James Bond: The Secret History

by Sean Egan

  Perhaps because he had been pushing for Johnson, Terence Young adjudged Connery’s casting a ‘disaster’, although his opinion carried at least a little weight insofar as he had directed Connery in Action of the Tiger (1957). Fleming also demurred.

  When Connery’s name was raised, United Artists sent Eon a telegram which simply read, ‘NO – KEEP TRYING.’ Eon squared up to the studio and were triumphant. This, at least, is according to Broccoli, whose autobiography is littered with things ranging from the questionable to the demonstrably incorrect that have the common factor of placing Broccoli in a better light than all the fools around him. Picker simply says, ‘The picture was cast out of London. Sean was submitted to us as their choice. We looked at him and we said, “Well, he’s the best one of the people you suggested and if you want to go with him, we approve him.” And that was the end of the conversation.’

  Connery resisted Eon’s original demands that he agree to two Bond movies a year. This worked out well for everyone. An annual (eventually biannual) Bond film was a special event in a way that a semiannual 007 picture would not be.

  Young agreed to make the best of what he considered a bad fist. Picker says he opted for Young as director over Eon’s other suggestion, Guy Hamilton, because he felt he could do a Henry Higgins-style mentoring job on Connery. Although he was in his mid-forties with a receding hairline, it seems to be universally agreed that the suave, handsome, upper-class Young was, to use Picker’s phrase, ‘a walking James Bond all by himself’. Young duly took Connery under his wing, introducing him to tailors, maître d’s and other fixtures of society unfamiliar to the son of a lorry driver and charwoman.

  Asked if he knows what Fleming thought about the casting of Sean Connery as his creation, John Pearson says, ‘Er … I think he enjoyed his work. [Chuckles.] I don’t want to talk about it really.’ Connery later avowed that Fleming had described him to a third party as an ‘overdeveloped stuntman’. In fairness, Fleming’s doubts about the casting must have seemed legitimate at the time. It would have been a shock for Fleming, for instance, that his quintessential Englishman was now audibly a Scot. Monty Norman – who, as the man tasked with scoring Dr. No, watched it being filmed – recalls Connery’s accent as being an issue with the author: ‘Ian Fleming wasn’t that keen on the idea. Terence Young also had reservations at the very beginning.’ However, he also says, ‘Both of them were really won over very quickly.’

  Monty Norman – a singer turned composer – was offered the Dr. No gig because he had written the score and lyrics of Belle, or The Ballad of Dr Crippen, a stage musical of which Broccoli had been a backer. At the time of Dr. No, Norman happened to be very busy. He recalls, ‘I was just about to stall and say, “Give me a little while to think about it” when Harry Saltzman said, “We’re going to do all the locations in Jamaica. Why don’t you come over with us and write some of the Caribbean music and get the atmosphere of the place, and bring your wife, all expenses paid?”’

  The film has the same opening as the book. Norman recalls, ‘When you first see those three blind beggars walking along in single file, I could have done a really dramatic thing, but I thought, “No, as we’re in Jamaica, as it’s all light, I’ll do a calypso-type song.” And I did “The Kingston Calypso”.’ This jolly piece incorporates a section that gives new words to the children’s nursery rhyme ‘Three Blind Mice’. ‘I suppose I was taking a bit of a risk because one would expect something a bit more serious, but, funnily enough, that set up for all time to come the sort of thing that you get out of a Bond film, which is that you don’t take it a hundred per cent seriously.’

  Once back in England, Norman turned his attention to a piece of music designed to serve as a theme for the film’s hero. He says he received no specific instructions from Eon on this. ‘Somebody – I can’t remember who now – wanted to use “Underneath the Mango Tree” ’cause they liked it so much. Of course it would have been silly to do that even if it was a big, big hit because they weren’t all going to be set in the Caribbean.’ He goes on, ‘I’d tried one or two pieces while I was in Jamaica, and one was pretty good – in fact, in the end Count Basie did a recording of it – but I didn’t feel it had all the qualities of James Bond.

  ‘I suddenly remembered another musical that I was doing in London a year or two before.’ A House for Mr Biswas had been abandoned because of the difficulties of assembling an exclusively Trinidad-Indian cast, but, ‘I put a few melodies in my bottom drawer. I kept thinking about this melody of a song called “Bad Sign, Good Sign”. It went, [singing] “I was born with this unlucky sneeze / And what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round.” And I thought, “What would happen if I split the notes and tried to get rid of the Asian quality?” Immediately, I realised that this was right and had all the qualities of James Bond. So I worked on that, completed it and that became the song.’

  Norman wrote down the piece of music (‘It was a bit more than notation’) but didn’t make an audio version: ‘Things were happening too fast for that. I think we were in a studio within three or four weeks.’ Said studio was Pinewood. ‘I brought in John Barry to orchestrate,’ Norman says.

  Barry was an arranger and producer responsible for hits by Adam Faith, the theme to TV’s Juke Box Jury and the score for the movie Beat Girl. As leader and trumpeter of the pop-jazz ensembles the John Barry Seven and the John Barry Orchestra, he had also achieved several British chart hits of his own. Norman: ‘He did a wonderful job. The definitive orchestration, actually. One of the reasons that we wanted somebody like John Barry was to get a kind of pop quality of the day.’

  Part of that contemporaneous pop quality was a surf-music characteristic to the guitar lick that now played what had been – in a slower variation – the vocal melody of ‘Bad Sign, Good Sign’. Such a move was fairly audacious for a film score in the early sixties. ‘At that time, the guitar was used in the odd rock-type film or whatever, but not generally,’ Norman notes.

  This makes it all the more surprising that ‘The James Bond Theme’ is not just exhilarating, catchy and evocative but also timeless. The dang-der-dang-DANG-dang-dang guitar figures that kick in after the opening parping brass should really now sound like a period piece in the way of old rockabilly records, yet ‘The James Bond Theme’ still somehow feels modern. The enduring vitality may also be something to do with the fact that those figures are perfectly suited to the subject, seeming to resonate with intrigue and danger. In any event, the guitar is only part of the theme’s brilliance. It bristles with stylish, explosive brass riffs, especially in its wild central section. A deflated note concludes proceedings in an unexpectedly, but delectably, sardonic manner.

  There has subsequently been much debate about the overall provenance of ‘The James Bond Theme’. Some have insinuated that the true composer was Barry, who went on to score eleven Bond films and wrote the music to some of 007’s most famous theme tunes. Barry supported those insinuations when asked about it in 1997 by Mojo magazine. He replied, ‘If I didn’t do it, why the hell did they not continue to employ Mr. Norman for the following 14 Bond movies? Name another two scores that Mr. Norman has composed.’ When a Sunday Times story followed up the claim, it led to a libel action by Norman, heard in 2001.

  Although not a defendant, Barry gave evidence in the libel case on behalf of The Sunday Times. He stated that he had been brought in by Broccoli and Saltzman because the score Norman had provided for Dr. No was inadequate. Norman, it was claimed, understood perfectly that, while he, Norman, would receive the credit, Barry had carte blanche to do as he liked with the theme. ‘Go ahead, I’m not proud,’ Norman is reported to have responded. Barry stated that he used the bare minimum of what Norman had written in rearranging his title theme. Barry felt that, apart from the melody played on the guitar riff, just about everything in the final theme – which includes riffs and countermelodies just as famous as the guitar riff – was his. Norman won the libel trial.

  Asked if he felt John B
arry added anything to his theme in terms of riffs or countermelodies, Norman says, ‘I wouldn’t say countermelodies.’ When Barry claimed that ‘The James Bond Theme’ was essentially his creation, did he think it was a lapse of memory or an outright mistruth? ‘I certainly couldn’t answer that, but what I would say is that there were certainly people around him, not necessarily friends, who were pushing that kind of Chinese-whisper thing. To this day – he’s dead now so there’s no way of knowing anyway – I don’t know whether he truly thought he wrote it. But I doubt it. It’s very difficult to say. Music is so ephemeral. You’re never quite sure. But one thing I am quite sure of is that I wrote it.’

  Because ‘The James Bond Theme’ became a staple of Bond films, people might think they know its every note, but in fact the arrangement is different each time. Norman: ‘Obviously, over the last fifty years, there’ve been a lot of very top orchestrators and composers working on the films and they’ve all bought something to it in their way and in their time. I wouldn’t say I think every one of them’s great, but certainly quite a few are. Each man has his own way of doing it. And I’m very thrilled to hear what they do with it.’

  A version of ‘The James Bond Theme’ was issued on disc by the John Barry Seven and Orchestra to coincide with Dr. No’s release. It gave the public a chance to hear the theme in full that the movie – despite sprinkling parts of it throughout its running length – did not. Barry’s version went to No. 13 in the British charts in late 1962, thus increasing Bond’s profile. However, a Dr. No soundtrack album did not appear until mid-1963, only a few months before the release of the second Bond film. Moreover, it included some material not even heard in the film while omitting the by-now famous melodramatic tarantula-scene music.

  As to why Broccoli and Saltzman never again asked him to contribute to a Bond soundtrack, Norman says, ‘They’d asked me to do their next film, which was a Bob Hope comedy called Call Me Bwana. When I’d finished it, I still hadn’t got a contract, so I said to Harry, “Isn’t it time we talked money?” He looked at me and said, “Monty, if you want to talk money, we can’t do business.” I got my lawyer to get me a contract and that was it. I can’t be sure if that was the reason that they didn’t use me, but it could well have been.’

  Be that as it may, Norman is associated with James Bond for all time. How does he feel about a single piece of work from half a century ago serving almost to define him? ‘Well, you can’t argue with something as iconic as that,’ he reasons. ‘If people want to remember me just for that, that’s fine.’

  Dr. No opens with a design like moving, separating spotlights to the background of space-age sound effects. The final spotlight becomes a gun barrel through which we are provided a view of a be-hatted Bond walking across the screen in virtual silhouette. He spins to shoot at the unseen holder of the gun. The screen freezes as a wash of blood-alluding red materialises, and, when it unfreezes, the barrel is wobbling, by which point the blaring brass riffs of ‘The James Bond Theme’ have kicked in. Said theme is used in syncopation with patterns of multi-coloured circles into which the gun barrel/spotlight has morphed. As the credits unfold – flashing at us – the theme’s sharp, circular guitar work starts up.

  The gun-barrel sequence was designed by Maurice Binder. It was at the time not just a lapel-grabber but achingly modern. Instantly iconic, it, or a variation, has been used in all official Bond films since. So stirring was the combination of imagery and theme that people shunted aside their feelings that it didn’t really make sense. Surely, the view should be through a scope rather than a barrel. And, surely, the blood wouldn’t drip down a barrel opening. The really observant would have detected something wrong – lack of height and barrel chest – about the Bond figure strolling screen-right to screen-left. It wasn’t until the fourth movie, Thunderball, that the Bob Simmons clip was replaced by footage of Connery. Since then, each successive Bond actor has shot his own gun-barrel sequence and for both audience and actor the 007 experience is not considered complete without one.

  Binder also supplied Dr. No’s opening credits, which feature colourful, dancing silhouettes. Although Robert Brownjohn would design the opening credits for the next two Bond pictures, Binder would make the job his own for a quarter-century from Thunderball (1965) on. Binder’s trademark would be gyrating female outlines that had the thrilling whiff of being naked.

  Our first sight of Bond is in a gambling club called Le Cercle. That we hear him and see his back and hands for a protracted length before we are allowed a view of his face was a mocking homage by Terence Young to a similarly extended build-up to the unveiling of Paul Muni in Juarez (1939). When 007 is finally shown, it is to the accompaniment of the instantly classic line, ‘Bond, James Bond’. Although it had appeared in the books, here the line is actually a quasi-sarcastic echoing of the way fellow chemin de fer player Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gay) introduces herself to him surname first. However, that the producers knew it would be iconic is suggested by its heralding the use of ‘The James Bond Theme’. The phrase would become a fixture of the film series, although surprisingly not so much in Connery’s tenure, being unused in From Russia with Love, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. Another example of what would become a series trademark is the fact that Bond is dressed in a tuxedo.

  Sean Connery does not look like Hoagy Carmichael and his still-audible Scottish brogue was not the normal soundtrack to plush London gentlemen’s clubs of the era. However, the public – including that section of it familiar with the Bond books – accepted Connery as 007 because his appearance did not constitute a juxtaposition with the material. He may have been from a dirt-poor background and self-educated, but his poise and presence ensure he glides through establishment backdrops as if he were to the manor born. The rough edges of his Glaswegian accent are already gone and his voice on its way to being generically British. A physique powerful enough to have seen him compete in a Mr Universe contest ensures that he looks as if he is used to hand-to-hand combat. Facially, he needed not so much to look like Hoagy Carmichael – even if a thespian could be found with that lookalike quality, it would have constituted a distracting novelty – but like someone intense, suffused with extraordinary experience and irresistible to women. Connery scores on all counts. He’s handsome, but also weather-beaten, the beginnings of a permanent grimace etching their way into his face. His unusually dark looks lend him a brooding mien.

  Future Bond movie signatures are piling up thick and fast as 007 enters through an upholstered door the antechamber office of Moneypenny (who is unexpectedly North American owing to the casting of Canadian Lois Maxwell) and tosses his trilby across the room to land perfectly on a hat stand. Courtesy of Fleming’s bare-headed friend John F. Kennedy, hats were already becoming granddad apparel. However, the hat-tossing became a long-running motif completely abandoned only in the late eighties with the Timothy Dalton Bond. Moneypenny’s swooning flirtatiousness and Bond’s not unkind brush-offs – never an element of the books – begin their long history here. The movies’ spotlight on M’s ‘girl’ has rather written Loelia Ponsonby out of Bond lore. Secretary in the books to the three double-O agents, ‘Lil’ was someone to whom Bond felt very affectionate.

  Bond’s maverick qualities are illustrated by his attempt to sneak his old Beretta out of M’s office after being instructed to switch over to a Walther PPK. Bernard Lee is crustily perfect as M as he fills in Bond on his Jamaican mission. Although at this stage the adaptations of the Bond books were broadly faithful, the multiple differences between the page and screen Dr. No start with the fact that 007’s mission is not quite the one described in the source book. While loss of communication with the murdered Strangways arouses suspicions at ‘Universal Exports’ (as the films plurally rendered the Secret Service’s cover name), the Service is already on to attempts to disrupt space launches from Cape Canaveral, which itself is distinct from disrupting missile launches.

  Other changes include the substitution of a tarantula for a
giant centipede, the villain having steel claws instead of hooks, the inclusion of Felix Leiter (Jack Lord), the creation of a minion of No’s named Dent (Anthony Dawson), Bond’s cold-blooded murder of Dent and the fact of Bond’s passage through narrow, hazardous tunnels being simply an escape attempt rather than a forced participation in a sadistic obstacle course.

  Additionally, the producers create a new climax where Bond causes an overload of the nuclear reactor that powers the radio beams utilised for bringing down American rockets. It admittedly feels a little pat and generic – particularly the way Bond smuggles himself onto the control-room floor by knocking out a technician and donning his handily anonymous safety uniform – but is undeniably more cinematic than would have been the book’s intrinsically slow-motion water-based combat with lugubrious sea life. While dumping a load of birdshit on the villain would probably have been a plus point – certainly, later Bond films would revel in such quasi-comic dispatchings – a good replacement is proffered: Dr No is consigned to a watery grave because his steel claws can’t grip the frame over the cooling vat of the nuclear reactor.

  Another change from the novel was made for impenetrable reasons. ‘With your disregard for human life, you must be working for the East,’ Bond taunts Dr No at dinner. No responds, ‘I’m a member of SPECTRE … The Americans are fools. I offered my services. They refused. So did the East. Now they can both pay for their mistake.’ While the background presence of SPECTRE may lie in the fact that the first Bond movie script on which Eon worked was an adaptation of Thunderball, the book where said organisation made its entrée, it doesn’t explain why the Bond series consistently declined to pit the British Secret Service against SMERSH, the KGB or any other instrument – fictional or real – of the Eastern Bloc. Broccoli later tried to sell the explanation, ‘We decided to steer 007 and the scripts clear of politics … None of the protagonists would be the stereotyped Iron Curtain or “inscrutable Oriental” villain. First, it’s old-fashioned; second, it’s calculated to induce pointless controversy …’ The Cold War was certainly not old-fashioned – it would continue throughout almost the whole of the rest of Broccoli’s life – and since when have filmmakers considered controversy a minus? That said, there doesn’t seem any more comprehensible a reason for the decision. It might be assumed that the removal of Cold War politics was felt necessary so as to not jeopardise a lucrative inroad into foreign markets, but, as Bond films were banned in the USSR throughout the Cold War, one wonders what the territories in question might be. Even had such a motivation existed in the beginning, it seems logical that it would have been abandoned as soon as it became clear that the Soviet censors were going to remain unyielding. Another possible explanation – that it was a mealy-mouthed rationale from Western left-wingers with a blind spot for Soviet human-rights abuses – hardly seems likely. Broccoli cited American right-winger George H.W. Bush as ‘a President I greatly admired’.