thunderball obsessional: james bond and his thunderbirds!

Thank you to Christina Hayward (nee Morse) for sharing her memories with me of the filming of the title sequence.

"We were not asked to go naked as mentioned, as in those days it was against the law to move if you were naked. We were given two plasters to cover our nipples which were not waterproof so came off and we had a small triangle to cover the front strategic area and we were covered in black pan cake which took days to remove. Filming was not too great as we had to swim beneath a rostrum of wood and 11 foot down and in cold water. Holding our breath was quite a feat swimming from one end to the other as Maurice was hoping that by having the rostrum it would prevent the water from moving too much!!! We were booked for one day but luckily for us the camera guy hung it out for three days."

Christina Hayward

"The only thing I remember of Maurice Binder was that he took photographs of Jean’s backside as she used to do a dolphin dive to get down to the depth we had to swim in front of the camera, as I mentioned this was 11ft down, quite heavy on the lungs as the water was so cold. When I had to get down to the depth for filming I used my arms, it shows this on one of the photographs - I thought it was most unelegant. On another shot I was told to swim towards the camera and as I was going up to spread my legs open (I thought that was a bit purvey!!!)"

Christina Hayward

"The only thing that sticks in my mind was that we were chauffeured to and from home and our pay was £27.00 per day. At my day job I was getting £13.00 per week as a typist!! At the time it was just another film to earn a few pennies, but who would have thought how many times these films would be played in the next 50 years, I only wish we could have got royalties!!"

Christina Hayward

"In the pre-credit sequence, Bond's Aston Martin sprays the villains, and the screen fills with water. I thought it could lead into the girls swimming around, so I shot them in an underwater tank, in silhouette. These were two gals who swam professionally, in nightclub tanks, but they said they didn't want to swim nude. I told them that if they wore bikinis, it wouldn't quite work. As a compromise they agreed to makeup as dark as possible. Then they walked out on the deck of the tank, absolutely nude and said: "This is not us. We're unrecognizable." We photographed them underwater against white panel and I did the bubbles against a black velvet background. It was all shot in black and white and I put the colour in optically."

Maurice Binder

After the global success of 'Goldfinger' the next film in the series was filmed for the first time in anamorphic widescreen (Panavision - 2.35 : 1), giving the film the epic look. The original gun barrel had featured Bob Simmons on black and white film. The 'Thunderball' gun barrel was filmed with Sean Connery on colour film.