The Man With the Golden Gun’s 35th anniversary

There have been so many 007-related anniversaries this year, it’s almost tempting to overlook the 35th anniversary this month of The Man With the Golden Gun. Our parent HMSS site, for example, doesn’t rate the film very highly.

But it would be a mistake to ignore the milestone, if only because it would be the finale for some significant contributors to the Bond movie franchise.

Foremost among them was Harry Saltzman, who had been Albert R. Broccoli’s partner from Dr. No through Golden Gun. By many accounts, Saltzman’s presence was limited on Golden Gun as by this point the two were more or less taking turns producing Bond films. Still, according to the documentary Inside The Man With the Golden Gun, Saltzman managed to order some unneeded elephant shoes for an elephant stampede sequence that evidently was in the script at one point but never filmed.

Also exiting the series with this entry were director of photography Ted Moore, who had worked on seven of the first nine films in the series; director Guy Hamilton, who a decade earlier had directed Goldfinger (and who would work for a time on pre-production of The Spy Who Loved Me before dropping out); and special-effects wizard John Stears. It was also the last 007 writing credit for Tom Mankiewicz, although he did some uncredited work on the next two films of the series, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

Besides, it’s a Bond movie and a lot of fans will still go back to watch it from time to time. Here’s the film’s gunbarrel sequence and the main titles where some of the 007 creative team took their final bows: