Britain."

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Steven, of Paris; two daughters, Hilary, of Pacific Palisades, Calif., and Merry, of Marina del Rey, Calif., and a sister, Mina Reizes of Reseda, Calif.

September 29, 1994, Page 00012 The New York Times Archives

Harry Saltzman (1915–1994)

Filmography

Producer (28 credits)

1988 Time of the Gypsies (co-producer)
1980 Nijinsky (executive producer)

1974 The Man with the Golden Gun (producer)
1973 Live and Let Die (producer)
1971 Diamonds Are Forever (producer)
1970 Nijinsky: Unfinished Project (producer)
1970 Toomorrow (producer)

1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service (producer)
1969 Battle of Britain (producer)
1969 Play Dirty (producer)
1967 Billion Dollar Brain (producer)
1967 You Only Live Twice (producer)
1967 Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond (TV Movie) (executive producer)
1967 Shock Troops (presents)
1966 Funeral in Berlin (executive producer)
1965 Chimes at Midnight (producer)
1965 Thunderball (executive producer - uncredited)
1965 A Man Named John (producer)
1965 The Ipcress File (producer)
1964 Goldfinger (producer)
1963 From Russia with Love (producer)
1963 Call Me Bwana (executive producer)
1962 Dr. No (producer)
1960 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (executive producer)
1960 The Entertainer (producer)
1959 Look Back in Anger (producer)
1956 The Iron Petticoat (produced in association with)
1955 Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (TV Series) (producer)

Production manager (1 credit)

1950 Robert Montgomery Presents (TV Series) (production supervisor - 9 episodes)
- The Citadel (1950) ... (production supervisor)
- The Champion (1950) ... (production supervisor)
- Rebecca (1950) ... (production supervisor)
- Pitfall (1950) ... (production supervisor)
- The Phantom Lady (1950) ... (production supervisor)

Writer (1 credit)

1956 The Iron Petticoat (story - uncredited)

1939: John Cleese is born--Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England.

1967: Men leeft slechts twee maal (Flemish title) released in Belgium. Also On ne vit que deux fois (French title).

1977: La espía que me amó released in Argentina.

1977: De spion die me liefhad released in Belgium.

1983: Octopussy released in Colombia.
1983: Octopussy released in Portugal.
1983: 007 - Operação Tentáculo (Tentacle Operation) released in Portugal.

Later video covers.

2008: Roy Stewart dies at age 83--London, England.
(Born 27 October 1925--Jamaica.)

Roy Stewart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Stewart
Born 15 May 1925, Jamaica
Died 27 October 2008 (aged 83).
London, England
Occupation actor
Years active 1959–1981

Roy Stewart (15 May 1925 – 27 October 2008) was a Jamaican-born British actor. He began his career as a stuntman and went on to work in film and television.

In 1954 he founded Roy Stewart's Gym in Powis Square, North Kensington, and ran the Caribbean club and restaurant The Globe, in Talbot Road until his death. Stewart played Quarrel Junior in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973). Other film appearances include Carry On Up the Jungle (1970), Leo the Last (1970), Games That Lovers Play (1971), Twins of Evil (1971), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers (1977) and Arabian Adventure (1979). He was also active on television, with credits including: Out of the Unknown, Adam Adamant Lives!, Doctor Who (in the serials The Tomb of the Cybermen and Terror of the Autons), Doomwatch, Up Pompeii!, The Troubleshooters, Space: 1999 and I, Claudius.

Background
One of seven brothers, Roy Stewart was born in Jamaica, and came to Britain in 1948 with aspirations of being a doctor. But either theatre or a television commercial changed that.

Having suffered for some time from heart disease, Stewart died on 28 October 2008, aged 83.

Film and television career
In a role, possibly his earliest, Stewart appeared in a television advert for Fry's Turkish Delight, playing a snake charmer. Later, he was an extra in films and did stunt work. He would become one of the top black actors and stuntmen in Britain.

Film

Possibly his earliest role was an uncredited one, playing a slave in the 1959 film, The Mummy. In 1973, he played the part of Quarrel Junior in the James Bond film Live and Let Die starring Roger Moore. Having not returned to Jamaica where the film was being shot for many years, Stewart suffered in the heat and couldn't believe the changes that had taken place over the years.

One of his last roles in film was as Pomeroy in Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective, a 1981 made-for-television movie.

Television
He appeared in Dr. Who at least twice. He played Toberman in The Tomb of the Cybermen and Tony in Terror of the Autons.

Television commercials
Fry's Turkish Delight[10]
Surf washing powder[11]

Business interests
Stewart ran a basement gymnasium at 32A Powis Square, Kensington, west London which was opened in 1954. It had the policy of allowing all races to train there. Some actors trained there too, one of them, David Prowse, a Commonwealth Games weightlifter in 1962, went on to play Darth Vader in the film Star Wars. The Gymnasium had a dual purpose. It was also an unofficial after-hours drinking club. By 1964, Stewart had been convicted four times for selling liquor without a license. He also ran a nightclub in Bayswater. Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and Bob Marley were some of the patrons.

The Globe
In the 1960s he opened a Caribbean restaurant and bar called The Globe. The Globe, formerly Bajy's, was located at 103 Talbot Road. Jimi Hendrix was reportedly seen there the night before his death in September 1970. Stewart ran The Globe until he died in October 2008. The Globe functions to this day and is one of longest-running nightclubs in London. It also has a Caribbean restaurant upstairs.

Roy Stewart (II) (1925–2008)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0829796/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Actor (42 credits)

1981 Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (TV Movie) - Pomeroy

1979 Rentaghost (TV Series) - Djinn
- Rentasanta (1979) ... Djinn
1979 Arabian Adventure - The Nubian
1978 Sykes (TV Series) - Porter
- Football Match (1978) ... Porter
1977 Follow Me (TV Mini-Series) - General
- Episode #1.7 (1977) ... General
- Episode #1.6 (1977) ... General
1977 Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers - American sailor
1976 I, Claudius (TV Mini-Series) - Sentor
- Waiting in the Wings (1976) ... Sentor
1976 Space: 1999 (TV Series) - Tall Alien in Cave
- The Metamorph (1976) ... Tall Alien in Cave (uncredited)
1976 Caesar and Cleopatra (TV Movie) - Nubian Slave
1975 Quiller (TV Series) - John Cornelius
- Objective Caribbean (1975) ... John Cornelius
1973 Live and Let Die - Quarrel
1972 Call Me by My Rightful Name - Doug's Agent
1972 Lady Caroline Lamb - Black Pug
1971 Twins of Evil - Joachim
1971 Lady Chatterly Versus Fanny Hill - Mr. Howanda
1965-1971 Doctor Who (TV Series) - Toberman / Strong Man / Saracen warrior
- Terror of the Autons: Episode Two (1971) ... Strong Man
- The Tomb of the Cybermen: Episode 4 (1967) ... Toberman
- The Tomb of the Cybermen: Episode 3 (1967) ... Toberman
- The Tomb of the Cybermen: Episode 2 (1967) ... Toberman
- The Tomb of the Cybermen: Episode 1 (1967) ... Toberman
... 6 episodes
1970 Up Pompeii! (TV Series) - Jeremy
- Guess Who's Coming to Sin'Er Nymphia (1970) ... Jeremy
1970 Mogul (TV Series) - Security Man / Carlos
- Let's See the Colour of Your Money (1970) ... Security Man
- Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (1970) ... Carlos
1970 Julius Caesar - Slave
1970 Doomwatch (TV Series) - Negro
- Spectre at the Feast (1970) ... Negro
1970 Leo the Last - Jasper's Bodyguard
1970 Carry On Up the Jungle - Nosha (uncredited)

1965-1969 The Wednesday Play (TV Series) - Boxer / Major Buba
- Son of Man (1969) ... Boxer
- For the West (1965) ... Major Buba
1968 Sherlock Holmes (TV Series) - Mulatto
- Wisteria Lodge (1968) ... Mulatto
1968 Detective (TV Series) - Pompey
- The High Adventure (1968) ... Pompey
1968 The Avengers (TV Series) - Giles
- Have Guns - Will Haggle (1968) ... Giles
1968 Virgin of the Secret Service (TV Series) - 3rd Guard / Guard
- The Great Ring of Akba (1968) ... 3rd Guard
- Dark Deeds on the Northwest Frontier (1968) ... Guard
1967 The Pilgrim's Progress (TV Series) - Muscle Man / Mad Cripple
- Episode #1.2 (1967) ... Muscle Man / Mad Cripple
1966-1967 Adam Adamant Lives! (TV Series) - Guard / Negro Bodyguard / Weightlifter
- The Basardi Affair (1967) ... Guard
- A Slight Case of Reincarnation (1966) ... Negro Bodyguard (uncredited)
- Beauty Is an Ugly Word (1966) ... Weightlifter
1967 Prehistoric Women - Warrior (uncredited)
1966 The Saint (TV Series) - Wrestler
- The Man Who Liked Lions (1966) ... Wrestler (uncredited)
1966 On the Margin (TV Series)
- Episode #1.2 (1966)
1966 BBC Play of the Month (TV Series) - A Dervish
- Gordon of Khartoum (1966) ... A Dervish
1965 Out of the Unknown (TV Series) - Security guard
- No Place Like Earth (1965) ... Security guard
1965 The Mind of the Enemy (TV Mini-Series) - Chief Nwambe
- The New Member (1965) ... Chief Nwambe
1965/I She - Black Guard (uncredited)
1964 The Count of Monte Cristo (TV Series) - Ali
- An End to Revenge (1964) ... Ali
- Dishonour (1964) ... Ali
- Evidence of a Crime (1964) ... Ali
- Unlimited Credit (1964) ... Ali
- A Garden in Auteuil (1964) ... Ali
1964 The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb - Bearer in Museum (uncredited)
1963 First Night (TV Series) - Broccoli
- The Strain (1963) ... Broccoli
1961 Operation Snafu - Trinidad (uncredited)
1960 Sands of the Desert - Gong Banger at Sheik's Tent (uncredited)

1959 The Mummy - Flashback Slave (uncredited)

2008: "Another Way to Die" enters the UK Singles Chart at twenty-six, later peaking at number nine.

2012: Skyfall released in Switzerland.
2012: Promotional materials for the documentary Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 become available, anticipating its 5 October premiere on EPIX.

2018: BBC News reports on a famous gun owned by a familiar figure about to go to auction.

'First' James Bond 007 gun to
go under the hammer

See the complete article here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-46360414

27 November 2018

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/308F/production/_104513421_bondwaltherppk-2.jpg
The original Walther PPK pistol given to James Bond at the beginning of Dr No (1962)

A handgun handed to Sean Connery in the opening scenes of Dr No in 1962 is to be auctioned.

The Walther PPK pistol was owned at the time by M actor Bernard Lee, who brought it on set when a prop was not available.

A letter signed by Lee confirms the then fully-active gun was the "first ever to appear in a James Bond film".

Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert described the piece as a "superlative piece of British film history".

Bernard Lee was the longest-serving M actor, playing the role in the first 11 Eon-produced Bond films, from Dr No in 1962 to Moonraker, in 1979.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/FFDD/production/_104510556_lot441.jpg
Humbert Ellis
The pistol appears in the opening scenes of Dr No, starring Sean Connery

Mr Lee brought the live gun along for the filming of the early Dr No scene after a prop gun ordered by Eon Productions did not arrive on time.

According to provenance notes, a different Walther pistol was used for the rest of the film because Mr Lee's gun was deemed "inappropriate".

The actor later gave the weapon to the parents of the vendor in 1974, with a signed letter in which he says: "This pistol is the first ever to appear in a James Bond film."

The letter adds: "It was fully functional at the time. I have since removed the firing pin."

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/38B9/production/_104512541_television-king-river-rehearsals-12293734.jpg
PA Images
Actor Bernard Lee, who died in 1981, played M in the first 11 James Bond films

The firearm is expected to fetch as much as £80,000 in the auction.

A pistol held by Sean Connery in a poster to promote the 1963 film From Russia With Love sold at auction for £277,250 in 2010.

RichardTheBruce

October 28th

1971: Dedos de oro (Fingers of Gold) re-released in Argentina.

1976: The Spy Who Loves Me films OO7 in Cairo's Karnak ruins, pursuing and pursued by Jaws.

1994: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills screens Goldfinger on its 30th anniversary.

2015: Daniel Craig and other cast attend the Berlin premiere of Spectre.

2015: BBC's Timeshift airs its documentary Looking for Mr Bond 007 at the BBC.

Timeshift (2002– )

Looking for Mr Bond: 007
at the BBC

7.1/10
1h | Documentary | Episode aired 28 October 2015
Season 15 | Episode 5

Directed by

Matthew Thomas

Cast (in credits order)

Tamsin Greig ... Herself - Narrator (voice)
Sean Connery ... Himself (archive footage)
Geoffrey Boothroyd ... Himself - Armourer 'Q' (archive footage)
Ian Fleming ... Himself (archive footage)
Noël Coward ... Himself - Speaking in 1969 (archive footage) (as Noel Coward)
Lois Maxwell ... Herself - Speaking in 1969 (archive footage)
John le Carré ... Himself - Former MI6 Agent and Novellist (archive footage)
Albert R. Broccoli ... Himself - James Bond Producer - speaking in 1967 (archive footage) (as Cubby Broccoli)
Harry Saltzman ... Himself - James Bond Producer - speaking in 1967 (archive footage)
Shirley Bassey ... Herself (archive footage)
David Frost ... Himself (archive footage)
Millicent Martin ... Herself - Presenter 'Mainly Millicent' (archive footage)
Roger Moore ... Himself (archive footage)
Joan Bakewell ... Herself - Interviewer (voice) (archive footage)
Christopher Trace ... Himself - Presenter, 'Blue Peter' (archive footage)
Patrick Campbell ... Himself - Presenter, 'Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life' (archive footage)
S.J. Perelman ... Himself (archive footage)
Alan Whicker ... Himself - Presenter, 'Whicker's World' (archive footage)
Roald Dahl ... Himself - Novellist and Writer of 'You Only Live Twice' (archive footage)
Lewis Gilbert ... Himself - Director, 'You Only Live Twice' - 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and 'Moonraker' (archive footage)
George Lazenby ... Himself - Speaking in 1997 (archive footage)
Diana Rigg ... Herself - Speaking in 1969 (archive footage)
Barry Norman ... Himself - Film 73 Presenter (archive footage)
Britt Ekland ... Herself (archive footage)
Ken Adam ... Himself - Set Designer (archive footage)
Timothy Dalton ... Himself (archive footage)
Pierce Brosnan ... Himself (archive footage)
Martin Campbell ... Himself - Director, 'Goldeneye' (archive footage)Stella Rimington ... Herself - Director General of MI5 - Speaking in 2006 (archive footage)
Michael G. Wilson ... Himself - Producer, 'Casino Royale' (archive footage)
Daniel Craig ... Himself (archive footage)
Jonathan Ross ... Himself - Interviewer (archive footage)
Eva Green ... Herself (archive footage)

2020: Sotheby's begins a week focused on Fleming and Bond items.

James Bond: A Collection of
Books and Manuscripts, The
Property of a Gentleman

See the complete article here:

https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/james-bond-a-collection-of-books-and-manuscripts-the-property-of-a-gentleman

Online Auction: 28 October–11 November 2020 • 3:00 PM GMT • London

Overview

I t has been said (by an auctioneer, I believe) that modern authors are collected less for the quality of their writing than the colour of their lives. A brutal reflection, perhaps, on the status of literature; but one that Ian Fleming would have appreciated. Nobody understood better than him the value of sensation. It infused his novels and marked every aspect of his career. While Foreign Manager at The Sunday Times he promised to hold the presses if a correspondent was delivering ‘dynamite.’ (Lot 2) He pestered his publishers, Jonathan Cape, with advice on how to improve sales. He sought constantly to make his dust jackets more striking and never hesitated to suggest improvements. Sometimes he designed them himself. But he was also a man who knew the importance of luck. In terms of collectability he has been very lucky indeed: not only did he write well but he lived well; and much of his life – wartime Intelligence officer, bon vivant, romantic - made its way into his books. He also had the unhappy fortune to have died before his time at the age of fifty-six, leaving not a diminishing trail of lesser works but the eternal cliffhanger: what might have happened next? It is this confluence of fact and fiction, life and death that sets him apart from other authors.

LOT 9, FLEMING | CASINO ROYALE, 1954, FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, SECOND ISSUE, THE COPY THAT FIRST PUT JAMES BOND ON SCREEN. ESTIMATE £2,000-3,000.

The books presented here are remarkable not just for their rarity but for their biographical narrative. Here is Fleming’s life as told by a bibliophile: from his 1918 copy of Boy’s Own Journal to a book he owned at Sandhurst and his 1948 manual of journalism for Kemsley Newspapers; from Bond novels inscribed to friends and colleagues - also to his wife Ann, Bobby Kennedy and his hero Winston Churchill – to copies used by film and TV companies (Lot 9); from a corrected typescript of Diamonds Are Forever to a notebook used while researching one of his last novels, You Only Live Twice (Lot 110). There are nice touches, such as Raymond Chandler’s annotated copy of Moonraker (‘all padding’ he fumes on p.18) (Lot 16). There is a nod, too, to Fleming’s oft-unadvertised role as a bibliophile. During the 1930s he amassed a library of first editions charting milestones in human progress - ‘books that had started something’ - which was considered so important that it had to be evacuated from London during the Blitz. And in 1952 he set aside the manuscript of Casino Royale to launch The Book Collector, one of the most authoritative journals of its kind, which flourishes to this day. Its editor was the redoubtable John Hayward, to whom several of these volumes are dedicated.

https://sothebys-com.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/5637f56/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2844x2002+0+0/resize/684x481!/quality/90/?url=http://sothebys-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com/dotcom/ad/9e/dc1b32f846ac9c5ca59c4c0a9bbd/l20424-blmhh-blmjc.jpg
LEFT TO RIGHT: LOT 16, FLEMING | MOONRAKER, 1955, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED TO RAYMOND CHANDLER . ESTIMATE £70,000-100,00; AND LOT 110, FLEMING | MANUSCRIPT NOTEBOOK, HONG KONG, MACAO, AND JAPAN, 1959 . ESTIMATE £25,000-35,000.

Fleming would have relished the irony of a collector becoming himself collectable. He would also have enjoyed the idea of his story being told through a collection of his own books. To him, stories were paramount whether on paper, in life or, in this case, posterity. Famously, he boiled down his recipe for a successful thriller to a few short words: you simply have to turn over the page. I think you’ll find this catalogue fits the bill.

Fergus Fleming
Timeline of Bond

1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966


https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/007-a-collection-of-books-and-manuscripts-the-property-of-a-gentleman/fleming-casino-royale-1953-first-edition-3?locale=en
Lot 5
FLEMING | Casino Royale, 1953, first edition
Estimate £25,000-35,000

Lot 13
FLEMING | Live and Let Die, 1954, first edition
Estimate £4,000-6,000

Lot 18
FLEMING | Moonraker, 1955, first edition
Estimate £2,000-3,000


Lot 21
FLEMING | Diamonds are Forever, 1956, first edition
Estimate £2,000-3,000

Lot 26
FLEMING | From Russia, With Love, 1957, first edition
Estimate £2,000-3,000

Lot 31
FLEMING | Dr No, 1958, first edition
Estimate £800-1,200

Lot 38
FLEMING | Goldfinger, 1959, first edition
Estimate £700-1,000

Lot 42
FLEMING | For Your Eyes Only, 1960, first edition
Estimate £300-500

Lot 45
FLEMING | Thunderball, 1961, first edition
Estimate £400-600

Lot 53
FLEMING | The Spy Who Loved Me, 1962, first edition
Estimate £300-500

Lot 60
FLEMING | On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1963, first edition, the rare "B" binding
Estimate £150-200

Lot 64
FLEMING | You Only Live Twice, 1964, first edition, first state
Estimate £200-400

Lot 69
FLEMING | The Man with the Golden Gun, 1965, first edition, first state with gilt gun design
Estimate £3,000-5,000

Lot 80
FLEMING | Octopussy and The Living Daylights, 1966, first edition
Estimate £200-300

FLEMING | Diamonds are Forever. Estimate £80,000-120,000.
A highlight of the sale is Ian Fleming’s final typescript of the fourth Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever (1956). Replete with last-minute revisions made by the author as he honed his work for publication, this working text provides a fascinating insight into Fleming’s creative process.


Inscriptions

The sale includes inscribed first editions of every James Bond book including inscriptions to personal friends and literary inspirations.

Ian Fleming
fleming | live and let die, 1954, first edition, presentation copy inscribed…
Estimate: 50,000 – 70,000 GBP

Ian Fleming
fleming | goldfinger, 1959, first edition, presentation copy inscribed…
Estimate: 40,000 – 60,000 GBP

Ian Fleming
fleming | the spy who loved me, 1962, first edition, presentation copy to r…
Estimate: 35,000 – 50,000 GBP

Ian Fleming
fleming | from russia, with love, 1957, presentation copy inscribed to the …
Estimate: 24,000 – 35,000 GBP

From the Library of Ian Fleming

Beyond Bond, a remarkable selection of books from Fleming’s own library also feature, including a copy of The Boy’s Own Annual, given to a ten-year old Fleming at Christmas and a fine presentation copy of close friend Raymond Chandler’s Playback.

RichardTheBruce

October 29th

1943: Margaret Nolan is born--Hampstead, London, England.
(She dies 5 October 2020 at age 76-- London Borough of Camden, London, England.)

Margaret Nolan dead: Iconic Goldfinger Bond girl has died aged 76

See the complete article here:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-margaret-nolan-dead-iconic-22829278

Film director Edgar Wright has tweeted his sadness at the passing of Margaret Nolan, who starred in Goldfinger as well as Beatles movies and Carry On films
By James Brinsford Overnight Showbiz/TV Reporter | 12 OCT 2020

James Bond girl Margaret Nolan has died aged 76.

She starred in 1964 film Goldfinger and was in the iconic credits of the movie and helped publicise the film, dancing in a gold bikini while painted head to toe in gold.

Though she will always be associated with this image, Margaret did not play the role on screen as Shirley Eaton played the gold-painted Bond girl in the film.

Film director Edgar Wright shared the news of her passing on Twitter in a lengthy tribute to the actress, who also starred in the Beatles' Hard Day's Night movie and a series of Carry On films.

The 46-year-old filmmaker tweeted: "It's my sad duty to report that actress and artist, the magnificent Margaret Nolan has passed away.

"She was the middle of Venn diagram of everything cool in the 60's; having appeared with the Beatles, been beyond iconic in Bond and been part of the Carry On cast too."

Margaret Nolan will always be remembered for her part in Goldfinger

Edgar continued: "She was the gold painted model in the iconic Goldfinger title sequence and poster (she also played Dink in the movie), she appeared in the classic A Hard Day's Night, Carry On Girls, No Sex Please We're British & many others, frequently sending up her own glamourpuss image."

The film director continued to list some of the famous projects that Margaret was involved in.

He added: "She also appeared in five Spike Milligan Q series, Steptoe & Son, The Likely Lads, Morecambe & Wise and The Sweeney.

"She became deeply involved in political theatre and more recently created visual art; deconstructed her own glamour modelling in a series of photomontages."

Margaret Nolan pictured with Bernard Bresslaw on set of Carry On at Your Convenience in 1971

Edgar concluded his tribute with a personal note about working with Margaret last year.

He wrote: "I worked with her last year as she plays a small role in Last Night In Soho.

"She was so funny, sharp and, as you might imagine, full of the most amazing stories.

"I’m so glad I got to know her. My heart goes out to her family and all that loved her. She will be much missed."

Margaret's son, Oscar Deeks, confirmed that she passed away on October 5.

She was born on October 29, 1943 in Somerset but grew up in London.

Margaret began her career as a glamour model, going by the name Vicky Kennedy in the early ’60s, but switched back to her birth name once she began acting.

Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call us direct 0207 29 33033.

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Margaret Nolan (I)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634318/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Actress

https://twitter.com/edgarwright/status/1315405389479976960

1974: Cecilie Thomsen is born--Bogø, Denmark.

1995: Fox television airs The World of 007 with host Elizabeth Hurley.

Opening excerpt

1996: The Propellerheads and composer David Arnold record "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" for Tomorrow Never Dies. A remix is released in 1997, becoming the only top ten hit for the Propellerheads.

2008: Quantum of Solace UK premieres at the Odeon Theater, Leicester Square, London.

2008: The Scotsman prints "A Quantum Leap" regarding the latest Bond film.

A Quantum leap

https://www.scotsman.com/news/a-quantum-leap-1-1144678
Published: 18:38 Updated: 19:07 Wednesday 29 October 2008

DANIEL CRAIG bounds into the room, his arm in a sling. "Damn, I was hoping you wouldn't notice," he says. Wound up like a coil from talking all day, he's eager to cut the crap when it comes to his interpretation of Bond. "I guenuinely just nicked a lot of stuff from Ian Fleming," he says. "His Bond is very psychological: he thinks, he's morally ambiguous, he's an assassin, he kills people for a living; at the same time he always gets his man and goes after the bad guys. But there's no deep and meaningful thing here. I don't approach it like some big dramatic piece."

He's reluctant to claim any ownership over the character, though. "I think I'm only borrowing it, don't you? This is all great, but I think someone else is going to come along and hopefully do a better job than I've done. It's not mine. It's Ian Fleming's, it's the Broccolis' – I could say I'm the caretaker, but that's a really naff thing to say."

Director Marc Forster also understands his relationship with Bond could be temporary. "If this film doesn't become a commercial success, I'm going to be on a very long vacation," laughs the German-born, Swiss-raised filmmaker.

Craig and Forster probably don't have much to worry about, but such is the pressure of following up Casino Royale, the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed (albeit bafflingly so) Bond film to date, that even though they're holed up in five-star luxury at London's Dorchester Hotel before the world premiere of Quantum of Solace, they'd rather crack self-deprecating gags than pat themselves on the back.

That's unsurprising, though. Before Bond, Forster was an art-house filmmaker in the enviable position of being able to make modestly budgeted pictures such as The Kite Runner, Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland with complete artistic freedom. It's little wonder, then, that he considers his move into the blockbuster arena something of a risk. According to producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli (the step-son and daughter of the late Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli), he took a lot of persuading, not least because when they approached him 18 months ago there was no script, no title, just Daniel Craig and a release date.

"Yeah, that's true," says Forster. "It was only when I met Daniel that I was inspired enough to take it. I thought he was incredible. Then I got on a plane to Italy and I thought, what am I doing? Am I crazy? I started thinking maybe I should talk to Barbara and Michael and pull out because I was frightened. There was no script and suddenly I was scouting the world for Bond locations, going, OK, we could shoot here, here, here and here, and all I had was a release date in my head. It was intense."

Nevertheless, he was soon buoyed by the realisation that doing action was not as difficult as "doing intense psychological scenes with actors". Which may be why, despite a CV that suggests he was brought on board to deliver a talkier, more character-driven Bond film, Forster has actually made the most action-packed installment to date. Kicking off just moments after the end of Casino Royale it barely stops for breath as 007 traverses the globe to find those responsible for the death of his lover Vesper Lynd. Indeed it's a film that cuts so ruthlessly to the chase it has already received flack for being a little too pared down, with rumours circulating that some of the performances – particularly Gemma Arterton's Bond girl, Agent Fields – are lying on a cutting-room floor somewhere.

Not so, says Forster. Aside from a 45-second sequence involving Craig, everything that was scripted ended up in the movie. "I just wanted this to be a much shorter film. Casino Royale was way too long for my taste; that poker game was really slow, so I wanted to make this a really tight and fast film. It should be like a bullet."

Still, even though Quantum of Solace is not the touchy-feely Bond film that was threatened, its makers make it sound as if they've shot a three-hankey-weepie. Ask Forster about Bond's relationship with M (played once again by Judi Dench) and he refers to 007 as an emotionally dysfunctional orphan in search of a parental figure. Get Broccoli on the subject of the film's relationship to Casino Royale and she expounds at length about how Lynd's betrayal of Bond in the previous film has left him broken-hearted and wondering if she ever really loved him. Blimey.

It's a relief, then, when Craig finally bounds into the room, and a reminder that it is his bruising, brutal and brooding take on 007 that has really made Bond relevant again, especially in a cinematic landscape dominated by Jason Bourne. Bring up this comparison (which is even more pronounced this time out) to Forster, Wilson or Broccoli and you'll be treated to a weary, resigned acknowledgement that, yes, stylistically there is some overlap, especially in the use of handheld cameras to make the action more realistic and emotionally intense. But, says Wilson: "If you look at the character and the storylines they're really different. Bond has a kind of sophistication and a different approach."

"Just having the Bond girls and the villains makes it different. There are certain things that are said in a Bond film that are iconic and you want to keep them in there," Forster says.

A faster, more intense Bond is certainly preferable to another jump-the-shark moment such as the invisible car in Die Another Day. "That idea was based on real technology," protests Broccoli sheepishly.

"Unfortunately it just looked a bit too science fiction-like when we executed it," Wilson chips in. "But that happens a lot in Bond films. Moonraker was another point where we went a bit too far and had to bring things back down to Earth with For Your Eyes Only. It's a constant cycle and if the Brosnan films got a little fanciful, these ones have given us the chance to strip them back again."

Finally acquiring the rights to Casino Royale was actually the real motivation for the current reboot, says Wilson, though Craig reckons there was another good reason for starting again from scratch. "It's hard to believe, but there is a generation of people who don't know the Bond movies. They haven't watched them the way I watched them growing up, so just saying the lines and introducing the characters and expecting them to understand who these people are would have been the wrong thing to do. But I do think that means we can do anything in the next Bond movie. We can introduce Moneypenny and Q back into it, I think we've just got to get the best actors we can find, and ask them to do the best job."

So, he'll definitely return as James Bond? "I don't know. I'd love to do another one. Maybe I'm just superstitious – or stupidly pessimistic. I just want to see how it goes and if I get the chance, I'll do it." • Quantum of Solace is in cinemas tomorrow. Read Alistair Harkness's full review of the film in tomorrow's Scotsman Review

Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/a-quantum-leap-1-1144678

2009: Puffin Books publishes Danger Society: The Young Bond Dossier by Charlie Higson, with the short story "A Hard Man to Kill".

2012: Skyfall breaks existing UK box office records for a 007 opening weekend.
2012: Sony Classical releases the Skyfall soundtrack in the UK, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London. Thomas Newman's score is nominated for an Oscar and wins a BAFTA.
2015: Spectre released in The Netherlands.
2015: Screen Daily reports on an abandoned SPECTRE mission from 1984.

James Bond's abandoned 'SPECTRE' mission from
1984

See the complete article here:

https://www.screendaily.com/james-bonds-abandoned-spectre-mission-from-1984/5096117.article

By Violet Acevedo29 October 2015

Screen International ad from 1984 offers glimpse of what could have been a precursor to the latest Bond film.

As Screen prepares to celebrate its 40th birthday, we have been busy trawling through the magazine’s archives in search of landmark moments from our history.

This full-page ad from 1984, purchased by film producer Kevin McClory of Paradise Film Productions, reveals the company’s intentions to create a series of James Bond films - beginning with SPECTRE - stating that an important announcement is forthcoming.

Evidently, the film never came to fruition, and the project is now consigned to Bond history.

In 1965, Kevin McClory had helped develop the story for the third entry in the Bond franchise, Thunderball, which introduced arch villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld as the figurehead of evil organization SPECTRE.

Following the film, a dispute arose over who owned the rights to those elements of the story, with a court eventually ruling after years of litigation that McClory was allowed to produce his own James Bond films.

Following that decision, he created the ‘unofficial’ entry in the series Never Say Never Again (1983), featuring the one-time return of Sean Connery as 007.

As shown by this advert in Screen, he clearly intended to follow up that film with multiple projects, of which SPECTRE would have been the first, but never managed to get them off the ground.

In 2013, seven years after Kevin McClory passed away, the dispute was finally resolved, with MGM reaching a settlement with the late producer’s estate to take back the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE.

Now, the 2015 incarnation of SPECTRE, featuring the return of the titular organisation, is breaking records at the UK box office.

However, if Kevin McClory had managed to garner more support for his future Bond projects, things could have been very different.

2016: Inspired by Spectre, the Mexican government channels promotion of pre-Hispanic culture into a "Día de los Muertos" parade through Paseo de la Reforma and Centro Historico. 250,000 in attendance.

Mexico City's James Bond-inspired Day
of the Dead parade gets mixed reviews

Thousands attend spectacle, but others bemoan changing face of
festival traditionally marked by more intimately
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/29/day-of-the-dead-parade-james-bond-mexico-city
David Agren in Mexico City @el_reportero
Sun 30 Oct 2016 10.15 EDT

Mexico City celebrates its first ever Day of the Dead parade

Mexico City has held its first Day of the Dead parade, complete with floats, giant skeleton marionettes and more than 1,000 actors, dancers and acrobats in costumes.

A tradition that normally takes place in private homes or at candle-lit cemetery sites was transformed this year by the silver screen – specifically the James Bond film Spectre.

“Day of the Dead is always something in Mexico City that is celebrated, though in a more serious way,” Enrique de la Madrid, the country’s tourism secretary, told the Guardian. “It’s a deeply rooted tradition in Mexico, but what we decided to do is a festival.”

The city government and Mexican tourism officials were inspired by parts of last year’s Bond film, which were filmed in Mexico City and featured 007 chasing a villain through a Day of the Dead celebration in the historical centre.

The official parade on Saturday attracted thousands of people with its full spectacle of skulls and skeletons, oceans of marigolds and catrinas (stylised skeleton costumes depicting high-society figures).

“It’s great that we can celebrate and remember our deceased loved ones,” said Jesús Arreola, 21, a brewery worker who was strolling along the parade route.

Day of the Dead dates back to the Aztec period and celebrants believe the spirits of their deceased loved ones return for a visit. Families build altars adored with photographs, votive candles and items the deceased enjoyed such as food and drink – even tequila or mezcal.

Day of the Dead has remained popular despite predictions the US import of Halloween would wipe it out.


Women wear skeleton masks during a procession organized by sex workers to remember their
deceased colleagues ahead of the Day of the Dead parade.
Photograph: Ginnette Riquelme/Reuters

But Saturday’s parade did not go down well with everyone. Some on social media pointed to it as another populist pitch from a local government famous for opening the world’s biggest ice rink, building urban beaches and having a fetish for setting world records such as taking the biggest ever selfie.

“This is a cheap stunt,” tweeted Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos. “They film James Bond here and now we have the ‘traditional Day of the Dead parade’. Let’s see what happens when (the mayor) finishes reading The Da Vinci Code.”

The parade came as Mexico approaches the 11th the year of its crackdown on drug cartels and organised crime, a conflict that has cost an estimated 150,000 lives.

“More than 100,000 dead: decapitated, disappeared, buried in clandestine graves, thrown in garbage dumps, reduced to ashes, drowned in sewage canals, dead by hanging in the public plaza … Why do with minimising what should give us all chills?” wrote Alma Delia Murillo in the online publication Sin Embargo.

Some see a big parade – even one inspired by 007 – as part of an evolution already under way in Mexico.

Shawn Haley, a Canadian who lives in southern Oaxaca state, and studies Day of the Dead, said the tradition had been evolving since 2000, when he started seeing parades and processions. He predicted it would continue its transformation into a less spiritual occasion, especially in urban areas.

“We are seeing the transition from a private family celebration with folks who truly believed the dead family members returned home to a much more community oriented event [which] has removed much of the sincere belief,” Haley said.

“In the smaller villages, the private family celebration of the Day of the Dead goes on … and family is what keeps the Day of the Dead going.”

Thunderfinger

I had forgotten about that 80s SPECTRE project. Fun to think about.

RichardTheBruce

October 30th

1943: Maud Russell writes about Ian Fleming in her diary.

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/

Saturday 30 October, 1943

Day in bed with cold in spite of four anti-catarrhal injections. Got up
to have dinner with I. Talked about every kind of thing as usual:
Admiralty, personalities, happenings, the funeral, love, death,
marriage, houses, Tahiti – or any escape island – and the formidable
future till after 12.

1963: The Desert Sun prints a short article "Hero or Creator--James Bond? Nope, Only Ian Fleming."

HERO OR CREATOR--
James Bond? Nope,
Only lan Fleming

Desert Sun, Volume 37, Number 75, 30 October 1963 —
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DS19631030.2.34&e

LONDON (UPI - As he stood there, bemused in Fleet Street, the tall man m the dark blue suit with cuffs on its sleeves did not look like secret agent James Bond, holder of; the rare double-cipher number 007, which entitles its bearer to kill in the performance of duty.

His suit fitted well, too well in fact for even an extra-flat Beretta automatic in a chamois skin holster hidden under the armpit. His shoes were certainly hand-made but on close examination too soft in the toes to be steel-tipped (for kicking out in emergencies, naturally).

His bow tie? Now that might have been whipped off and used for a garrote in the event of a sudden confrontation with an assassin from SMERSH A Soviet agency set up to eliminate counterspies or "double” agents. And the hard grey-blue eyes in the battered handsome face would probably not flinch from such a routine encounter (or, for that matter, a duel with cyanide guns, throwing knives or poisoned brass knuckles.)

But this was definitely not James Bond for the good reason that it was lan Fleming, the British journalist who created a fictional secret agent and gained a world wide audience that includes President Kennedy.

All Things Possible
In the world Fleming has created with the skill of his pen all things are possible, all characters are believable at least for the moment no matter how bizarre. This is a tribute to the sure instinct of his writing and to a trick of weaving the improbable within a solid framework of solid, practical information.

Some interpreters of the Fleming cult allege that Bond is the way he sees his mirror-image. He was a commander in the Royal Navy. So is Bond. He was engaged in a highly secret work during the war. Bond is an agent of the British Secret Service. They dress alike, insist on the same drinks, smoke the same cigarettes, buy their clothes in the same stores and frequent the same restaurants.

With three homes, a wife who is one of London’s leading hostesses, one of the fastest private automobiles in Europe and all the luxuries that royalties can provide, Fleming is willing to let the public think what it wants as long as it continue* to buy his books and patronize the series of films now being made from them.

Millions Sold
The James Bond novels have sold more than 14 million copies and the first film. "Dr. No,” was a box office smash.

The second, “From Russia With Love" has now opened to equally enthusiastic notices. Fleming approved the star who portrays Bond, Sean Connery. But they do not resemble each other in any way. Fleming’s nose looks as though he had started his career with a left hook in his face instead of a silver spoon in his mouth. It is not, to be tactful, film-star photogenic, although at 55, Fleming has rugged good looks of his own.

Fleming was born to a member of parliament and a mother who was regarded as the reigning beauty of England. He had a typically upper-class education at Eton, which he disliked, and later Sandhurst Military Academy the West Point of Britain. From there he went to the universities of Munich and Geneva where he learned fluent German and French.

Later in his career, as manager of the Moscow bureau of Reuters, he added fluent Russian.

But along came the war and someone remembered that he was a linguist, widely traveled, a man of many interests from golf to gambling. This added up to an invitation to join naval intelligence.

Much of his war work is still secret although he had a staff under him assigned to moving in with the advance troops to seize codes and special equipment. He insists that he has never had to draw from his personal experience for his plots but the contracts he made then must be invaluable when it comes to checking accuracy or possibilities.

1973: Thomas Wright in The Gleaner calls Live and Let Die “the poorest of the lot so far, though there were some great moments during the speed-boat chase”. He dismisses the idea the film was “insulting to black people."

2008: Penguin Modern Classics publishes Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories.

2008: The Guardian prints "For Your Ears Only", a rundown of Bond title song near-misses.

For your ears only

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/oct/31/james-bond-songs
Jude Rogers | Thu 30 Oct 2008 20.01 EDT

Amy Winehouse was lined up to sing the theme for Quantum
of Solace, but it never happened. Jude Rogers looks down her
gun-barrel at other tunes that nearly made the 007 title
sequence

The Bond girl that almost was: Amy Winehouse.
Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty

Goldfinger

Anthony Newley (1964)
Shirley Bassey's gutsy performance nearly never was. Goldfinger's lyrics were co-written by Leslie Bricusse and singer Anthony Newley, and it was Newley - the Cockney pop impresario - who made the original recording. A light jazz version in which he delivers the lyrics in a sinister whisper was included on 1992's 30th-anniversary album, The Best of Bond, but Bassey's version, enhanced by composer John Barry's brassy arrangement, became the quintessential James Bond theme.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/6b33qc

Thunderball

Johnny Cash (1965)
Submitted on spec by Johnny Cash, this majestic country track paints Bond as a furious avenger, his arrival heralded by trumpets, female harmonies and urgent drums. The lyrics also refer to the nuclear bombs for which Bond was hunting in the film ("There's a rumble in the sky and all the world can hear it call/ They shudder at the fury of the mighty Thunderball"). Also rejected was Barry and Bricusse's Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, made as a demo by Bassey but recorded by Dionne Warwick. That was turned down at the last minute after producers decided the theme tune should share the film's title. Don Black, the lyricist who still works on Bond film soundtracks, was recruited, and Tom Jones's theme was written in a few days.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/5qxatn

You Only Live Twice

Lorraine Chandler (1967)
Discovered in the RCA vaults in the 1990s, Lorraine Chandler's northern soul floor-filler began life as a demo that the Detroit-born singer-songwriter submitted herself. It refers to the film's narrative, incorporating both Japanese scales, to reflect the film's location, and the bassline of Monty Norman's famous 007 theme. It was rejected in favour of Barry's song of the same name for Nancy Sinatra, and Chandler went on to write songs for the O'Jays and Eddie Parker.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/5pmcr2

The Man With the Golden Gun

Alice Cooper (1974)
Alice Cooper decided that he was Bond's next main man after Paul McCartney and Wings had international success with 1973's Live and Let Die. Cooper's track is four minutes of dirty glam-metal, and revels in the phallic imagery of the film title ("The man with the golden gun in his pocket/ The man with the golden gun in his case/ The man with the golden gun in your face"). Rejected out of hand by the studio, it appeared on Cooper's album Muscle of Love.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/3vgdfb

For Your Eyes Only

Blondie (1981)
Debbie Harry agreed to sing this film's theme tune, but pulled out after being told that the track would be written by Bill Conti, the composer of the Rocky soundtrack, rather than Blondie. Sheena Easton filled Harry's high heels, but Blondie wrote their own theme tune regardless, a strange, dramatic song that they included on their final album, The Hunter.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/6nhtb7

Never Say Never Again

Phyllis Hyman (1983)
Although Never Say Never Again was not an official Bond film, its original theme tune was also shelved late in the day. Stephen Forsyth wrote a smooth, sultry song, performed by American soul singer Phyllis Hyman. He claims it was dropped after the film's soundtrack composer, Michael Legrand, demanded that he also be allowed to write the title track. Forsyth finally released the track for free on the internet earlier this year, 13 years after Hyman committed suicide. Brazilian singer Lani Hall, the wife of Herb Alpert, sang the song that replaced it.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/5r8bvb

The Living Daylights

The Pet Shop Boys (1987)
After industry rumours that they were in the running to perform the next Bond theme, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe made a demo with a Bond-style guitar motif. But after Duran Duran's success with A View to a Kill, another pretty boy pop group, A-ha, were chosen to collaborate with Barry - an unpleasant process for both parties, which Barry later likened to "playing ping-pong with four balls". Tennant and Lowe later returned to their Bond demo, turning it into This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave on their 1990 album, Behaviour.
Advertisement

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/5lx9k6

License to Kill [sic]

Vic Flick and Eric Clapton (1989)
Vic Flick played lead guitar on Norman's original 007 theme, and had been contributing to Barry's Bond film soundtracks since the early 1960s. In 1989, Clapton had just released Journeyman, his successful album of guitar-and-vocal collaborations. Flick and Bond's two-man take on the theme was meant to reflect the grit of Timothy Dalton's Bond, but the producers thought differently. Elements of Flick's guitar work remain in the score, but Gladys Knight's Goldfinger homage took the opening credits.

Hear it: Sorry, you can't.

The Goldeneye

Ace of Base (1995)
Fresh from having international hits with All That She Wants and The Sign, Ace of Base were recruited to write and perform the theme for Pierce Brosnan's first Bond film. Their record company Arista pulled them from the project after the track was complete, because of fears the film would flop. The opposite happened: not only was it a critical and commercial success, but it rebooted the career of Tina Turner. Seven years later, the band reworked the song, renamed it The Juvenile, and released it on their 2002 album Da Capo.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/66ms2t

Tomorrow Never Dies

Saint Etienne (1997)
Swept up by the easy listening boom, Saint Etienne were one of many bands asked to compete for this Bond theme. Their exotica-flavoured song made much of Sarah Cracknell's breathy vocals, but it was rejected, as were entries by the Cardigans, Pulp and Marc Almond. Saint Etienne put theirs on their 1999 fanclub compilation, Built on Sand, and wrote in the liner notes that Pierce Brosnan had kept the master tape of their song, deeming it "seven times better than Sheryl Crow".

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/6ga5db

The World Is Not Enough

Straw (1999)
Straw, a Bristol band formed by Mattie Bennett and Roger Power of the Blue Aeroplanes, were the bright hope for record label WEA in 1999. Their Bond theme nodded towards Radiohead's romantic ballads, but it was rejected in favour of David Arnold and Black's theme for Garbage. A specially recorded Scott Walker song for the closing credits was also dropped, though it did feature on the soundtrack album for the movie.

Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/27vngo

Quantum of Solace

Amy Winehouse (2008)
The theme tunes for Die Another Day and Casino Royale were agreed and recorded quickly, but the hunt for the latest Bond theme tune was protracted. Black and Arnold wrote a song for Quantum of Solace earlier this year, and Black says Amy Winehouse was approached to sing it, amid rumours she and Mark Ronson were also working on a track. Neither worked out.

But Bond themes have changed now, as Black explains. "They're not about being seductive or provocative, with that whiff of the boudoir about them. They're also not as lyrically led." Black quite likes the new song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, but, like many other Bond fans, he's still a sucker for history. "I'm all for the music that makes you think of menace and drama, of spiders running across the pillow," he says. "And personally, I'd get Shirley Bassey to sing them all."

Hear it: Sorry, you can't.

2012: Skyfall premieres in Berlin, Germany.

2015: Spectre released in Denmark and Sweden.
2015: 007 Spectre released in Finland.
2015: James Bond: Spectre released in Norway.
2015: In The Telegraph Tom reveals what it's like to be Blofeld.

What it's like to live with the
surname Blofeld

See the complete article here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/james-bond-spectre/real-blofeld-surname/

Trying to take over the world since 1961: SPECTRE's leaders Franz Oberhauser and Ernst Stavro Blofeld Credit: EON/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tom Blofeld 30 October 2015 • 7:00am

Sharing a surname with a supervillain hasn’t been easy for Tom Blofeld. Here, he reveals the genesis of 007’s arch-foe

2018: British auction house Fellows puts the last Rolex screen-worn by Bond up for sale.

https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/watches/rolex-submariner-may-or-may-not-grant-you-a-licence-kill

https://www.fellows.co.uk/james_bond_watch

A Licence To Kill

A Rolex Submariner worn by 007 could fetch a whopping £90,000 at auction. The magnificent timepiece - worn by Timothy Dalton’s stunt double during the British spy thriller, Licence to Kill, in 1989 – is estimated at £60,000 - £90,000 in the upcoming Watch Sale on Tuesday 30th October.

The Rolex featured in a memorable scene - a car chase where 007 is driving a tanker truck in Mexico. Shot almost entirely in Mexico and the US, Licence to Kill pits Britain’s favourite spy against a fierce drug lord.

The watch comes with photos of the cast and crew on set in Mexico, as well as paperwork from Rolex. There is also a book detailing the making of the movie, a soundtrack album, and a certificate of authenticity from EON Productions (the film company).

Licence to Kill was Timothy Dalton’s final appearance as 007 in the franchise, before Pierce Brosnan took over the role as the famous British spy.

Additional information on provenance

• Filming of this scene in Licence to Kill took place at two locations in Mexico. Timothy Dalton was in one location wearing the Submariner 16610 which can be seen in the film.
• Rodney Pincott (Stand-by propman 2nd unit) was in the second location with the stunt doubles.
• Because the stunt double needed to wear a watch during the scene, Pincott’s own watch was used. Pincott’s watch was very similar to the 16610 worn by Timothy Dalton in the film - apart from the date which is not displayed. It is Pincott’s Rolex Submariner 5513 that is being offered for sale.
• The watch was badly damaged during the filming of the tanker scene and was sent to Rolex for a full service. We have the service paperwork, showing the correct serial reference, to prove this. We also have all of the original parts that Rolex replaced. Rolex performed the service free of charge.

2019: Dynamite Entertainment releases James Bond 007 #12.

JAMES BOND 007 #12

https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513027532512011
Cover A: Dave Johnson UPC: 725130275325 12011
Cover B: Khoi Pham UPC: 725130275325 12021
Cover C: Ben Caldwell UPC: 725130275325 12031
Cover D: Robert Carey UPC: 725130275325 12041
Writer: Greg Pak, Art: Robert Carey
Format: Comic Book
Page Count: 32 Pages
ON SALE DATE: 10/30/2019

"Goldfinger" concludes. From GREG PAK (Agents Of Atlas, Star Wars) and ROBERT CAREY (Aliens: Resistance).

https://icv2.com/gallery/44368/1

RichardTheBruce

October 31st

1948: Michael Kitchen is born--Leicester, Leicestershire, England.

1966: You Only Live Twice films the rocket launch near film's end.
1968: 007: Sólo se vive dos veces released in Mexico.

1974: David Dencik is born--Stockholm, Sweden.
1976: US television premiere of Live and Let Die on ABC.

An awesome Sunday.

1977: 007: O Espião que me Amava released in Brazil.

2006: MTV video premiere of "You Know My Name". Director Michael Haussman's contrasts "the lives of a professional spy and a rock star".

MTV's Making the Video 2006 - You Know My Name by Chris Cornell

2008: Quantum of Solace released in the UK, Ireland, France, Sweden.

2008: EU release of the video game Quantum of Solace.

Trailer


"When No One Loves You", Kerli


Soundtrack

2008: Science Daily proposes "Once Improbable James Bond Villains Now Close To Real Thing."

Once Improbable James Bond Villains Now Close To Real
Thing, Spy Researcher Says

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081030075649.htm

Date: October 31, 2008
Source: University of Warwick
Summary: Researchers say that the once improbable seeming villains in the Bond movies have become close to the real threats face faced by modern security services. One researcher said, "Remarkably, the Bond villains - including Dr No, Goldfinger and Blofeld - have always been post-Cold War figures. Bond's enemies are in fact very close the real enemies of the last two decades - part master criminal - part arms smuggler - part terrorist - part warlord."

FULL STORY

Professor Richard J. Aldrich, Professor of International Security at University of Warwick, who has just been awarded a £447,000 grant from UK's Art and Humanities Research Council to examine 'Landscapes of Secrecy' says that the once improbable seeming villains in the Bond movies have become close to the real threats face faced by modern security services.

He says:

"Throughout the Cold War, Bond's villains looked improbable, but now life imitates art. Indeed, in the early 1990s as the Cold War came to a sudden end, real MI6 officers worried about redundancy. Their boss, the real "M", Sir Colin McColl reassured them that the end of the Cold War would be followed by a Hot Peace. He was quite right. Within a few years they had joined with special forces to battle drug barons in South America and to track down war criminals in the former Yugoslavia."

"Remarkably, the Bond villains - including Dr No, Goldfinger and Blofeld - have always been post-Cold War figures. Bond's enemies are in fact very close the real enemies of the last two decades - part master criminal - part arms smuggler - part terrorist - part warlord. They are always the miscreants of globalization, they endanger not only the security of single country, but the safety of the whole world. Like our modern enemies, they thrive on the gaps between sovereign states and thrive on secrecy."

The full text of his comments now follows:

"Spying is often thought of a Cold War phenomena. Ten years ago, in the film "Goldeneye", the stern figure of "M" told 007 that he was nothing more than a historical relic. Yet even before Ian Fleming's extraordinary hero first appeared on the screen, the world of James Bond was in fact looking forward to the twenty-first century - and not backwards."

"Remarkably, the Bond villains - including Dr No, Goldfinger and Blofeld - have always been post-Cold War figures. Bond's enemies are in fact very close the real enemies of the last two decades - part master criminal - part arms smuggler - part terrorist - part warlord. They are always the miscreants of globalization, they endanger not only the security of single country, but the safety of the whole world. Like our modern enemies, they thrive on the gaps between sovereign states and thrive on secrecy."

"Throughout the Cold War, Bond's villains looked improbable, but now life imitates art. Indeed, in the early 1990s as the Cold War came to a sudden end, real MI6 officers worried about redundancy. Their boss, the real "M", Sir Colin McColl reassured them that the end of the Cold War would be followed by a Hot Peace. He was quite right. Within a few years they had joined with special forces to battle drug barons in South America and to track down war criminals in the former Yugoslavia."

"In "The Quantum of Solace" [sic] this forward-looking theme is continued. Counter-terrorism is already yesterday's business and instead Bond looks forward to the next decade when the enemies will be climate change, environmental hazard and global uncertainty. Here the villain - Dominic Greene - played by Mathieu Amalric - together with the mysterious Le Chiffre and Mr White - hide behind an organisation appropriately titled "Greene Planet". This looks like a foundation for global preservation and eco-friendly fundraising. In fact Greene Planet is a front for a secret criminal conspiracy and kleptocratic generals. 007 and the villain first come face to face at a lavish eco fund-raising cocktail party."

"The role of film and fiction in shaping the public understanding of espionage is serious stuff. Curiously, although government secret services hide in shadows, the public somehow feels it knows more about them than the more mundane work-a-day civil service. This is because "007", together with television series such as "Spooks", "24" and the "X-Files" have allowed the viewer to spend literally hours inside their highly-secure buildings."

"Programme-makers often go to obsessive lengths to get things right, albeit in reality "M"s office on the south bank of the Thames is a little less glitzy than the one portrayed in "Quantum of Solace". Secret services have come to recognise that film and fiction play an important part in the public understanding of intelligence work and the CIA has gone so far as to appoint a Hollywood liaison officer to assist film-makers whose wish to portray the agency. "

"Many films, like "The Good Shepherd", are retrospective and are praised for their historical accuracy, and some, like "The Bourne Conspiracy", seek to capture the present. But few capture the wave of the future with the wonderful insight of Ian Fleming. His villains, drawn half a century ago, are truly the miscreants of globalisation. Far fetched in the 1960s, they are now the stuff of reality. We need James Bond more than ever."

Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Warwick. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Cite This Page:
University of Warwick. "Once Improbable James Bond Villains Now Close To Real Thing, Spy Researcher Says." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 October 2008. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081030075649.htm>.

2012: Skyfall released in Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, and The Philippines.
2012: Skajfol released in Serbia.

2020: Sir Thomas Sean Connery dies at age 90--The Bahamas.
(Born 25 August 1930--Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland.)

Sean Connery, Oscar Winner and James Bond
Star, Dies at 90

See the complete article here:

https://variety.com/2020/film/actors/sean-connery-dies-oscar-winner-and-james-bond-star-dead-at-90-1234820498/

By Richard Natale, Manori Ravindran

Sean Connery Dr No James Bond
Courtesy Everett Collection

Sean Connery, the Scottish-born actor who rocketed to fame as James Bond and became one of the franchise’s most popular and enduring international stars, has died. He was 90.

Connery, long regarded as one of the best actors to have portrayed the iconic spy, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 and marked his 90th birthday in August. His death was confirmed by his family, according to the BBC, which notes that the actor died in his sleep while in the Bahamas. It’s believed he had been unwell for some time. His last acting role had been in Stephen Norrington’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentleman” (2003).

Connery was an audience favorite for more than 40 years and one of the screen’s most reliable and distinctive leading men. The actor was recently voted the best James Bond actor in an August Radio Times poll in the U.K. More than 14,000 voted and Connery claimed 56% of the vote. Global tributes poured in for Connery on Saturday following news of his death.

In a statement, Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said Connery “was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words, ‘The name’s Bond… James Bond.’

“He revolutionized the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him,” said the producers.

However, Connery — who made his debut in the first Bond film, “Dr. No” (1962) — also transcended Ian Fleming’s sexy Agent 007, and went on to distinguish himself with a long and mature career in such films as “The Wind and the Lion” (1975), “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975) and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989).

His turn as a tough Irish cop in Depression-era Chicago in Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” (1987) brought him a supporting actor Oscar.

Even as he entered his seventh decade, Connery’s star power remained so strong that he was constantly in demand and handsomely remunerated. In 1999 he was selected People magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Century, and from his 007 days to “Entrapment” (1999), opposite the much-younger Catherine Zeta-Jones, his screen roles more than justified the choice. Age seemed only to intensify his sex appeal and virility.

In his early career, his physique was his main asset as he modeled and picked up acting jobs where he could. In 1956, he landed the role of a battered prizefighter in the BBC production of “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” Good notices brought him to the attention of the entertainment community, and his first film was “No Road Back,” a B crime movie in 1956. He seemed doomed to play the hunk to ageing leading ladies, as he did opposite Lana Turner in “Another Time, Another Place,” or roles that stressed his looks such as “Tarzan’s Great Adventure” in 1959.

It was easy to dismiss him in films like “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” but his Count Vronsky to Claire Bloom’s Anna Karenina on the BBC brought him some respect and the kind of attention needed to raise him to the top of the Daily Express’ poll of readers asked to suggest the ideal James Bond.

After an interview with producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, he landed the role without a screen test, according to Saltzman. It was a controversial choice at the time, as Connery was an unknown outside Britain. But 1962’s “Dr. No,” the first of the Bond films, made him an international star.

His stature grew with the ever more popular sequels “From Russia With Love,” “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball,” which arrived over the next four years. Bond gave Connery a license to earn; he was paid only $30,000 for “Dr. No” but $400,000 for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie” and was soon getting $750,000 a film.

His initial efforts to break out of the Bond mold, however, proved fruitless. Films like “A Fine Madness,” “Shalako” and “The Molly Maguires” were well-intentioned attempts that did nothing to shake Connery as Bond from the public consciousness. After 1967’s “You Only Live Twice,” he left the Bond franchise, but he was coaxed back for 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever.” He looked old for the role, and the series seemed tired, so with that, he left Bond behind — though money would tempt him back once last time in 1983 for “Never Say Never Again.”

He took a major misstep with sci-fi film “Zardoz,” and his career seemed to be foundering.

Sean Connery and Luciana Paoluzzi filming “Thunderball” at Pinewood Studios in the U.K. (AP)

But he bounced back in 1974 with a supporting role in “Murder on the Orient Express” and the following year with “The Wind and the Lion” and “The Man Who Would Be King,” two bold adventures featuring a mature, salt-and-pepper-bearded Connery. “Robin and Marian” (1976) opposite Audrey Hepburn was not a popular success, but critics embraced it, and the film cemented Connery’s reputation as a versatile, serious screen actor.

In the late 1970s, there were more missteps such as “Meteor,” “A Bridge Too Far” and “Cuba.” But he scored in Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits.” It wasn’t until after his last Bond film that his standing as a box office star caught up to his critical reputation, thanks mostly to two huge worldwide hits: “Highlander,” which was not a big hit in the U.S., and “The Name of the Rose,” which was also much more popular abroad.

BAFTA gave him a best actor award for “Name of the Rose,” and he received his Oscar for “The Untouchables.” After that, he was an instant greenlight any time he agreed to take a role even if some of them, such as “The Presidio,” and “Family Business,” were not so hot.

Pairing Connery and Harrison Ford as father and son in the third “Indiana Jones” film was an inspired move, and the film grossed almost half a billion dollars worldwide.

Meanwhile, “The Hunt for Red October,” in which Connery played a defecting Soviet sub captain, was also a major hit in 1990.

By the 1990s, he was so popular that his uncredited cameo as King Richard in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” became one of the film’s highlights.

He was still a force to contend with in the foreign market, as “Highlander 2,” “Medicine Man,” “Rising Sun,” “Just Cause” and “First Knight” proved over the next several years. His salary was regularly $5 million and above.

One setback was a bout with throat cancer in the early 1990s, but Connery rebounded with a burst of activity. He starred with Nicolas Cage in 1996 actioner “The Rock,” playing a character that drew more than a little on his history as James Bond. In 2000, he essayed a very different role and received positive reviews for “Finding Forrester,” playing a reclusive writer who bonds with a young black basketball player who’s an aspiring scribe himself.

Nevertheless, he continued with action roles well after his 70th birthday, playing the legendary adventurer Allan Quatermain in 2003’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” He announced his retirement in 2005. He voiced a James Bond videogame the same year, and he subsequently did some other voice acting, playing the title character in the animated short “Sir Billi the Vet” and reprising the role in 2010 for “Sir Billi,” which he also exec produced.

Thomas Sean Connery was born of Irish ancestry in the slums of Edinburgh on Aug. 25, 1930. Poverty robbed him of an education, and by his teens he’d left school and was working as an unskilled laborer.

At 17, he was drafted into the Royal Navy, but he was discharged three years later due to a serious case of ulcers.

He returned to Edinburgh and worked a variety of jobs, including as a lifeguard. He took up bodybuilding and placed third in the 1950 Mr. Universe competition.

After moving to London, he learned of an opening in the chorus of “South Pacific.” He took a crash dancing and singing course and, surprisingly, landed the role, in which he stayed for 18 months. He was “hooked,” he said, but spent several years paying his dues in small repertory companies in and around London before anyone else became hooked on him.

Connery was devoted to his native Scotland and used his stature to press for the re-establishment of a Scottish parliament. When the body reconvened in 1999, 296 years after its last meeting, Connery was invited to address the first session, where he was greeted with a thunderous ovation. The next year, when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II — an honor he called “one of the proudest days of my life” — he asked that the investiture be performed in Edinburgh.

Connery published his autobiography, “Being a Scot,” co-written with Murray Grigor, in 2008. Besides his knighthood and his Academy Award, he received many kudos over his long career, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999 and the American Film Institute’s lifetime achievement award in 2006.

Connery was married to actress Diane Cilento from 1962-73. The couple divorced in 1973 and Cilento died in 2011. Connery is survived by his second wife, painter Micheline Roquebrune, whom he married in 1975; his son by Cilento, actor Jason Connery; and a grandson from Jason’s marriage to actress Mia Sara.

RichardTheBruce

November 1st

1945: Lani Hall is born--Chicago, Illinois.

1964: The Sunday Gleaner reports Kingston cinemas still showing Dr. No as they anticipate Goldfinger.

1982: Octopussy films OO7 playing dead at Kamal Khan’s fortress.

1992: This month Marvel Comics releases James Bond Jr #11 "Indian Summer".

Featuring Baron von Skarin.

1995: Esquire magazine prints Will Self's James Bond Story "License to Hug".

LICENSE TO HUG
In a smoke-free world of nonviolent solutions, 007
must fight to the death just to stay unevolved

November 1 1995 WILL SELF

See the complete article here:

https://classic.esquire.com/article/1995/11/1/license-to-hug

As Bond watched the secretaries, he thought not of unbridled, unfettered carnality but of melanoma.

Bond looked up, straight into the most captivating pair of eyes he had beheld for... at least two weeks.

"I see, so Mister Secret Agent has become Mister Flop-on Merchant, has he?” exclaimed Blanche.

License to Hug

Fiction In a smoke-free world of nonviolent solutions, 007 must fight to the death just to stay unevolved

WILL SELF

- - -

1995: This month Topps Comics releases James Bond 007 Goldeneye #0 as a limited edition preview at the James Bond Convention.

James Bond 007 Goldeneye #0

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/james-bond-007-goldeneye-0-special-james-bond-conv/4000-246134/

James Bond 007 Goldeneye #0 - Special James Bond Convention Limited Preview Edition released by Topps Comics on November 1995.

This preview issue had a limited edition run and was only given away at the James Bond Convention.

Creators: Don McGregor, writer. Rick Magyar, artist.
Characters: James Bond
Locations: England, London, Monte Carlo, Russia

KILLED IN ACTION — UNRELEASED BOND
COMICS

https://www.comicsroyale.com/

Topps Comics’ GOLDENEYE AND OTHER CANCELLED
ADVENTURES

Originally released by American publisher Topps Comics as an adaptation of the 1995 EON Productions film of the same name, only one issue of a planned three-issue series made it to publication, along with a black-and-white teaser issue #00 for the convention circuit. Despite this, issues #2 and #3 were written, illustrated, inked, and lettered, and they are now here for your enjoyment! Adapted by writer Don McGregor, with art by Claude St. Aubin, inks by Rick Magyar, and covers painted by Brian Stelfreeze.

Support your local comic shop and seek out back issues of GoldenEye #00 and #1 to complete the story, and for more James Bond action by Don McGregor, check out the Dark Horse/Acme Comics limited series James Bond 007: The Quasimodo Gambit!

Also included in this gallery, unpublished art and issue synopses for Dark Horse’s James Bond 007: A Silent Armageddon, another story sadly cut short just when things started to get interesting.

GoldenEye #2

https://www.comicsroyale.com/goldeneyetopps-comics#/weite/
Originally Published: Never released, intended to be published by Topps Comics as GoldenEye #2
Writer: Don McGregor
Artist: Claude St. Aubin
Inks: Rick Magyar
Cover Artist: Brian Stelfreeze

Notes: Reportedly, the plan was to continue this series after the three-issue film adaptation as an ongoing James Bond 007 series. It’s a shame this never came to pass, but if you’d like to read more Bond work by Don McGregor then check out his three-issue limited series James Bond 007: The Quasimodo Gambit, published by Dark Horse/Acme Press.

Pages Here

GoldenEye #3

https://www.comicsroyale.com/goldeneyetopps-comics#/schwane/
Originally Published: Never released, intended to be published by Topps Comics as GoldenEye #3
Writer: Don McGregor
Artist: Claude St. Aubin
Inks: Rick Magyar
Cover Artist: Brian Stelfreeze

Notes: Reportedly, the plan was to continue this series after the three-issue film adaptation as an ongoing James Bond 007 series. It’s a shame this never came to pass, but if you’d like to read more Bond work by Don McGregor then check out his three-issue limited series James Bond 007: The Quasimodo Gambit, published by Dark Horse/Acme Press.

Pages Here

1995: This month Berkley publishes the GoldenEye novelisation by John Gardner (from the screenplay by Michael France and Jeffrey Caine) in paperback.

https://bookfrom.net/john-gardner/41223-bond_-_29_-_goldeneye.html

1997: This month Hodder & Stoughton publishes the Tomorrow Never Dies novelisation by Raymond Benson (from the screenplay by Bruce Feirstein) in hardcover.

TOMORROW NEVER DIES

Pierce Brosnan stars again as
James Bond in 007's most exciting
screen adventure. The cars -- and
motorcycles -- are fast, the women
are fascinatingly seductive and
Bond's enemy is the most deadly he
has ever encountered.

From the snowy Khyber Pass to the
sultry South China Sea, TOMORROW
NEVER DIES is a breathtaking all-
action story that pits Bond -- and
Britain -- against a power-mad global
media mogul who is determined to
destroy the world's peace.

Partnered with a Chinese secret
agent who also happens to be a
stunningly beautiful woman, 007
uncovers the secrets of a high-tech
modern TV studio and the
underwater wreck of a sabotaged
warship. His objective: to prevent
the outbreak of World War III. If he
can stay alive for long enough . . .

This is the story all Bond's fans
have been waiting for, with all the
action, the excitement and the
glamour of the screen's bravest
and most enthralling secret agent.

Raymond Benson is the author of THE
JAMES BOND BEDSIDE COMPANION, which
was shortlisted for an Edgar Allan Poe
Award for best biographical/critical
word and is considered by 007 fans to
be the definitive book on the world of
James Bond. His is a director of the
Ian Fleming Foundation and served as
vice-president of the American James
Bond 007 Fan Club for several years.
Mr Benson is also the designer and
writer of several award-winning
interactive software products and
spend over a decade in New York
directing stage productions and
composing music. He has taught film
theory classes at the New School
for Social Research in New York
and interactive screenwriting at
Columbia College in Chicago. Mr
Benson is married, has one son and
lives in the Chicago area. ZERO MINUS
TEN, his first novel, is published by
Hodder & Stoughton.

1999: Garbage performs "The World Is Not Enough" on the Late Show with David Letterman.

2002: 007 Ice Racer video game developed published by Vodafone, using the Die Another Day ice chase.

007 Ice Racer

https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/007_Ice_Racer

007 Ice Racer
Game information:

Developer(s): In-Fusio
Publisher(s): Vodafone UK
Designer(s): Marc Pestka
Released: 1st November 2002
Genre: Action-adventure, racing video game
Mode(s): Single-player
Platform(s): ExEn

Preceded by: 007 Racing
Followed by: Agent Under Fire

2012: Skyfall released in Austria, Bolivia, Switzerland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Croatia, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Slovenia, El Salvador, Thailand.
2012: Skaifoli released in Georgia.
2012: Operacija Skyfall released in Lithuania.
2012: 007: Operación Skyfall released in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay.

2012: 007: Координати Скайфолл released in Ukraine.

Thunderfinger

TWINE really is one of the best Bond themes, and Shirley Manson is definitely the hottest of all the singers. No wonder Letterman finds it hard to let go.

RichardTheBruce

November 2nd

1961: Kathryn Dawn (K.D.) Lang is born--Consort, Alberta, Canada.

1975: ABC-TV network premiere of You Only Live Twice.
1976: The Spy Who Loved Me begins filming at Pinewood Studiosand the the Atlantis boardroom.

2006: John Murray publishes Secret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries by Kate Westbrook (Samantha Weinberg).

2010: Activision releases GoldenEye 007 in North America.

GoldenEye 007 (2010)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1679586/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

Directed by Kate Saxon
Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)
Bruce Feirstein
Ian Fleming ... (characters) (uncredited)
Ian Fleming ... (concept)
Adam Foshko ... (dialogue)
Bobby Johnson

Cast (in credits order)
Daniel Craig ... James Bond (voice)
Judi Dench ... M (voice)
Rory Kinnear ... Bill Tanner (voice)
Elliot Cowan ... Alec Trevelyan (voice)
Kirsty Mitchell ... Natalya Simonova (voice)
Kate Magowan ... Xenia Onatopp (voice)
Laurentiu Possa ... General Ourumov (voice)
Ed Stoppard ... Dimitri Mishkin (voice)
Sónia Balacó ... Sgt. Garcia (voice)
Alec Newman ... Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky (voice)
Nathan Osgood ... Sky Briggs (voice)
Adrian Schiller ... Additional Voices (voice)
Al Nedjari ... Additional Voices (voice)
Aleksandar Mikic ... Additional Voices (voice)
Beatriz Romilly ... Additional Voices (voice)
Daniel Curshen ... Additional Voices (voice)
Slav Shumov ... Additional Voices (voice)
Dhafer L'Abidine ... Additional Voices (voice) (as Dhaffer L'Abidine)
Fintan McKeown ... Janus Soldier (voice)
Jimmy Akingbola ... Additional Voices (voice)
Jonathan Aris ... Additional Voices (voice)
Louiza Patikas ... Club Patron (voice)
Mark Monero ... Additional Voices (voice)
Nicholas Boulton ... Additional Voices (voice)
Nick Nevern ... Additional Voices (voice)
Steffan Boje ... Additional Voices (voice)
Stephane Cornicard ... Additional Voices (voice)
Timothy Watson ... Janus Soldier (voice)
Trevor White ... Additional Voices (voice)
Velibor Topic ... Additional Voices (voice)
Vincent Carmichael ... Additional Voices (voice)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Georgina White ... Natalya

Produced by Graham Hagmaier ... associate producer
Mike Ward ... executive producer
Music by David Arnold, Kevin Kiner
Production Design by Robert Cowper
Art Department Iain Harrison ... Senior Artist
Visual Effects by Danny Duke ... Artist
Rich Holleworth ... MoCap Animator
Gareth Richards ... visual effects artist
Stunts Ben Cooke ... stunt coordinator

2012: Skyfall released in Colombia. Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Panama, and Turkey.
2012: 007: Skyfall released in Estonia.
2012: 007: Operación Skyfall released in Mexico. And Venezuela.

2012: 007：空降危機 (007: Kōngjiàng wéijī; 007: Airborne Crisis) released in Taiwan.

2012: Tử Địa Skyfall (Death Location Skyfall) released in Vietnam.
2015: BBC News reports Spectre breaking box office records in the UK.

Bond's Spectre breaks box
office records

See the complete article here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34697604

Published 2 November 2015

Spectre is Daniel Craig's fourth stint as 007

Spectre, the 24th James Bond adventure, has broken all-time box office records in nearly every market in which it has been released so far.

2015: 007: Spectre premieres in Mexico.

RichardTheBruce

November 3

1933: John Barry Prendergast is born--York, North Yorkshire England.
(He dies 30 January 2011 at age 77--Oyster Bay, New York.)

John Barry obituary
Composer most closely associated with the golden age of James Bond but whose scores ranged from Midnight Cowboy to Dances With Wolves

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jan/31/john-barry-obituary
Adam Sweeting - Mon 31 Jan 2011 13.31 EST


John Barry in the recording studio, 1965. Photograph: Dezo Hoffmann / Rex Features

John Barry, who has died aged 77 following a heart attack, will always be associated with the golden age of James Bond, but though much of his most famous music was written to accompany the outlandish adventures of 007, his work covered a huge variety of moods and styles. Barry wrote epic, sweeping film scores for Zulu (1964), Born Free (1966) and Out of Africa (1985), introduced blues and jazz themes into The Chase (1966) and The Cotton Club (1984), and conceived the shivery, sinister music for The Ipcress File (1965). He even became something of a pop star in his own right.

He was born John Barry Prendergast in York, where his father ran a chain of cinemas. His mother was a talented musician, but had abandoned the attempt to establish herself as a concert pianist. "My father had seven or eight cinemas, so I was brought up in the cinema," he recalled. "I remember my dad carrying me through the foyer of the Rialto in York and pushing the swing doors open at a matinee. I was looking at this big black-and-white mouse on the screen, and he'd taken me to see a Mickey Mouse cartoon."

Barry cherished an early ambition to join the family business and become a projectionist, but the combination of film and music made a deep impression on him. He began taking piano lessons with Francis Jackson, master of the music at York Minster, and studied with the jazz arranger Bill Russo, who had worked with Stan Kenton's orchestra. His father was a jazz fan, and would present concerts by such stars as Kenton and Count Basie.

After national service with the army, Barry formed his own jazz combo, the John Barry Seven, and scored a string of pop hits during the late 50s and early 60s, including Hit and Miss (the theme from TV's Juke Box Jury), Walk Don't Run and Black Stockings.

Barry thrived on the feverish wave of creativity that made London the world's most fascinating city at the time. He socialised with Michael Caine and Terence Stamp, collaborated with the pop stars Adam Faith and Nina & Frederik, and guaranteed himself the attention of gossip columnists by marrying the actress Jane Birkin. In 1960 he was asked to write music for the Peter Sellers/Richard Todd vehicle Never Let Go and then for the Faith comedy Beat Girl.

In 1962, he was signed up to work on the first Bond film, Dr No, although only as back-up to the composer Monty Norman, for a fee of £250. The official story is that Barry merely arranged Norman's famous James Bond Theme, and when Barry claimed in a Sunday Times interview many years later that he had written it himself, Norman successfully sued for libel and was awarded £30,000 in damages.

Subsequently there was no such ambiguity, as Barry's scores for From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964) and [n]Thunderball[/b] (1965) became popular the world over. Such was the potency of the Bond mystique that Barry's soundtrack album for Goldfinger knocked the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night off the top of the American charts in 1964, and earned the composer his first gold disc. He scored 10 consecutive Bond films and decided he had had enough after The Living Daylights (1987) because "all the good books had been done". 

In 1969, he scored John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, one of the first movies to use a selection of pop songs on the soundtrack. It was a technique that would be copied by countless imitators. "That movie is still shown at the cinema school at UCLA as the epitome of how songs should be used in the movies," Barry said in 1997. "We only bought in a couple of songs, Everybody's Talkin', sung by Harry Nilsson, and a John Lennon song, and for the rest we got young songwriters to score the scenes with songs. The songs work because they were written for the movie."

However, Barry always gave credit to the great classically influenced Hollywood film composers, such as Bernard Herrmann or Max Steiner, and echoes of their work would frequently bubble up in his own. Barry's music was used on the soundtracks of many other films – The Knack (1965), The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The Lion in Winter (1968), Murphy's War (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Raise the Titanic (1980), Body Heat (1981), Jagged Edge (1985), Chaplin (1992), Dances With Wolves (1990) and Indecent Proposal (1993) – and he was a natural choice to write the theme for the Roger Moore/Tony Curtis TV series, The Persuaders!

He won five Oscars, including two for Born Free and one each for The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances With Wolves. He also won Bafta's Anthony Asquith award for The Lion in Winter, and a Grammy for Dances With Wolves. In 1998 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Barry had never needed a career boost, but during the 1990s he found himself being feted by a younger generation of artists, including David Arnold, who had stepped into the role of James Bond's personal composer for Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Arnold masterminded the Shaken and Stirred album in homage to Barry's Bond music, and commented that "for me the success of the Bond series was 50% Sean Connery and 50% John Barry". Barry was delighted by Arnold's enthusiasm. "I think Shaken and Stirred is terrific. David Arnold has kept all the essence of the originals, and he's cast it beautifully with all the different performers. It has a real freshness and rhythmic impetus, which sounds very now."

A throat cancer scare in 1989 slowed Barry's work rate, but his ambition remained undimmed. In 1998 he released The Beyondness of Things, a "tone poem" unconnected to any film and which he presented as a concert piece. "It's amazing to work without film or without a director or producer," commented Barry, who was appointed OBE in 1999. "I love doing films, but it's been refreshing to work with such total freedom."

It was rumoured that Beyondness … had been derived from his rejected score for The Horse Whisperer, and a certain sameness of mood could be discerned creeping into his compositions. Perhaps recognising the need for fresh stimulus, he signed up to collaborate with the lyricist Don Black and director Michael Attenborough on a stage musical version of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, which had a short run in London in 2004. "I don't mind people going on about my past as long as I've still got a future," said Barry, "and I've got plenty of things coming up."

In 2006, Barry was executive producer on the album Here's to the Heroes by the Australian group the Ten Tenors. It featured several songs he had written with Black. The duo also wrote a new song, Our Time Is Now, for Shirley Bassey's 2009 album The Performance, their first for her since Diamonds Are Forever.

Barry, who had lived in Oyster Bay, New York state, since 1980, is survived by his fourth wife Laurie, their son Jonpatrick, and three daughters, Susie, Sian and Kate.

Eddi Fiegel writes:

I wrote to John Barry in 1997 telling him I had been commissioned to write his biography. I heard nothing for months but then, just at the point when I had almost given up hope of a reply, I got a message on my answerphone saying, "This is John Barry. I'm in London working at Abbey Road studios. Why don't you come in and we can meet?"

He immediately put me at ease with a dry, self-deprecating humour and extraordinary personal charm. A few days later we had the first of many epic lunches at his favourite London restaurant, Rules, in Covent Garden.

He had an excellent memory and was a superb raconteur – a gift for a biographer. Like many artists he could also veer between insecurity and supreme confidence. When he arranged to play his first British concert in decades at the Albert Hall, he asked me: "Do you think people will come?"

Another day, however, I mentioned to him that an electronic dance act had recently recorded what they described as a tribute to his television theme to The Persuaders! I played it to him, curious to know what he would make of it. He listened in silence. Then after a pause, he said: "It's not as good as The Persuaders!, is it?"

• John Barry (John Barry Prendergast), composer and songwriter, born 3 November 1933; died 30 January 2011
• The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 10 February 2011. In this article, we said that John Barry scored 10 consecutive Bond films; in fact he scored six consecutively, 11 in all. We quoted Barry as saying that the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack included a John Lennon song. It contained two songs by Elephants Memory, who worked with Lennon, but none written by him. Barry had a ruptured oesophagus in the late 80s, rather than a throat cancer scare. The film Beat Girl is not a comedy, although Halliwell's film guide describes it as risible melodrama.

• This obituary was further amended on 24 February 2015. Earlier versions said that Barry was born Jonathan, rather than John, Barry Prendergast.

John Barry (I) (1933–2011)
Music Department | Soundtrack | Composer

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000290/?ref_=nv_sr_4?ref_=nv_sr_4

Filmography

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000290/?ref_=nv_sr_4?ref_=nv_sr_4

1936: Takao Saito (斎藤 隆夫; Saitō Takao) is born--Wakayama Province, Japan.

1948: Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie (Lulu) is born--Glasgow, Scotland.

1957: Dolph Lundgren is born--Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden.

1961: The Daily Cinema announce Sean Connery in the James Bond role.

2002: "Die Another Day" charts in the UK at #3.

2008: Casino Royale re-released in The Netherlands.

2010: MGM files for bankruptcy.
2011: EON Productions announces the start to filming for Skyfall at the Corinthia Hotel, London. Locations confirmed: London, Shanghai, Istanbul, Scotland. Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Ben Wishaw, Naomie Harris, Javier Bardem.

2012: Heineken Global Duty Free (GDF) partners with Virgin Atlantic to introduce its 33cl James Bond edition bottle.

Heineken Global Duty Free launches James Bond special
range

See the complete article here:

https://www.moodiedavittreport.com/heineken-global-duty-free-launches-james-bond-special-range/

by Dermot Davitt | [email protected] Source: ©The Moodie Report 29 October 2012

How KLM is advertising the new campaign in its inflight brochure

Heineken Global Duty Free (GDF) has launched a special 33cl James Bond edition to coincide with the launch of Skyfall, the latest film in the James Bond series.

2020: Royal Mail issues a No Time To Die collectors sheet.

Royal Mail

James Bond No Time To Die Collector's Sheet

https://shop.royalmail.com/james-bond-no-time-to-die-collectors-sheet
Catalogue code AT122

Ten First Class James Bond stamps alongside labels featuring images and key characters from the film.

Description
A dramatic image of James Bond’s iconic Aston Martin DB5, as featured in No Time To Die, is the backdrop to an action-packed souvenir.

Ten First Class self-adhesive James Bond stamps from the original Q Branch Miniature Sheet, originally issued in March 2020, alongside labels featuring images and key characters from No Time To Die – including James Bond, Safin, Nomi and Paloma.

RichardTheBruce

November 4th

1964: Ian Fleming's will is proved.

1972: Live and Let Die films OO7's boat crashing a wedding in the Louisiana bayou.
1976: James Bond comic strip Nightbird ends its run in The Daily Express.
(Started 2 June 1976. 3179-3312) Yaroslav Horak, artist. Jim Lawrence, writer.

https://comicsgrinder.com/tag/yaroslav-horak/


Swedish Semic Comic https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1978.php3

Nattfågeln Dödligt Uppdrag För Bond!
(Nightbird) Issue: #50 (1967+ series)



Danish 1979 https://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007dk-no49-1979/

James Bond 007 no. 49:
“Nightbird/
When the Wizard Awakes” (1979)
"Natfuglen"

2012: The British GQ James Bond Special Edition features 6 covers.

2015: Spectre released in Belgium and Luxembourg.
2015: Dynamite Entertainment publishes James Bond #1 beginning the VARGR story arc.

JAMES BOND #1

See the complete article here:

https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513024181801011

Cover A: Dom Reardon
Writer: Warren Ellis
Art: Jason Masters
Genre: Action/Adventure, Media Tie-In
Publication Date: November 2015
Format: Comic Book
Page Count: 32 pages
ON SALE DATE: November 4

Beginning "VARGR", the first story in the ongoing James Bond comic series by best-selling writer Warren Ellis! James Bond returns to London after a mission of vengeance in Helsinki, to take up the workload of a fallen 00 Section agent. But something evil is moving through the back streets of the city, and sinister plans are being laid for Bond in Berlin...

In Stores November 4th in advance of the block buster movie on November 6th!
Dynamite Entertainment is proud to launch the first James Bond comic book series in 20 years! "Ian Fleming's James Bond is an icon, and it's a delight to tell visual narratives with the original, brutal, damaged Bond of the books." - Warren Ellis

VARGR - 4 November 2015 - Jason Ellis
VARGR was Dynamite Comics' first story arc in its series of James Bond comics, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Jason Masters. Published in six issues from 2015 to 2016, the first issue was released on 4th November 2015, coinciding with the arrival of the twenty-fourth James Bond film, Spectre. A hardcover collection of the first six issues of VARGR was later published on 21st June 2016.

James Bond #1 - VARGR released by Dynamite Entertainment on November 2015.

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/james-bond-1-vargr/4000-504958/
Beginning “VARGR”, the first story in the ongoing James Bond comic series by best-selling writer Warren Ellis! James Bond returns to London after a mission of vengeance in Helsinki, to take up the workload of a fallen 00 Section agent. But something evil is moving through the back streets of the city, and sinister plans are being laid for Bond in Berlin...

List of covers and their creators:
Cover Name Creator(s) Sidebar Location

A/Reg Regular Cover Dom Reardon 1
B/Auth Blank Authentix Cover None 2
C/RI 1:10 Retailer Incentive Cover Francesco Francavilla 3
D/RI 1:20 Retailer Incentive Cover Stephen Mooney 4
E/RI 1:30 Retailer Incentive Cover Dan Panosian 5
F/RI 1:40 Retailer Incentive Cover Gabriel Hardman 6
G/RI 1:50 Retailer Incentive Cover Glenn Fabry 7
H/RI 1:60 Retailer Incentive Cover Jock 8
I/LE Rare "Virgin Art" Edition Cover Glenn Fabry 9
J/RE Retailer Shared Exclusive Variant Cover Jason Masters 10
K/RE Black Cat Exclusive Variant Cover ? 21
L/RE BAM!/2nd & Charles Exclusive Variant Cover Francesco Francavilla 19
M/RE Heroes & Fantasies Exclusive Variant Cover Timothy Lim 18
N/RE Madness Games & Comics Exclusive Variant Cover Aaron Campbell 17
O/RE Maximum Comics Exclusive Variant Cover Dennis Calero 16
P/RE Midtown Comics Exclusive Variant Cover Robert Hack 11
Q/RE Midtown Comics Shared Variant Cover Jason Masters 12
R/RE MyGeekBox.com Exclusive Variant Cover Ben Oliver 15
S/RE Previews UK Exclusive Variant Cover ? 20
T/RE Ssalefish Exclusive Variant Cover Dennis Calero 14
U/RE Tate's Comics + Toys + More Exclusive Variant Cover Dennis Calero 13

2015: The Peninsula Hong Kong hosts photographer Terry O'Neill's exhibition "All About Bond at The Peninsula".

All About Bond at The Peninsula: MI6 agent as seen
through the lens of Terry O’Neill

See the complete article here:

https://www.2luxury2.com/all-about-bond-at-the-peninsula-mi6-agent-as-seen-through-the-lens-of-terry-oneill-photographer-to-the-stars/

Editorial Team on September 21, 2015

Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig, and the most famous Bond Girls in the James Bond exhibition @ The Peninsula Hong Kong.

The Peninsula Hong Kong pays tribute to James Bond with a unique photographic exhibition by iconic british photographer Terry O'Neill



The whole world seems to be obliged to pay tribute to the world’s favourite spy. To whet appetites for the new Spectre film, which sees Daniel Craig return to play 007 for the fourth time, The Peninsula Hong Kong is the latest to announce top secret events and a unique photographic exhibition dedicated to James Bond.







The Peninsula is hosting a spectacular VIP dinner and a high-profile exhibition by the renowned British photographer Terry O’Neill, who has the distinction of having shot five Bonds, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, more than 20 iconic “Bond Girls”, as well as Frank Sinatra, Elton John, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Audrey Hepburn and Faye Dunaway, to name a few of Hollywood’s elite. O’Neill will be the guest of honour at the VIP dinner, in addition to hosting an artist talk that day, charting his career as one of the leading celebrity photographers of the 20th century. The Peninsula is even giving guests the opportunity to emulate the iconic British spy’s opulent lifestyle with “A Bond-worthy Stay”.

Guests will have the chance to trace the cinematic history of the dapper secret agent by visiting a curated exhibition of Terry O’Neill’s Bond photographs, which features unique images of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig in the role, as well as a selection of the films’ most famous Bond Girls.





The Peninsula Hong Kong - Terry O'Neill All About Bond at The Peninsula - MI6 agent as seen through the lens of Terry O’Neill, photographer to the stars

A must-see for fans of 007, the exhibition will be on display at Gaddi’s and the hotel’s first-floor corridor exhibition space from 4 November to 10 December 2015, in tandem with a pop-up exhibition from 2 to 8 November 2015 at leading Hong Kong contemporary art gallery, The Cat Street Gallery, featuring signed editions of O’Neill’s iconic photographs. Jetting in to host a VIP “In Conversation with the Artist” talk in Felix on 4 November, O’Neill will offer insights into his impressive body of work and reveal the stories behind these arresting images.

2021: The Plowright Theatre promises The Sounds of James Bond, Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England.

THE SOUNDS OF JAMES BOND

See the complete article here:

https://www.scunthorpetheatres.co.uk/whats-on/the-sounds-of-james-bond/

THE SOUNDS OF JAMES BOND IS A MUSICAL TREAT FOR ALL BOND FANS.

We celebrate Bond at its best - as the 25th Bond film is released, we wanted to showcase the fantastic songs from this popular film series including epic hits of the past from Shirley Bassey, Louis Armstrong, Paul McCartney and Tom Jones to the more recent hits from Sam Smith, Adele & Billie Eilish to name but a few. This musical extravaganza will be performed by four outstanding vocalists.

Not only will we perform all the amazing theme songs for you, but we also have a special featured appearance from our own stunt team, who will reenact some of the action we see in the Bond films.

With all of this linked together with our fantastic dancers and using brilliant video footage on our giant screen, we can guarantee this show will take you on an unforgettable musical journey through the memories, drama and the epic-ness that is Bond.

TO PUT IT SIMPLY, THE SOUNDS OF JAMES BOND WILL MOST DEFINITELY LEAVE YOU SHAKEN & STIRRED!

Thursday, 4 November 2021

RichardTheBruce

November 5th

1912: Paul Dehn is born--Manchester, England.
(He dies 30 September 1976 at age 63.)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Schreiber
The Unsung Achievement of Screenwriter Paul Dehn
By David Kipen

ISSUE: Winter 2013

There are too many clues …
—Hercule Poirot, Murder on the Orient Express, screenplay by Paul Dehn

Born a hundred years ago this past November 5, the late poet and critic Paul Dehn won an Oscar, served as a spy in World War II and, notwithstanding his long and loving cohabitation with another man, helped create the epitome of twentieth-century hetero-sexual virility—yet today, even Google all but asks, “Paul who?”

How could this be? What tastemakers did he offend? Did he throw a drink in Edmund Wilson’s face? Make a pass at Susan Sontag? Hardly. His only crime was to excel at the art that dare not speak its name: Paul Dehn was a screenwriter.

In addition to the definitive James Bond picture (Goldfinger), Dehn adapted the works of John le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Deadly Affair), Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express), and Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew). He had a hand in the scripts of all four initial Planet of the Apes sequels and won the Oscar for his very first screenplay, the widely influential Cold War suspense film Seven Days to Noon.

Dehn (pronounced “Dane”) resurrected or reinvented at least three genres given up for dead at the time: the British mystery, the Shakespeare adaptation, and the spy film. He understood a thing or two about espionage, having taught and then practiced it with distinction during World War II. Yet the hundredth anniversary of Dehn’s birth has passed without the merest hiccup of notice.

I mean to lay out some of the reasons that make Paul Dehn worth remembering not just on his centenary by film critics, but by anybody fascinated with who’s responsible for their favorite movies. Dehn’s scripts suggest an intelligent, witty, morally engaged, cohesive sensibility. Even in his adaptations, he gravitated toward thematically idiosyncratic material. For example, his pictures often begin with the arrival of a threatening letter and fear of exposure (Seven Days to Noon, Murder on the Orient Express, The Deadly Affair)—surely fraught territory for a man acquainted with both deep-cover operations and the menace of British anti-sodomy laws.

Dehn wasn’t the best screenwriter who ever lived. He wrote too few originals, and too often in collaboration, to claim anything of the kind. Nor was he the best author ever to approach film as an art form. That would be Graham Greene, or perhaps Harold Pinter, the only screenwriter ever to win the Nobel Prize. (Pinter wrote as many film and television scripts as he did stage plays.) No, Dehn was merely a very good screenwriter. His work carried a creative signature that withstood even the most overbearing director’s attempts to flatten it.

Our Man in Hollywood

Only one peacetime photograph of Paul Dehn survives. It shows him reclining in a dark leather chair with a book open on his lap. Behind him, level with his balding head, a rank of mostly hardcover books stands mustered for inspection. A writer works here. Close to Dehn’s left hand, atop the desk back of him, sits his only visible concession to modernity: a small British portable tv circa 1970, maybe six inches across, its screen convex with latent entertainment. Legs casually crossed and bent, Dehn looks up from his book and over at us. We’ve surprised him with our camera, but not unpleasantly so. He looks to be in his fifties, his eyeglasses seemingly borrowed from David Hockney, with round lenses and dark frames. His ears must have been prominent even before the hair started to go.

What gets you is the smile. It’s not broad. Every third or fourth glance at him, it’s not there at all. Even when you see it, the smile has more curves than it should, like a sine wave. Dehn essentially resembles a taller, leaner Charlie Brown—already middle-aged and made good, but still a bit nervous.

Military historian Raleigh Trevelyan’s brief but warm evocation of Dehn for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography helps capture something of the spirit of the man: “He delighted everyone with his entertaining manner and piano playing, and could put on a ‘good nightclub act’. He is also recorded as having been a ‘serious thinker’, with a warm and romantic nature, not to mention an outstanding instructor. In America it was said that listening to him was more exciting than reading a spy novel.”

Harold Pinter once described his own screenplay for a half-decent spy film, The Quiller Memorandum, as “between two stools: One, the Bond films and the other, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” In the photograph, Dehn inclines decidedly toward the Smiley end of the spectrum, yet the scripts written at this desk put both George Smiley and James Bond on the screen.

The excellence of Dehn’s spy films derives partly from his wartime experiences as both a desk jockey, like George Smiley, and a field agent, like Bond. Or not like Bond—since how often does Bond do any actual spying?—but at least in the same line. Dehn spent the majority of his war service at the improbable Camp X, a disused estate in Canada commandeered for the training of British spies in what was then called “black warfare,” now “black ops.”

Many walks of life are known for the exhaustiveness of their archival documentation: statesmen, for example, or Nazis. But Englishmen and screenwriters, especially at midcentury, each tended toward self-effacement. Spies and homosexuals were, by definition, outlaws, and likely even less inclined to careless diary-keeping. So the trail for Dehn—and a generation of other gifted screenwriters—is cold and getting colder.

Researching the lives and careers of directors is much easier. Directors get interviewed vastly more often than screenwriters do. They also appear to live considerably longer. It’s uncanny just how many of Dehn’s variously talented directors are still alive, forty or fifty years after their work together. The men who shot Goldfinger (1964), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Fragment of Fear (1970),and The Taming of the Shrew (1967)—Guy Hamilton, Ted Post, Richard Sarafian, and Franco Zeffirelli—may well live to attend their own centennial retrospectives.

Dehn, meanwhile, and all the writers ever credited alongside him, are dead. An actuary and a screenwriter’s analyst might have an interesting conversation about that.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Screenwriter

Goldfinger: I prefer to call it an atomic device. It’s small, but particularly dirty.
—Goldfinger, screenplay by Paul Dehn and Richard Maibaum

Death and radioactivity are abstractions. Corpses and running sores are not.
—Paul Dehn, film review

How did Paul Dehn become the preeminent screenwriter of the Cold War? Like most information about screenwriters, the answer might as well be top secret. There exists no biographical dictionary of screenwriters. The number of good biographies of screenwriters can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. The late Bruce Cook’s dramatic three-act life of Dalton Trumbo, written with his subject’s dying cooperation, stands apart for its quality. A couple of volumes of different scriptwriters’ letters have survived into print as well, with Trumbo’s Additional Dialogue among the best correspondence ever written by an American.

Screenwriter memoirs are just as scarce. Dehn’s fellow Bond scripter Tom Mankiewicz’s recent, addictive My Life as a Mankiewicz (2012) is an object lesson in the thoroughly untapped potential of the genre. After all, successful screenwriters can actually write. They also tend to meet interesting people, and travel in circles that many readers actively wonder about. Their careers split the difference between Horatio Alger and Dr. Faustus. What film buff wouldn’t want to read about that?

If there were a biographical dictionary of screenwriters, Paul Dehn’s entry might begin like this:

1912–1939: Born Manchester, of German Jewish descent, Nov. 5, 1912. Educated at Oxford. Fond of men. Contemporary of notorious Russian moles Philby, Burgess, Maclean. Upon graduation, down to London. Encouraged by godfather, drama critic James Agate, contributes numerous humorous film reviews to newspapers up one side of Fleet Street and down the other. Also writes poetry, lyrics, and libretti.

So far, unspectacular. Dehn’s reviews amuse, but his proficient, highly formal poetry canters confidently toward critical oblivion. Had he kept on in this vein, he might have become a kind of road-show Ivor Novello, forever marooned in the 1930s as the world grew past him.

Then came the war. Redacted for national security—and by the strictest of all censors, an ungrateful posterity—his sketchy wartime biographical listing might continue as follows:

1939–1945: Joins Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) early in the war. Stationed in Canada alongside Ian Fleming and Christopher Lee. Learns tradecraft, drills spies in same. Cowrites S.O.E. spy training manual. Dispatched on missions in continental Europe and Scandinavia. In 1944 meets composer James Bernard, begins lifelong domestic and creative partnership.

Without at least a research trip to the Imperial War Museum in London, we’ll have to content ourselves with Dehn’s slender, self-deprecating version of his wartime experiences: “I was an instructor to a band of thugs called the S.O.E.,” he recalled to Chris Knight and Peter Nicholson in what may be his only surviving interview, “and I instructed them in various things on darkened estates, so I got a pretty good view of what counterespionage was like.” Dehn then nudges the conversation on to the next question. As with World War I, not the least of its sequel’s aftereffects was a reticence bordering on aphasia.

But, as we learn from an interview with John le Carré that accompanies the 2008 DVD reissue of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, there is more to be said on the subject of Dehn’s wartime service. “Paul actually had been in our Special Operations Executive during the war, and he had been, among other things, a professional assassin,” le Carré remembers. “It was a gruesome fact. Paul was a very gentle guy, lovely to work with.” He adds, “Great credit to Paul Dehn, the screenwriter, who, as I mentioned, had had pretty startling experience of the spook world.” This information speaks to the discernible—even preeminent—signature of the screenwriter. Quite literally, you can read him like a book.

1946–1950: Demobbed, returns to London, resumes versatile writing career, begins moonlighting as screenwriter.

Like Truffaut or Goddard in their magazine days, exalting the role of the director shortly before assuming it, Dehn’s film reviews from this era display a rare sensitivity to the contributions of the screenwriter. “One has waited with impatience for a script-writer of discernment,” he characteristically wrote, “to adapt James Thurber’s piteously funny parable about the fantasies of Walter Mitty.” For Dehn as well, the piteously funny was something of a critical stock in trade. Of Esther Williams, he cracked, “Only on dry land is she truly out of her depth.”

Dehn had written amateur theatricals as a student and film reviews ever since, but never a movie. If his prior interview is to be believed, he got into screenwriting for a reason as unusual as it is laudable: Dehn hoped it might make him a better critic. “I started writing manuscripts,” he told his interlocutors in 1972, “because I found it so hard to allocate praise and blame justly in a composite work of art like a film.” Imagine the decades of damage undone, in other arts as well as film, if defections like Dehn’s over the firewall between critics and practitioners were not so rare, and usually so irreversible.

So here begins one of the great runs in the annals of Anglo-American popular filmmaking. Dehn’s first script was not a spy story, but only a spy could have done it justice. No manuscript survives of Dehn and his partner Bernard’s screen treatment for Seven Days to Noon, the placidly terrifying Cold War thriller that won the 1952 Academy Award for best story. Absent any records, we can only speculate that more of the work fell to Dehn, who made his living at his typewriter, than to Bernard, who never received another writing credit—though the latter did go on to score almost all the Hammer horror films. The barest outline of Seven Days to Noon itself would read as follows:

Principled government scientist Willingdon absconds from secret facility carrying suitcase-sized nuclear explosive. Writes to Prime Minister threatening to detonate bomb in London unless nuclear weapons research suspended. Londoners evacuated to countryside. Sappers sweep deserted city for Willingdon, confront him in ruined church as bomb timer ticks down to final seconds.

What this précis leaves out are Dehn’s grace notes: a lapdog nosing around a satchel containing enough potential blast force to obliterate London, the paranoia of a fugitive whose face suddenly stares back at him from every hoarding and newsagent he sees. Already present in embryo are the signature Dehn themes: the plot set in motion by a letter, the overhanging shadow of nuclear annihilation, and the moral complexity of even the noblest motives.

Dehn had trained men to lie and kill and, if necessary, die for queen and country. Impatient with teaching, he went on missions himself, took lives according to le Carré, and risked his own. Finally, with England all but free, he’d seen her allies slaughter one-fifth of a million people over four days in August of 1945. Is it any wonder that Seven Days to Noon and several of Dehn’s later films end with a lone man crouched over an atom bomb and time running out? Alone or with colleagues, from source material or from scratch, Dehn would write several of the most sophisticated, intelligent entertainments about the Cold War and its arsenal ever made. Perhaps 1952 struck some as a touch on the early side to be writing antinuclear films, but his style and polish conspired to help the strong medicine go down.

If Seven Days to Noon and later Goldfinger hardly resulted in immediate nuclear disarmament, they nevertheless gave a shape to our nightmares. Dehn did not have it in him to do more than that. He was no diplomat. He’d seen enough of that breed at university, and too many would soon betray either their ideals or their country. Instead, Dehn did what he could with what he had. He did his bit.

1951–1958: Fresh off his Oscar for Seven Days to Noon, newly sensitized to the screenwriter’s role, Dehn takes up reviewing again. Also writes well-received short films, including one about the Glyndebourne Opera. Returns to features in 1958 with script for Orders to Kill, French Resistance-set suspense film about American pilot recruited by British to kill possible Parisian double agent. Target appears kindly, gentle, harmless. Friendship develops between oblivious victim and his conflicted assassin.

If a little centenary attention to Paul Dehn accomplishes nothing else, may it at least rescue Orders to Kill—which deservingly won the 1958 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for best screenplay—from the memory hole that’s swallowed altogether too many fine midcentury British genre pictures. Sending filmgoers back to familiar movies with fresh eyes is a mitzvah, of course. Even more satisfying is to spotlight rarities like this that no one has looked at carefully in years. So it is with this slow-starting, screw-turning, ultimately quite moving thriller, directed by Anthony Asquith, the man to whom Dehn’s 1956 oddments collection For Love and Money is dedicated.

Aside from the sheer excellence of its craftsmanship, Orders to Kill rehearses themes that haunted Dehn his entire career. In Seven Days to Noon, he’s already introduced one idea that will preoccupy him from first film to last: the slaughter of innocents. In that film, Willingdon threatens to incinerate all of London, young and old, the blameless with the guilty. By the end, the potential toll of the suitcase bomb has shrunk to a few military men—and Willingdon himself. For Willingdon is the last innocent—a meek, mild man constitutionally unable to hear out the violent bluster of a stranger in a pub, yet prepared to destroy an entire city to save the world from science gone mad. His ambivalence becomes our own: We want London saved, but do we want him dead? We sympathize with his mission even as we deplore his methods. When the bomb is ultimately defused, we share his disappointment as much as his pursuers’ relief. A moment later, Willingdon’s death outside the church comes as a martyrdom.

Similarly, the suspected double agent in Orders to Kill earns our sympathy long before his innocence is finally proven. Like Willingdon, he’s a milquetoast, an easy mark for stray kittens and lost souls—even the one who will ultimately kill him. His cat, and the floozy’s dog in Seven Days to Noon who sniffs at Willingdon’s mysterious parcel, echo and reinforce their masters’ guilelessness. War kills the complicit and the pure alike, as Dehn must have learned in his war work. To judge by his later scripts, no amount of writing about it would ever put this guilt fully to bed.

1959–1964: Maintains steady work as film critic. Writes Quake, Quake, Quake in 1961, a miscellany of familiar comic verse, all rewritten to incorporate Sputnik-era subject matter and antinuclear politics. Sample stanza: “Hey diddle diddle, / The physicists fiddle, / The Bleep jumped over the moon. / The little dog laughed to see such fun / And died the following June.” Gives up reviewing in 1963 to become full-time screenwriter. Adapts Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Goldfinger in 1964. Story concerns master criminal’s plot to irradiate America’s gold supply and increase value of own holdings. Goldfinger thwarted when Bond penetrates Fort Knox depository and helps defuse warhead with seconds remaining.

Goldfinger is the most famous script Dehn ever worked on, and success never wants for paternity claims. His cowriter Richard Maibaum, who later became for James Bond what Dehn would become for the Apes films—the go-to writer and sheepish keeper of the franchise flame—claimed authorship of Goldfinger’s first and last drafts, with Dehn coming on in between. Film is “a composite work of art,” as Dehn the critic knew long before he ever set his tab stops at screenplay width. If we risk praising Dehn for any of Maibaum’s work, it’s no greater risk than too many film critics court every day by crediting a director with just about everything.

The scene in Goldfinger we can most confidently ascribe to Dehn is, of course, the climax he pioneered a decade earlier in Seven Days to Noon. Even if Maibaum had written it, consciously or not he pinched the idea from Dehn. It may be hard nowadays to conceive of the climactic bomb-defusal countdown as one man’s invention, rather than part of our archetypal collective unconscious. But Dehn got there first in Seven Days to Noon, when the Cold War was young, and in Goldfinger he may just have done it best.

At least two moments distinguish the Goldfinger countdown from all the rest. First, it may be the first scene in the Bond series in which 007 is overmatched. He’s arm-deep in the bomb’s guts—and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Whether contemporary audiences realized it or not, the subtext here is most assuredly the fear of firepower that even 007 can’t save us from. As Connery plays it, Bond is on the verge of yanking a wire at random and hoping for the best—when a trusty nuclear scientist mercifully intervenes and neutralizes the bomb in seconds. “What kept you?” Bond asks. Even today, after half a century of hollow promises and unsecured plutonium, what’s keeping our deliverer now?

1965–1969: Dehn adapts The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Deadly Affair (AKA Call for the Dead), from novels by John le Carré. Also two agreeably overproduced international coproductions, The Taming of the Shrew and The Night of the Generals.

After Goldfinger, it took Dehn’s two le Carré adaptations to make the screen safe for espionage without lasers or martinis. As Dehn admits, “I am one of those writers who like darting about from one type of film to another. And when I’d collaborated on Goldfinger, I wanted to do a truthful spy story instead of a fantastic one, which is why I did The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Deadly Affair.”

Le Carré himself deserves the laurels for Richard Burton’s great self-loathing monologues against idealism—Marxist and otherwise—in The Spy Who Came in from The Cold. But Dehn’s deft streamlining and word-pictures, filtered through Oswald Morris’s cinematography and Martin Ritt’s direction, help make those speeches play.

There’s more to a script than dialogue, or Dehn’s later script for The Taming of the Shrew wouldn’t have required even a bad writer’s screenwriting services, let alone a great one’s. As Dehn himself said, “It isn’t just a question, as so many people think it is, of writing the dialogue. Some writers, myself included, go into great detail, and they have a strange physical sense, and they see that film on the wall and write down what they see.”

Dehn also warrants credit for a mental image that sticks with a viewer, long after those soliloquies have left behind no residue but a willingness to hear Burton speak them again and again. I’m referring to all those small mounted animal heads in the courtroom at the final East German show trial, peering down at defense and prosecution alike. The long tribunal twists to its surprising end, unforgettably, under the specter of this profligate sacrifice of life.

Animals meant the world to Dehn. He kept cats and watched birds, and composed the rhyming text for Cat’s Whiskers, an entire book of feline photography. As he once wrote, “My hobby is birdwatching: partly because sunlight and fresh air are more than normally vital to a film-critic who spends three weeks of the year’s daylight in the almost total darkness of a cinema.”

If only film retrospectives would recapitulate a writer’s career every so often, recurrent Dehn subthemes—like this identification of animals with vulnerability—would unfailingly shine out. One can’t look back over Dehn’s career without noting a virtual arkful of innocuous fauna. The inquisitive dog in Seven Days to Noon, the contraband cat in Orders to Kill, Goldfinger’s stud horse—“Certainly better bred than the owner,” Bond muses—all testify to his benign preference for animal company over the human kind. Dehn later breathed fresh life into the Planet of the Apes films by focusing not on the humans, but on the chimpanzees.

1970–1973: Writes or cowrites four Apes sequels in as many years. A true rarity: the non-horror studio film series in which every picture’s ending is bleak.

The Apes sequels differ from their precursors in Dehn’s filmography chiefly by not being very good. Centenary or no centenary, nobody gets away with a speech like “You’re the beast in us that we have to whip into submission. You’re the savage that we need to shackle in chains.” That’s from his script for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. If screenwriters are the true authors of their films (a case I tried to make in The Schreiber Theory [2006]), then they write the bad ones along with the good.

Yet even a good screenwriter’s creatively unsuccessful films are interesting in the context of a career, and Dehn’s Apes scripts are nothing if not interesting. Beneath the Planet of the Apes may be a meddled-with, muddled, mediocre movie, but it’s saved by one great visual idea—a realistic portrait of New York as a sunless, corroded, post-apocalyptic hell, overrun by mutants—and a wryly remorseless ending. For the classic Dehn threat of wholesale slaughter, it’s hard to top Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in which a “cobalt bomb” carries off the entire world. The final title card breaks the news to us with sadistic understatement, especially for any viewers unlucky enough to be impressionable children at the time: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”

Dehn originally fought this finale, which Charlton Heston pumped for in order to kill off the series for good, but ultimately Dehn submitted to it in high style. He was rightly anticipating the quandary he would face if Twentieth Century Fox commissioned another sequel after all—a dilemma he wound up solving, in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, through a characteristically ingenious time-travel kludge.

1974: Adapts Agatha’s Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, to great acclaim. Story finds detective Hercule Poirot aboard snowbound train, with sleeping car full of likely suspects in murder of industrialist implicated in Lindbergh-like kidnapping. Christie pronounces it best film from her work to date.

Dehn began his career with the Oscar for Seven Days to Noon, and rounded it off with a nomination for Murder on the Orient Express. (Already ill with cancer, he lost to The Godfather, Part II.) Murder stands among his best work, not least for its use of humor and dramatic tension to distract from the original’s simultaneous predictability and outlandishness. How Dehn keeps viewers guessing as to which of the twelve other passengers has given the murder victim twelve stab wounds—why, whatever could that mean?—is itself a mystery.

Save The Taming of the Shrew, Dehn never wrote a script that did not begin or end in death. His own came at sixty-three, likely the result of a lifelong cigarette habit. In the work of a writer as war-scarred as Dehn, death is rarely solitary. In Seven Days to Noon, he imperiled an entire city; in Goldfinger, half of Kentucky. In The Night of the Generals, Peter O’Toole orders the massacre of the surviving population of the Warsaw Ghetto. The “holy fallout” in Beneath the Planet of the Apes takes the whole planet with it. Meanwhile, Dehn’s own death, in 1976, met with scarcely more commemoration than his centenary this year.

So who really misses Paul Dehn after a hundred years? Besides John le Carré, that is, and Dehn’s niece, the poet Jehane Markham, who remembers him “as a dear friend as well as top notch uncle”? Perhaps no one.

There’s just one hitch. By end of next year, the same centennial odometer will turn over on the screenwriters of High Noon, Midnight Cowboy, The Defiant Ones, Salt of the Earth, and On the Waterfront—four blacklistees and one informer, all heroically gifted, each tragically either silenced, compromised, or redeemed. Will their fascinating careers share the Dehn curse of asterisked obscurity?

It’s up to us. Think of a dead screenwriter’s reputation like an early silver nitrate print of a classic movie. It degrades, over time, into dust. But once touched with sunlight, it might yet flare into incandescence—and send all our prized assumptions about film authorship up in smoke. 

Paul Dehn (I) (1912–1976)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0214989/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Filmography

Writer (20 credits)

1974 Murder on the Orient Express (screenplay by)
1973 Battle for the Planet of the Apes (story)
1972 Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (written by)
1971 Escape from the Planet of the Apes (written by)
1970 Fragment of Fear (screenplay)
1970 Beneath the Planet of the Apes (screenplay) / (story)
1970 Music on 2 (TV Series) (libretto - 1 episode)
- The Bear (1970) ... (libretto)

1968 Beryl Reid Says Good Evening (TV Series) (additional material - 1 episode)
- Episode #1.3 (1968) ... (additional material)
1967 Before the Fringe (TV Series) (1 episode)
- Episode #2.1 (1967)
1967 The Taming of the Shrew (screen play by)
1967 The Night of the Generals (adapted for the screen by) / (additional dialogue)
1967 The Deadly Affair (screenplay)
1965 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (screenplay)
1964 Goldfinger (screenplay)
1960 A Place for Gold (Documentary short) (commentary writer)
1960 ITV Play of the Week (TV Series) (adaptation - 1 episode)
- A Woman of No Importance (1960) ... (adaptation)

1958 Orders to Kill (screenplay)
1956 On Such a Night (Short) (screenplay)
1951 Waters of Time (Documentary short)
1950 Seven Days to Noon (original story)

Music department (2 credits)

1955 I Am a Camera (English lyric by)
1952 Moulin Rouge (lyrics adaptd by)

Producer (1 credit)

1970 Fragment of Fear (associate producer)

Soundtrack (1 credit)

1961 The Innocents ("O Willow Waly")

1935: Christopher Hovelle Wood is born--Lambeth, London, England.
(He dies 9 May 2015 at age 79--France.)

Christopher Wood, writer - obituary

See the complete article here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11951112/Christopher-Wood-writer-obituary.html

Author of the risqué Confessions novels who armed James Bond with wit and
humour in Moonraker
5:47PM BST 23 Oct 2015

Christopher Wood

Christopher Wood, who has died aged 79, was an advertising executive turned writer whose oeuvre included literary fiction, historical novels and the screenplays for the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).

“One of the keys of writing a Bond movie,” he said, “is to do the same thing, just differently.” It was, however, his Confessions series of humorous erotic novels, written during the 1970s under the name “Timothy Lea” and presented as Lea’s real experiences, which proved his richest seam. “Timothy” recalls his amorous encounters while on a variety of jobs, and his improbable success rate as window cleaner, driving instructor or plumber made the books a publishing phenomenon.

Wood took as his inspiration the tall tales he heard in his youth while working as a mason’s mate and part-time postman. “These stories were prolific,” he said. “Even one of the – to my eyes – singularly uncharismatic workers had apparently been invited to indulge in carnal capers after a glass of lemonade one hot summer afternoon near Guildford.” Most of the men’s claims, Wood recalled, involved a mature but seductive “posh bird”.

Film poster for Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974)

The first in the series, Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1971), set the tone. “She has dyed hair, too much lipstick and a diabolical eyebrow pencil beauty spot that dates her a bit,” Timothy notes while eyeing up a potential conquest. “If she is going down hill I can think of a few blokes who wouldn’t mind waiting for her at the bottom.”

Henry Hitchings, author of Sorry! The English and their Manners, suggested that the first book proved “that we are not just bad at anything to do with the erotic life but also window cleaning”. The combination of soft pornography and bawdy comedy proved a hit, prompting 18 more titles – each one dashed off in five weeks – and four film adaptations, scripted by Wood, with Robin Askwith as the irrepressible Lea and Tony Booth (father of Cherie Blair) as Timothy’s oily brother-in-law.

Film poster for Confessions of a Driving Instructor
Photo: Rex Features

Elegant and erudite, Wood was an unlikely author of erotica. One interviewer was taken aback by his tweed jacket and received pronunciation. Yet, when the series was republished in 2013, Wood remained unapologetic about the books’ racy content. “They were funny then, and they are funny now,” he insisted. “They are full of clever alliteration, onomatopoeia, metaphors and similes.” In later life he observed that Fifty Shades of Grey made his Confessions books “seem like Aristotle”.

Christopher Hovelle Wood was born on November 5 1935 in Lambeth, south London. During the Blitz his parents sent him away to Norwich where he became a pupil at the Edward VI Grammar School. He later returned to London to attend King’s College Junior School.

He read Economics and Law at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and after graduating in 1960 had a spell working in Cameroon, where he took part in the administration of the UN plebiscite of 1961. He did his National Service in Cyprus during the Eoka crisis.

By the end of the 1960s Wood was back in London managing brands for the advertising agency Masius Wynne-Williams. He used his daily journey from Royston in Hertfordshire to write fiction. His first two novels, both in the comical-realist vein of Evelyn Waugh, drew on his experience in Cameroon (Make it Happen to Me, 1969) and Cyprus ('Terrible Hard’, Says Alice, 1970). Although well reviewed, neither sold well. He then pitched the idea of a sex journal written in the hand of a Cockney chancer, and he “could almost see the pound signs in my publisher’s eyes”.

In 1976 he wrote the comedy film Seven Nights in Japan (1976, starring Michael York) for the director Lewis Gilbert, with whom he shared an agent. Gilbert’s next project was The Spy Who Loved Me, and he brought Wood on board. “I just wanted to do a good job for everybody,” Wood said, describing their producer, Cubby Broccoli, as a generous employer: “Everybody on the movie lived in style.” His approach to the script, writing with Richard Maibaum, fitted the Roger Moore era in which Bond was more of a lover than a killer.

Wood, centre, looking up at Richard Kiel as he greets Prince Philip at the premiere of
Moonraker in 1979
Photo: Rex Features

Wood returned to the franchise two years later as the sole writer on Moonraker. “It seemed to me that we were copying Star Wars,” he recalled. “I also found the idea of space slow in filmic terms. It is difficult to rush around in an astronaut’s suit. Did I tell Cubby that his idea sucked? No.”

As Ian Fleming had sold only the titles to his books, not the content, Wood was commissioned to “novelise” his screenplays for tie-in paperbacks. “Mr Wood has bravely tackled his formidable task,” Kingsley Amis wrote in the New Statesman, “that of turning a typical late Bond film, which must be basically facetious, into a novel after Ian Fleming, which must be basically serious.”

Film poster for Moonraker (1979)
Photo: Rex

In the early 1980s Wood published A Dove Against Death (1983), a Boy’s Own tale set in Africa during the First World War. In all his writing there was a sense of fun and a keen intelligence. William Boyd, who wrote the Bond sequel Solo, described Wood as “one of the most quick-witted, wittiest men I have ever met – up there with Gore Vidal”.

Wood’s other projects include two novels involving the adventurer John Adam (“deadlier than Kung Fu, lustier than Flashman”), the Rosie Dixon series of novels, sex comedies this time from a female perspective , and the screenplay for Remo Williams: Unarmed and Dangerous (1985), an action film directed by another Bond veteran, Guy Hamilton.

Latterly he lived in France, where he was occasionally asked to comment on Timothy Lea and James Bond. “I miss the lightness of touch of the old Bonds,” he told one reporter. In 2013 Harper Collins republished the Confessions books.

Christopher Wood married Jane Patrick in 1962; the marriage was dissolved. He is survived by their son and daughter; another son predeceased him.

Although he died in May, his death only became widely known earlier this month when Sir Roger Moore published the news on Twitter, saying: “He wrote two of my best.”

Christopher Wood, born November 5 1935, died May 9 2015

Christopher Wood (I) (1935–2015)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0228970/?ref_=nv_sr_3?ref_=nv_sr_3

Filmography

Writer (16 credits)

2000 Dangerous Curves

1999 Stray Bullet (writer)
1997 Eruption
1996 The Unspeakable (TV Movie)
1991 James Bond Jr. (TV Series) (character Jaws - uncredited)

1988 Steal the Sky (TV Movie) (written by)
1985 Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (written by)

1979 Lovely Couple (TV Series) (writer - 13 episodes)
- Wedding Bells (1979) ... (writer)
- Just the Job (1979) ... (writer)
- Jealousy (1979) ... (writer)
- Dirty Weekend (1979) ... (writer)
- Australia Calling (1979) ... (writer)
- Hospital Corners (1979) ... (writer)
- The Cup and the Lip (1979) ... (writer)
- Home Sweet Home (1979) ... (writer)
- Future Prospects (1979) ... (writer)
- Cuckoo in the Nest (1979) ... (writer)
- Change Partners (1979) ... (writer)
- The Engagement Party (1979) ... (writer)
- Come Fly with Me (1979) ... (writer)
Show less
1979 Moonraker (screenplay)
1978 Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse (novel - as Rosie Dixon) / (screenplay)
1977 Confessions of a Summer Camp Councillor (novel - as Timothy Lea) / (screenplay)
1977 The Spy Who Loved Me (screenplay)
1976 Seven Nights in Japan (screenplay)
1976 Confessions of a Driving Instructor (novel - as Timothy Lea) / (screenplay)
1975 Confessions of a Pop Performer (novel "Confessions from the Pop Scene" - as Timothy Lea) / (screenplay)
1974 Confessions of a Window Cleaner (novel - as Timothy Lea) / (screenplay)

1964: Famke Janssen is born--Amstelveen, Noord-Holland, Netherlands.

1977: James Bond comic strip Ape of Diamonds begins its run in The Daily Express.
(November 5, 1976 - January 22, 1977. 3313-3437) Yaroslav Horak, artist. Jim Lawrence, writer.

https://spyguysandgals.com/sgLookupComicStrip.aspx?id=1019


https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/aod.php3




Swedish Semic Comic https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/comics/semic_1978.php3

Dödligt Kommando
("Fatal Command" -
Ape Of Diamonds)

Danish 1979 http://www.bond-o-rama.dk/en/jb007-no48-1979/

James Bond Agent 007 no. 48:
“Ape of Diamonds” (1979)
"Dødelig kommando"
[=Deadly Command]
[Note: The front page states the title as "Dødbringende magt", meaning "Deadly force"]

1987 A View to a Kill US premier on ABC-TV's Thursday Night Movie.

1:31

RichardTheBruce

2008: Quantum of Solace released in Belgium, Switzerland, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
2008: 콴텀 오브 솔라스 released in the Republic of Korea.

2010: Refinanced and under the control of Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, MGM announces Peter Jackson's production of "The Hobbit" and the November 2012 release of BOND 23.
2010: Activision releases James Bond: Blood Stone in Europe.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone

See the complete article here:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/James_Bond_007:_Blood_Stone

Connected to: Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Nintendo DS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Developer(s) Bizarre Creations
n-Space (Nintendo DS)
Publisher(s) Activision
Writer(s) Bruce Feirstein
Composer(s) Richard Jacques
Series James Bond video games
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows | Nintendo DS | PlayStation 3 | Xbox 360
Release

• NA: 2 November 2010
• AU: 3 November 2010
• EU: 5 November 2010

Genre(s) Third-person shooter
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

James Bond 007: Blood Stone is a third-person shooter video game, developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision for the Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. It is the 24th game in the James Bond series and is the first game since James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing to have an original story. The game was confirmed by Activision on 16 July 2010. The game was released on 2 November 2010 in North America and released on 5 November 2010 in Europe. Activision's remake of GoldenEye 007 for the Wii and DS was released on the same day respectively in each region. Blood Stone features the voices and likenesses of Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, and Joss Stone. Blood Stone was the final game developed by Bizarre Creations before it closed on 18 February 2011.

A sequel, developed by Raven Software, was reportedly planned but was ultimately scrapped due to Blood Stone's poor sales upon release.

[MORE]

James Bond 007: Blood Stone Trailer


James Bond Blood Stone 007 Gameplay Trailer


James Bond 007 Blood Stone | title sequence (2010) Joss Stone & Dave Stewart ( Eurythmics )

2012: Film Music Magazine prints Daniel Schweiger's interview with Thomas Newman.

Interview with Thomas Newman

http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=10217
By Daniel Schweiger • November 5, 2012

As James Bond gun-barrels hell-bent into the 21st century with his 23rd film “Skyfall,” 007’s owners have continued to re-shape their iconic 50 year-old bread-and-Broccoli character into a spy who’s far more a part of a believable “Bourne” universe, as opposed the stylish wisecracker who duked it out with evil industrialists aboard super tankers and space stations. While that gallows humor is still very much part of Bond’s DNA, the character has achieved a real-world level of brute force and inner turmoil unheard of in his past incarnations. But even before the real world makeover that’s best been personified by Daniel Craig, 007’s music has strived to stay in tune with modern musical tastes. The soundtrack variations have included the positively relaxed jazz-action approach of John Barry, George Martin’s Afro-funk, the disco-style heroics of Marvin Hamlisch and Bill Conti, the appalling Euro beat of Eric Serra and most recently David Arnold’s electrifying mash up Barry’s now old-school orchestrations and his biggest fan’s rock-pop pulse.

Now James Bond’s music has taken on board perhaps its most interesting agent provocateur by giving Thomas Newman a license to score. A composer who’s somehow managed to walk the Hollywood line between indie experimentalism and studio conformity, Newman has never lost the alt. edge that’s made him the most musically progressive member of his family’s film scoring dynasty, especially with such breakout scores as “Desperately Seeking Susan,” “The Lost Boys” and “The Rapture.” Yet his father Alfred’s robustly melodic symphonic spirit has very much flowed through Thomas’ bloodline in scores to “Little Women,” “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Good German.” But if there was one genre that Newman barely hit through the years, it’s been action, with recent scores for “The Adjustment Bureau” and “The Debt” showing off the rhythmic possibilities he might give a balls-out car chase, a fight atop a train or a gun battle inside a government building.

Thanks to “Skyfall,” Thomas Newman gets to engage in all three, and many more action sequences, all with a particular debt to filmmaker Sam Mendes, whom the composer has worked before with scores like “American Beauty,” “The Road To Perdition” and “Jarhead.” The result of the confidence of a director who brings equally eccentric energy to his work has allowed Newman to engage in a crazy-quilt of his greatest hits for “Skyfall,” among them from the rock rhythms of “Erin Brockovich” the eerie orchestrations of “The Green Mile” and the lush romance of “Meet Joe Black,” with even “Finding Nemo’s” perky comedy thrown in for good measure. It’s a thoroughly engaging Newman mix tape, as uniquely heard for a Bond mission that starts big and ends relatively small. Even cooler yet, his “Skyfall” more than acknowledges the many of the composing styles that have come before, incorporating the famed theme, lush jazz swagger and Vic Flick guitar stylings in a way that will please both purists and Discman-wearing newcomers to the franchise. For a Bond that holds more surprises than most, Thomas Newman’s score is one of “Skyfall’s” most impressive, and wackiest weapons in a musical cannon that’s never been afraid to go for the shot.

In your wildest dreams did you ever imagine you’d be scoring a big action movie, let alone a James Bond picture?

I guess the answer to that would be ‘No.’ I don’t think I ever thought about it. Action scores speak with a muscularity and strength that had to be heard next to tire screeches and gunshots and things of that nature. So even though I enjoy action movies, it’s not like scoring an action movie was ever a thought of mine, especially because one’s personal voice was less likely to come out because of those kinds of requirements. I’d never really thought about doing a Bond movie until I heard that Sam Mendes was directing one. So I thought I’d be brave and give him a holler to say that I’d love to work on it with him if he would have me. But I also didn’t want to be pushy about it. And it turned out that Sam had already been thinking about calling me to see if we could make “Skyfall” happen together.

Did Sam have to fight to get you the gig, especially as you didn’t have a lot of action movies on your resume?

I don’t know. You’d have to ask him that. Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson loved working with David Arnold on the last several Bond scores, and wanted to make sure I was the right guy in their mind, and that they could get along with me. So they made sure to come to see me in Los Angeles before hiring me. I enjoyed meeting them, and that was about it.

The Broccoli family has a legendary level of control over the franchise. How much of that did you feel during the scoring process, or did Sam keep you separate from it?

Sam sheltered me up to the point of the recording sessions, which the Broccolis were present for. They were not shy to speak up. But in fairness to them and Sam, the communication was always through Sam in the recording environment.

Did it always go smoothly with the Broccolis?

I think it did go smoothly. They’re kind and good people. Obviously, they’re not going to stop until they get what they want, but they were never ferocious about it. They were always very respectful of me, even if they weren’t going to be shy about making sure I understood any issues they may have had.

What has James Bond meant to you, and what do you think the responsibilities are of scoring such an iconic franchise?

While I wasn’t a rabid fan of James Bond movies when growing up, I really loved watching them. Now there’s obviously a huge amount of expectation in terms of what a “James Bond score” is. Everybody has an opinion on Bond, and his music. But I really didn’t feel an obligation to meet up to these expectations. Or if I was going to defy them, I wanted to defy them in a way that was pleasing and compelling as opposed to making people feel that I was doing something different for it’s own sake.

As one of Hollywood’s more experimental composers, how “far out” did you think you could go with “Skyfall’s” score?

You have ideas, and you see if they fly. In the case of the action, there was so much going on sonically that I wondered how much space was left to hear the intricacy, and detail in the manner that I’ve scored films with before. So at the very least, I knew that sounds really needed to hit the subwoofers to really hit the audience physically. So I think I recognized that I’d have to be more extroverted with “Skyfall’s” score then maybe I’m used to being.

While the musical voice is most definitely your own in “Skyfall,” you can still hear the styles that such past composers as John Barry and David Arnold brought to Bond. Did you want to make a point of capturing those past styles?

It’s not like I set out to study the past Bond scores. I watched some of the movies, and had general notes and impressions about how the music was operating. But after that, I didn’t want to be too studious about it all. I thought that would be intimidating, and suppressing any ability I might have to be creative in my own right. But maybe butting up against those past scores kind of rubbed off on me a bit.

Yet the main theme in the film is essentially the classic James Bond melody.

I guess that’s appropriate, right? It’s a great, iconic and satisfying theme to so many people, especially the fans. I definitely wanted to use it. The issue was when and where, and Sam and I, with the help of Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, talked about where we should evoke the Bond theme.

The Adele theme song is only reflected in the cue “Komodo Dragon.” Did you want to incorporate it anywhere else in the score?
[center[/center]
Michael Wilson had asked where I was going to use the Adele song so that it didn’t appear as a kind of “one off” at the top of the movie. And the scene where he enters the Macau casino with his new, shaved appearance and tuxedo was a real moment of “Bond” swagger. The Adele tune has that quality to it too, so that seemed like a good place to reprieve the song.

Did you have any interaction with Adele or the writers of the song?

While I did not get to meet with Adele, I did with Paul Epworth, who was the co-writer and producer of the song, He really wanted to evoke the early Shirley Bassey arrangements with “Skyfall,” and talked to me about arranging the strings and brass to that effect But my task was already so huge and daunting that my orchestrator J.A.C. Redford, who’s a great composer in his own right, ended up doing the arrangements.

The film you scored before “Skyfall” was “The Iron Lady,” which dealt with Margaret Thatcher’s imperious rule of England’s government. Do you think there are any similarities between her and M?

That’s interesting. I guess there’s a certain stoic nature to English behavior, a kind of stiff upper lip. That was obvious in the case of Margaret Thatcher, and also in the case of M. Their music couldn’t be overly sentimental or emotional. And if they were being emotional, then the score had to allow for that without directly “speaking” for their feelings. I think that kind of character gives strength to the way I musically depicted them.

Javier Bardem’s Silva is my favorite character in the film, especially because he’s just might be the craziest Bond villain the series has had. Do you think your naturally offbeat music is particularly well suited to him?

You know, I never thought of it that way. There was so much quirkiness in Silva’s personal choice of music that it occurred to me that my sense of his character would be more wrapped up in his unfolding story.

You’ve got a lush approach for the femme fatale character of Severine.

That’s because I probably wanted to evoke as much of a John Barry’ish type of melody for her as I could find, which meant using a major-minor theme, something that had sexuality and danger as mixed with a certain level of satin loveliness.

I think you’re one of the few composers to write a comedy cue for James Bond with “Close Shave.”

That was a tough scene for Sam because we’re still figuring out what the Bond and his fellow agent Eve is. The scene’s dangerous, sexy and had a level of humor. I ended up doing many different versions of it because the cue kind of came late in late during our process. I’d spent some time on the podium refining a take on “Close Shave” that Sam was very high on. Or at least I thought he was until he rejected it a few minutes later!

What didn’t work about your first “Close Shave?”

I think my first approach, was a kind of classical in its sexiness, and Sam was wondering if the music was saying the wrong thing, or it was saying too much and tipped this kind of balance in what Bond and Eve’s relationship was.

Was the rest of the score relatively easy? Or were there a lot of changes like that?

There were tough moments and areas that needed to be re-examined, and in some cases re-written. But that’s no different then any other movie where something is accepted on a Monday and rejected on a Thursday.

What do Sam’s sensibilities as a director bring to “Skyfall?”

Sam’s great with character, obviously, and had a fundamental understanding of Bond. So I think it was a perfect storm of him really wanting to respect the character and the franchise while wanting to make the story more compelling, and more evolving.

How do you think that “English” quality rubs off on the score?

“Skyfall” is very much an English movie. I felt the same way when doing “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” in a way, which is for me to think, “What’s a yank doing on a movie like this?” I was over in London for three and a half months on “Skyfall,” did nearly all of the writing over there. It was a really different experience for me in many ways to have an office at Abbey Road studios, composing morning, noon and night, and then to have the score performed there. The musicians are so fantastic as well in England. There’s a real sense of ensemble on the way the orchestra plays. It’s a great town musically.

Were you ready for “Skyfall’s” rave reviews, some of which say that it’s the best Bond movie since “Goldfinger?”

I always thought it was a good movie. I really enjoyed it when I first saw it. In terms of reviews and people liking it it’s really a wonderful thing to happen at the end of this arduous process.

What kind of doors do you think that “Skyfall” is going to open up for you in terms of people who may have thought Thomas Newman couldn’t score an action film?

I don’t know. I try not to think on that level. What’s fun is to think I can take action films on and handle them, that I can be chameleonic in a way. It’s always a great thing to defy expectations. It’s been such a high point in my career to work with Sam on this film. He tends to bring good work out of me. But then, he kind of expects it and won’t stop until he gets it. So it hurts, but it always rewards, especially with “Skyfall.”

Do you think of “Skyfall” as your biggest score yet?


I never thought of it that way. What’s funny is how much visibility scoring a Bond film has. The Pixar movies I score like “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E” become known when they’re completed, but typically not before they are completed. Me scoring “Skyfall” has become a much bigger deal then I would have thought.

Interview transcribed by Peter Hackman

2012: Skyfall released in Armenia.

2015: Spectre released in Albania, Bahrain, Switzerland, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, Republic of Macedonia, Peru, Singapore, and Thailand.
2015: 007: Spectre released in Argentina and Mexico.
2015: 007 Contra Spectre (007 Against Spectre) released in Brazil.

2015: James Bond 007: Spectre released in Germany.
2015: 007 Spectre: A Fantom visszatér (007 Spectre: The Phantom Returns) released in Hungary.

2015: 007 Spectre released in Portugal.
2015: James Bond: Spectre released in Slovakia.
2015: 007：惡魔四伏 (Èmó sìfú, 007: Devil) released in Taiwan.

2015: Спектра (Spektra, Spectra) released in Serbia.
2015: 007: Спектр (007: Spectrum) released in Ukraine.

2020: Sotheby's auctions James Bond Film Posters.

James Bond Film Posters

See the complete article here:

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/james-bond-film-posters

Bidding Opens • 5 November 2020 • 14:00 GMT • London

199 results sorted by Lot number (low to high)

2020: Geoffrey Dyson Palmer OBE dies at age 03--Lee Common, Buckinghamshire, England.
(Born 4 June 1927--London, England.)

Dame Judi Dench recalls how the late
Geoffrey Palmer told her they wanted
another actress for As Time Goes By
during their first lunch meeting

See the complete article here:

By Georgia Simcox For Mailonline | Published: 04:17 EDT, 17 November 2020

They were inseparable friends for almost 30 years.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/11/17/08/35764394-8956833-image-a-2_1605602264379.jpg
And Dame Judi Dench has revealed her collaboration with the late Geoffrey Palmer nearly didn't happen.

In an emotional interview with this week's Radio Times just days after the comedian died aged 93, the actress, 85, recalled meeting her co-star for lunch to discuss As Time Goes By.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/11/17/08/35764392-8956833-image-a-3_1605602269137.jpg

'He got us off to a good start': Dame Judi Dench, 85, has revealed her collaboration with the late Geoffrey Palmer nearly didn't happen

She said: 'He got us off to a good start when he informed me that they'd wanted Jean Simmons for the part, but she'd declined!'

Judi and Geoffrey starred in As Time Goes by from 1992 onwards, with Geoffrey playing Lionel Hardcastle.

She paid tribute to her late friend, who died earlier this month, saying she couldn't have done the show with anyone else.

Judi said: 'When you acted with him, you'd just feel very safe.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/11/17/08/35764392-8956833-image-a-3_1605602269137.jpg
Inseparable: Judi became lifelong friends with co-star Geoffrey, staying inseparable friends for almost 30 years

'Geoffers was so sure on comedy that you could be pretty secure in knowing he would get you through it and make it funny.
Emotional: The actress was speaking to the Radio Times in an emotional interview just days after Geoffrey's death

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/11/17/08/35764320-8956833-image-a-6_1605602284356.jpg
Emotional: The actress was speaking to the Radio Times in an emotional interview just days after Geoffrey's death

'I certainly couldn't have done As Time Goes By with anyone else.'

Judi presented Palmer with an Oldie award in 2018, joking that he was 'the naughtiest man I ever had the pleasure to work with' and that the trophy should be for 'most promising newcomer'.

The pair also starred in 1997's Mrs Brown and Tomorrow Never Dies, the James Bond blockbuster.

Recalling how Geoffrey was a private man who gave few interviews, she said: 'He took acting very seriously, but he would sometimes say he would rather be fishing on a riverside in Scotland.'

She continued: 'Geoffers was a terrific man and most remarkable friend and actor. I wouldn’t have missed a moment of our time together for the world.'

Geoffrey's agent said on November 6: 'We regret to sadly announce that the actor Geoffrey Palmer died peacefully at home yesterday aged 93.'

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/11/17/08/35764408-8956833-image-a-4_1605602279308.jpg
As Time Goes By: Judi and Geoffrey starred in As Time Goes by from 1992 onwards, with Geoffrey playing Lionel Hardcastle

The veteran star, known for his hangdog features and distinctive voice, had parts in some of the nation's best-loved TV series and was once a staple on screens watched by millions.

Younger viewers will remember his turn in the 2014 Paddington film where he played Head Geographer.

Those longer in the tooth will remember him from the The Avengers and The Saint in the 1960s, and alongside Leonard Rossiter in The Rise And Fall of Reginald Perrin in the 1970s.

He also starred in multiple episodes of Doctor Who, including the 1970 episode Doctor Who And The Silurians and 2007's Voyage Of The Damned.

Geoffrey Palmer (I) (1927–2020)

Actor | Soundtrack
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0658244/

RichardTheBruce

November 6th

1966: The New York Times says Toshiro Mifune declined the Tiger Tanaka role in You Only Live Twice, deferred to Tetsuro Tamba.

1973: The Man With the Golden Gun films at the RMS Queen Elizabeth, Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong.

2008: Quantum of Solace released in Bahrain, Bolivia, Chile, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Croatia, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Republic of Macedonia (Skopje), Malaysia, Netherlands, Oman, Qatar, Slovakia, Syria, Switzerland, and United Arab Emirates.
2008: 007 Quantum of Solace released in Argentina and Portugal
2008: James Bond Quantum of Solace released in Slovakia.
2008: James Bond 007 - Ein Quantum Trost (James Bond 007: A Quantum of Comfort) released in Germany.

2008: Kvantum sočutja (Quantum of Compassion) released in Slovenia.

2008: Quantum shel nehama (Quantum of Comfort) released in Israel.
2008: Zrno utehe (Grain of Consolation) released in Serbia.

2008: Квант милосердия (Quantum Mercy) released in Russia.

2008: 007: Квант милосердя (007: Quantum of Mercy) released in Ukraine.

2008: BBC Audiobooks releases Ian Fleming's 'Quantum of Solace' on CD, collecting all the Bond short stories.

2012: Thomas Newman's Skyfall soundtrack, recorded the London Abbey Road Studios, released in the US. It wins the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, and is nominated for an Oscar.

2014: Random House publishes Steven Cole's Young Bond novel Shoot to Kill.

2015: Thomas Newman's Spectre soundtrack, recorded the London Abbey Road Studios, released in the US.

2015: Spectre released in Austria, Belarus, Canada, Spain, Hong Kong, Croatia, Indonesia, Iraq, Iceland, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Venezuela, USA, and Vietnam.
2015: 007: Spectre released in Estonia.
2015: Спектър (Spectrum) released in Bulgaria.

2015: Speqtri released in Georgia.
2015: Spektras (Spectrum) released in Lithuania.
2015: 007: Spektrs (007: Spectrum) released in Latvia.

Latvia premiere 5 November for a 6 November general release.

2015: 007: Спектр (007 : Spectrum) released in Russia.

2017: Kätherose Derr (Karin Dor) dies at age 79--Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
(Born 22 February 1938--Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany.)

Karin Dor obituary
Actor best known as a Bond girl in You Only Live Twice

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/15/karin-dor-obituary
Ronald Bergan | Wed 15 Nov 2017 06.43 EST

Karin Dor as the seductive Spectre operative Helga Brandt, with Sean Connery as 007, in You Only Live Twice, 1967. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists

No matter what roles she played in films, on stage or on television throughout the rest of her career, the German actor Karin Dor, who has died aged 79, was labelled a Bond girl. Her induction as a member of this exclusive group of beautiful women who have provided James Bond with a love interest came in You Only Live Twice (1967), in which she met a memorably grisly end.

Dor played the seductive, titian-haired Helga Brandt, an operative of the criminal organisation Spectre ordered to kill 007 (Sean Connery), who has been conveniently tied up for her. “I’ve got you now,” she states ambivalently. “Well, enjoy yourself!” he replies. She slaps his face and threatens him with a surgical knife, which he wrestles from her, using it to cut the strap on her black dress.

Helga expertly switches from being cold and calculating to passionately kissing Connery. She seems to have changed sides, though she makes a further attempt to kill Bond by trapping him in a booby-trapped plane, which she parachutes out of, before it crashes. When the super-villain Spectre boss Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) discovers that Bond has survived the crash, he activates a mechanism that dumps Helga into a tank filled with piranha fish, which eat her alive.

Karin Dor with Alfred Hitchcock during the filming of the 1969 film Topaz.Photograph: Allstar/Universal

Dor also fails to survive to the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969). A rare bright spot in one of Hitchcock’s most anonymous films, she is Juanita de Cordoba, a dark-haired anti-Castro resistant, her German accent notwithstanding, known as the widow of a “hero of the revolution”, a description that enables her to work undercover. When her activities are discovered, she is shot by her revolutionary lover, providing the film with its best visual sequence. As Juanita collapses onto a marble floor, her deep purple dress spreads beneath her like a pool of blood.

Surprisingly, these high-profile roles in two English language commercial successes did not help Dor to achieve further international recognition. However, she was hugely popular in Germany and Austria throughout the 1960s, mainly in escapist action movies loosely based on the thrillers of Edgar Wallace (called Krimis from the German Kriminalfilm), and the western adventures of Karl May, co-starring the dubbed ex-Tarzan Lex Barker, almost all of them directed by her first husband, Harald Reinl.

Born Kätherose Derr in Wiesbaden, she studied acting and ballet at school and began in films as an extra. Her marriage at 18 to the Austrian director Reinl, 30 years her senior, gave her the chance to appear as a juvenile lead in numerous period melodramas and operettas such as The White Horse Inn (1960).

Apart from the Wallace and May series, Dor was a favourite fräulein in distress in several horror movies with Barker as the hero, including The Invisible Doctor Mabuse (1962), The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and The Torture Chamber of Doctor Sadism (1967), the last two starring Christopher Lee as an evil mastermind.

In contrast to the range of the low-budget Krimis, horror spin-offs and German westerns, Dor starred as Brunhild in Reinl’s The Nibelungen, shown in two parts, Siegfried (1966) and Kriemhild’s Revenge (1967), an epic that required the use of 8,000 extras in one battle scene alone.

Dor took fewer and fewer film roles from the 70s onwards, although she did appear regularly in series on German television.

Her third husband, the stuntman George Robotham, died in 2007. Dor is survived by a son, the actor Andreas Renell, from her marriage to Reinl, which ended in divorce, as did her second marriage.

• Karin Dor (Kätherose Derr), actor, born 22 February 1938; died 6 November 2017

Karin Dor (1938–2017)

Filmography

Actress (74 credits)

2015 Die abhandene Welt - Rosa
1998-2011 Rosamunde Pilcher (TV Series) - Lady Claire Sherberton / Emily Stockton / Daisy
- Herzensfragen (2011) ... Lady Claire Sherberton
- Ruf der Vergangenheit (2000) ... Emily Stockton
- Der Preis der Liebe (1998) ... Daisy
2010 Das Traumschiff (TV Series) - Ellen Barner
- Panama (2010) ... Ellen Barner
- Indian Summer (2010) ... Ellen Barner

2006 I Am the Other Woman - Frau Winter
2004 Inga Lindström (TV Series) - Elinor Frödin
- Sehnsucht nach Marielund (2004) ... Elinor Frödin
2001 SOKO 5113 (TV Series) - Berenike Stassfurth
- Ludwig der Letzte (2001) ... Berenike Stassfurth

1994 My Friend, the Lipizzaner (TV Movie) - Louise
1992-1993 Die große Freiheit (TV Series) - Jutta van Straaten
- Van Straatens Verlobung (1993) ... Jutta van Straaten
- Besuch aus Bremen (1992) ... Jutta van Straaten
- Liebe, Krach und Phantasie (1992) ... Jutta van Straaten
- Ein Mann erfüllt sich seine Träume (1992) ... Jutta van Straaten

1987 Johann Strauss: The King Without a Crown - Jetty
1985 Gipfeltreffen (TV Movie) - Nadine
1983 Der Lord und das Kätzchen (TV Movie)
1980 Achtung Zoll! (TV Series) - Monika Gerber
- Vanloo und der Gast aus Frankreich (1980) ... Monika Gerber

1977 Dark Echoes - Lisa Bruekner
1977 Four Against the Desert (TV Movie) - Karin
1977 Women in Hospital - Claudias Mutter
1977 Warhead - Liora
1974 Only the Wind Knows the Answer - Nicole Monnier
1974 Hochzeitsnacht im Paradies (TV Movie) - Regine Mangold
1972 Liebe ist so selten - Die Krise einer Ehe (TV Short) - Schwester Ruth
1971 Haie an Bord - Andrea Jacobs
1970 The F.B.I. (TV Series) - Maria Chernoff
- The Target (1970) ... Maria Chernoff
1970 Ironside (TV Series) - Jeanine Duvalier
- Check, Mate, and Murder: Part 2 (1970) ... Jeanine Duvalier
- Check, Mate and Murder: Part 1 (1970) ... Jeanine Duvalier
1970 Assignment Terror - Maleva Kerstein

1969 Topaz - Juanita de Cordoba
1969 It Takes a Thief (TV Series) - Angela
- The Three Virgins of Rome (1969) ... Angela
1968 The Valley of Death - Mabel Kingsley
1968 Dear Caroline - Isabelle de Loigny
1967 The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism - Baroness Lilian von Brabant
1967 You Only Live Twice - Helga Brandt
1967 Die Nibelungen, Teil 2 - Kriemhilds Rache -Brunhilde
1966 Die Nibelungen, Teil 1 - Siegfried - Brunhild
1966 Target for Killing - Sandra Perkins
1966 Killer's Carnival - Denise (Rio segment)
1966 The Spy with Ten Faces - Helen Farheit
1965 The Sinister Monk - Gwendolin
1965 I Knew Her Well - Barbara, the lady friend of Adriana
1965 Winnetou: The Last Shot (uncredited)
1965 The Face of Fu Manchu - Maria Muller
1965 The Last Tomahawk - Cora Munroe
1965 Hotel der toten Gäste - Gilly Powell
1964 Winnetou: The Red Gentleman - Ribanna
1964 Room 13 - Denise
1963 Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Witwe - Clarisse
1963 The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle - Claridge Dorsett
1963 Die weiße Spinne - Muriel Irvine
1962 The Treasure of the Silver Lake - Ellen Patterson
1962 Ohne Krimi geht die Mimi nie ins Bett - Barbara Holstein
1962 The Carpet of Horror - Ann Learner
1962 The Invisible Dr. Mabuse - Liane Martin
1962 The Bellboy and the Playgirls
1961 Im schwarzen Rössl - Eva Lantz
1961 Am Sonntag will mein Süsser mit mir segeln gehn - Georgie Hagen, die Sprachstudentin
1961 The Forger of London - Jane Clifton, geb. Leith
1961 Pichler's Books Are Not in Order - Anneliese
1961 Der grüne Bogenschütze - Valerie Howett, geb. Bellamy
1960 The White Horse Inn - Brigitte Giesecke
1960 The Terrible People - Nora Sanders

1959 That's No Way to Land a Man - Tessy
1959 A Summer You Will Never Forget - Christine von Auffenberg
1959 The Blue Sea and You - Helga Heidebrink
1959 Skandal um Dodo - Helga, die Nichte
1958 13 kleine Esel und der Sonnenhof - Monika
1958 False Shame - Christa Riek
1958 Sin Began with Eve - Dinah
1957 Almenrausch und Edelweiß - Maresi Meier
1957 Die Zwillinge vom Zillertal - Daniela Kleemann
1957 Little Man on Top - Meike Brauns
1956/I Santa Lucia - Manina
1955 As Long as You Live - Pepita
1954 Ihre große Prüfung - Elena Clausen
1954 Der schweigende Engel (as Rose Dor)
1954 Rosen-Resli (as Rose Dor)
1954 Rosen aus dem Süden (as Kätherose Derr)
1953 The Last Waltz - Extra (uncredited)

2020: 88.5 Southern FM radio in Australia promises an hour of Bond music at 9 a.m. as a tribute to Sean Connery.

JAMES BOND MOVIE MUSIC SPECIAL - THURSDAY 5 NOVEMBER AT 9
AM

See the complete article here:

https://www.southernfm.com.au/specials/james-bond-movie-music-special-friday-6-november-at-9-am/

To honour the memory of the late Sir Sean Connery, Southern FM will feature a full hour of music from some of the great JAMES BOND movies this Thursday morning.

From the original soundtrack themes to songs written about the legendary 007, don’t miss our Bond Special at 9 AM on Thursday 5 November 2020.

https://tunein.com/station/?stationid=8752&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=s8752&utm_source=geminiEmbedSubTitle&st=undefined

RichardTheBruce

November 7th

1924: Wolf Mankowitz is born--Bethnal Green, London, England.
(He dies 20 May 1998 at age 73--County Cork, Ireland.)

Screenwriting Lessons from One of Britain’s Best: A Rare Interview with Wolf Mankowitz

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/screenwriting-lessons-one-britains-best-rare-interview-wolf-mankowitz/

One of the most interesting cultural personas of the British fifties and sixties, the versatile writer Wolf Mankowitz made a name for himself in the spheres of literature, film industry and theater. As a child of two Russian Jewish immigrants, he lived in poverty but unexpectedly got the opportunity to turn the tables around when he received a scholarship for Cambridge, where he went to study English and soon dedicate himself to writing. In 1952 he published his first novel ‘Make Me an Offer,’ which was soon turned into a film and a successful West End musical. The very next year his biggest literary success came out: ‘A Kid for Two Farthings’ was translated into many languages and ultimately ended up as a Carol Reed film. In 1960 he wrote the script for Anthony Asquith’s The Millionairess, an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play with Sofia Loren and Peter Sellers in leading roles, and his musical Expresso Bongo, a fine satire of the music industry, blossomed as a successful movie with Cliff Richard and Laurence Harvey. Interestingly enough, one of Mankowitz’s biggest contributions to the world of cinema came surprisingly from a project he didn’t even want his name on. Mankowitz introduced his friend Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli to Harry Saltzman, the man who held the film rights to James Bond. This partnership instigated one of the biggest franchises in the history of film business starting with Dr. No, but Mankowitz, fearing the movie would be a huge flop that could potentially seriously damage his reputation, asked that his name be removed from the credits, even though he worked on the script. Mankowitz would later, however, write the screenplay for the 1967 Bond movie Casino Royale.

Mankowitz continued to write all the way until 1991, when he anounced he suffered from cancer and stepped away from the spotlight. Some MI5 files released in 2010 revealed that the famous screenwriter and playwright had been seen as a security risk by the secret service for roughly a decade after the Second World War due to his Russian roots, connections and the fact that his wife was once a member of the Communist Party, a suspicion that caused Mankowitz to unsuccessfully apply for several BBC positions during the fifties. He was ultimately allowed to join BBC on a three-week contract to translate and dub Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Bear’ for television, but not before BBC consulted the secret service first, concluding that translating Chekhov, despite Mankowitz’s obviously controversial background, failed to present any serious security risks for the country.

Today we bring you a precious interview with Mr. Mankowitz published in the February, 1974 edition of the great Filmmakers Newsletter. The esteemed novelist and screenwriter talks about the differences between writing for the stage, film and literary audiences, about his greatest professional successes, the problems he faced throughout his career, the role of the writer both as someone who tries to illuminate and to entertain, and much more. It’s a wonderful and educational read we wholeheartedly recommend, especially if you want to learn more about the craft from the mouth of one of Britain’s best. You can download the PDF version here.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lgulsfs008i1cuk/A Rare Interview with Wolf Mankowitz.pdf?raw=1

“The task of adapting the 1958 novel ‘Dr No’ for the screen initially fell to Richard Maibaum and Wolf Mankowitz, with Johanna Harwood and Berkely Mather brought in to polish later drafts. At this time, Mankowitz—a friend of ‘Cubby’ Broccoli’s—was best-known for the Peter Sellers-Sophia Loren vehicle The Millionairess (1960) and the apocalyptic sci-fi The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). He would later ask for his name to be removed from the Dr No credits after seeing the rushes and fearing a major flop. Maibaum, on the other hand, who had spent the 1950s writing war films like The Red Beret (1953) and The Cockleshell Heroes (1954), as well as Nicholas Ray’s Bigger than Life (1956), would go on to make a career out of Fleming’s secret agent, penning a further 12 Bond films before bowing out with Licence to Kill in 1989. To celebrate Mr Bond’s cinematic anniversary, we present an extract from the fifth draft script. It’s the classic moment part-way into Dr No in which the suave superspy (played in the film by Sean Connery) is first introduced to the world. The scene is a London gambling room called Le Cercle, where at the top stakes table, surrounded by onlookers, a chic woman in a red dress and a tuxedoed man with his back to the camera issue their commands to the croupier…” —British Film Institute

Wolf Mankowitz (1924–1998)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542554/?ref_=nv_sr_3?ref_=nv_sr_3

Filmography

Writer (39 credits)

1984 Almonds and Raisins (Documentary) (treatment)
1984 Tales of the Unexpected (TV Series) (dramatisation - 1 episode)
- Have a Nice Death (1984) ... (dramatisation)

1976 Dickens of London (TV Mini-Series) (written by - 13 episodes)
- Memories (1976) ... (written by)
- Angel (1976) ... (written by)
- Nightmare (1976) ... (written by)
- Magic (1976) ... (written by)
- Dreams (1976) ... (written by)
- Possession (1976) ... (written by)
- Money (1976) ... (written by)
- Fame (1976) ... (written by)
- Love (1976) ... (written by)
- Success (1976) ... (written by)
- Blacking (1976) ... (written by)
- The Deed (1976) ... (written by)
- Mask (1976) ... (written by)
1973 The Battle of Sutjeska (writer)
1973 The Hireling (screenplay)
1972 Treasure Island (adapted for the screen by)
1971 Black Beauty (screenplay)
1970 The Hero (screenplay)

1969 Pickwick (TV Movie) (book of musical play)
1969 The Assassination Bureau (additional dialogue)
1968 Die Pickwickier (TV Movie) (play)
1967 Doctor Faustus (co-writer - uncredited)
1967 Casino Royale (screenplay)
1967 The 25th Hour
1966 BBC Play of the Month (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode)
- Make Me an Offer (1966) ... (writer)
Armchair Theatre (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode, 1966) (adaptation - 1 episode, 1959)
- The Battersea Miracle (1966) ... (writer)
- The Model Marriage (1959) ... (adaptation)
1966 Where the Spies Are (screenplay)
1965 Love Story (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode)
- A Cure for Tin Ear (1965) ... (writer)
1965 Bongo Boy (TV Movie) (play)
1962 Dr. No (treatment - uncredited)
1962 Waltz of the Toreadors
1961 The Day the Earth Caught Fire (written for the screen by)
1961 Jungle Fighters (screenplay)
1960 The Millionairess (screenplay)
1960 The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (screenplay)

1959 Expresso Bongo (based on "Expresso Bongo" by) / (written by)
Alan Melville Takes You from A-Z (TV Series) (based on an idea by - 24 episodes, 1958 - 1959) (book "The ABC of Show Business" - 24 episodes, 1956 - 1957)
- X, Y and Z (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- W (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- V (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- U (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- T (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- S (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- R (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- Q (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- P (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- O (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- N (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- M (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- L (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- K (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- J (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- I (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- H (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- G (1959) ... (based on an idea by)
- F (1958) ... (based on an idea by)
- E (1958) ... (based on an idea by)
- D (1958) ... (based on an idea by)
- C (1958) ... (based on an idea by)
- B (1958) ... (based on an idea by)
- A (1958) ... (based on an idea by)
- X, Y and Z (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- W (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- V (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- U (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- T (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- S (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- R (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- Q (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- P (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- O (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- N (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- M (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- L (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- K (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- J (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- I (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- H (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- G (1957) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- F (1956) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- E (1956) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- D (1956) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- C (1956) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- B (1956) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
- A (1956) ... (book "The ABC of Show Business")
1959 Wednesday Magazine (TV Series) (story - 1 episode)
- Episode dated 11 March 1959 (1959) ... (story)
Theatre Night (TV Series) (original story - 1 episode, 1958) (play - 1 episode, 1958)
- Expresso Bongo (1958) ... (original story) / (play)
1958 The Killing Stones (TV Series) (script - 6 episodes)
- The Bankrupting of Hammerman (1958) ... (script)
- The Retirement of De Haan (1958) ... (script)
- The Homecoming of Coetze (1958) ... (script)
- The Fearfulness of Desai (1958) ... (script)
- The Holiness of Ant Eater (1958) ... (script)
- The Carefulness of Kleiber (1958) ... (script)
1958 East End, West End (TV Series) (writer - 6 episodes)
- Episode #1.6 (1958) ... (writer)
- Episode #1.5 (1958) ... (writer)
- Episode #1.4 (1958) ... (writer)
- Episode #1.3 (1958) ... (writer)
- Episode #1.2 (1958) ... (writer)
- Episode #1.1 (1958) ... (writer)
1956 Trapeze (uncredited)
1955 The Bespoke Overcoat (Short) (by) / (screenplay)
1955 It Should Happen to a Dog (TV Movie)
1955 The Girl (TV Movie)
1955 Make me an Offer! (additional dialogue) / (novel)
1955 A Kid for Two Farthings (based on the book by) / (screenplay)
1954 Playbill (TV Series) (adaptation - 1 episode)
- The Bespoke Overcoat (1954) ... (adaptation)
1954 The Bespoke Overcoat (TV Short) (adaptation)

Producer (2 credits)

1970 The Hero (producer)

1955 Orson Welles' Sketch Book (TV Series) (executive producer - 6 episodes)
- Bullfighting (1955) ... (executive producer - uncredited)
- The War of the Worlds (1955) ... (executive producer - uncredited)
- Houdini/John Barrymore/Voodoo Story/The People I Missed (1955) ... (executive producer - uncredited)
- The Police (1955) ... (executive producer - uncredited)
- Critics (1955) ... (executive producer - uncredited)
- The Early Days (1955) ... (executive producer - uncredited)
-
Actor (1 credit)

1959 Expresso Bongo - Sandwich Man (uncredited)

Soundtrack (1 credit)

1959 Expresso Bongo (lyrics: "Nausea", "The Shrine on the Second Floor", "I've Never Had It So Good", "Nothing Is For Nothing" - uncredited)

1932: Yuri Borienko is born--Russia.

1984: A View to a Kill films OO7 and May Day and the Eiffel Tower.

1995: Parlaphone and Virgin release the "GoldenEye" single.

2002: Coronet Books publishes Raymond Benson's Die Another Day novelization.

2008: "Another Way to Die" released as a download for Guitar Hero World Tour.

2008: Quantum of Solace released in Austria, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Iceland, Latvia, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, El Salvador, Switzerland, Turkey, and Taiwan. (Original planned released date for UK and US.)

2008: 007 - Quantum of Solace released in Brazil, Italy, and Poland.
2008: Спектър на утехата (Spectrum of Consolation) released in Bulgaria.

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2008: 007: Veidi lohutust (A Little Consolation) released in Estonia.

DVD ad

2008: Paguodos kvantas (The Quantum of Consolation) released in Lithuania.

DVD ad

2008: 007: Partea lui de consolare (His Side of Consolation) released in Romania

2011: Principal photography for BOND 23 begins in London.
2012: Skyfall released in Jamaica.

2018: Dynamite releases James Bond 007 #1.
Marc Laming, artist. Greg Pak, writer.

JAMES BOND 007 #1

https://dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C72513027532501011
Cover A: Dave Johnson
Cover B: John Cassaday
Cover C: Rafael Albuquerque
Cover D: Marc Laming
Writer: Greg Pak, Art: Marc Laming
Page Count: 36 Pages
ON SALE DATE: 11/7/2018

The ODD JOB epic begins in a new ongoing James Bond comic series by superstars GREG PAK (Planet Hulk, Mech Cadet Yu) and MARC LAMING (Star Wars, Wonder Woman)! Agent 007 tracks a smuggler into Singapore to secure a dangerous case, contents unknown. But a Korean mystery man wants the case as well, for very different reasons. And if Bond and this new rival don't kill each other, the ruthless terrorist organization known as ORU will be more than happy to finish the job.

RichardTheBruce

November 8th

1945: Angela Scoular is born--London, England.
(She dies 11 April 2011 at age 65--Maida Vale, London, England.)

Angela Scoular

See the complete article here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8448951/Angela-Scoular.html

Angela Scoular, the actress who died on Tuesday aged 65, played Agent
Buttercup in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) and was Ruby
Bartlett in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969); she was also the second
wife of the Carry On star Leslie Phillips.
13 Apr 2011

[img][/img]

Angela Scoular Photo: ITV/ REX FEATURES

Her qualifications as a Bond girl are obvious in OHMSS when she becomes Bond's (George Lazenby) first conquest, after writing her room number in lipstick on his inner thigh. "I used to hate chicken," she tells 007. "Used to make me break out. It was all over. You'd be surprised where."

She met Leslie Phillips in 1970 on the set of Doctor in Trouble (in which his character chases her character aboard an ocean liner). They met again in 1976 when they were both in the same play. She was pregnant at the time with a son by another actor, while Leslie Phillips's first marriage to Penny Bartley had foundered in the 1960s following his affair with the actress Caroline Mortimer. They began living together, but at first there was no question of marriage. When Penny was crippled by a stroke, Leslie Phillips was "pulled back into the frame" by his children and he and Angela helped to care for her until her death in a house fire in 1981. They married in 1982.

Despite Phillips's on-screen reputation as a lothario, theirs was a happy marriage. Angela Scoular went on to appear in several more films, stage productions and television series, notably as the sex-mad Lady Agatha Shawcross in the television series You Rang, M'Lord? (1988-93). But during her early years as an actress she had struggled with anorexia and later on she suffered from severe clinical depression which, according to her husband, meant that she lost her ability to face an audience. It was "difficult to be a character actress when you were a sex symbol", he observed.

Angela Scoular was born in London on November 8 1945 and encouraged in her ambitions to be an actress by her aunt, the actress Margaret Johnston.

She began her screen career in the mid-1960s, appearing in the long-running police drama No Hiding Place and taking a bit part in Ian McKellen's adaptation of David Copperfield, before going on to appear in her first feature films, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967, with Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren), Casino Royale and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968).

On television she appeared in series such as The Avengers, Penmarric, Coronation Street and As Time Goes By, and was Cathy in a 1967 television adaptation of Wuthering Heights. On stage she starred in Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular, at the Criterion Theatre (1974); appeared in a production of Hamlet at the Cambridge Theatre (1971); in Joseph Caruso's Little Lies at the Wyndham (1983); and in Peter Shaffer's White Liars and Black Comedy at the Lyric Theatre (1968).

She is survived by her husband and son.

Angela Scoular (1945–2011)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0780029/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Filmography

Actress (35 credits)

1996 As Time Goes By (TV Series) - Glenys
- Avoiding the Country Set (1996) ... Glenys
- The Country Set (1996) ... Glenys
1988-1993 You Rang, M'Lord? (TV Series) - Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Well, There You Are Then...! (1993) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Fall of the House of Meldrum (1993) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- The Truth Revealed (1993) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Come to the Ball (1993) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Requiem for a Parrot (1993) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Yes Sir, That's My Baby (1993) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- A Day in the Country (1991) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- The Night of Reckoning (1991) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Gretna Green or Bust (1991) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Current Affairs (1991) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Please Help the Orphans (1991) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Royal Flush (1990) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- The Wounds of War (1990) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- The Meldrum Vases (1990) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Trouble at Mill (1990) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Love and Money (1990) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- The Phantom Sign Writer (1990) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross
- Pilot (1988) ... Lady Agatha Shawcross

1981 The House on the Hill (TV Series) - Aileen Douglas
- Man of Straw (1981) ... Aileen Douglas
1971-1981 Play for Today (TV Series) - Joanna Trout / The Girl
- Dear Brutus (1981) ... Joanna Trout
- Evelyn (1971) ... The Girl
1979 Penmarric (TV Series) - Maud Castallack / Maud Penmar
- Episode #1.6 (1979) ... Maud Penmar
- Episode #1.5 (1979) ... Maud Castallack
- Episode #1.4 (1979) ... Maud Castallack
- Episode #1.1 (1979) ... Maud Castallack
1977 Adventures of a Private Eye - Jane Hogg
1976 Adventures of a Taxi Driver - Marion
1975 Rooms (TV Series) - Madeline Parsons
- Midgely: Part 2 (1975) ... Madeline Parsons
- Midgely: Part 1 (1975) ... Madeline Parsons
1973-1974 ITV Sunday Night Theatre (TV Series) - Thomasine / Patty
- Only the Other Day (1974) ... Thomasine
- Hopcraft Into Europe (1973) ... Patty
1974 Beryl's Lot (TV Series) - Jill Savage
- Backs to the Wall (1974) ... Jill Savage
- A Bit of Culture (1974) ... Jill Savage
- It's a Rum World (1974) ... Jill Savage
1973 Omnibus (TV Series documentary) - Charlotte
- The Runaway (1973) ... Charlotte
1973 Second City Firsts (TV Series) - Astral Philips
- Mrs Pool's Preserves (1973) ... Astral Philips
1973 Harriet's Back in Town (TV Series) - Frankie Prentiss
- Episode #1.62 (1973) ... Frankie Prentiss
- Episode #1.61 (1973) ... Frankie Prentiss
1973 Crown Court (TV Series) - Serena Cutforth
- The Gilded Cage: Part 2 (1973) ... Serena Cutforth
- The Gilded Cage: Part 1 (1973) ... Serena Cutforth
1972 For Loving (TV Movie) - Girl
1972 The Adventurer (TV Series) - Dorinda
- Nearly the End of the Picture (1972) ... Dorinda
1972 Coronation Street (TV Series) - Sue Silcock
- Episode #1.1193 (1972) ... Sue Silcock
- Episode #1.1192 (1972) ... Sue Silcock
- Episode #1.1191 (1972) ... Sue Silcock
- Episode #1.1190 (1972) ... Sue Silcock
- Episode #1.1189 (1972) ... Sue Silcock
- Episode #1.1188 (1972) ... Sue Silcock
1972 Thirty-Minute Theatre (TV Series) - Francesca Stokes
- Knightsbridge (1972) ... Francesca Stokes
1971 Comedy Playhouse (TV Series) - Pauline
- Equal Partners (1971) ... Pauline
1970 Doctor in Trouble - Ophelia O'Brien
1970 ITV Playhouse (TV Series) - Charlotte
- Don't Touch Him, He Might Resent It (1970) ... Charlotte
1970 The Adventurers - Denisonde

1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Ruby
1969 Doctor in the House (TV Series) - Fiona
- Rallying Round... (1969) ... Fiona
1968 Great Catherine - Claire
1968 The Avengers (TV Series) - Myra
- Super Secret Cypher Snatch (1968) ... Myra
1968 Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush - Caroline Beauchamp
1967 Wuthering Heights (TV Series) - Catherine Earnshaw / Cathy Earnshaw
- The Last Revenge (1967) ... Catherine Earnshaw
- The Abduction (1967) ... Catherine Earnshaw
- The First Revenge (1967) ... Cathy Earnshaw
- An End to Childhood (1967) ... Cathy Earnshaw
1967 Love Story (TV Series) - Joy
- Her Freudian Slip (1967) ... Joy
1967 Casino Royale - Buttercup
1967 Girl in a Black Bikini (TV Series) - Kathy Sheridan
- Episode #1.6 (1967) ... Kathy Sheridan
- Episode #1.5 (1967) ... Kathy Sheridan
- Episode #1.4 (1967) ... Kathy Sheridan
- Episode #1.3 (1967) ... Kathy Sheridan
- Episode #1.2 (1967) ... Kathy Sheridan
- Episode #1.1 (1967) ... Kathy Sheridan
1967 A Countess from Hong Kong - The Society Girl
1966 David Copperfield (TV Series) - Emily
- Toll of the Sea (1966) ... Emily
- Old Acquaintances (1966) ... Emily
1965 Romeo and Juliet (TV Movie) - Juliet
1963-1964 No Hiding Place (TV Series) - Chantal Smith / Gillian Kendrick
- Why Baker Died (1964) ... Chantal Smith
- Pillar to Post (1963) ... Gillian Kendrick

1969: Insan Iki Kere Yasar (Human Lies Twice) released in Turkey.

1999: The World Is Not Enough premiere at the Fox Bruin Theater, Los Angeles.

2012: Skyfall IMAX premiere in the US prior to a 9 November general release.

2015: Geneva auction of a Rolex wristwatch with ties to Live and Let Die and Roger Moore closes this date.

290
Rolex
Ref. 5513

See the complete article here:

https://www.phillips.com/detail/ROLEX/CH080515/290

A unique and historically significant stainless steel wristwatch-prop with bracelet, specially adapted for James Bond's "Live and Let Die", caseback signed "Roger Moore 007"

1972
39.5mm. Diameter
Case, dial and bracelet signed
Estimate CHF150,000 - 250,000
Sold for CHF365,000

Manufacturer: Rolex
Year: 1972
Reference No: 5513
Case No: 2'683'776
Model Name: Submariner
Material: Stainless steel
Calibre: Movement removed
Bracelet/Strap: Stainless steel Rolex Oyster
Clasp/Buckle: Déployant clasp stamped 7-72
Dimensions: 39.5mm. Diameter
Signed: Case, dial and bracelet signed
Accessories: The present example is accompanied with James Bond memorabilia, 3 corresponding black and white framed stills, the "Live and Let Die" movie tape and the Christie's South Kensington catalogue of the "James Bond" auction in 14.02.2001.
Provenance: The present example was formerly offered at auction at Christie's South Kensington, on 14.02.2001, "James Bond", lot 145. Later offered at Christie's Geneva, 14.11.2011, "Important Watches", lot 182.

Provenance
The present example was formerly offered at auction at Christie's South Kensington, on 14.02.2001, "James Bond", lot 145. Later offered at Christie's Geneva, 14.11.2011, "Important Watches", lot 182.

Catalogue Essay
The most recognizable watch in history with 1 billion people having watched the film “Live and Let Die”, the wristwatch worn on the wrist of Sir Roger Moore as James Bond is in fact a Rolex Submariner reference 5513 made in 1972, and was later modified for the movie.

Art director and British production designer Syd Cain worked on over 30 movie projects, and received international fame for playing a key role as gadget designer in the James Bond movies. The acclaimed Rolex Submariner worn was memorable for its buzzsaw bezel that spun and could cut through rope to escape dangerous situations, and its hyper intensified magnetic field with the ability to deflect bullets. Used for both humor and heightened dramatic events, the magnetic power could unzip Miss Caruso’s dress, and catch a spoon off of a coffee saucer.

The present Rolex reference 5513 “Q” is the most unforgettable watch prop used in a movie and is even signed inside the caseback “Roger Moore 007”. As a highlight in the most iconic scenes of “Live and Let Die”, this watch is sure to interest both watch collectors and true fans of cinematography alike.

SYD CAIN: An accomplished movie production designer, "Syd" Cain is best known for his creative work on four films of the famous James Bond 007 series. His work on the series followed his successful efforts supporting Producer Albert R. Broccoli on two films in 1954 and 1956. Broccoli chose Cain for "Dr. No" in 1962, and went on to assume the role of art director for 1963's "From Russia With Love". That film introduced Q, the legendary character responsible for issuing gadgets to James Bond. It was Cain who was designing these gadgets in actuality, including villains gadgets, such as the poisoned-tipped blade of Rosa Klebb's shoes, and of course this Rolex Submariner 5513 worn in 1973's "Live and Let Die".

Cain (1918-2011) was himself a survivor, having managed to walk away from a plane crash during World War II, and later, surviving a lightning strike. Notably, he also served as assistant art director for Standley Kubrick, and production designer for Alford Hitchcock and Jack Gold. Survived by five sons and three daughters, he was a popular personality with James Bond fans, and wrote an autobiography documenting his experiences with the 007 films: Not Forgetting James Bond: The Autobiography of James Bond Production Designer Syd Cain.

Maker Biography

Rolex
Swiss • 1905
Founded in 1905 England by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis as Wilsdorf & Davis, it soon became known as the Rolex Watch Company in 1915, moving its headquarters to Geneva in 1919. Like no other company, the success of the wristwatch can be attributed to many of Rolex's innovations that made them one of the most respected and well-known of all luxury brands. These innovations include their famous "Oyster" case — the world's first water resistant and dustproof watch case, invented in 1926 — and their "Perpetual" — the first reliable self-winding movement for wristwatches launched in 1933. They would form the foundation for Rolex's Datejust and Day-Date, respectively introduced in 1945 and 1956, but also importantly for their sports watches, such as the Explorer, Submariner and GMT-Master launched in the mid-1950s.

One of its most famous models is the Cosmograph Daytona. Launched in 1963, these chronographs are without any doubt amongst the most iconic and coveted of all collectible wristwatches. Other key collectible models include their most complicated vintage watches, including references 8171 and 6062 with triple calendar and moon phase, "Jean Claude Killy" triple date chronograph models and the Submariner, including early "big-crown" models and military-issued variants.

2019: Planned BOND 25 release date (confirmed by an official announcement 24 July 2017).

2020: The third of three dates screening James Bond films at Ritz theaters in Australia as a tribute to the passing of Sir Sean Connery. [Goldfinger at 6:45 p.m. AEST.]

https://www.jamesbondaustralia.com/2020/11/03/sean-connery-tribute-screenings-at-the-ritz-cinemas/