JAMES BOND IN THE MOVIES - A Personal Journey

Daniel Craig in 'Casino Royale' (2006)

A couple of years ago I wrote a series of articles for Starburst Magazine, to celebrate 50 years of the James Bond films. Here they are:

BOND @ 50

A Personal Journey

Fifty years of James Bond films. Who woulda thunk it, huh? In this celebratory year I thought I’d take the opportunity to reflect on five decades of the EON produced 007 movies (not to mention the several oddities churned out by rival companies during those years). Rather than write a straight-forward account of the familiar facts and figures,  I’d like to share with you my personal experience of the Bond movies, as I have been very fortunate indeed to have seen them all in order of production.

I was born in 1964 in Wigan; as far removed from the glamorous world of Ian Fleming and his creation as it’s possible to get. Coming from a very poor family, I never got to see the earliest Bonds on the big screen, and so my first encounter with an EON epic came when ITV purchased the rights to screen every 007 movie way back in the mid 1970s. The closest I came to Bond was when my mum took the kids to the cinema on my birthday around 1970 to see Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm in ‘The Silencers’. I loved it. The colour! The exotic locations! The funky 60s music! The trouble was that my mum, Gawd bless her, had got the screening times wrong, and we actually walked in around halfway through the film! We then proceeded to watch the first part of the next screening (you were allowed to do that in 1970), and so my first cinematic experience was a pretty confusing and bizarre one. Nevertheless, I was blinded by the glamour, and it would be a few decades before I saw the film again and realised just how awful it was when compared to the Bonds.

I was a big fan of the original Fleming novels, which were passed around school along with the dog-eared dirty magazines that puzzled many a pubescent youth with their explicit depictions of the female anatomy. I remember well being totally confused by a full page photo of a lady’s undercarriage. My friends and I thought it was a malformed gentleman, and would only discover the truth many years later. But I digress. Back to the Bond books. I loved them. Probably as much for the naughty bits as the salivating descriptions of scrambled egg breakfasts and Beluga Caviar (whatever the heck THAT was!). Fleming wrote fast-paced, gritty and imaginative novels about a man with the outward charm of George Sanders, and the ice cold heart of a born assassin. We all wanted to be Bond; suave, tough, ruthless, and with an insatiable sexual appetite. So, by the time I saw my first Bond movie, I was well steeped in the character’s literary origins.

I was always aware of the films, as they were constantly in the newspapers, and there were the odd clips on 70s tv shows such as ‘Screen Test’ and ‘Clapperboard’. Everybody knew the Bond theme, and the songs were always on the radio. I remember my more affluent school chums excitedly recounting their excursions to see Diamonds Are Forever in the cinema; the closest I came was jealously pawing a toy Moon Buggy a mate brought in to class one day. The films were like a forbidden fruit to me, and I began to think I would never see one. Then ITV came to the rescue. With ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’ in cinemas at the time, I couldn’t believe it when I read the films were going to be shown on the telly. The telly!!

Riding on the bus to school on a damp morning in October 1975, I remember thinking that the streets would be empty that night when ‘Dr No’ (1962) was on. I was excited beyond belief, and it was all anybody was talking about at school. A James Bond film on the telly! Remember kids, those were dark days without the internet, Facebook, mobiles, etc. If you were living in a small Northern town back then you may as well be on a desert island. I’d read the novel, and I couldn’t wait to see it brought to life. Even though we only had a black and white tv, into which we had to put 10p in the slot at the back every couple of hours, I was entranced. Following the announcer’s introduction, the screen went black. Several small white dots paraded across, until one widened to become what appeared to be the view down the barrel of a gun. A man wearing a trilby hat and wearing a dark suit and tie walked into shot, he spun around and fired his own gun at us. Blood seemed to drip down the screen as our sight of the man wobbled. Blimey! I’d been shot dead by James Bond! The ‘gunbarrel sequence’ would become a classic Bond movie trademark, and here was I seeing it for the very first time. The opening credits with Maurice Binder’s dancing dots, enhanced by John Barry’s fabulous rendition of  Monty Norman’s theme, blew me away. I’d seen nothing like it before. Brought up on a diet of the ITC action tv shows, and my personal favourite ‘The Saint’, this was a dream come true for me. 

Sean Connery as Bond

I don’t think I’d ever seen Sean Connery before, but he was everything Bond should be. His introductory scene was a masterclass of Hitchcockian style and suspense. We see only the back of his head as he plays a card game in a smokey casino. A beautiful lady sits opposite him, as he beats her effortlessly. Obviously losing heavily, she orders another small fortune in chips. Then we hear the voice: “I admire your courage, Miss...?”. Close up on actress Eunice Gayson , who gives the icy retort “Trench, Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr...”. and here we go. Lift off!! We cut to the man opposite as he slowly raises a lighter to the cigarette dangling from the lips of his cruel mouth, and purrs “Bond, James Bond”. What an introduction! Connery had it all. He looked like a man who would break your face if you looked at him the wrong way. He had the confidence of someone in possession of the world’s biggest and most powerful tool (I’m talking confidence here, so stop sniggering at the back there!), and in the words of Tony Christie, he walked like a panther. James Bond had arrived on the telly, and I’m guessing the viewing figures must have been around 20 million. 007 had stepped down from the rarefied atmosphere of the big screen and was now crashing into our front rooms. ‘Dr No’ was a cracking start, and a hugely successful adaptation of the Fleming novel. It was also pretty sadistic stuff with Bond shooting an unarmed man several times in the back, date raping an enemy agent, and ordering a colleague to break a young woman’s arm. And of course we had Ursula Andress as the first and most iconic of Bond girls, Honeychile Rider. When she emerged from the sea in that white bikini, the entire male population must have given out a collective sigh (as well as readjusting their trousers). She looked stunning. Statuesque, dripping with feral sensuality, and ready to knife any man in the heart if he tried getting his hands on her cockles and mussels (and she carried a hell of a big knife!). And there I was. A mere 10 years old, watching the first ever Bond movie on the telly in a miserably cold maisonette in Wigan. We had no central heating, and there was only the coal fire in the living room for warmth. But that night, gathered on a winter’s evening in front of a flickering black and white tv set, I was in heaven. In the years before video recorders, you had to pay close attention. If you missed anything, you wouldn’t get a chance to see it again for a very long time. In those days we focussed intently on every moment, even to the extent of reading through the end credits while savouring that wonderful theme music. And there, right at the end, was the teaser announcement – ‘The end of ‘Dr No’, but James Bond will return in ‘From Russia With Love’. Wow!!!

From that point on I was obsessed with the Bond films, and safe in the knowledge that I would get to see each and every one of them over the coming years, in order (which IS a big deal!), kept me going as a shy, poverty-stricken kid who was always next to last to be picked for the football team during games lessons. I attended St Thomas More High School from 1975 to 1980, and believe me it was rough. We had the most sadistic P.E. teacher imaginable in the form of short-arsed Mr McGuiness. A man who told everybody, and with a straight face, that he been in the army, navy, air force, and the SAS (whatever that was!). Wigan in the 1970s was pretty grim. I remember loving ‘The Persuaders’ on tv, and saving up for the annual I’d seen in the local newsagents. I saved up a whole 15p, but when I took it to the shop I was told that the price sticker said £1.50. I was devastated. I would eventually find the book again a decade later in a second hand shop in Manchester, but it was rubbish. Most annuals were back then. All they seemed to consist of were terrible comic strips and dubious text stories, with vaguely connected articles on associated subjects such as ‘crime over the centuries’, ‘fashion in the 70s’, and sparse ‘Fact Files’ on Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. My weekly pocket money of 5p(FIVE PENCE!) enabled me to buy a Wagon Wheel and a small bottle of Coke from the mobile shop, and I was lucky if I got the occasional Whizzer and Chips comic book. Those were the days, eh?!

Around six months later I sat down to watch ‘From Russia With Love’. I’d been impressed by how closely ‘Dr No’ had stuck to the original novel, and I was to be delighted again by EON’s faithful adaptation of President John F Kennedy’s favourite 007 book. Once again we got the fantastic gunbarrel opening, and the first pre-credits ‘teaser’ sequence featuring Bond being stalked by night through the grounds of  an impressive mansion (in reality the gardens of Pinewood Studios). Actor Robert Shaw played the psychotic agent of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Donovan ‘Red’ Grant with an icy efficiency that would be the benchmark for all Bond henchmen to come. He strangles Bond quite graphically with what looked like a cheese wire drawn from his wristwatch, but the rug is pulled from under us when a mask is peeled from the dead man’s face to reveal an imposter. It was all a test, and a great teasing opening for the movie. John Barry had so impressed with his rendition of the James Bond theme that he was brought back to score the whole movie, replacing ‘Dr No’ composer Monty Norman. In the previous film, Barry had taken a few written notes for Norman’s intended Bond theme, and produced a barnstorming piece of music that would become famous the world over, and used repeatedly in every Bond movie to come. When one listens to Norman’s theme played during ‘Dr No’ it is pretty feeble when compared to Barry’s interpretation. The fact that Norman gets a credit (and royalties) on every 007 movie has always annoyed the heck out of me. That Norman disappeared into relative obscurity, while Barry became a 5 time Oscar-winning success with eleven Bond scores in total says everything.

FRWL (1963) was another thrilling espionage adventure, with Connery cementing the role of the globe-hopping, ruthless, womanising British agent. This was an intricately plotted tale with Bond the target of  the international crime organisation known as the Special Executive for Crime, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, headed by the mysterious figure referred to only as ‘Number One’. We only see this character’s hands as he sits stroking a white cat whilst giving out orders to kill Bond and ruin his reputation. This was all good stuff! Daniela Bianchi was a bit of a letdown as Bond’s leading lady, the Russian double agent Tanya Romanova though. Following the Amazonian goddess that was Ursula Andress was always going to be a tall order, and Ms Bianchi turned out to be a bit of a wet lettuce. Thankfully we had the exotic Martine Beswick as a fiery gypsy girl snarling and scratching her way into Bond’s affections. 

Connery with Desmond Llewelyn as 'Major Boothroyd' (known in later films as 'Q').

In one of the best fist fights ever seen on screen, Connery and Shaw battle it out aboard The Orient Express in a brutal and bone-shattering encounter, the likes of which would only be seen again decades later during Daniel Craig’s era. Interestingly, Connery and Shaw would meet again on screen in 1976’s ‘Robin and Marian’ (scored by John Barry), and indulge in an even more violent encounter on the battlefield. 

Robert Shaw as 'Grant' has 007 at his mercy.

Once again, I loved every minute. I was a little puzzled by Lotte Lenya’s character as the evil SPECTRE agent, Rosa Klebb, who has obvious designs on the innocent Tanya. I had no idea what a lesbian was back then, and the usually attractive Lenya’s appearance as an ugly, military uniform attired hag wearing huge black-rimmed glasses was certainly an unsavoury and highly prejudiced depiction. Never mind, at least she got shot in the back at the end!

Goldfinger (1964) was next up, and here was the one we’d been waiting for. Shirley Bassey’s lung-busting performance of the theme song had been a huge hit, and everybody knew the tune. Then there was the gadget-filled Aston Martin, the gold-painted Shirley Eaton (seen virtually naked; hubba hubba!), and the wonderful bowler-hatted huge oriental henchman, ‘OddJob’ (Harold Sakata). Plus of course the outrageously named ‘Pussy Galore’ (Honor Blackman)! 

Connery with Gert Frobe as 'Auric Goldfinger'.

This was the Bond movie I felt I’d already seen, such was the power of its iconic imagery. A change in director – Guy Hamilton replacing Terence Young – ushered in a more tongue-in-cheek approach which set the template for future Bond movies (reaching its farcical nadir during the Roger Moore era, and only being completely eradicated with the appearance of Daniel Craig’s ruthless 007 in 2006). 

'OddJob' at work.

Goldfinger was huge. The massive Fort Knox set, the car chase around Goldfinger’s factory (in reality the alleyways of Pinewood Studios) with Bond’s Aston Martin firing machine guns, emitting clouds of smoke, and spewing nails and oil slicks at its pursuers, and the climactic hand-to-hand battle with OddJob culminating in the man mountain’s electrocution by Bond. Hugely entertaining, and leaving one thinking “Well, where do we go from here?”

“James Bond will return...”