Original
feature from the July 13th 1965 edition -
transcribed with original spelling.
REJOICE! James Bond
is off to the chase again. 007 must save
our bumbling, sleeping world. Emilio
Largo, that eye-patched paw of SPECTRE,
has snatched a British bomber complete
with armed H-bombs. Largo, black-mailer
extraordinaire, wants £100,000,000 from
the free world. Else, he will blow up an
unnamed city - like Miami, Fla. Who can
humble, foil and kill Largo? Who else?
Reluctantly, M, the
pipe-smoking, tut-tutting head of Her
Majesty's Secret Service, springs Bond
for the job. M knows that 007 wearies his
pistol hand with wine, women and cards.
But M also knows 007 enjoys blotting
people out. As Operation Thunderball
bounces into action, chiefs of state,
admirals and generals sweat and stammer
tactics in coded cables.
Bond fumbles it
alone, just as he did in Dr. No, From
Russia With Love and Goldfinger. His
helpers are like people who fill bat
racks. Thunderball, fourth film based on
the secret-agent novels of Ian Fleming,
stars Sean Connery again. Locales are
Paris, London, Nassau, land, sea, air and
improbability. No matter. Bond sharpens
his taste for vodka and women.
James Bond has an
endearing boyish trait. He goes to bed
early. Women don't care that his body is
a Pollock canvas of reds, blacks and
blues, a body stained by floggings,
fists, pistols, stompings and the dust of
guano. They love him. In earlier films,
007 wooed Honeychile, Tatiana, Pussy
Galore; they were just main events. In
Thunderball, he wins Domino.
As cinema lovers,
Sean Connery (Scotsman) and Richard
Burton (Welshman) have laid the ghost of
the chinless, tea-sipping British Romeo.
Yet Ian Fleming's fans have a puzzle:
Bond's love life is a lovely riddle,
despite his brief marriage to Tracy. For
007 never stays put to meet the parson or
the bloody payments on a split-level
honeymoon cottage. Actually, long ago
such reluctance drove Don Juan to hell.
The Don dreaded the inevitable plaint of
his conquests: "When will I see you
again?" D.J. always fled. Bond does
same; 007 cleans up a caper, kisses,
showers and jets back to his London
bachelor flat. There waits the faithful,
clucking May, his gray-haired Scottish
housekeeper. She is a - Nanny.
Bond's truth
emerges: Forget the gorgeous birds. Nanny
knows best.
If you play with
fire, you know what happens. Bond is a
five-alarm conflagration for foe and
friend. The movies bank him a little, but
he remains inferno.
Jill Masterson
betrays Goldfinger, coddles 007, so
Goldfinger paints her out of this world.
Vesper cheats her masters, makes the
earth move with James and kills herself.
Kerim, Bond's Turkish bat man in From
Russia With Love, goes to a leaden
reward. In Thunderball, SPECTRE sinks
poor Paula. Paula thought that running
around with 007 was better than running a
Nassau gift shop. Now, she knows.
If Bond is a
Superman or a Tarzan, his adversaries are
Satans paying doomed visits to our
planet. They rub their hands and set
snares baited with luscious dames. Fools!
They all fall down and go BOOM as
Goldfinger did, or GLUB as Dr. No did in
a radioactive tankful of water, or SSSST
as Oddjob did against an oversized
toaster in Goldfinger.
Ian Fleming, for all
the curled lips of some critics, did
create incredible villains who are
believable fun. Rosa Klebb, that twisted
maniac with those knife-flicking shoes,
is dead. But the Bond loyalists pine for
her. They will be bereaved, too, over the
fate of Emilio Largo in Thunderball. This
supercrook slaves for POWER and the joy
of pulling off an impossible crime. He,
too, has gimmicks (a fly-away hydrofoil,
sharks, two-man submarines, radar) to
blank out Bond. But he may as well forget
them.
When Largo jousts
with Bond, the fiend discovers that his
weapons are merely little boy's
tinkertoys.
JAMES BOND - or
Bondism or 007-ism - is a happy fever
rampant through the world. 007 is cheered
in movie houses in Peoria, London, Paris,
Madrid, West Berlin and Tokyo. Immunity
shields you from Bond only if you reject
violent, foolish entertainment or require
a hero who writhes through too many reels
at the faintest memory of Mother's First
Frown. Mr. Bond is not out of the
Stanislavsky stable.
Ian Fleming created
him in 1951 (Casino Royale) as the hero
of improbable tales, a British secret
agent immortal in combat, snobbish in the
selection of maidens and martinis,
unswerving in his devotion to The Crown
and to his hopped-up Bentley motor car
(painted battleship gray). Bond is a
bright, amusing fiction in the shadowy
business of espionage. He comforts. When
a real agent gets exposed, the whole
world trembles. Too much is at stake.
Actual spies are
colorless men and women (as they must
be), and they blend into gray offices
loaded with computers or laboratories
stacked with Einsteinian formulae. These
people eat in cafeterias, live in
ordinary apartments and often owe money.
They are nervous nondescripts and blow
the job, eventually.
Not so with James
Bond, who is dashing, handsome,
assertive. He hates paper shuffling and
loves his Walther pistol. He takes in
worldly pleasures as easily as a cluster
of seedless grapes, and buys women $750
diamond clips. Bond is a great gambler.
When he calls for chips at an elegant
casino, immediately the dealers blow on
their manicured fingernails. They know
that the fellow with that black comma of
hair over the right eye is - trouble.
Fleming's books sold
well enough, but remained something of a
cache. They were "in" trifles;
the late President John F. Kennedy was
one reader who enjoyed them. The movies
fanned Bond into a rage, and Fleming's
books, printed in 11 languages, have now
sold more than 40 million copies. The
fire was built by Dr. No, From Russia
With Love and Goldfinger.
All star Sean
Connery, a 34-year-old Scotsman who chose
acting as a career on impulse in 1953.
Now, the usual believers insist Connery
is James Bond. He chafes, no, and seethes
when people ask him about the possible
similarities between 007 and himself.
Big-boned, 6'2" with brown hair
(Bond's is black) and brown eyes (Bond's
are blue), Connery speaks with a burr
that one other Scotsman compares to the
kind of American English spoken by
residents of New York's Bronx. Like Bond,
he plays golf. Connery has read but two
Fleming books, gives no comment about
either.
He is a player in a
special kind of comedy, and he gives his
role the easiness that makes these gory
spoofs manna for the believers.
Goldfinger, which has grossed more than
$40 million, crested the wave that is
washing out box-office history. It also
sent forth hordes of producers and actors
into the conspirator industry. TV already
has NBC's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Richard
Burton stars in the movie The Spy Who
Came In From The Cold. And The Ipcress
File, Passport to Oblivion, The
Liquidator and many more are on their
way.
Harry Saltzman and
Albert R. Broccoli produced the first
Bonds. Joining them in Thunderball is
Kevin McClory, who won the film rights to
the novel after extended court debate
with Fleming. He is one of three writers
who share credit for the Nassau epic of
007.
McClory, 40, has
been in movies almost all of his life. He
worked for Mike Todd and once produced an
art film about a boy and a bridge that
won awards but broke McClory. He
remembers, "Mike told me you
couldn't eat plaques or awards. It is the
best advice anyone ever gave me."
McClory, familiar with the Bahamas,
suggested Thunderball to Fleming as a
script that could be turned into a novel.
It became both. McClory says, "Sean
is the best for Bond."
The producers know,
also, there have been at least 12
Tarzans, but there may be only one Bond.
"Sean," Saltzman says, "is
the ideal marriage of actor and
character." In 1961, when Connery
came into the London offices of Eon
Productions to talk about his first
assignment in the spy business, he wore a
sweater, slacks and loafers. He put his
feet on Broccoli's desk. He began to
pound when the talk swung to the
exclusivity of his servives, something
all producers demand and get (if they
can) from an actor. Saltzman and Broccoli
had the options on all of Fleming's works
except two. Connery signed for six Bond
films, but won the right to do other
work. He had acted on the stage, in
British television and U.S. movies, had
never achieved great success, but was
confident. Broccoli says: "When Sean
left the office, I watched him walk along
Audley Square. He moved like a cat. That
did it for us. Harry and I said, 'This is
the guy.' Sean plays Bond, and it seems
like a cinch, but he is damned clever at
it. Bond is a tough assignment."
The first two
thrillers were made on low budgets.
Skillful spoofs, they thrust James Bond
to center stage. Book sales increased.
Kids began collecting 007 trading cards.
With these profits in the can, Eon
Productions moved the Goldfinger budget
to $2.5 million. The sweet and
troublesome smell of success hung in the
air as all the elements of Fleming howl
and horror got hot. Given a better deck
of trick cards to deal, art director Ken
Adam laid out a lot of aces. Bond got a
supercar, a wild Aston Martin. It was an
armored racer but could have won at the
Grand Prix and Bastogne. The publicity
about Bond films claimed they were
"larger than life," and Adam
improved on the cliché with a replica of
Fort Knox, which seemed bigger than all
Kentucky. Auric Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce
(almost solid "gold") and
Oddjob's iron derby were ordinary
gimmicks, but they played as masterful
bits of business. The big-beat theme
music was marvelous.
Sean Connery had to
emerge on top of all this competition. He
sensed it. He was also concerned about
his original contract. Estimates vary,
but he was paid between $16,000 and
$35,000 for Dr. No, was to get about
$200,000 for Goldfinger. Connery's role
calls for a lot of action. In one
tussling scene, he got jostled about and
went home with a sore neck. He did not
return for four days. During that time,
his contract was renegotiated, and he
wound up with a new deal that gave him
five percent of the picture's gross. He
stands to make at least $1,000,000 from
Goldfinger alone. His fee for acting in
The Hill, an un-Bond picture, was
$400,000. By now, Connery had come all
the way from a chorus boy who worked for
about $35 a week in a British road
company of South Pacific.
Once, Connery told
LOOK's Stanley Gordon, "America has
too much pressure. If you don't have
money, you're in trouble. It's even too
expensive for motorists here. One doesn't
mind buying a car and paying the road
tax, but when you have to pay to park the
bloody thing, it's too much." Today,
he doesn't feel such pressure.
The Nassau shooting
of Thunderball began in April. Jets bore
102 actors and technicians and 12 ½ tons
of gear from England to the Bahamas. Work
was hustled on the full-scale copy of a
Vulcan bomber, the hydrofoil Disco
Volante and the submarines. Tiger sharks
were caught and tied, parades staged,
cans of Panavision and Technicolor film
shot. The budget was $5.5 million.
Connery was the eye
of this hurricane of activity. He had
arrived with special problems. They were
marital; he and his wife, Diane Cilento,
were apparently separated. The crush of
the press was historic. Connery was
dogged by reporters and photographers
from all over the world. He found
hideouts at Lyford Cay, then at Love
Beach; it was there that Mrs. Connery and
their young son, Jason, joined him
several weeks after his arrival. Now
there was a story. For Tom Carlile, the
publicity director, there were questions
like this: "Did Diane stay with Sean
at Love Beach? Hmm. In his house, in the
same room? Hmm. Do they have twin
beds?" Carlile is 6'8". The
lines on his face grew as long as his
legs while he swatted away such gnats.
Connery talked to
very few people apart from company
associates in Nassau. He did his work: He
got into the pool with exhausted tiger
sharks, played fight and love scenes,
"battled" with villains and
posed for photographs on very tight
schedules. He also managed 18 holes of
golf almost every day. His handicap is
nine.
"Without
golf," a friend says, "Sean
would go right around the bend."
Connery became addicted to the game
during his visits to California. He
started on miniature courses, then
graduated. But he shied from private
clubs and played on public links.
Terence Young is
directing Thunderball. Young beckons
Connery onto a set with the cry,
"All right, Barrymore, you're
on!" He believes Connery is an actor
who is just beginning; Young would like
to see him play Bothwell, for who Mary,
Queen of Scots, gave up all.
"Connery has the physical presence
to make her action believable. All of
this success hasn't changed Sean one
iota, subtly or unsubtly, period. He is
still the same fellow who can play
Hotspur (the British critics compared him
to Olivier) and the role of Giraudoux's
Holofernes. He is a very good comedian
with a quick wit, not with schoolboy's
humor, and he is very well read. Don't
ever unkid that. When I direct him, I
want him relaxed. When you talk to him,
talk theater. He will relax."
One night, after
scuffling for the cameras with a SPECTRE
thug, Connery relaxed alongside one of
two swimming pools on Livingston
Sullivan's Rock Point estate. He was
dressed in the black SPECTRE costume;
sweat trickled down his face. His voice
was hoarse. He croaked, "I've had
everything here from the trots to
leprosy."
Connery believes
that leading male actors are the products
of cycles: "A different actor lasts
about 10 years. There was the time of the
fair-haired lead, with the aquiline nose.
He was a romantic conception of a period.
Then there were the Garfields, the Lee
Cobbs, the Brandos, probably the best of
later actors to come out of New York.
There are boyish ones, like Dean
Stockwell, Bradford Dillman, aesthetic in
appearance. Europeans have gone the other
way. Jean-Paul Belmundo, for example. It
is all a cycle. Look at Leslie Howard,
when England was producing that sort of
an actor."
Does he fear being
frozen in the Bond mold, as Brando
remains forever shrouded in his torn
T-shirt and jeans? "If one weren't
realistic, it could be a problem,"
Connery admits. "I make a Bond every
14 months. You must realize that no one
imagined that Bond would take off in such
a phemomenal way. What you do is close
your eyes and ears a lot and carry on the
best you can."
Connery's contract
calls for two more Bonds with Saltzman
and Broccoli. Charles Feldman owns Casino
Royale. Is it true Connery wants $1
million and 10 per cent of the gross for
doing that film?
"Yes, that's
so."
Thunderball will be
another Christmas present for moviegoers
from Eon studios, and will be released by
United Artists. A blizzard of 007
merchandise will precede and attend the
movie. Jay Emmett, the chairman of
Licensing Corporation of America,
believed in Sherlock Holmes when he was a
kid. Today, he believes in James Bond.
Emmet predicts $40,000,000 in sales of
007 products, which include shoes, cards,
toys, toiletries and, it figures, the
sleeping coats 007 wears. Women can buy
those too. Bond is blue chip for
everybody, and certainly for Sean
Connery.
In The Hill, Connery
plays a sergeant with a crew cut and a
mustache. The movie opened in Paris
recently. When his face flashed on the
screen, there was an excited roar:
"James Bond."
Bond goes it alone,
but Connery will always have 007 with
him.
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