![]() Eventually Fleming came around, not least because female friends of his were all too ready to tell him just how attractive the new star was. Fleming, who had very clear ideas about his personal vision for Bond, wasn't sold, thinking Connery seemed too rough and was more stuntman than charismatic gentleman spy. When it came time to cast the first big-screen Bond, Broccoli and Saltzman looked at hundreds of actors for the role, and ended up backing little-known Scottish actor Sean Connery for the part. Ian Fleming and Sean Connery on the Jamaica set of Dr. Ian Fleming didn't want Sean Connery as Bond. No, when an MI6 armorer named "Boothroyd" (played by Peter Burton), trades Bond's Beretta for the PPK. In Fleming's early novels, Bond carries a 0.25 caliber Beretta pistol, a very portable gun that drew objections from firearms expert Geoffrey Boothroyd, who took it upon himself to write to Fleming and dismiss the Beretta as "a lady's gun." Fleming took Boothroyd's suggestion and gave Bond a Walther PPK, now the character's signature gun, instead. James Bond owes his famous gun to a firearms expert. So one of Bond's famous fans also caused a ripple effect that helped the movies get made. The endorsement sent paperback sales of Fleming's novels into high gear just as Saltzman and Broccoli set out to make deals to finance their first Bond film. Kennedy, who named From Russia With Love one of his favorite books in a 1961 Life magazine article. One key early Bond fan? President John F. These days, the Bond films have a lot of famous fans, but that wasn't necessarily the case back in the days before the films. JFK had a hand in helping to get the Bond movies made. Fortunately for Broccoli, he ultimately partnered with Saltzman to make the films, launching one of cinema's most profitable collaborations in the process. Fleming was, of course, offended, and ended up selling the rights to producer Harry Saltzman instead. not so much.Īllen told Fleming that not only were the Bond novels not good enough for films, but that they might not even make good television. Broccoli was a huge fan of the Bond books. ![]() In the late 1950s, while caring for his sick wife Nedra Clark, Broccoli sent then-producing partner Irving Allen to London to meet with Fleming about securing the movie rights to his novels. But Broccoli actually, through no fault of his own, blew his shot at getting the rights to 007 the first time around. "Cubby" Broccoli's name is synonymous with the James Bond film series, and it's hard to imagine a world in which his family isn't involved with the franchise. Albert “Cubby” Broccoli blew his first shot to make a Bond movie.Ĭubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman chatting on a beach in Jamaica. McClory's legal claim to the story would haunt Bond's eventual film producers for decades. He wrote Thunderball without giving any credit to McClory or Whittingham, and published it in 1961. When the film project fell through, Fleming went back home to Jamaica and decided the idea would do just fine as the plot for the next Bond novel. Together, the three men hammered out a treatment about a nuclear weapons heist that they named Thunderball. In the late 1950s, before Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli came calling, Ian Fleming set out to try and make a Bond film of his own, with the help of producer Kevin McClory and writer Jack Whittingham. Thunderball was almost the first James Bond movie. The adaptation, featuring an American gambler named "Jimmy Bond" (played by Barry Nelson), was almost immediately forgotten. Despairing of Hollywood, Fleming gave the adaptation rights for his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, to CBS Television, which adapted the book as part of the anthology series Climax! in 1954. James Bond's first on-screen appearance was on network television.Īlmost from the beginning, Fleming saw his creation as a character who could thrive in the film world, but quickly grew frustrated as he found that many producers didn't initially agree. When the real Bond later discovered this, Fleming apologized, and offered to allow the ornithologist to name a nasty species of bird after him one day. He lifted it from the cover of one of his birdwatching "bibles" at home in Jamaica: Birds of the West Indies by James Bond. ![]() When he began writing his spy thrillers, Fleming sought out a masculine yet not-too-flashy name for his hero, but he didn't just pluck "James Bond" out of thin air. Jerry Freilich, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons American ornithologist James Bond, circa 1974. ![]()
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