Little Book of Bond E-Book

Michael Heatley

• Herausgeber: G2 Rights
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 100

Beschreibung

Little Book of Bond is a 128-page hardback book in the million selling Little Book series written by Michael Heatley. This fantastic companion is a perfect entry into the world of the most well-known spy in the world. From the early movie release of Dr No fans of the Bond franchise have been fascinated by Bond's world of fast cars, fantastic looking girls and unique gadgets. This superb book looks at the history of the series and explores the actors who have played him from Sean Connery and Roger Moore to the more recent incarnations through actors Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.

Leseprobe

Contents

Chapter One: The History of Bond

Chapter Two: The Actors

Chapter Three: Bond Girls

Chapter Four: The Movies

Chapter Five: The Cars

Chapter Six: The Gadgets

Chapter Seven: Villains

Chapter Eight: Themes and Songs

Chapter Nine: Collectables

Chapter Ten: Iconography

Chapter Eleven: Quotes

Chapter Twelve: The Broccoli Dynasty

Chapter Thirteen: 007 Trivia

Publishing Rights

Chapter One: The History of Bond

From creation to Quantum…the whole story.

The creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming, was born in Mayfair, London on 28 May 1908, the second of four sons. His father Valentine, a Conservative MP, was killed in the First World War, shortly before Ian’s ninth birthday, leaving his formidable widow Eve (nicknamed “M” by her sons) in charge of the family. A rebellious, moody but charming boy, Ian attended Eton where he was a distinguished athlete but lived in the shadow of his brilliant elder brother Peter. In 1926, at his mother’s insistence, he enrolled for officer training at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Finding the strict regime absurd, he left in September 1927 without taking a commission.

Fleming was sent to a private finishing school in Kitzbühel in the Austrian Tyrol, where he wrote his first short story, then attended the Universities of Munich and Geneva, studying German and French. Returning to England, he failed the Foreign Office’s entrance exam for the diplomatic service before taking a job at the international news agency Reuters when he was 23. In 1933, he was sent to Moscow to cover the trial of six British subjects charged with spying. Later that year, he resigned from Reuters to become a stockbroker.

On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Fleming was headhunted for a job in Naval Intelligence, as personal assistant to the director. He quickly attained the status of commander – the same rank as James Bond. As with his Russian sojourn, Fleming’s wartime experiences provided him with a great deal of material for his novels.

*Ian Fleming and his wife on their way to their home Goldeneye in Jamaica.

After being discharged, Fleming became foreign manager at Kemsley Newspapers, publisher of the Sunday Times, which allowed him to travel abroad frequently on assignments. In 1953 he took charge of Atticus, the paper’s equivalent of a gossip column. Fleming had visited Jamaica for a conference in 1944 and was so enchanted by the island that he bought some land overlooking the ocean and built a house, Goldeneye, there. Fleming accepted the job at Kemsley’s on condition that he be allowed two months paid holiday per year, allowing him to escape the English winter by spending every January and February in Jamaica. From 1952 until his death in 1964, he would use the vacation to write a Bond book.

Fleming joked that the first novel, Casino Royale, was written as a reaction to marrying for the first time at 43. His wife, Anne, was one of many women in his life. Their affair began during the war and continued after she married Viscount Rothermere in 1945. When Anne became pregnant with the couple’s only child, Caspar in 1952, she divorced Rothermere.

*Ian Fleming on the beach near Goldeneye, 1964.

Fleming had been harbouring the notion of writing “the spy story to end all spy stories” for several years. Antecedents included Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim and works by Dornford Yates, William Le Queux and E Phillips Oppenheim. Fleming was also influenced by John Buchan, author of The Thirty-nine Steps, W Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden series and HC “Sapper” McNeile’s patriotic hero Bulldog Drummond.

Although many role models for Bond have been suggested, including Peter Fleming who himself published a novel in 1951 and helped secure Casino Royale a berth at publishers Cape, the character most likely represented an idealised version of Ian Fleming himself. 007 and his creator shared many of the same tastes in cigarettes, clothes, food and women, whilst Bond’s appearance was based on American composer/musician Hoagy Carmichael.

Casino Royale, published in April 1953, was a notable success for a first novel and was followed by 13 more books, including two volumes of short stories. The Bond books were generally well-received by the critics – who dubbed the author’s vigorous style the “Fleming Sweep” – and popular with the public, but the literary establishment sneered at them. Fleming had an ambivalent relationship with his creation, referring to Bond as “a blunt instrument” and “a cardboard booby”. He dallied with killing 007 off at the end of From Russia With Love but, of course, the secret agent returned.

*Ian Fleming in his study with a copy of ‘For Your Eyes Only’.

Aware of the screen potential of his creation, Fleming made several attempts to bring Bond to the cinema or television. The first adaptation was Casino Royale which appeared on US television in 1954, starring Barry Nelson as an American “Jimmy” Bond. The following year, Fleming sold the film rights for Casino Royale to producer Charles K Feldman, resulting in a spoof Bond film in 1967. A deal for the rest of the novels was finally made in 1961 with Eon Productions, the production partnership of Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

The series began with Dr No in 1962, with the relatively unknown Sean Connery in the lead role. The box-office success of the movies reignited interest in Fleming’s novels and spawned a host of imitators. Having survived a heart attack in 1961, Fleming declined to compromise his lifestyle which included considerable amounts of cigarettes and alcohol. He suffered a second, fatal coronary in August 1964, before he could revise the first draft of The Man With the Golden Gun.

Shortly after his death, the third 007 film, Goldfinger, was released, setting Bond-mania in motion. James Bond became one of the world’s best-known fictional characters and the movies became the highest-grossing and longest-running series in movie history, periodically renewing and reinventing itself as George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig succeeded Connery over the years.

Fleming had transferred his copyright in Bond to Glidrose Productions which authorised new 007 novels after his death and English novelist and Bond buff Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Markham, produced Colonel Sun in 1968. Apart from novelisations The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker (as the films were radically different from the novels), 13 years elapsed before the next new Bond book when British thriller writer John Gardner stepped into Fleming’s shoes in 1981. He was replaced in 1997 by American Bond expert and screenwriter Raymond Benson.

*Ursula Andress and Peter Sellers stars of the 1967 Casino Royale.

When Benson resigned in 2002, the company (now known as Ian Fleming Publications and run by the author’s family) chose comic actor Charlie Higson to create a series of five prequels featuring “Young Bond”. To mark the centenary of Fleming’s birth, the adult Bond returned to action in 2008. Devil May Care by British novelist Sebastian Faulks is set in 1967 after the events of The Man With The Golden Gun, Fleming’s final novel.

Book List

By Ian Fleming

CASINO ROYALE (1953)

LIVE AND LET DIE (1954)

MOONRAKER (1955)

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1956)

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1957)

DOCTOR NO (1958)

GOLDFINGER (1959)

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (Short Stories) (1960)

THUNDERBALL (1961)

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1962)

ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1963)

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1964)

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1965)

OCTOPUSSY AND THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (Short Stories) (1966)

By Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis)

COLONEL SUN (1968)

By Christopher Wood

JAMES BOND, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)

JAMES BOND AND MOONRAKER (1979)

By John Gardner

LICENCE RENEWED (1981)

FOR SPECIAL SERVICES (1982)

ICEBREAKER (1983)

ROLE OF HONOUR (1984)

NOBODY LIVES FOREVER (1986)

NO DEALS MR BOND (1987)

SCORPIUS (1988)

WIN LOSE OR DIE (1989)

LICENCE TO KILL (Novelisation) (1989)

BROKENCLAW (1990)

THE MAN FROM BARBAROSSA (1991)

DEATH IS FOREVER (1992)

NEVER SEND FLOWERS (1993)

SEAFIRE (1994)

GOLDENEYE (Novelisation) (1995)

COLD (COLDFALL in the US) (1996)

*A selection of James Bond books.

By Raymond Benson

ZERO MINUS TEN (1997)

TOMORROW NEVER DIES (Novelisation) (1997)

THE FACTS OF DEATH (1998)

HIGH TIME TO KILL (1999)

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (Novelisation) (1999)

DOUBLESHOT (2000)

NEVER DREAM OF DYING (2001)

DIE ANOTHER DAY (Novelisation) (2002)

THE MAN WITH THE RED TATTOO (2002)

By Charlie Higson

SILVERFIN (2005)

BLOOD FEVER (2006)

DOUBLE OR DIE (2007)

HURRICANE GOLD (2007)

BY ROYAL COMMAND (2008)

By Sebastian Faulks

DEVIL MAY CARE (2008)

Chapter Two: The Actors

Casting the hero was crucial for the success of the James Bond series. Various actors were in the frame: Ian Fleming favoured David Niven – who, like Cary Grant, was too big for the modest budget – whilst Roger Moore, Richard Burton and Patrick McGoohan were in contention. The Daily Express newspaper, then serialising Fleming’s novels in comic-strip form, conducted a poll for its readers’ choice as 007, which Sean Connery topped. The rest, including his five successors, is movie history!

Sean Connery

Date of birth: 25 August 1930

Place of birth: Edinburgh, Scotland

Height: 6’ 1 ½’’

Colour of eyes: Brown

Weight: Dr. No (1962) 177lbs

Never Say Never Again (1983) 190lbs

Date of first Bond film: 1962

Number of Bond films: Seven

Retired: 1971 and 1983

The first and, for many, the definitive screen Bond, Sean Connery was born Thomas Sean Connery. He started work, aged nine, delivering milk and left school at 13 after which he was employed as a milkman, labourer, cement mixer and coffin polisher. At 16, he joined the Royal Navy, further honing athletic physique by boxing and weightlifting. Discharged after three years because of a duodenal ulcer, he became a male model at Edinburgh School of Art.

*Sean Connery, the first screen James Bond in From Russia With Love.

Co-producer Cubby Broccoli was won over after seeing him in the Disney film Darby O’Gill And The Little People, particularly impressed by his light-footed grace – unusual in such a tall man – and range of acting experience. Crucially, Broccoli’s wife highlighted Connery’s appeal to women. Fleming was initially dismayed at the choice but changed his mind after seeing the movie.

Dr No director Terence Young had worked previously with Connery and initially shared some of Fleming’s misgivings that the actor had too many rough edges for the part. Under Young’s tutelage Connery learnt to apply a veneer of sophistication over his harsh Scottish exterior. Young and Connery were also largely responsible for injecting humour into 007.

*Sean Connery in a scene from the film Dr. No, 1962.

By You Only Live Twice, Connery was weary of the role; his frustrations exacerbated by long production schedules and frequent delays. The final straw was the constant invasion of his privacy during the making of You Only Live Twice.

After the box-office disappointments of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with George Lazenby in the title role, United Artists tempted Connery to return by offering him over £1 million – a huge sum for 1971 which he used to set up the Scottish International Educational Trust charity. The actor’s seventh and final screen outing as the secret agent came in the unofficial 1983 Bond movie Never Say Never Again.

Disillusionment with the studio system caused Connery to take a break from acting for three years. Roles in The Name Of The Rose and Highlander reignited his career. He went on to win an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1987 for his role as an Irish cop in The Untouchables. Connery also made memorable appearances in The Hunt For Red October, The Russia House, The Rock and Entrapment, maintaining his distinctive Scottish burr whatever the nationality of his character.

*Sean Connery rehearses a bedroom scene with actress Daniela Bianchi, for the James Bond film From Russia With Love.