The least sexy James Bond movie vehicles

The James Bond film series is best known for fast Aston Martin and Lotus sports cars (often with gadgets). But there are quite a few Bond vehicles that don’t get the heart pumping. Here are some examples:

Kerim Bey’s station wagon

In From Russia With Love, Kerim Bey sends a Rolls-Royce limousine to pick James Bond up from the Istanbul airport. Later in the movie, the head of Station T sends the Rolls (with two dummies in the back) off in another direction while he and Bond travel to a gypsy camp in a station wagon.

The modest transportation works in the context of the story. The flashy Rolls is a decoy. Bond’s journey in Kerim’s station wagon helps set up one of the key sequences of the movie. But the station wagon isn’t particularly sexy. In 1966’s The Silencers, Matt Helm (Dean Martin) also goes around in a station wagon. But Dino’s wheels include a bar (!).

James Bond’s Lincoln Continental

In Thunderball, Bond (Sean Connery) again drives the Aston Martin DB5 he had earlier piloted in Goldfinger. The fourth Bond film made by Eon Productions provided 007 a more down-to-earth set of wheels once Bond got to The Bahamas — a Lincoln Continental he drove up to the estate of Largo (Adolfo Celi). The Lincoln is only briefly seen onscreen.

Honda ATV (all-terrain vehicle)

In Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery’s final movie for Eon Productions, the intrepid agent infiltrates a Nevada installation owned by industrialist Willard Whyte. Bond is discovered and has to get out fast.

He first steals a “moon buggy” being developed by Whyte’s company (which is under control of Blofeld). Bond manages to get out of the moon buggy while the vehicle continues on its way. Bond then overcomes one of the Whyte security personnel, who is driving a three-wheel Honda all-terrain vehicle (or ATV).

Despite the lack of dignity, Bond drives the ATV until he can rendezvous with Tiffany Case (Jill St. John). She is waiting with a new Ford Mustang, the main product placement deal of the film.

Bond’s Ford LTD

In A View to a Kill, Bond (Roger Moore) is following Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) around San Francisco in a Ford LTD. The LTD was a big, boxy Ford sedan that went out of production and is long forgotten. Presumably, in the story, it was a rental car but that’s not spelled out in the movie.

By the time of the release of A View to a Kill, the LTD was on its last legs. The model would soon be phased out in favor of the Ford Taurus.

Bond’s Lincoln Mark VII

In Licence to Kill (1989), Bond (Timothy Dalton) intends to depart Florida after Felix Leiter (David Hedison) has gotten married. Dalton’s Bond is depicted as getting ready to return his rental car. But things take a turn when Bond discovers Leiter never made his honeymoon. Bond goes rogue, doesn’t catch his flight, and instead gets back in the car to figure out what’s going on.

Bond’s Ford Mondeo

2006 Ford Mondeo prototype driven by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (photo by The Spy Command)

Technically, the first car driven by the Daniel Craig version of Bond was a Ford Mondeo. The automaker had redesigned the European car and arranged for it to be in 2006’s Casino Royale. The car in the film wasn’t then (and still isn’t) street-legal. Bond drives the car (or so it seems) after the agent has arrived in The Bahamas.

Many Bond fans can’t stand the Mondeo’s appearance in the movie, viewing it as an obvious commercial for Ford. The magic of cinema likely made the Mondeo appear to be traveling faster than it could, via camera angles and sound effects.

60th anniversary of the Ford Mustang

A damaged Ford Mustang after getting the Ben-Hur treatment from Bond’s Aston-Martin DB5 in Goldfinger

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the Ford Mustang at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

The model’s first cinema appearance took place during the filming of 1964’s Goldfinger.

James Bond (Sean Connery) was driving the soon-to-be-iconic Aston Martin DB5 while following Auric Goldfinger. Suddenly, a woman (Tania Mallet) driving the Mustang initially passes the DB5 on the roads of Switzerland. After Bond seems to have been targeted for a killing attempt, the British agent passes the Mustang.

Bond uses the DB5’s gadgets to pull a Ben-Hur maneuver to tear apart the Mustang and run it to the side of the road.

Things turn out to be more complicated and the Mallet character ends up as one of the movie’s sacrificial lambs. Regardless, in Goldfinger, the Mustang is almost as iconic as the DB5.

The Mustang would also be seen in 1965’s Thunderball, driven by SPECTRE killer Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi). In 1971, a muscle car version of the Mustang was seen in Diamonds Are Forever, with Sean Connery dodging law-enforcement cars in Las Vegas.

As the Mustang’s design evolved, it would also be featured prominently in 1968’s Bullitt, driven by Steve McQueen as the film’s title character. What’s more, the Mustang would be featured on American television shows such as The FBI (1965-74). In the first four seasons of that series, star Efrem Zimbalist Jr. drove Mustangs in the end titles.

Pamela Salem, NSNA’s Moneypenny, dies

Pamela Salem as Moneypenny in Never Say Never Again

Pamela Salem, an India-born actress who played the character of Miss Moneypenny in 1983’s Never Say Never Again, has died at the age of 80, according to her Wikipedia entry.

In the early 1980s, Never Say Never Again amounted to a serious Bond attack against the Eon 007 series. Until that decade, there had been a parody Bond film (1967’s Casino Royale).

In 1983, Eon came out with Octopussy with Never Say Never Again (essentially a remake of Thunderball) coming out months later. Never Say Never Again featured the return of Sean Connery as the cinematic Bond.

For enthusiasts of Never Say Never Again, Sean Connery’s interactions with Pamela Salem were a highlight. Salem was different from Lois Maxwell’s interpretation of Moneypenny in the Eon movies.

Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, to this day, still generate a debate. I’ve seen comments where Eon fans feel NSNA was an insult to Eon. I’ve seen NSNA fans that movie was better than better than Octopussy.

Regardless, 1983 was a once-in-a-lifetime event for Bond fans. Pamela Salem was part of that.

Q the Music returns this weekend

Q the Music logo

At one point, it appeared Q the Music, the group that performs James Bond music and songs, was going away.

Well, you can’t keep a good group down. Q the Music is scheduled to perform a concert on Oct. 15 in London. Here’s an excerpt from a description of the show:

The show features all your favourite Bond songs such as Goldfinger Diamonds Are Forever Live and Let Die and Nobody Does It Better performed with the most authentic and dedicated arrangements to the originals ever heard but with such passion enthusiasm and flair: you can’t help but be wowed. This show will also focus on three huge anniversaries: From Russia With Love (60th) Live and Let Die (50th) and Octopussy (40th) with musical tributes to the scores as well as hearing memories from our special guests who appeared in the films.

The guests cited in the description are Kristina Wayborn as well as David and Tony Meyer from Octopussy plus Martine Beswick who appeared in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. The concert is to be hosted by David Zaritsky of The Bond Experience channel on YouTube.

Here is a YouTube video promoting the event:

1964: Saltzman plays hardball with McClory

Thunderball poster in 1965

As part of this week’s Sotheby’s auction concerning Ian Fleming-related items, one lot provides a peak into the negotiations between Eon Productions and Kevin McClory concerning Thunderball.

McClory had gotten the film rights to the Ian Fleming novel, which originated as a film project headed by McClory. The Sotheby’s auction includes an offering of documents from McClory’s estate.

Most notable is a Sept. 10, 1964 letter by Harry Saltzman (typed on Eon Productions stationary) where the Bond film producer appeared to be losing his patience with McClory.

“We and our lawyers have made unremitting efforts during the last four weeks with you for the production of THUNDERBALL,” the co-founder of Eon with Albert R. Broccoli wrote.

“We have wanted so much to be able to make an agreement that we have postponed work on ‘ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE’ which we have to start producing in January if we are unable to make a deal with you,” Saltzman continued. “We have repeatedly set deadlines to our negotiations with you because we have been afraid that we would run out of time for our next film.”

The Eon co-boss said, “(W)e are still a long way from agreement and we are afraid that we cannot wait any longer.” Saltzman says in the letter that Eon is “immediately” going forward with Majesty’s and “can no longer” talk about doing a Thunderball deal. Saltzman suggests a break and that, perhaps, Thunderball could be made after Majesty’s.

At the time of the letter, Goldfinger was coming out in the U.K. and those early prints say that Bond “will be back On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Eon did reach an accord with McClory and when Goldfinger was released in the U.S. in December 1964, those prints say Bond would be back in Thunderball.

There’s no way to tell from the letter itself whether Saltzman beat down McClory or whether McClory held tough and got what he wanted from Eon.

The lot of documents also includes a 1989 handwritten note by Sean Connery, star of Eon’s 1965 Thunderball and its 1983 remake, Never Say Never Again.

The Connery letter is addressed to “whom it may concern.”

“The first James Bond film which I was hired for was — “THUNDERBALL” for UNITED ARTISTS and the first script I was given to read by BROCCOLI & SALTZMAN’S company was “THUNDERBALL”

Eon initially intended to make Thunderball as its first James Bond film and Richard Maibaum did a script in 1961. Because of the rights disputes, Eon switched gears and did Dr. No instead as its opening 007 effort.

Happy 86th birthday, Luciana Paluzzi

Luciana Paluzzi and Sean Connery during the filming of Thunderball

Today, June 10, is the 86th birthday for actress Luciana Paluzzi. She is perhaps best known for playing Fiona Volpe, the femme fatale in Thunderball. But she performed in spy-related entertainment before that.

—Five Fingers: A short-lived 1959-60 television series where she co-starred with David Hedison.

–The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: Paluzzi played Angela, a femme fatale that, essentially, was a warmup for her Thunderball part. She filmed her scenes in early 1964. The intent was to expand the show’s pilot into a movie for international distribution.

There are two versions of those scenes. The first is To Trap a Spy, the aforementioned movie version. It’s in color and sexier. The other is The Four-Steps Affair, an episode of U.N.C.L.E.’s first season, which was in black and white and not as sexy. A new story was devised around the Paluzzi footage.

Post-Thunderball, there were other moments.

–The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: Paluzzi played a sympathetic character in the show’s first episode, The Dog-Gone Affair.

–Hawaii Five-O: Near the end of her acting career, Paluzzi played an Italian journalist causing problems for Steve McGarrett amid an international crisis in a 1978 episode. Paluzzi had earlier acted with star Jack Lord in a 1966 episode of 12 O’Clock High.

UPDATE: A Paluzzi credit I forgot — The 1966 MGM movie The Venetian Affair, starring Robert Vaughn, with a cast that also included Elke Sommer, Boris Karloff, Roger C. Carmel and Edward Asner.

Washington Post argues for Skyfall as 2012’s best picture

Daniel Craig in 2012 during filming of Skyfall.

The Washington Post, in an article about what movies should have won the Best Picture Oscar, says Skyfall should have received the award for 2012.

The story originally was published in 2016 but has been updated because of the Oscars ceremony scheduled for March 12.

Here’s the article’s entry for 2012:

Go big or go home. Listen, this was a tough year: “Argo” was delightful, but Spielberg was working at a much higher level of difficulty by making the weighty themes of “Lincoln” so human and relatable. But that’s beside the point: The academy had one chance to give a Bond movie the Oscar, and it was with the confident, thrilling, psyche-probing “Skyfall.” Bond may be the best franchise of all times, but its individual films rarely connect on all levels like this one did.

Skyfall wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture. The nominees were Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty. Argo ended up winning.

Skyfall received five nominations. It won two, Best Song (the film’s title song) and it shared a sound award with Zero Dark Thirty. The results snapped a long Oscar drought for the Bond film series. Bond had previously won for special effects for Thunderball.

Still, there was disappointment among Bond fans. Roger Deakins had been nominated for Skyfall’s cinematography but didn’t win. (He would later win for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917.) And the film wasn’t nominated for acting, directing, or writing.

Since Skyfall, the Bond series has won two more Best Song Oscars for SPECTRE and No Time to Die.

Bond stories being edited for racial issues, Telegraph says

Cover to a U.S. paperback edition of Live And Let Die

Some Ian Fleming novels and short stories are being edited and altered to address racial issues, The Telegraph reported.

According to The Telegraph, Ian Fleming Publications “commissioned a review by sensitivity readers of the classic texts under its control.”

Many of the examples cited by The Telegraph concern Live And Let Die, Fleming’s second novel, which has sequences set in New York City.

An excerpt from The Telegraph article:

In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die, Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” becomes – “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”

Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated.

The Telegraph said other changes are being made:

The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace, a butler’s race now also goes unmentioned.

This all comes after The Guardian reported, some of author Roald Dahl’s children’s books have been changed “to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher Puffin.” (Dahl was also a screenwriter on the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice.)

“Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work,” the Guardian said.

Various forms of entertainment have dealt with related issues for decades. In the 1990s, a cable TV version of a Bugs Bunny cartoon abruptly lopped off the end where Bugs, Elmer Fudd, and various Canadian mounties did a song in blackface.

Today, on TV and streaming services, there are disclaimers/warnings that appear ahead of a film.

Raquel Welch dies at 82

Cover to the Fathom soundtrack

Raquel Welch, one of the most famous sex symbols of the 20th century, has died, according to various outlets, including The New York Times.

Welch was in the running to play Domino in Thunderball. She almost had the role but Claudine Auger was cast. Welch instead ended up starring in Fantastic Voyage, where a team of scientists (and a security agent played by Stephen Boyd) is miniaturized and injected into the body of a defecting scientist to perform delicate surgery. One of the team, it turns out, is a traitor.

Welch ended up with her own entry in the spy craze: Fathom. It included a main title sequence by Maurice Bender of Raquel Welch packing a parachute.

Welch’s IMDB.COM ENTRY lists more than 70 acting roles from 1964 until 2017. They included movies such as One Million Years B.C., Kansas City Bomber and The Last of Shiela.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: First attempt at a Thunderball script

Kevin McClory’s cameo in Thunderball

Adapted from a 2015 post

Bond collector Gary J. Firuta loaned us a copy of the first script in what would eventually become 1965’s Thunderball — but it’s an uneven effort at best.

The script was Jack Whittingham’s first draft, titled Longitude 78 West for producer Kevin McClory. It’s dated as being completed on Feb. 15, 1960. The title page specifically refers to it as a “first draft screenplay” that’s “Based on a story by Ian Fleming.”

The villains belong to the Mafia and are led by Giovanni “Joe” Largo. Except we’re told in the second half of the script that name is an alias. Nevertheless, he is identified as Largo throughout the script in both lines of dialogue and in stage directions.

Aside from the hijacking of two atomic bombs, there’s no other action in the script’s first half. It begins with a short pre-credits sequence where U.S. President Harry S. Truman comments about how, one day, civilization could be destroyed by atomic weapons.

“It is hoped that we may be able to persuade Mr. Truman to record this scene,” the stage directions read. “If not, it’s (sic) intention and content can be expressed quite easily some other way.”

Bond doesn’t appear until page 26. The rule of thumb is that one page of script equals a minute of running time. So 007 wouldn’t be seen until almost a half-hour into the movie. He’s on the shooting range at headquarters, in a scene similar to the opening of Fleming’s Moonraker novel.

Bond is summoned to M’s office. Here, the secretary to the MI6 chief is named simply Penny, not Moneypenny. The British government has been notified by the Mafia it has the atomic bombs and it wants 100 million pounds.

We also see things unfold in the Bahamas. Largo’s mistress is Gaby. It’s clear she’s not particularly enthusiastic about the arrangement. He wants her for, in effect, decoration at an upcoming meeting of delegates to a supposed union meeting (of course they’re fellow members of the Mafia, or the Brotherhood). “I’ve got a lot of entertaining to do, and I want you around,” Largo tells Gaby.

Bond meets Gaby at a hotel on page 38. It turns out Largo’s group is meeting there as well. Bond orders a planter’s punch from a bartender and buys a vodka martini for Gaby. They talk until page 41, when Bond first gets a look at Largo and 007 meets the villain on the following page.

Shortly thereafter, Bond meets up with the CIA’s Felix Leiter. After a meeting with the governor of the Bahamas, the agents have lunch. Bond talks a lot about food. When Bond asks the waiter for a wine list, Leiter replies: “Not for me thanks. Bring me a glass of water.” Bond says, “Of course, I’d forgotten!” What he forgot is never explained.

In the story, there’s a sequence that goes back and forth between Bond romancing Gaby and Leiter keeping tabs on Largo’s group. There’s also a scene where Gaby talks to Johnni, a young boy who’s a crew member on Largo’s yacht. Bond wonders why Gaby is so interested in children. She replies because she can’t have any.

The action picks up in the second half. Largo is mad about Bond being with Gaby, and the agent gets beaten up. Eventually, the Mafia makes its move and is ready to bring one of the bombs to Miami.

Bond plays Largo in a game of baccarat. Presumably, this is an homage to Fleming’s Casino Royale and the scene is more important that a similar scene in Thunderball; in that version, the card game is where Bond and Largo first meet. Bond tries to win Gaby to his side and instructs her how to deactivate, or activate, the bomb.

Meanwhile, Leiter, while not an equal to Bond, is more of a participant in events than he’d be in Thunderball. He gets captured by Largo and is on the villain’s yacht.

In the climax, Bond is involved in an underwater fight with the Mafia (though not as expansive as would take place in Thunderball). Largo shoots Leiter, after the CIA agent had gotten free. Largo takes Gaby and the other bomb in an airplane.

Bond tends to Felix and watches the plane getting away. Then, the aircraft goes up in an atomic explosion. “She’s done it…She had the guts…She’s done it!” Bond says as the story ends.

Besides the downer ending, which 007 audiences wouldn’t experience until 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the script is unusual in other ways. It’s very chatty. VERY chatty. Scenes go on and on. Bond comes across as a social worker where he quizzes Gaby about her fondness for children.

Granted this is a first draft, but one suspects if this version had gone before the cameras, the cinema 007 might have ended right there.