RE-POST: 007 moments in Oscars history

Originally posted Feb. 5, 2009. Re-posting because this year’s Oscars on Feb. 24 will have the biggest 007 component in 31 years. We’ve added some links that weren’t available when the original post was published.

The Oscars (R) are coming up this month. That got us to wondering: What were the great James Bond moments at the Academy Awards?

There haven’t been that many, but here’s a partial list:

1965: Soundman Norman Wanstall picks up the first Oscar (R) for a James Bond movie for his work on Goldfinger. We weren’t watching, alas. But a film historian talked to Wanstall decades later. He described the sound effect when Oddjob demonstrates his deadly hat:

“That had to be really frieghtening. So we got an ordinary carpenter’s woodsaw, put it on a bench and just twanged it.” (Adrian Turner on Goldfinger, page 216)

To see Wanstall pick up his Oscar, CLICK HERE.

1966: We weren’t watching, alas. Nor was the special effects wizard of Thunderball, John Stears. In extras for Thunderball home video releases available since 1995, Sears said he didn’t know he had won the Oscar (R) until his arrived in the U.K.

To see Ivan Tors pickup the award for Stears, CLICK HERE

1973: Roger Moore, the incoming Bond, and Liv Ullmann are on hand to present the Best Actor Oscar (R). Marlon Brando won for The Godfather. But the new 007, and everybody else, got a surprise:

1974: Roger Moore is back, with one 007 film under his belt, and ready to film a second. He introduces Best Song nominee Live And Let Die, written by Paul and Linda McCartney. Instead of a performance by McCartney, the audio of the song is played while Connie Stevens dances to it. The song doesn’t win.

1978: The Spy Who Loved Me, nominated for three Oscars (R), is blanked, taking home none. Ken Adam, the production designer guru, loses out to Star Wars. Marvin Hamlisch is double blanked, losing out for best score and he and his lyricist fail to get the Best Song Oscar (R).

1980: Moonraker, nominated for Best Special Effects, fails to repeat what Thunderball accomplished. It’s just as well after we found out about the salt shakers in the rockets in the extras for the DVD. (Feb. 20, 2013 observation: Then again, given the lack of resources that Derek Meddings and his team had, relative to other nominees such as Alien, The Black Hole and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the Moonraker nomination is pretty impressive.)

1982: Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, founding co-producer of the Bond franchise, receives the Irving G. Thalberg award, given to producers for a career of work. Then-Bond Roger Moore is on hand once again, this time to give Cubby the award.

Snaring the Thalberg award put Broccoli in some impressive company:

Note: Broccoli is shown twice in that video, once by mistake.

What’s more, the music director for the Oscar (R) show is Bill Conti, composer of For Your Eyes Only, which was nominated for Best Song. Sheena Easton performs the song as part of an elaborate Bond dance act. The long skit includes Richard Kiel and, shortly before his death, Harold Sakata, the actor who played Oddjob, for whom Norman Wanstall labored for his sound effect years earlier.

The only sour moment (from a Bond perspective): For Your Eyes Only didn’t win the Oscar (R). But it hardly ruined the evening for the Broccolis.

To view the Sheena Easton performance of For Your Eyes Only, CLICK HERE. To view Albert R. Broccoli getting the Thalberg award, CLICK HERE.

2013 Oscars to have James Bond tribute

Poster for a 1972 007 triple feature

The 2013 Oscars will have a James Bond tribute, according to a PRESS RELASE on the Oscars’ official Web site.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – The 85th Academy Awards® will include a tribute to the James Bond movie franchise, which is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year, the telecast’s producers announced today.

“We are very happy to include a special sequence on our show saluting the Bond films on their 50th birthday,” said producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. “Starting with ‘Dr. No’ back in 1962, the 007 movies have become the longest-running motion picture franchise in history and a beloved global phenomenon.”

This isn’t the first 007 tribute for the Oscars.

In 1982, Eon Productions co-founder Albert R. Broccoli was scheduled to receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which is given to producers for their body of work. There was a Moonraker-themed Bond dance number presented as Sheena Easton sang For Your Eyes Only, the Oscar-nominated song.

Participating were Harold Sakata as Oddjob and Richard Kiel as Jaws. Bill Conti, who had scored 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, was the musical director for the broadcast and he worked in some of his music from that movie. (Conti had also co-written the For Your Eyes Only song). It was the last time a 007 film was nominated for an Oscar, but it didn’t win.

All of that was a prelude to Roger Moore presenting the award to Broccoli and the gracious speech given by the man known as Cubby. To view it, CLICK HERE. Embedding isn’t enabled but we left up the image to dress up the look of this post.

UPDATE: A video copy of Easton’s performance is on YouTube. You can take a look unless YouTube yanks it:

Wall Street Journal profiles one-time 007 villain Michael Lonsdale

The Wall Street Journal’s arts section, in a story dated Dec. 3 but already online, has a profile of actor Michael Lonsdale, who played 007 nemesis Hugo Drax in Moonraker.

Here’s an excerpt:

At 79 years old, Mr. Lonsdale has played the gamut of religious roles —priests, abbots, cardinals, inquisitors—as well as countless aristocrats ranging from English lords to Louis XVI. Also a man of the theater, his circle of friends has included literary heavyweights like Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, whose works he performed on stage in Paris in the 1960s. Perfectly bilingual, he moves easily between the bizarre shoe salesman in François Truffaut’s “Stolen Kisses” and the campy bearded villain in the James Bond classic, “Moonraker”

There’s a lot of detail about Lonsdale’s career and current projects. To read the story, JUST CLICK HERE.

And here’s a quick look back to the 1979 007 film where Lonsdale delivers a short speech to his minions on a space station while Bond (Roger Moore), Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and Jaws (Richard Kiel) look on.

USC Film School celebrates Cubby Broccoli and James Bond

James Bond fans lucky enough to be living in Southern California can look forward to a nice weekend: starting this Friday, November 6, the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts will be celebrating the life of James Bond film producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. The three-day festival will feature panel discussions, an exhibition of 007 movie props, costumes, and other ephemera, and, of course, screenings of selected Bond films — introduced by USC film professor Rick Jewell.

Jewell, who teaches a pop-culture course on James Bond, will also be heading up two panel discussions on the subject. One, on “Bond Today,” will feature Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Marc Forster, and our good buds Neal Purvis and Rob Wade. The other, completely about Cubby Broccoli, will feature Broccoli & Wilson again, with Tom Mankiewicz, Richard Kiel, and the most yummy Maud Adams.

After this weekend, the exhibition will continue through Friday at the Hugh M. Hefner Exhibition Space in the George Lucas Building on the USC campus. (Ya gotta love SoCal institutions of higher learning!)

Read all about it at the USC website. There’s also a good story about it at the Los Angeles Times website.