Casino Royale’s 55th anniversary: Oh no, 007!

Adapted from a 2012 post

April Fool’s Day is as good as any occasion to note this month marks the 55th anniversary of Charles K. Feldman’s Casino Royale, the producer’s 1967 send-up of 007.

Feldman, one-time agent (Albert R. Broccoli was one of his employees) turned producer, was nobody’s fool. He had produced films in a variety of genres such as 1948’s Red River (uncredited), 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire, 1955’s The Seven Year Itch and 1965’s What’s New Pussycat.

So, when he acquired the film rights to Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel in the early 1960s, Feldman recognized it had commercial potential even as the film series produced by one-time associate Broccoli and Harry Saltzman was getting underway in 1962.

Feldman tried to entice director Howard Hawks, his one-time colleague on Red River. Hawks was interested but the director backed out after seeing an early print of Dr. No with Sean Connery.

Feldman pressed on, signing distinguished screenwriter Ben Hecht to come up with a screenplay. Details of Hecht’s work were reported in 2011 by Jeremy Duns in the U.K. Telegraph newspaper. Hecht died in 1964, while still working on the project. In 2020, Duns uncovered additional details about an attempt by Joseph Heller to adapt Fleming’s first novel.

By the 1960s, Eon’s series was reaching its peak of popularity with 1964’s Goldfinger and 1965’s Thunderball. Broccoli and Saltzman agreed to a co-production deal with Kevin McClory, holder of the film rights for Thunderball.

James Bond, The Legacy, the 2002 book by John Cork and Bruce Scivally, presents a narrative of on-and-off talks between Feldman, Broccoli, Saltzman and United Artists, the studio releasing the Broccoli-Saltzman movies. In the end, talks broke down. (Behind the scenes, Broccoli and Saltzman had their own tensions to deal with, including Saltzman’s outside ventures such as his Harry Palmer series of films.).

So Feldman opted to go for farce, but not in a small way. His movie had an estimated budget, according to IMDB.com. of $12 million. The Cork-Scivally book put the figure at $10.5 million. Either way, it was more than the $9.5 million budget of You Only Live Twice, the fifth entry in the Broccoli-Saltzman series. Twice’s outlay included $1 million for Ken Adam’s SPECTRE volcano headquarters set.

Feldman’s film didn’t have that kind of spectacle. But he did pay money (or Columbia Pictures’ money) for talent such as John Huston (one of five credited directors), David Niven (playing the “original” James Bond, brought out of retirement, who implies the Sean Connery version of the Broccoli-Saltzman series was assigned the James Bond name by MI6), Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress (now famous because of Dr. No), William Holden, Woody Allen and….well CLICK HERE to view the entire cast and crew.

Casino Royale, however, was less than the sum of its impressive parts. The humor is uneven, it doesn’t really have a story, despite employing a number screenwriters, including Wolf Mankowitz, who introduced Broccoli and Saltzman to each other.

The’67 Casino managed a reported worldwide gross of $41.7 million. That was good in its day, though less than a third of Thunderball’s $141.7 million global box office.

Much has been written since 1967 about the stressful production, including reported feuds between Sellers and Welles. Perhaps all that took a toll on the film’s producer. Feldman died in May 1968, a little more than 13 months after Casino Royale’s premier. He was 64.

Dr. No’s 60th anniversary Part IV: `The Elegant Venus’

Adapted from a 2012 post

For their first 007 film, producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman faced a challenge. Ian Fleming had provided a memorable introduction for Honeychile Ryder in the Dr. No novel.

Ursula Andress as part of her entrance in Dr. No.

The first time Bond sees the novel’s heroine she’s “not quite naked. She wore a broad leather belt around her waist with a hunting knife in a leather sheath at her right hip.” Agent 007 is reminded of “Botticelli’s Venus seen from behind.” The title of chapter is “The Elegant Venus.” The task for Broccoli and Saltzman was to find somebody who could live up to that title.

The producers cast Ursula Andress. Director Terence Young staged her first appearance, coming out of the Carribean in a bikini, rather than naked as in the novel. The scene is one of the most commented aspects of the movie. Young’s technique was simple. Andress (dubbed by Nikki Van der Zyl) walks out of the sea, singing Underneath the Mango Tree. There are no fancy camera angles: first a long shot of Andress, followed by a reaction shot of Sean Connery as Bond, followed by a waist-high shot of Andress.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it made an impact on the audience. Honey doesn’t even appear until after an hour of screen time. Andress, nevertheless, became the first major Bond woman in the series. As noted by the John Cork-directed Inside Dr. No, Ian Fleming was impressed by Andress, even dropping in a mention of the actress into his On Her Majesty’s Secret Service novel that he was writing as Dr. No was being filmed.

Decades later, Barbara Broccoli, the current boss of Eon Productions, told the London Evening Standard: “And look at Ursula Andress [emerging from the sea in Dr No]. Yes, she’s the most stunningly beautiful person in the whole world but her look was very different to what had come before. First of all, she had a very athletic body, and she was also incredibly natural — no make-up, no false eyelashes. I think that image of natural beauty is one we appreciate.”

Contrast that with Die Another Day, the 40th anniversary Bond movie in 2002. Director Lee Tamahori tried to emulate the scene from Dr. No with Halle Berry’s Jinx wearing an orange bikini, rather than the white one Andress wore. Tamahori used a couple of slow-motion shots and Berry preens for a moment before she comes out of the ocean. The extra bells and whistles of that scene emphasize how it’s a copy, rather than an original.

NEXT: Ken Adam’s magic

Marion ‘Oatsie’ Charles, Ian Fleming friend, dies at 99

Marion “Oatsie” (Leiter) Charles

Marion “Oatsie” (Leiter) Charles, a friend of Ian Fleming who helped inspire the surname of Felix Leiter, died earlier this month, according to an obituary in The Washington Post.

She died on Dec. 5 at the age of 99, the newspaper said. The Post described her as “among the last of the grande dames of Georgetown and Newport, R.I.,… She broke bread with President John F. Kennedy and drank with spy novelist Ian Fleming.”

She married Thomas Leiter in 1942, who she later divorced.

Here’s an excerpt from The Post’s obituary about the creator of James Bond.

During World War II, she made a passing acquaintance of Fleming, the future author of the James Bond British spy novels. They met again in Jamaica in the winter of 1949 during the social season there.

“I’d gone to a party, and a great friend of mine was very much in love with Ian, or thought she was,” she recounted to a Fleming website. “And he was treating her in the most atrocious way. And with the arrogance of youth, I walked up to Mr. Fleming when I was introduced to him and said, ‘Mr. Fleming, I consider you’re a cad.’

“And he looked at me and said, ‘Mrs. Leiter, you’re indeed right. Shall we have a drink on it?’ ”

She said she was taken aback by his charm, and they became friends. When Fleming published his first Bond novel, “Casino Royale,” in 1953, he partially named the CIA agent, Felix Leiter, after her husband.

John Cork, director of a number of James Bond documentaries for home video, wrote a story for the website of Ian Fleming Publications (the same one cited in The Post obit) about Charles.

It described Fleming attending a 1960 dinner party at John Kennedy’s home in Washington. The future president invited Fleming after seeing him with Marion Charles. Others present at the dinner party were Joseph Alsop, a columnist “and part-time CIA operative” and John Bross, a future deputy director the agency, according to Cork’s article.

At the gathering Fleming was asked for ideas for how the U.S. might deal with Fidel Castro in Cuba. One of Fleming’s ideas was for the CIA to drop leaflets promoting the notion “that nuclear fallout was collecting in men’s beards” on the island nation, Cork wrote. Men wearing beards would become impotent. That would prompt men to shave their beards, and beards had become part of the image of the Castro revolution.

Marion Charles was interviewed for some of the Cork-directed documentaries.

UPDATE (6:50 p.m. New York time): I rewatched the Cork-directed Ian Fleming biography documentary that’s on the home video release of The Living Daylights. In it, Charles provided this anecdote:

“I think I made Ian Fleming in a curious way. Jack Kennedy rang me up one morning and said, ‘Oats I’m sick. Have you anything to read?’ ‘Yes, so you like spy stories?'”

The book, according to the documentary, was From Russia With Love. That book, in 1961, turned up in a list of Kennedy’s ten favorite books published in Life magazine. That, in turn, greatly helped sales of Fleming’s novels in the United States.

Four 007 films credited with saving the franchise

Image for the official James Bond feed on Twitter

This week’s 10th anniversary of Casino Royale generated a number of stories crediting the 21st James Bond film with saving the franchise.

However, this wasn’t the first time the series, in the eyes of some, had been saved. What follows is a list of four.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971): Sean Connery returned to the Eon Productions fold for a one-off after 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman weren’t looking for Connery’s return. But United Artists executive David V. Picker was. As a result of efforts by Picker, Connery was offered, and accepted, a $1.25 million salary coupled with other financial goodies. John Gavin, who had  been signed as Bond, was paid off.

None other than Picker himself, in his 2013 memoir Musts, Maybe and Nevers,  said the moved saved the Bond series.

Hyperbole? Maybe. Still, Majesty’s box office ($82 million) slid 26.5 percent from You Only Live Twice and 42 percent from Thunderall. Those percentage change figures won’t warm a studio executive’s heart.

Diamonds rebounded to $116 million, better than Twice but still not at Thunderball levels. Nevertheless. Picker has argued his strategy of getting Connery back kept the series going.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): The 10th 007 film was made after Broccoli and Saltzman dissolved their partnership, with UA buying out Saltzman.

What’s more, the box office for the previous series entry, The Man With the Golden Gun, had plunged almost 40 percent from Roger Moore’s Bond debut, Live And Let Die.

As a result, there was anxiety associated with the production. Spy ended up re-establishing Bond, in particular the Roger Moore version. The movie produced a popular song, Nobody Does It Better, and the film received three Oscar nominations.

GoldenEye (1995): The 17th Bond adventure made its bow after a six-year hiatus, marked by legal fights. Albert R. Broccoli, at one point, put Danjaq and Eon on the market, though no sale took place.

As the movie moved toward production, health problems forced Broccoli to yield day-to-day supervision over to daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael G. Wilson.

The question was whether 007, now in the person of Pierce Brosnan, could resume being a successful series. The previous entry, Licence to Kill, didn’t do well in the U.S., finishing No. 4 in its opening weekend, even though it was the only new movie release released that weekend.

GoldenEye did fine and Bond was back.

Casino Royale (2006): This week, a website called History, Legacy & Showmanship had comments by various Bond students, including documentary maker John Cork, who is quoted as saying, “Casino Royale saved Bond.” Yahoo Movies ran a piece with the headline ‘Casino Royale’: The Movie That Saved James Bond Turns 10.

Meanwhile, GQ.com ran a article saying Casino was the best 007 film while Forbes.com aruged the movie “provides a helpful template in terms of doing the reboot just right.”

If Casino saved the franchise, it wasn’t necessarily in a financial sense. 2002’s Die Another Day was a success at the box officce. But Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were having a creative mid-life crisis.

“We are running out of energy, mental energy,” Wilson told The New York Times in October 2005. “We need to generate something new, for ourselves.”

The something new was casting Daniel Craig in a more serious version of 007 and starting the series over with a new continuity.

Casino was a hit with global box office of $594.4 million compared with Die Another Day’s $431.9 million. In the U.S. market, Casino actually sold fewer tickets than Die Another Day (25.4 million compared with 27.6 million). But, with higher ticket prices, Casino out earned Die Another Day in the market, $167.4 million to $160.9 million.

On Twitter, the blog did an informal (and very unscientific) survey whether fans thought Casino had saved the series. You can see the results below.

Casino Royale saved Bond! Your reaction?

— The Spy Command (@TheSpyCommand) November 17, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Richard Graydon, 007 stuntman, dies at 92

Richard Graydon, a stuntman in several James Bond films, died Dec. 22, according to an obituary at the MI6 JAMES BOND WEBSITE.

Two of Graydon’s signature stunts involved cable cars. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he doubled star George Lazenby, in a sequence where Bond is supposed to be on a cable as a cable car approaches. The official 007 Twitter feed on Dec. 23, posted a picture in connection with the movie’s 45th anniversary.

Stuntman Richard Graydon doubles for George Lazenby for the escape from Piz Gloria in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE pic.twitter.com/o8uGzvAS9u

— James Bond (@007) December 23, 2014

A decade later, Graydon doubled for Roger Moore atop a Rio cable car in a scene where 007 is depicted as fighting Jaws. In the documentary Inside Moonraker, director Lewis Gilbert described himself as transfixed watching, having to be reminded to yell cut. Graydon shows up as an interview subject in a number of the 007 film documentaries directed by John Cork.

Graydon also got an on-screen credit in the end titles of 1983’s Octopussy as Francisco, the Fearless, one of the acts in Octopussy’s circus.

Director of photography Oswald Morris dies at 98

Oswald Morris, a distinguished director of photography whose work included part of one James Bond movie, has died at age 98.

Morris photographed films of various genres, according to his IMDB.COM BIO. They included Moulin Rouge, Moby Dick, A Farewell to Arms, Lolita, The Hill, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and The Man Who Would Be King.

His one Bond contribution was 1974’s The Man With The Golden Gun, the second Roger Moore 007 film.

Morris was hired to replace Ted Moore, who had fallen ill after completing location shooting in the Far East. Morris took over photography of the interiors. That included the scenes at the “fun house” of assassin Francisco Scaramanga, which the assassin uses for training. In the John Cork-directed documentary Inside The Man With the Golden Gun, Morris commented shooting on the set with its many mirrors was “a pain in the butt” to photograph. Morris also had tight deadlines to meet Christmas 1974 release dates.

Neither Morris nor Ted Moore would return to the 007 series. Morris won an Oscar (for Fiddler On The Roof) and was nominated for two others, ACCORDING TO IMDB.COM

You can CLICK HERE to read an obituary by The Hollywood Reporter, HERE for Variety.com’s obit and HERE one by The Guardian.

Ken Wallis, Little Nellie pilot, dies

Ken Wallis in Little Nellie

Ken Wallis, 97, the real-life pilot of the mini-helicopter Little Nellie has died, ACCORDING TO AN OBITUARY ON THE BBC’S WEB SITE.

Little Nellie, which appeared in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, was an aerial equivalent of the Aston Martin DB5 that was featured in Goldfinger and Thunderball.

In the John Cork-directed documentary Inside You Only Live Twice, YOLT production designer Ken Adam says he heard a BBC interview with Wallis about the mini-helicopter. Adam checked it out and made design changes so the aircraft could included in the fifth James Bond film. The documentary details how Wallis had to make many flights to produce several minutes of screen time for the 1967 movie.

An excerpt from the obituary:

Retired Wing Cdr Ken Wallis, who lived near Dereham, Norfolk, died on Sunday, his daughter confirmed.

Born in Ely, his first solo flight was in 1937. Thirty years later he doubled as Sean Connery’s Bond for an explosive aerial sequence in You Only Live Twice.

His daughter Vicky said her father passed away after “a long and successful life doing what he wanted”.

(snip)

Honoured with an MBE in 1996, he piloted 24 wartime missions over northern Europe in Wellington bombers, before spending 20 years engaged in weapons research in the Royal Air Force.

Here’s a sample of how Little Nellie appeared on screen:

UPDATE (Sept. 13): To view The New York Times’ obituary on Ken Wallis (published Sept. 9): just CLICK HERE.

A 007 discussion on an Illinois public radio station

Casino Royale’s original cover

WILL, a public radio station in Illinois, had a James Bond discussion on April 11, in connection with the University of Illinois’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of Casino Royale’s publication.

On hand were Michael VanBlaricum, president of the Ian Fleming Foundation, and John Cork, who has directed many of documentaries that accompany James Bond movie DVDs.

Near the start of the program, called Focus, Cork said that Bond was “significantly different” from other characters who had come before because he was part of a “post World War II universe” who could be the “knife that cut the Gordian Knot” of complicated post-war problems. “He can be portrayed as a hero,” Cork said. “He still does that.”

VanBlaricum said newer movies, including the 2006 Casino Royale, “really did follow the James bond style created by Ian Fleming” and there’s “a lot of Fleming in Daniel Craig’s performance.”

Cork, who formerly was involved with the foundation, observes that the various actors have brought things to the 007 role. Regarding original film 007 star Sean Connery, he says: “They wouldn’t have had a job if Connery wasn’t so good at what he did.”

To listen to the entire program, CLICK HERE. When that page comes up, go to the left. There are icons to either listen to the program or to download it.

RE-POST: Univesity of Illinois kicks off 007 celebration

Casino Royale’s original cover

Originally posted March 17. Re-posted ahead of events scheduled April 12 and 13 at the University of Illinois.

We’ve written before about how the University of Illinois will have exhibits related to the 60th anniversary of the Casino Royale novel. Here’s a list of events in April that will kick off that celebration.

3 p.m. central time, April 12: Michael VanBlaricum, co-founder of the Ian Fleming Foundation, delivers a talk about items on display and how his collection of Ian Fleming novels evolved. Location: Room 66 Library, 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois.

7 p.m., April 13: Concert featuring music from James Bond films by the University of Illinois concert jazz band. Location: Spurlock Museaum Knight Auditorium, 600 South Gregory, Urbana, Illinois.

April 26-28: James Bond film festival. Besides movies being shown, there will be discussions about the films. Those talks will be led by John Cork, who made a series of documentaries about the making of the 007 films that are on DVDs as extras. Schedule of films and activities will be available at http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu (you can also try THIS LINK; no titles or times are listed yet). Location: 600 South Gregory, Urbana, Illinois.

The university is at Urbana-Champaign, in the east-central part of Illinois near where I-57 and I-74 intersect. You can view a map of the University of Illinois campus by CLICKING HERE.

If you want to go the April 12-14 weekend, expect to stay well outside the Urbana-Champaign area. There are other university events that weekend and hotels are booked.

University of Illinois kicks off 007 celebration next month

Casino Royale’s original cover

We’ve written before about how the University of Illinois will have exhibits related to the 60th anniversary of the Casino Royale novel. Here’s a list of events in April that will kick off that celebration.

3 p.m. central time, April 12: Michael VanBlaricum, co-founder of the Ian Fleming Foundation, delivers a talk about items on display and how his collection of Ian Fleming novels evolved. Location: Room 66 Library, 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois.

7 p.m., April 13: Concert featuring music from James Bond films by the University of Illinois concert jazz band. Location: Spurlock Museaum Knight Auditorium, 600 South Gregory, Urbana, Illinois.

April 26-28: James Bond film festival. Besides movies being shown, there will be discussions about the films. Those talks will be led by John Cork, who made a series of documentaries about the making of the 007 films that are on DVDs as extras. Schedule of films and activities will be available at http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu (you can also try THIS LINK; no titles or times are listed yet). Location: 600 South Gregory, Urbana, Illinois.

The university is at Urbana-Champaign, in the east-central part of Illinois near where I-57 and I-74 intersect. You can view a map of the University of Illinois campus by CLICKING HERE.

If you want to go the April 12-14 weekend, expect to stay well outside the Urbana-Champaign area. There are other university events that weekend and hotels are booked.