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Taschens massive new bookJames Bond.Dr.
Excerpt from JAMES BOND.
My books, said Ian Fleming,tremble on the brink of corn.
One has to be very careful.
United Artists announced the deal with producers Albert Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman on June 29.
However, United Artists had different ideas.
Nowas the one to do first.
It was the cheapest one to make.
No, which they hoped to begin shooting before the end of the year.
Its the acting plum of the decade.
Everyones been after it.
Cary Grant, David Niven, Trevor Howard, and James Mason are interested.
Hitchcock wanted to buy it for Cary Grant, and Jimmy Woolf tried to buy it for Larry Harvey.
But I guess my timing just happened to be right.
Flemings physical descriptions of James Bond were very well drawn, Cubby explained.
Well, we had our blueprint, but where was there an actor to fit it?
But he was strongly religious and was uneasy about sex and violence.
James Fox was also put forward, but he, likewise, was reluctant because of strong religious scruples.
Roger Moore [then starring in American TV showMaverick] had also been touted as a possible Bond.
But at that time I thought him slightly too young, perhaps a shade too pretty.
He had what we called the Arrow collar look: too buttoned-down smart.
It belonged to an actor I had met briefly a few years before in London.
He was a handsome, personable guy, projecting a kind of animal virility.
I phoned Dana to come down to see the picture.
Danas reaction was immediate: Thats our Bond!
She thought he would be absolutely ideal for the role.
I knew that her judgment was spot-on.
Ben Fisz suggested that maybe Sean would make a good James Bond.
Harry remembered looking at several of Connerys early films.
He was dreadful in most of them, we thought.
He had suffered a small but fatal miscasting all the way down the line.
Harry, Cubby, and Bud Ornstein waited for their potential star.
Connery arrived wearing baggy trousers, loafers, and a five oclock shadow.
Everything about Connery that day was convincingly James Bond.
Harry and I asked him a lot of questions.
His answers, in that very appealing Scottish accent of his, were friendly and direct.
There was no conceit to him and no false modesty, either.
Everybody accepted that, on a strictly limited production budget, big salaries were out.
When we explained this to Sean the discussion became very lively.
I wont work for fooking nothing!
It was quite a performance.
Privately, I was quite amused by it.
And I gather that Sean himself admitted sometime later that it had been a bit of an act.
But it all ended in a friendly way.
We agreed on his salary, and he walked out happy.
Cubby left for New York, to meet with United Artists, armed with photos of Sean Connery.
Meanwhile, the script was going through some extreme changes.
He was just Fu Manchu with two steel hooks.
It was 1961, and we felt that audiences wouldnt stand for that kind of stuff anymore.
So, bright boys that we were, we decided that there would be no Dr. No.
Wolf and I thought it was marvelous, and we showed it to Cubby and Harry.
Cubby was outraged, in his usual good-natured way.
Youve got to throw the whole damn thing out.
No monkey, dyou hear?
Its got to be the way the book is!
He made a very strong point about it.
Now I think about it, it was just a temporary collaborators aberration.
But Cubby wasnt going to forget it.
Ian Fleming attended several of our meetings well before the picture started, Cubby remembered.
It was good having him around.
He never interfered in any way.
Ian Fleming wrote, James Bond is a blunt instrument wielded by a government department.
He is quiet, hard, ruthless, sardonic, fatalistic.
But not always, and certainly not if it interferes with his job.
He likes gambling, golf, and fast motor cars.
They are tough, uncompromising men and so are the people who work for and with them.
Concurrent with script development, Harry and Cubby were looking for a director.
Cubby recalled, There was no great stampede to take on the job.
They turned it down.
Maybe they all thought the idea wasnt good enough, corny perhaps.
We finally offered the job to Terence Young, who had done such good work for me before.
Young signed a contract on October 15 and committed to 26 weeks work on the film.
Young remembered, I knew Ian Fleming, but I never particularly liked him.
I thought he was a pompous son of a bitch, immensely arrogant.
Now lets start level.
He said, My, youre a prickly guy, arent you?
and I said, Yes I am, now lets go and have dinner quietly, which we did.
We left the party and went off and had dinner.
We eventually became enormously good friends.
Ian was an intensely shy person, which never showed.
Bond was how Fleming saw himself; the sardonic, cruel mouth; the hard, tight-skinned face.
Ian was a charmer, though, once you got to know him.
He was one of the most delightful people I ever met.
He was adamant: he preferred the cash.Young got a flat fee of 17,500 for directing the movie.
On October 24, Bob Simmons was hired as stunt coordinator.
Terence never looked anything less than immaculate on the set.
And throughout it all he remained cucumber cool.
It was fascinating to watch.
Suitably chilled, of course.
He traveled first class, did Terence.
The way Bond dressed was intrinsic to the character.
We were lucky in one sense.
I believe that Terence Young, like Ian Fleming, subconsciously saw himself as James Bond.
He had a fair claim to the fantasy.
Hed read the books, too, was a bon viveur and knew the odd countess here and there.
Excerpted from TASCHENsJames Bond.
Dr. Noby Paul Duncan.
Reprinted by permission of TASCHEN, EON Productions Limited and Danjaq LLC.
