Goldfinger’s 45th anniversary (cont.): the first hit 007 song

Nearly 45 years after it was introduced, Goldfinger’s title song still resonates with the public. As we’ve written about before, the song was nearly killed because co-producer Harry Saltzman hated it. But there was no time to record a replacement. So it remained and became a big hit.

The previous 007 film, From Russia With Love, had a title song but the main titles used an instrumental version coupled with the James Bond Theme. The Matt Monro performed vocal version was used in the middle of the movie (supposedly playing on a radio) and in the end titles. Thus, Goldfinger was the first 007 to have a song play in the main titles. Goldfinger was also composer John Barry’s first opportunity to write a title song for the series. He had arranged the James Bond Theme in Dr. No and composed the dramatic music for From Russia With Love while Lionel Bart wrote that film’s title song.

This time, Barry teamed up with lyricists Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. Meanwhile Robert Brownjohn designed titles where scenes from the movie (along with an outtake from From Russia With Love and a shot from Dr. No) were projected over actress Margaret Nolan, who played Dink in the film (the character Sean Connery slaps on the rump). The results can be seen in this video:

That’s not the end of the story, though. In 1992, an alternate version of the song surfaced as part of a CD celebrating the 30th anniversary of James Bond’s film debut. Anthony Newley, co-writer of the lyrics, had given it a try with an alternate arrangement of the music:

For John Barry, Goldfinger would become part of a spectacular career scoring movies. In 2001, Barry conducted an orchestra playing an instrumental version of the song, which sounds similar to the sequence in the film where Bond drives the Aston Martin in the Swiss Alps. Take a look:

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