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August 03, 2005

Secret History of the British Secret Service

The Real Reason Bond Battled SPECTRE (And Why He Stopped Battling SPECTRE)

Just in case anyone cares. The Colussus writes:

My understanding is that the Broccoli/Saltzman team, working in the early 60s, were so freaked out by the Cuban Missile crisis that they wanted to back off the East vs. West divide and provide some escapist fare. I don't think they did it because they sympathized with the commies or were trying to argue for moral equivalence per se -- neither of them were traditional Hollywood leftist types. If they had been, I'm sure our man Jimmy Stewart would have managed to rat them out or performed a barehanded strangulation on them. :-)

Okay, I have little doubt that it was the desire to avoid the "reactionary" politics of Fleming's books (where SMERSH, a Russian counterespionage unit, was usually the bad guy, at least in the beginning of the series) and replace SMERSH with a less political villain. An organization that everyone could agree was bad 'n stuff, because they just wanted to take over, extort, and/or destroy the world.

Here's about how SPECTRE came to be, and why it disappeared from the films. Wikipedia has info on this, but here's my version.

Fleming's books were only marginally successful when they first came out. He considered killing off Bond, but was told not to by a friend, and one of my favorite authors, Raymond Chandler, who thought this British Secret Service hero might have a bit of life and commercial potential in him yet. (Actually, at the end of From Russia With Love, Bond is poisoned and seems to die. I think this might have been where Fleming was debating whether or not to just leave the guy on the slab. But, thanks to Chandler's intervention, James Bond Would Return.)

Fleming tried to get Hollywood interested in Bond, but no offers came. So he began to pen an original Bond screenplay, with the assistance of a man named Kevin McClory. That screenplay was called 78 Degrees Longitude South or something like that.

The screenplay was never sold. Later, John F. Kennedy mentioned that he was currently reading From Russia With Love, which caused the Bond books to go flying off the shelves, and the Salzberg/Brocolli team at EON bought the movie rights. Dr. No was made as the first Bond film, I think maybe because at the time that was the most recent book. (A little trivia: Bond is identified as working for MI-6 in the film, but apparently at that time the British were maintaining that was forbidden to say under the Official Secrets Act, so the line was redubbed to "MI-7," and you can notice the lip-flap flub when M says this.)

Now, Fleming still has this old incomplete script lying around. Much of the script is reworked into a novel, which is called, eventually, Thunderball. Including an idea that the Fleming/McClory partnership had created (it's disputed whose idea it was): that there should be a big, apolitical villainous organization out there blackmailing NATO with nuclear weapons, and that it should be called SPECTRE, and headed by a mysterious Eastern European named Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Fleming, however, fails to give McClory any credit when Thunderball comes out as a book, and no money, either. This provokes a threat of a lawsuit. Later editions of the book are co-credited to McClory and a third man who also helped with the old script (whose name escapes me, but it doesn't matter, because he drops out of the story).

Years and years pass and McClory is still pretty pissed off. SPECTRE was intended to be the villainous organaization in The Spy Who Loved Me, but McClory threatens legal action and TSPWLM script wars end with SPECTRE being dropped as a villain. Blofeld is replaced by some guy with webbed hands named Kronbourg or something.

This legal cloud hangs over the Bond franchise and United Artists/MGM for a while. Eventually, a deal is reached: SPECTRE can no longer be mentioned in any Bond film; McClory will get credit and some back payments for Thunderball; and he has the right, at some point, to produce a re-make of Thunderball.

Ever notice that Never Say Never Again didn't have the Bond opening, the Bond music, the usual Bond characters (M, Q, etc.), and seemed suspiciously similar in plotline to Thunderball? Well, that was McClory's remake of Thunderball, made not with the EON/UA/MGM people but with a competing studio. (Later on, MGM would buy NSNA and add it to its Bond library.)

Now there were even lawsuits over Never Say Never Again-- how far can you deviate from the original script and still call it a "remake"? Now it was EON/UA/MGM threatening legal action if this "remake" departed too far from Thunderball and became a free-standing, original (competing-franchise) Bond picture.

Eventually that was all worked out too, and the story is pretty much just Thunderball with a black Felix Leiter and a couple of changes in location.

No longer able to use Blofeld or SPECTRE as villains, the EON people dispensed with someone who looks like Blofeld (but, for legal reasons, is never identified as Blofeld) at the beginning of For Your Eyes Only. He was dispatched quickly and almost as a joke after being an implacable and ruthless Bond foe for ten movies, just because of legal considerations.

Bond could never truly vanquish Blofeld, but eventually the lawyers did.

Hmmm... maybe Kerry & Clinton had the right ideas about how to deal with Osama bin Ladin after all.

007 Says "Shut Up And Stop Carrying On Like a Jerkoff:" It's Secret Service Serendipity as Cathy Seipp digs up a very dry Roger Moore slam on a misbehaving actor that leaves him shaken if not stirred.

posted by Ace at 07:52 PM

Comments

Interesting stuff, Ace.

BTW, does anyone know if Bond and Moneypenny have ever "done" it in any of the novels? Or is she just destined spend her life alone with her shower attachment, wishing for true love?

Ya know, like a more attractive Janeanne Garafalo.

Posted by: Log Cabin on August 3, 2005 08:15 PM

To my knowledge, no. Perfectly chaste.

I don't read the post-Bond books, but I assume that continutes.

Posted by: ace on August 3, 2005 08:19 PM

I mean the post-Fleming books.

I think the closest they ever got was an agreement to have date-dinner, but that was interrupted by "business."

And I'm not even sure that was in a book.

Posted by: ace on August 3, 2005 08:21 PM

Nice post. Didn't know none of this. (and I second the mad props to Chandler)

Posted by: Ray Midge on August 3, 2005 08:24 PM

Holy shit, and I thought this blog meant you had too much time on your hands....

Posted by: fat kid on August 3, 2005 08:44 PM

Ace, I'm sure you knew that McClory tried to remake Thunderball *again* just a few years ago, with Sony backing him up?

Of all the Bond movies to remake, they keep going down *that* well.

Seriously, when do we get the gangsta rap version of Live and Let Die?

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on August 3, 2005 08:50 PM

It's Karl Stromberg. Weakest archvillain ever.

Posted by: See-dubya on August 3, 2005 08:54 PM

Oh, and as a public service, in case you didn't know:

American Movie Classics (you know, the channel that used to show Citizen Kane but under new ownership now shows Predator 2) is having a month-long Bond marathon starting Monday, 8 August with Dr. No and going through (the underrated) License to Kill.

Oh, and they're going to show them twice: the first the crappy pan-and-scan, the second time a "restored" (whatever that means in this context, I'm assuming the DVD version) widescreen version.

I dunno about you, but there goes my August.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on August 3, 2005 08:57 PM

BTW, does anyone know if Bond and Moneypenny have ever "done" it in any of the novels?

Not sure about novels, but - although I have reason to suspect it may not be part of the 'offical canon' - they finally do the deed in my VHS copy of "For Your Mouth Only." (Surprised me too!)

Posted by: Fielding Mellish on August 3, 2005 09:11 PM

Speaking of replacing people - TLC conspiracy uncovered!

Posted by: Darth Matt on August 3, 2005 09:16 PM

Man...can I ever empathize with McClory. After all those years of working with Ace to come up with the "Johnny Coldcuts" character, I haven't seen one red cent either.

If I'm lucky, though, I will eventually get permission to sell the Johnny Coldcuts script I've been working on: "Rye Another Day".

Posted by: Jack M. on August 3, 2005 09:19 PM

That was more interesting than any Bond movie. You should turn it into a screenplay...

Posted by: ted on August 3, 2005 09:57 PM

Very interesting. I've never heard about any of this before.

Posted by: Moonbat_One on August 3, 2005 10:10 PM

Let's see--Thunderball and Never Say Never Again--is that the one where the bad guys acquire nuclear weapons, and Bond has to stop them? That one with the attractive woman?

Posted by: See-Dubya on August 3, 2005 10:19 PM

And that actor that Roger Moore slammed on the set?

Yep, you guessed it.

Frank Stallone.

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on August 3, 2005 10:56 PM

Am I the only guy who kept waiting for Telly Savales to say "who loves you baby" in On Her Majesty's Secret Service?

Posted by: Dave in Texas on August 3, 2005 10:56 PM

Actually, Bond and Moneypenny don't even flirt all that much in the novels - that's mostly a bit from the movies.

The novel of The Spy Who Loved Me has an interesting history too. It's an anomaly in the series, ostensibly "written by" a young woman who was rescued by Bond after running afoul of some gangsters menacing her in the empty motel she's looking after. Bond kind of comes into the picture by happenstance, and only late in the book.

It was basically an attempt by Fleming to experiment with the formula (and go in sort of a Mickey Spillane direction), one which Fleming considered a failed experiment. He didn't want it to be rereleased in paperback (and it wasn't until after his death), and for another oddity, while he *did* sell the film rights, he stipulated that the filmmakers *must* deviate from the book and only use the title.

Posted by: David C on August 4, 2005 06:26 AM

And if you're interested in obscure Bond trivia, this book is a great source:

http://tinyurl.com/atahw

"The Bond Files," by Andy Lane and Paul Simpson

Posted by: David C on August 4, 2005 06:35 AM

Ace,

Good info, thanks for the background. But what about Casino Royale? That's the other "non-canon" (i.e., legally complicated) Bond film, shot as a spoof featuring David Niven and Peter Sellers . . . I've never seen it (yet) but my understanding is that it is nothing like the Fleming book.

Interestingly enough, the Broccoli team is making Casino Royale as the next Bond film (jamesbond.com for more info) . . . though they've got no Bond yet (still talking with Brosnan, rumors say). The book's a pretty good read.

I'm going to be doing a "Bond beginning to end" series on the movies and books, which I have committed to seeing and reading, starting in the next few days with a review of Fleming's Casino Royale, and the Broccoli/Saltzman film Dr. No.

Not going to delve too much into the history, just going to shoot from the hip. I'll leave the serious Bond geekery to you :-)

Posted by: The Colossus on August 4, 2005 08:34 AM

John F. Kennedy mentioned that he was currently reading From Russia With Love

As a kid I read many of the Bond books and am not surprised that JFK read such low-brow fare. Kennedy's favorite book (whose title escapes me right now) was said to about the English aristocracy who partied heavy (as only a Regency buck like Kennedy a can do) but bravely defended their country on the battlefield. How adolecent!

Posted by: 72 fools on August 4, 2005 11:06 AM

Uh, not to be too critical here 72, but you also just described at least half of Hemingway's novels with that post.

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