Monday, June 17, 2013

James Bond Trivia

  From Batman Bond To That $50,000 Bikini To … Kitty Galore?!
(By Kimberly Potts, Movies.com website)

1. The first big-screen James Bond movie may have been 1962's Dr. No, but Bond's first screen appearance was in a 1954 CBS TV movie adaptation of Casino Royale.  

2. The character was called "Jimmy Bond" — and was played by actor Barry Nelson.

3. Bond author Ian Fleming is best known for his super spy series, but he also wrote the book that became the Dick Van Dyke movie classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

4. Bond was named after an American bird scientist who wrote a book that obsessive bird watcher Fleming kept in his home. He said he chose the name because it sounded so ordinary. 

5. In Fleming's novels, he described Bond as looking like scrawny, craggy Stardust composer Hoagy Charmichael.

6. Fleming was initially against the casting of Sean Connery. He called him a "snorting lorry driver."

7. Five years after leaving the Bond movie series in a money dispute, Connery returned for 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, with a $1.25 million salary and 10% of the gross, a payday that put him in the Guinness Book of Records.

8. When Connery's eventual Bond replacement, George Lazenby, showed up for a casting meeting with producer Albert R. Broccoli and company, he was actually wearing one of Connery's suits. Connery had forgotten to pick it up from the tailor, and it was sold to car salesman/male model-turned-actor Lazenby. 

9. Avengers star Diana Rigg played James Bond's only wife, Tracy, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She and Lazenby clashed so much that a couple of weeks after the movie's opening, they sniped at each other in a series of newspaper interviews.

10. When Broccoli and his fellow producers had to replace Connery again after Diamonds Are Forever, they toyed with the idea of eschewing actors altogether and hiring a military man to play 007 instead. They even went as far as putting casting call ads in military magazines, but changed their plans when Equity, the British actors union, objected.

11. Though movie Bond has become famous for his constant stash of cool gadgets, the first 007 flick, Dr. No, had Connery's Bond getting his spy groove on with nothing more than  a Geiger counter and a (mildly) souped-up watch.

12. In an initial treatment for the Dr. No script, the writers changed Fleming's book storyline to create a new villain who carried a pet monkey with him everywhere. The monkey was named Dr. No, which prompted Bond producer Broccoli to reject it and demand a rewrite.

13. Goldfinger (1964) was the first 007 movie where the cars were a co-star, including the famous Aston Martin DB5.

14. Then-Beatle Paul McCartney bought a Goldfinger Aston Martin for himself immediately after seeing the movie, telling an interviewer, "I'm quite a James Bond fan, you know." 

15. Original Bond girl Ursula Andress, whose emergence from the water in her teeny white bikini is one of the all-time most memorable movie scenes, was cast as Honey Ryder in Dr. No after producer Harry Saltzman saw a photo of her in a wet T-shirt.

16. Andress' famous bikini sold for more than $50,000 to Planet Hollywood owner Robert Earl in 2001.

17. Goldfinger bad girl Pussy Galore was named after a 1950s madam in Saratoga, N.Y. Producers toyed with the idea of changing the suggestive name to Kitty Galore, but when actress Honor Blackman was photographed with England's Prince Philip at a movie premiere, a newspaper captioned the photo "Pussy and the Prince," and producers decided that meant the public would accept the name.

18. When Live and Let Die (1973) was released in South Africa, the love scenes between  newbie Bond Roger Moore and African-American actress Gloria Hendry (playing Bond girl Rosie Carver) had to be cut because the apartheid government prohibited interracial affairs.

19. The Bond movies make up the second most successful movie franchise in history, after Star Wars.

20. The last Bond movie, 2002's Die Another Day starring Pierce Brosnan, is the most successful 007 flick of all time, earning more than $450 million in worldwide box office revenue.

21. The search to replace Brosnan for Casino Royale reportedly resulted in a list of 200 contenders, including Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, Eric Bana and Julian McMahon.

22. Among the actors who were offered the role of James Bond through the years but turned it down are: James Brolin, Burt Reynolds and Batman TV star Adam West.

23. Casino Royale's Daniel Craig is the youngest Bond ever — at 38, younger than the series itself.

24. Craig told Premiere magazine that he was in a Whole Foods grocery store in Baltimore when he got the call from Bond producer Barbara Broccoli in which she officially told him he would be the next James Bond. "I think the story's rather sad that I wasn't on a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean," Craig says. "I was in a f---in' Whole Foods." 

25. Hate-filled craignotbond.com (now offline) is just one of several websites that fiercely have objected to the casting of blond Bond Craig.

26. After Casino Royale's big poker game, the movie's final act features a torture scene in which Bond, captured by his nemesis Le Chiffre, finds himself, and his, uh, little James Bond, in a precarious position, as he's strapped to a chair with a hole cut in the bottom. "From that moment on, when I sit in that chair, I'm hanging out from under there, or at least - you know, I'm not giving myself that much praise, but it's definitely down there," says Craig.

27. MGM planned the first ever Bond movie spin-off, featuring Halle Berry's Die Another Day character Jinx, in 2003. But when female action flicks like the Tomb Raider sequel flopped, the studio made Casino Royale instead.

28. Bond girls have had somewhat of a "pinup" reputation all along, but ever since Halle Berry's Die Another Day performance, the franchise has been courting Oscar-winning actresses. Both Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron were approached for the role of Casino Royale's Vesper Lynd before Eva Green signed on. 

29. Fleming, like James Bond, counts scrambled eggs as one of his favorite dishes. He even included the recipe for making Bond's favorite eggs in a 007 short story.

30. Did you know there's a James Bond Jr.? He's not 007's son, but his teen-age nephew, who starred in a short-lived syndicated cartoon in 1991. Jr. was a British prep school student who hung out with I.Q., Q's gadget-happy grandson, and Gordo Leiter, son of Felix.  31. Jr.'s catchphrase? "Bond, James Bond … Junior."

32. Fleming himself was an officer in the Naval Intelligence Division, and even claimed that the casino storyline in Casino Royale was inspired by an experience he had during a World War II trip to Lisbon.

33. Blofeld's volcano lair for You Only Live Twice cost more to build than the entire budget for Dr. No.

34. 1979's Moonraker replaced For Your Eyes Only as the post-The Spy Who Loved Me Bond flick because producers wanted to cash in on the recent popularity of Star Wars by sending 007 into space.

35. Sheena Easton performed the Oscar-nominated theme song for For Your Eyes Only, but she was the producers' second choice. Blondie originally wrote and recorded a theme song, but producers rejected it, and Blondie's For Your Eyes Only was relegated to the band's 1982 album The Hunter.

36. Duran Duran's A View to a Kill theme song is the only 007 theme to reach #1 on the U.S. pop music charts.

37. Welsh singer Shirley Bassey is the only singer to have recorded more than one Bond movie theme, performing the title tracks for 1964's Goldfinger, 1971's Diamonds Are Forever and 1979's Moonraker.

38. Casino Royale's song, You Know My Name, is performed by Audioslave and Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.

39. 1983's Octopussy was the 13th "official" Bond movie, produced by Cubby Broccoli's EON Productions. It was released in the same year as Never Say Never Again, the "unofficial" Bond flick that featured the return of Sean Connery to the 007 role. Never, a remake of 1965's Thunderball, is considered an unofficial Bond movie because it wasn't a Broccoli production.

40. The 22nd movie in the 007 franchise, known by the working title Bond 22, is already scheduled for release on Nov. 7, 2008, with Craig returning in the title role.


Movie Title Year Actor Director Total Box Office Budget
#         (Worldwide)  
1 Dr. No 1962 Sean Connery Terence Young $59,600,000 $1,000,000
2 From Russia with Love 1963 Sean Connery Terence Young $78,900,000 $2,500,000
3 Goldfinger 1964 Sean Connery Guy Hamilton $124,900,000 $3,500,000
4 Thunderball 1965 Sean Connery Terence Young $141,200,000 $11,000,000
5 You Only Live Twice 1967 Sean Connery Lewis Gilbert $111,600,000 $9,500,000
A Casino Royale 1967 David Niven Lewis Gilbert $44,400,000 $12,000,000
6 On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1969 George Lazenby Peter R. Hunt $87,400,000 $7,000,000
7 Diamonds Are Forever 1971 Sean Connery Guy Hamilton $116,000,000 $7,200,000
8 Live and Let Die 1973 Roger Moore Guy Hamilton $161,800,000 $7,000,000
9 The Man with the Golden Gun 1974 Roger Moore Guy Hamilton $97,600,000 $7,000,000
10 The Spy Who Loved Me 1977 Roger Moore Lewis Gilbert $185,400,000 $14,000,000
11 Moonraker 1979 Roger Moore Lewis Gilbert $210,300,000 $34,000,000
12 For Your Eyes Only 1981 Roger Moore John Glen $195,300,000 $28,000,000
13 Octopussy 1983 Roger Moore John Glen $187,500,000 $27,500,000
B Never Say Never Again 1983 Sean Connery John Glen $160,000,000 $36,000,000
14 A View to a Kill 1985 Roger Moore John Glen $152,400,000 $30,000,000
15 The Living Daylights 1987 Timothy Dalton John Glen $191,200,000 $40,000,000
16 Licence to Kill 1989 Timothy Dalton John Glen $156,200,000 $42,000,000
17 GoldenEye 1995 Pierce Brosnan Martin Campbell $353,400,000 $60,000,000
18 Tomorrow Never Dies 1997 Pierce Brosnan Roger Spottiswoode $346,600,000 $110,000,000
19 The World Is Not Enough 1999 Pierce Brosnan Michael Apted $390,000,000 $135,000,000
20 Die Another Day 2002 Pierce Brosnan Lee Tamahori $456,000,000 $142,000,000
21 Casino Royale 2006 Daniel Craig Martin Campbell $594,293,106 $150,000,000
22 Quantum of Solace 2008 Daniel Craig Marc Forster $321,857,447 $230,000,000
          $4,397,593,106 $1,098,000,000

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