The earliest days of Bond

Nothing startling here, but given many of the principals are no longer with us, it’s still interesting to hear the perspectives of those who launched 007 movies in 1962.

So, in this video, you can hear 007’s first director, Terence Young; Johanna Harwood, one of the screenwriters of Dr. No; Peter Hunt, and edited five films and directed a sixth; and former United Artists executive David Picker all discuss how Bond got started.

Being picky: Goldfinger and Thunderball on TCM

The last few seconds of Goldfinger’s end titles were cut off before we got the credits of the digital restoration crew. Maybe they were anxious to see their names and figured nobody would notice a few seconds lopped off. At least they didn’t change the colors of the end titles this time.

After the movie, TCM’s Robert Osborne says he recently saw the movie with Guy Hamilton. He depicted the director as uneasy watching the film, wanting to make changes and tweaks. That’s interesting. Hard-core Bond fans would probably be curious. Regardless, Osborne indicated he’s still enthusiastic about the film decades after its 1964 release.

UPDATE: Osborne gets the name of the villain in Thunderball wrong, calling him Emil Largo, instead of Emilo Largo. On the other hand, he did a nice, tight summary of Thunderball’s complicated history.

UPDATE II: The TCM version of Thunderball uses the music from previous prints where Bond meets Domino underwater. The Ultimate DVD edition (which we have a copy of) changed the music.

UPDATE III: Host Osborne’s closing commentary touches upon Sean Connery’s growing dissatisfaction with the Bond franchise for both the growing spectacle of the 007 films and lack of pay relative to the huge grosses the movies were generating for Eon Productions Ltd. and United Artists.

UPDATE IV: Both last week and this week, TCM has shown non-Bond Connery films following a 007 double feature. By coincidence, both films, On The Fiddle (May 1) and Woman of Straw, still had a number of Bond crew members. On The Fiddle included Peter Hunt as film editor and sound manNorman Wanstall. Woman of Straw had a crew including production designer Ken Adam, art director Peter Murton and assistant director Clive Reed.

UPDATE V: On the Saturday, May 9, rerun of the Bond movies, TCM weekend host Ben Mankiewicz, a cousin (once removed) of one-time 007 screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, went into more detail about Thunderball’s history of the Ian Fleming/Kevin McClory legal battle. He also noted how Thunderball scored the Best Ocar for special effects (while not mentioning John Stears by name). However, he mis-pronounced the name of Claudine Auger. We’re now curious whether next weekend whether Ben Mankiewicz will mention his relative’s connection to the Bond series when TCM shows Diamonds Are Forever.