MI6 looks back at Lee Goldberg's "Making the James Bond Films" written during the 25th anniversary year of James Bond's cinematic adventures...

Making The James Bond Films (Part 1) - By Lee Goldberg
9th June 2005

Lee Goldberg interviewed those involved with bringing Bond to the big-screen back in 1987, when the cinematic 007 series was celebrating it's 25th anniversary and the introduction of the fourth James Bond actor...

The coveted License to Kill has passed from Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton for this summer's 007 adventure "The Living Daylights," but there's no doubt James Bond will emerge victorious, unscathed by either the vicissitudes of the box- office or the slings and arrows of critics. It's been 25 years since the first 007 movie, and now, after 15 films, three stars, and over $1 billion in revenues, people will still line up around the block for more. It's a success story "so far beyond the movie business dreams of glory as to be mind-boggling," wrote author Richard Condon. James Bond has grown past the boundaries of mere popular entertainment to become a cultural artifact -- not one relegated to history, but one that's still going strong.

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Even as "The Living Daylights" is playing in theatres, New York's Museum of Modern Art will be showcasing an exhibit of Bond paraphenalia. "The elimination of James Bond, either by Her Majesty's enemies or by the disfavor of the movie public is not to be thought of," wrote novelist Anthony Burgess. "He goes on."

It wasn't always that way. In fact, just about no one remembers the first time author Ian Fleming's James Bond appeared on screen. That was back in 1954, and it's no wonder it has been forgotten. Only a rare kinescope exists of the live television production, an adaptation of Fleming's novel "Casino Royale" for CBS' "Climax Theatre." The producers called him "cardsense Jimmy Bond," made him a rough American gambler instead of a British spy, and pitted him against Peter Lorre.

Above: Barry Nelson

It has never been broadcast since, so most people have no idea that actor Barry Nelson, still a frequent face on television these days, was actually the first James Bond. "No one ever stops me on the street and recognizes me as James Bond," jokes Nelson. "It's kind of a novelty for me to be the first one. It certainly is a curiosity, there being a James Bond film hardly anyone has ever seen." It wasn't until 1962 that producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, along with screenwriter Richard Maibaum, took Fleming's literary hero and molded him into movie hero with "Dr. No." The first thing they did was cast against type. Sean Connery was a virtual unknown and "was nothing like Fleming's concept of James Bond," says Maibaum. "If we had chosen somebody like David Niven, that was more like the way he wrote it."

"Sean was a rough, tough, Scottish soccer player, not a suave, cultured gentleman of the Cambridge/Whitehall type," explains Maibaum. "The fact we attributed to him such a high style epicure was part of the joke."

The big question was whether audiences would laugh with them or at them. "When Sean, in the beginning of the picture, said 'The Name is Bond, James Bond,' if you didn't believe it, there would have been no series," says Maibaum. But audiences did believe it and now "the line seems like the understatement of all time."

Maibaum, who eventually worked as a writer on 11 more 007 films including "The Living Daylights," believes that by casting Connery they inadvertently took a larger than life role and made it someone the average person could relate to. "It enabled the ordinary guy and girl to look at the screen and say 'That's me. I could do all those things.' It was a slight take off, not belabored or done consciously. But it came off as if it was planned and it was a great, great plus."

From Russia With Love followed and, while that film is widely considered, as Maibaum says, "the most successful artistically" of the Bond films, the series really hit its stride with the next adventure, "Goldfinger." The movie set the style for the Bonds that would come -- the double entendres, the suggestive character names, the bizarre henchmen, the stylish deaths, the amazing stunts, the outlandish capers, the eccentric villain. And, above all, the Aston-Martin. The car was more than just another catchy gimmick; it was a spectacular vehicle driving on the treacherous road dividing comedy and drama. "We took into consideration the audience's growing sophistication," says Maibaum. "We dared to do something seldom done in action pictures. We mixed what was funny with what was serious."

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The formula continued to work through "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice," by which time the audiences so identified Connery with the role that the advertisements proclaimed in bold letters: "Sean Connery is James Bond."

So when Connery decided to quit, it's no wonder the producers thought the series was in dire peril. If they believed their own hype, there could be no new 007. What they didn't see, and what they didn't discover until much later, was that their advertising was true, but in a completely different sense. George Lazenby, an Australian male model, understood it intuitively before they did and used it to his advantage.

Above: Lee Goldberg

"I think the most acting I did was to acquire the role in the first place," says Lazenby. "I walked in looking like James Bond and acting as if that's the way I was anyway. And they thought, 'all we have to do is keep this guy the way he is and we've got James Bond.'" What they had was a man imitating Sean Connery and, in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," he did it poorly. But the producers finally realized what they unconsciously knew already. "When you cast James Bond, you're casting a leading actor, not a character actor," says Michael G. Wilson, Broccoli's stepson and co-writer and co-producer of "The Living Daylights." "What that means is, the actors to a certain extent are playing themselves."

And Lazenby was himself, a man with no acting experience, a handsome model wearing someone else's clothes -- Connery's clothes. What the producers needed wasn't someone who would step into Connery's shoes, but someone who would reshape Bond in his own image. They couldn't find that man in time for "Diamonds are Forever." At the last minute, they stalled the inevitable by luring Connery back one more time -- in exchange for a $1 million donation to his favorite charity and financing for two films of his choice.

It was a temporary solution. A new James Bond had to be found. Paul Newman, Patrick McGoohan, Burt Reynolds, John Gavin, and even Timothy Dalton were among the dozens of actors considered before the producers settled on Roger Moore.

Moore made his name in television playing quick-witted, debonair adventurers like smooth-talking gambler Beau Maverick, globe-trotting adventurer Simon "The Saint" Templar, and notorious playboy Lord Brett Sinclair in "The Persuaders." Somewhere along the line the roles, and the actor who plays them, became one. He seemed perfect.

When Moore replaced Sean Connery as James Bond, he didn't just continue the role as George Lazenby did. Moore absorbed it. James Bond became yet another extension of himself. Beginning with "Live and Let Die," he imbued James Bond with the same playful, coy charm that typified his TV characters, radically transforming the style of the series and making 007 undeniably his own. "I'm not Sean Connery. In 'Live and Let Die,' I didn't do any of that tough stuff because that was what Sean would do. My personality is entirely different than his," Moore says. "I'm not that cold-blooded killer Sean can do so well, which is why I play it for laughs. The producers encourage me to impersonate myself." He believes the only difference between himself and James Bond is that he doesn't carry around a Walther PPK.

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Watch for out for the final part of "Making The James Bond Films" later this month.

Republished courtesy of Lee Goldberg, images courtesy of Amazon associates.