The Forgotten Bond Film - Moonraker (1956)

timdalton007

This past October saw celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the James Bond film series. The release of Dr. No in 1962 saw the start of a cinematic juggernaut going strong today, with audiences around the globe eager for news on who the seventh actor to play 007 will be. Not surprisingly, the Bond films are full of their own "what if?" moments, from a 1967 version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service to numerous actors who might have earned their on-screen license to kill if only things had gone differently). Or, indeed, if circumstances had allowed Bond to come to the cinema screen earlier than he did.


Say in a 1956 film version of the previous year's Bond novel Moonraker? Starring Dirk Bogarde as 007 and directed by Orson Welles, who also played the villainous Sir Hugo Drax. In the spring of 2004, film historian Simon Bermuda released a vision of such a film on the web with The Forgotten Bond Film.

I've recently taken a look back at Simon Bermuda's intriguing "what if?" piece (now archived online over at The Wayback Machine) over at the blog of alternate history publisher Sea Lion Press. It remains, after nearly twenty years, a fascinating look at what might have been as a piece of Bondian alternate history.

SIS_HQ

You can put it here:

https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/19318/the-what-if-thread-at-times-in-the-series-there-has-been-a-choice-made-or-not-made-discuss-here/p47

007HallY

I do wish we'd have had Orson Welles as a villain in his prime. The way his career eventually went I don't think it was ever going to happen by the 60s in an official Bond film. Dirk Bogarde sounds like a strange choice, but probably in the context of the 1950s he'd have been exactly the sort of actor one would have expected to play Bond.

I've heard about this website before. I vaguely remember even thinking it was real! Interesting little what if though.