Thunderball (1965)

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND ON THUNDERBALL

It’s no exaggeration to say that the success of Goldfinger was unprecedented, and anticipation for the next movie in the burgeoning Bond franchise was at fever pitch. In fact the next movie was the most complex yet, not least due to the tortuous history in how it came to be made. Its origins go back to 1959, when the idea of taking Bond to the big screen was in its infancy, and Fleming was working with a producer called Kevin McClory to bring a Bond story to cinematic life. McClory hired Jack Whittingham to work with Fleming on plot ideas, and a treatment was worked up between the three of them, for a movie. That treatment was entitled ‘Thunderball’. Those plans fell through, so Fleming decided ‘why waste a good story’, and wrote the novel based on the treatment. When it subsequently became a huge success as a novel, McClory and Whittingham sued, saying their ideas and contributions were in the story. Subsequently, Broccoli and Saltzman got the Bond rights, and wanted to make Thunderball as the first movie, but steered clear of it when they realised the rights were not ‘clean’, and made Dr No instead. However, by 1964 a complex court case resulted in an out of court settlement, whereby EON studios (Brocolli and Salzman) got to make the movie, however McClory would retain rights to the story and be the producer of the movie.

Pictures of Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming

Having agreed the movie was to be made, the cast and crew were assembled. Guy Hamilton felt drained of ideas after Goldfinger and declined to return, but director of the first two movies, Terence Young, returned. Richard Maibaum was yet again on scriptwriting duties, and Ken Adams returned as production designer, helping create the magnificent settings and rooms that had become such a feature of Bond. Although Raquel Welch, Julie Christie and Faye Dunaway were all considered, a former Miss France, Claudine Auger, was selected for the key role of Domino.

It has to be put in context, that Goldfinger had made a phenomenon of spy movies. By the time Thunderball came along, Bond was no longer the fresh new one of a kind – it had imitators everywhere now, so something had to be done to distinguish it. Two things then… one, it was made self referencing.. Bond could now be more knowing about who he was, now the character was so embedded. Secondly – it had to be bigger. Literally, in the sense that this was the first cinemascope (widescreen) movie in the franchise, and that it was longer and had more budget and more special effects.. in fact, the most challenging aspect was that so much of the movie was underwater, the first major movie to do so. Shooting took place largely in the Bahamas, otherwise in Miami and Pinewood, with some shots taken at Silverstone. Ken Adams designed the underwater craft, with no knowledge of how they might work, and subsequently found a manufacturer who was able to build working models precisely as he envisaged.

There were other effects such as the yacht which transforms, the hijacking of the Vulcan bomber etc., and in fact this movie won the Oscar for Special Effects for John Stears… the last to date which went to an individual rather than a team. One interesting moment happened when General Charles Russhon, who had helped the production several times before, notably on Goldfinger, provided some experimental rocket fuel to use as an explosive.. Stears used it liberally on the Disco Volante not appreciating how powerful it would be, and the resulting explosion knocked out the windows on Nassau promenade – 30 miles away!! Another problem for the movie was with the key plot point of nuclear weapons. At that time, no-one knew what they looked like. However, Peter Lamont the set decorator managed to get a courtesy visit to an RAF base, and used a spycam to acquire pictures that were then used as the basis of design for the movie versions. Thunderball was filming in France for the opening title scene, when Goldfinger premiered in France. However, by this point, Sean Connery was feeling intimidated by the intrusion into his personal life, and he did not take part in the public relations efforts and did not take part in the Premieres. Return of the Aston Martin DB5, John Barry’s music, widescreen, Maurice Binder’s titles – which in this movie established the format that would stay until License to Kill, Sean Connery’s ease in the role, Moneypenny, M, Q, the most ambitious underwater filming ever undertaken, and a budget adding up to more than the combined budget of the first 3 movies - this final cocktail of ingredients put together masked the troubled origins of the story, and led to this being the most popular and successful Bond film when accounting for inflation, up to 2012, though since then Skyfall has eclipsed its success. But have tastes changed – has time taken its toll… watch it again and decide for yourself!

Trivia

During the helicopter sequence towards the end of the film, the inexperienced pilot flew too close to Sean Connery, almost killing him.

"Q"/ Major Boothroyd played by Desmond Llewelyn appears for the first time. This character was played by Peter Burton in Dr. No. When Burton was unable to return for this film, the role was recast with Llewelyn in the part. Llewelyn would reprise the role of "Q" in 16 subsequent Bond films (17 performances in all, but he didn't appear in Live and Let Die. Q is referred to by his real name, "Major Boothroyd," only in Dr. No, this movie, and The Spy Who Loved Me.

The love scene between Sean Connery and Daniela Bianchi caused censorship problems in Britain. In the scene, a sweating SPECTRE cameraman films James Bond and Tatiana Romanova in bed from a cabinet de voyeur. The British Board of Film Censors mandated to producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman that the voyeurism in the scene was too explicit and to keep the footage of the cameraman as minimal as possible or face risking having the whole sequence censored.

In 1950, a US naval attaché was assassinated and thrown from the Orient Express train by a Communist agent. This story inspired Ian Fleming's novel "From Russia With Love". Fleming's own experience at an Interpol Conference in Istanbul, Turkey provided the setting. The film To Paris with Love provided the tile.

The film's storyline deals with the Lektor Decoding Machine, the name of which was called the Spektor Decoding Machine in the original Ian Fleming novel. Its name was changed because of its similarity with the name of the fictitious criminal spy organization "Spectre". He based this device on his knowledge of the Enigma Decoding Machine from World War II. Fleming was involved with the Ultra Network who cracked the Enigma Code in 1939. The Ultra Network's activities were not released until 1975 in a book called A Man Called Intrepid. Fleming's friend Sir William Stevenson wrote the book which was published at the time when the closed period on wartime secrets expired and the records were finally declassified.

In the books, Bond often drives his beloved Bentley. The car appears in this film for the only time in the regular series.

This film and From Russia with Love are the only Bond movies to use the wipe editing technique in scene transitions.

The dictionary definition of the word "thunderball" is that it was a military term used by US soldiers to describe the mushroom cloud seen during the testing of atomic bombs. Hence its use as a title because this would be result of SPECTRE detonating the stolen atomic bombs.

Claudine Auger's heavily accented English was deemed too "French-thick" by the filmmakers after shooting initial scenes of her. Hence, Nikki Van der Zyl, who dubbed Ursula Andress' voice in Dr. No, was brought back to dub Auger's lines.

The rocket-propulsion Jet Pack seen in the film was originally designed and invented for military use. It is also known as the Small Rocket Lift Device (SRLD). The original intention as conceived during the 1950s was for soldiers to be able to improve their agility, depth of field and ability to commandeer terrain by being able to jump over impeding landmarks and waterways. The Bell Aerosystems Rocketbelt model was used for this movie. Its flight goes for twenty one seconds, and provides 1000 brake horsepower.

The many underwater scenes stem from writer Kevin McClory's interest in diving.

First 007 film in which Bond doesn't smoke. Interestingly though, a large papier-mache Marlboro box can be spotted on the right side of the screen during a festival.

The only Bond film where we get a glimpse of all 00 agents in one shot. They are summoned to M's briefing and 007 is the last to join in. He sits down in the only available chair - the seventh from the left. Only one of the other 00's faces are revealed, however, as they are filmed from behind or their faces are hidden, and Bond is seen in close-up.

The reason why many of the villains are played by Italian actors was because the original script did not involve SPECTRE but Italian gangsters in the Sicilian Mafia, with Largo as a Crime Boss.

A character called Fatima Blush was originally created by Ian Fleming as a double agent and existed in early treatments / outlines of this movie. She does not appear in either the book or movie Thunderball but does in its remake, Never Say Never Again.

To prevent anyone using the Vulcan bomber mock-up for future filming, the production team blew up the plane with dynamite. The frame work left behind has since become a reef.

Peter R. Hunt claims that the scene with a dog urinating in the shot during the Junkanoo (at 87:14) was at first left on the cutting room floor, feeling that the footage wasn't that great. However the producers, who noticed the take as they checked the dailies, enjoyed the shot so much that they demanded it remain in the film. Also, in the parade behind the dog, a group who arrived for filming as part of the parade dressed up wearing "007" on their hats. Filmmakers attempted to edit around the group, but the dog's impromptu nature call kept the "007" group in the film.

The line where Fiona derides Bond's ability to turn women to the side of right and virtue was taken from an actual critique of Goldfinger, where the critic derided Bond's ability to turn Pussy Galore away from Goldfinger.

At the preflight briefing an officer says, "You'll be flying a Vulcan armed with two atomic bombs, MOS type." MOS stands for the Ministry of Supply which in 1946 took on increased responsibilities for atomic weapons, including the H-bomb development program. The Ministry of Supply was abolished in 1959 and its responsibilities were devolved to three single-service ministries. Later, these ministries were to merge to form the Ministry of Defence. However, in the year of this film, 1965, some H-bomb types were still referred to as "MOS type."

Sean Connery performed the gun-barrel sequence for the first time because of the new Panavision process used in the movie.

Bond enters Miss Moneypenny's and hangs up his hat then enters the meeting with M. When he exits M's meeting, after his chitchat with Moneypenny he goes to the hat rack to find his hat is gone Bond states "I thought I wore a hat when I came in.." This was the final appearance of James Bond wearing a hat as a fashion statement.

Bob Simmons: The series regular stuntman in an uncredited part as Colonel Bouvard, the man in drag whom James Bond fights in the pre-title sequence. Before "she" gets punched, the part is played by Rose Alba, explaining why "his" legs look so good in a dress. Up until this film Simmons had appeared as James Bond in the gun-barrel sequence in the first three movies in the series.

STEPHEN'S MOVIE GUIDE

Thunderball (1965)

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND ON THUNDERBALL