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The novel of You Only Live Twice (YOLT) was started in 1962, when Ian Fleming took a vacation in Japan, after suffering a heart attack. In 1964, it became a bestseller, with many of the critics of the time struck by its reoccurring motif of death, not least in the opening haiku –
"You only live twice
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face"
For the moviemakers, selecting the next novel after the phenomenal success of Thunderball was a no-brainer – they should use the novel generally regarded as Flemings best… “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. However the need for winter locations meant this would mean a significant delay, and YOLT was fasttracked instead. Lewis Gilbert was hired as director, and the producers, veteran Bond production designer Ken Adams and he went to Japan to scout for locations. Two things became clear – the novel itself was unfilmable, being somewhat akin to a travelogue and not Fleming’s strongest novel. Secondly, the locations were unfindable. This was solved when flying over an area of Japan known for its volcanoes and Cubby Brocolli asked Ken Adams if he could design an interior set of a volcano, for Blofelds’ lair. Adams said of course he could, but it would cost a million dollars.. Cubby didn’t blink, and the largest interior sound stage and set in the UK and the most ambitious interior set ever designed, were given the green light as Ken Adams started work on the massive volcano lair. The return journey from Japan was delayed a day due to an unexpected opportunity to see a ninja training school, but had they taken their planned flight they would have perished, as the plane crashed into a mountain 25 minutes after take off, killing all on board. Regular editor Peter Hunt was also hired again this time as second unit director. The problems in creating a story to replace that of the novel, were resolved by hiring well known author Roald Dahl as the screenwriter. He leaned on current events – the space race, to create a (then) topical story, a tactic which would continue in later movies as Fleming material became scarcer.
During the filming, Johnny Jordan the aerial cameraman was involved in an aerial collision and had his leg sliced off, though amazingly there was a nearby convention of surgeons who managed to reattach it. Although ultimately he lost his foot, he went on to film various other movies. The original casting of Blofeld was unsuccessful – he looked like a benevolent Santa Claus instead of a villain – and the role was recast with Donald Pleasance, to show Blofeld in full for the first time.
The final assault of the lair would take over 100 stuntmen, and used some innovative new techniques in movie stuntwork including the use of trampolines and fall arresters.
One key casting issue was that Sean Connery’s contract was running out – and this led to the announcement during filming that Sean Connery was going to retire from the role, and that this would be his last Bond movie. Indeed, the crowds in japan exacerbated Connery’s feel that the role was becoming too onerous in its intrusion into his personal life, as the Japanese crowds were extraordinary, on one occasion attempting to follow him into the bathroom in his hotel. This news coincided with the other factor threatening the success of the movie – a rival Bond film, Casino Royale, starring David Niven as Bond (and many others).
The producers of the rival pictures agreed on a staggered release schedule so that the films would not compete, but Columbia reneged due to overruns on the shooting schedule, and the films were in theatres at the same time. Although now seen as a poor parody of Bond and much less known than the EON films, at the time this movie was seen as a considerable threat, leading the advertising campaigns to be extravagant, and stressing “Sean Connery IS James Bond”. In any event, YOLT was a success critically and commercially, though most agreed it was not as fresh as its predecessors and the formula had not been as successful.
So was YOLT a product of its time – grown bloated with the threat of competition, or is it the series at its peak, with Sean Connery the glue holding both the old and new elements together…? Try watching it again and make up your own mind….
Trivia
The primary reason for converting the Toyota 2000GT coupes into convertibles was Sean Connery's height; he was simply too tall to fit into the GT which was notoriously too small for anyone over 5'8". Connery's height was 6'2".
Little Nellie is based on the real-life Wallis Autogyro. Its inventor, Wing Commander K.H. Wallis, actually flew Little Nellie in the film. The machine was incorporated into the plot after production designer Ken Adam heard Wallis in a radio interview discussing his invention. Wallis had to log 85 flights in total to film the sequence. It was all filmed outside of Japan because Japanese Law forbade the firing of rockets in the air.
Tsai Chin, who played Bond's playmate in the opening pre-credit sequence, returned to the Bond series nearly 40 years later when she played one of the players in Le Chiffre's big poker match in Casino Royale.
Ken Adam's volcano set was constructed at Pinewood Studios outside London and consisted of a movable helicopter platform, a working monorail system, a launch pad and a full scale rocket mock-up that could simulate lift-off. 700 tonnes of structural steel and 200 miles of tubular steel were used. Adam once said that the set used more steel than that used for the London Hilton Hotel. The set also used 200 tonnes of plaster, 500,000 tubular couplings and over 250,000 square yards of canvas were all employed in the construction of the set which cost just over $1 million.
Early production sketch by Ken Adams of Volcano lair
Before the title sequence there is an outdoor shot of a Russian radar station, where US and Soviet leaders are having a crisis meeting. This was in fact filmed at Magerø in the Oslo fjord in Norway (uncredited), to get a Nordic winter light feel to the footage. The dome-shaped radar station is still in operation today, run - as it was then - by the Norwegian military.
First Bond film in which 007 does not visit Britain at all. Because of this plot point, M and Miss Moneypenny are given portable offices - a gimmick reused in The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker.
First film to show James Bond in his Royal Navy uniform and to clearly indicate that he holds the rank of Commander.
Last Bond film to make extensive use of voice dubbing. In this film and most of those made previously, many of Bond's leading ladies and villains were overdubbed by other actors. This practice rarely occurred in future Bond films.
Burt Kwouk as SPECTRE Agent No. #3 is dubbed. Kwouk had previously played Mr. Ling in the earlier James Bond movie Goldfinger, and of course went on to become the sidekick of Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.
A scene where a helicopter grabs a car of Spectre with a magnet was an idea conceived by Dana Broccoli, wife of producer Albert R. Broccoli.
Out of simple courtesy on Bond's part, this is the only film in which he accepts a Martini (from Henderson) that is stirred, not shaken. This is an intentional joke by the producers.
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