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I think you'll find that TB's success came off the back of the popularity of GF. It was GF not TB that created the "template for the character" as you call it. Helps to get certain facts right.
Here is a fact for you. Thunderball was supposed to be the first Bond to be made. They were in preproduction when Eon realised that Fleming did not have the rights in Tball despite assuring them that he did when he sold it. They scrapped it but used the new character that Fleming/Whittingham and McClory developed as the template for Dr No.
What the hell are you talking about? "New character"? You mean that brand new 'James Bond' fellow that was never created by Fleming in 1953? Yes I see now. It all makes perfect sense. Clearly it was Whittingham and McClory who invented him James Bond. What an utterly ridiculous comment.
Who is suggesting that we forget Fleming? That is ridiculous. You seem to forget that that Fleming was a co-writer of TBall. I never suggested that the success had nothing to do with Eon or Terrance Young. I am suggesting that it had something to do with Jack Whittingham and Kevin McClory as well.
Did you join this forum to peddle a pro-McClory agenda? Because if so, this is a James Bond forum, not a Kevin McClory forum. I'm one of the few fans that has a little, and I stress a little sympathy for McClory. Most of the hardcore fans here are well read on the matter and everybody has an opinion.
McClory and Whittingham were integral in the development of 'an initial screen version' of Bond, and all evidence makes it clear that this creative process yielded the idea of SPECTRE and Blofeld. McClory himself states this was a 'collaborative' process. He doesn't suggest he alone created the aforementioned character and organisation. Does that mean he owns the rights to said properties? Perhaps a share, perhaps not, but wholesale ownership?. Who knows what the agreements were between gentlemen, but instinct tells me that Fleming was actually relatively naïve, where McClory was a shrewd businessman. Whittingham was sadly caught in the middle and, ironically, probably contributed much more to the process than McClory ever did.
The way I read the situation is as follows. Fleming recruited McClory in good faith, to develop James Bond for the screen. For reasons we're all familiar with this wasn't to be. Fleming's goal was getting his character up on the silver screen and he did not in any way feel indebted to McClory and if that meant pursuing other avenues, so be it. Meanwhile McClory watched on as his perceived contribution was developed into Fleming's TB novel, something that was a stupid mistake on Fleming's part and particularly irresponsible. I can understand why this would cause friction and I think McClory had every right to contest this.
What I don't care for is the situation that was yet to arise. McClory witnessed the release of the EON produced Dr.No, the catalyst for what would be the film series he'd dreamed of making. It's understandable that one may feel bitterness, I get that. But McClory clearly wasn't going to let sleeping dogs lie. He felt, in his own mind, that he'd somehow pushed the Bond character into territory that was now being exploited by others. The trouble is, that was all in his head. It seems he was consumed by jealously and I get the impression he was forever believing it should have been him, not Cubby and Harry, that was responsible for this cinematic phenomenon.
The biggest mistake Fleming made was writing TB. The second biggest was allowing EON to option it, when in reality he should have done much the same as he did with TSWLM, allow the title, but not the content.
In hindsight, this is all irrelevant, we got TB and we got OHMSS and YOLT, three fantastic Fleming novels. Fleming embellished the Blofeld character beyond anything McClory could ever conceive in his wildest imagination. The fact copyright law had yet to consume the creative process, as it does now, also threw up problems. Nowadays everyone in a writing room would have their rights confirmed before even sitting down. Would we be better or worse off had this situation occurred in 2013? Hard to say.
In conclusion, I understand McClory's beef with the use of SPECTRE and Blofeld. He saw others making money from a creation he felt part-ownership of. What he didn't own was 'James Bond' and he had no bearing on the EON productions that served to kickstart the world's greatest movie series. A hard pill to swallow, but as they say, shit happens.
As you alluded to @RC7, this member seems to be pushing his pro-McClory propaganda on us.
Do you think that the Bond of the books is the same Bond that is on the screen? If not, when do you think the changed occurred?
When Richard Maibaum wrote Dr No. If you can show me where in that screenplay or indeed the film's credits that Jack Whittingham and Kevin McClory were also responsible, then fair enough.
You're talking about unverifiable, completely unquantifiable assertions. I work in the ideas market and I'm incredibly familiar with the difficulties in attributing ideas to specific individuals, especially when numerous people are involved in the development process. Only 'you' know if an idea was initially yours and even if it is, another person may add a certain facet that makes that idea even better, more fully realised. Who's idea is it then? How can you even determine which element of an idea is worth more to its ultimate success? It's all subjective.
Kevin McClory did not create the literary James Bond and he did not create the cinematic James Bond. Whether his ideas found their way to the big screen is even debatable - it seems to me McClory was more obsessed with creating an underwater epic than a James Bond film, which is why TB is dramatically slow. One thing's for sure, the essence of Kevin McClory did not somehow find it's way to the screen in Doctor No.
Richard Maibaum, Terence Young, Ken Adam, Cubby Broccolli, Harry Saltzman, Monty Norman, John Barry and Sean Connery created the cinematic James Bond, and there is nothing Kevin McClory has ever been able to do about that. It's bitterness personified. If you think this raft of creative talent was in someway informed by an omnipotent McClory then you're a buffoon.
Post Of The Day =D>
McClory owned the all of the rights in the treatments and all of the film rights in the novel. Fleming conveyed his share to McClory under the 1963 settlement.
These were not gentlemen's agreements. These were written contracts. All of the Tball preproduction was done though Bryce and McClory's company Xanadu. Flemings actions in this period were highly suspect. He was trying to sell Tball to MCA at the same time as Kevin was selling it to Sam Goldwyn despite the fact that Kevin had the exclusive option. The 1963 case was as much about the ownership of Xanadu as it was about the ownership of TB.
When did McClory suggest that he was solely responsible for the 'cinematic phenomenon'?
You say he had no bearing on the Eon Productions that served to kickstart the franchise yet the first screenplay Maibaum adapted was Thunderball. Tb was the film Eon chose to open the franchise with. McClory co-wrote and owned the script.
Why?
Just out of curiosity.
But due to the legal issues surrounding the use and ownership of TB, EON abandoned those plans and went ahead with DN instead. Maibaum wrote his script, which he adapted from the novel. How does this make McClory and Whittingham's TB screen treatment responsible for the cinematic success of Bond? Answer: It doesn't.
The reality is, McClory's vision never saw the light of day and when someone other than himself acheived the success of bringing Bond to the big screen, McClory was hell bent for the rest of his life in trying to get his hands on a golden goose that didn't belong to him.
Nobody is saying that McClory created the literary or cinematic James Bond. You are chasing windmills there. I am saying that Fleming Whittingham and McClory adapted the literary character for the screen. McClory's creative contribution was significant. One of the products of the collaboration was Thunderball. Thunderball was the first screenplay Maibaum adapted and it's influence on the franchise is evident in that fact that the Bond in Dr. No more resembles the Bond of the TBall screenplay and related treatments than he does the Bond of the novel.
You've read Maibaum's original '61 script for TB then?
This is certainly a new style of troll - one that campaigns on a one issue pro Mcclory ticket. Or is Kevin haunting the boards from beyond the grave?
I can't add a lot to RC7's excellent summary above apart from the fact that even if Maibaum when adapting the TB treatments for DN realised some aspects of the character worked better in said scripts for the screen and even if he took aspects such as the humour from said scripts and inserted them into DN and even if Mcclory did create 50% (extremely debatable) of those scripts at the end of the day all he did was slightly change a character that was already established in a series of novels that had nothing to do with him.
And theres a lot of big 'ifs' there. Nobody (not even you dear Morgan in all your wisdom) can state with certainty who created what.
But we can state with certainty who hired Sean Connery, Terence Young, Richard Maibuam, John Barry, Ken Adam and Maurice Binder and who wrote the novels DN, FRWL and GF and it seems fairly clear that Whittingham did the actual work on the TB script (Kevin's big contribution seems to be the underwater stuff and setting it in Nassau - wow) so to say he created the cinematic James Bond is the raving of a lunatic; an opinion incidentally a high court judge shared on numerous occasions when finding in favour of EON during Kevin's increasingly pathetic and desperate attempts to cut himself a slice of their pie in his later years.
I note you are so blinded by your passionate bromance with Kevin that you fail to note how he properly f****d Whittingham over. He was the guy who contributed most to the script and he got peanuts. Kevin had his million dollar payday for TB and given his scant contribution most people would have been happy with that but not our Kev.
Had he crawled away into a hole to count his money after TB then I doubt there would be such animosity towards him but his wretched scrabbling after anything he could get for 40 years was the act of an utter arsehole - dont kid yourself that it was ever anything to do with owning the rights to James Bond with Kevin. It was always all about the money.
I'll give him credit for being shrewd. Fleming made a catastrophic mistake in not giving Kev and Whittingham due credit in the TB novel and Kev exploited it to the absolute max. You notice how he made sure he had Whittingham on a watertight contract with a flat fee for his work? For a bloke who always claimed the moral high ground regarding rights he never felt the need to send a bit of the TB millions Jack's way.
At the end of the day he lived a very nice life thanks to one moment of stupidity by Fleming and Ian & EON's work.
'Lets set it in the Bahamas, have some scuba diving stuff and a bit more humour' seems to be the sum total of his creativity. Should that really give you a meal ticket for life? I'm sorry but P&W came up with their fair share of set pieces and one liners - is anyone suggesting they should be entitled to a share of the whole Bond empire?
I have no idea how many turned up for Cubby's and Kevin's respective funerals but I would wager a substantial amount of money on Cubby's mourners outnumbering Kev's by at least 5 to 1 - unless the local urinal was closed on the day in which case Kev's grave as the next most obvious place to empty your bladder might have pushed his numbers up to Princess Diana and Ghandi levels.
All in all a fairly odious individual who is just a small footnote in Bond history on a par with Charlie Feldman.
Yes, he puts it in a way I never could ;-)
He´s classic.
He´s 100% Ian Fleming (99? :D )
He´s a cinematographic legend.
He´s the most famous Bond nemesis.
Modern screenwriters can put him on the 21st Century with talent and respect.
It would put Fleming again on the talks and his books on the shelves...
I think you are "on a top" of something here...
;)
If Maibaum didn't use Tball for writing Dr No. can you explain how Spectre ended up in the film and yes, I have read it.
There certainly is an issue with trolling but it is with you, not me. Kevin did not f-over Whittingham. It was a joint decision for Jack to drop out of the 1963 case and pursue his own. It was not Kevin's fault that Fleming died before it could be finished.
Your opinion on Kevin's contribution is pure speculation. Whittingham said of Kevin's contribution to Longitude 78 West (the earlier name for TB) that,' without your many contributions and ideas, your unfailing encouragement, and without the confidence with which you inspired me, it could never be written'.
Your comments about urinals and bladders are vile and disgusting yet unfortunately appear to be a very accurate measure of the standard of discussion on this forum. Mods?
I came to this forum to have an opportunity to reply to the nameless person who published the inaccurate 'ten negative ways article'. Despite my requests Mi6 HQ has not responded. I thought that given the great news about the MGM/Eon's acquisition that we could perhaps take more sober, intelligent view of McClory's input. I clearly came to the wrong place.
Good Luck.
What exactly is it that you feel was lifted from TB (or JB of the Secret Service), other than the introduction of SPECTRE? At the time of writing and well before production, TB was already on bookshelves and as such there had clearly been discussions about this organisation and their ability to lend a level of continuity to the series. It's advantageous to give scope for a sequel when your intentions are for a long-term series. Again, was this wrong from your POV? After all, Fleming created the meat on the bone of both the organisation and its chief, as evidenced in the novel TB.