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Four years before Saltzman and Broccoli kicked off the movie franchise with ‘Dr No’, Ian Fleming was already looking towards a big-screen incarnation of his protagonist. It was 1958 and Fleming’s friend Ivar Bryce put him in touch with Kevin McClory, a writer/director on the verge of making his debut with a film called ‘The Boy and the Bridge’. Another mutual friend of Fleming’s and Bryce’s – Ernest Cuneo (to whom the novel ‘Thunderball’ is dedicated) – joined the party and the foursome formed a production company, Xanadu Productions.
Taking Xanadu – pace Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the name of Charles Kane’s palatial bolthole in Orson Welles’s ‘Citizen Kane’ – as an elaborate folly, the name couldn’t have been better chosen.
Between the formation of Xanadu Productions and McClory’s ‘The Boy and the Bridge’ opening to public disinterest and meagre box office takings (at which point Fleming’s interest in making a film nosedived), the four men collaborated, to various degrees, on a basic idea involving a stolen plane and underwater action sequences which mutated through about ten different treatments and/or screenplay drafts. In late 1959, with Fleming about to depart on a round-the-world tour for a travelogue commissioned by The Sunday Times, McClory engaged the services of Jack Whittingham, who had two decades’ experience writing for film. With Whittingham on board, a full treatment was completed, followed quickly by a script. Whittingham and McClory’s title was ‘Longitude 78 West’. Fleming approved, albeit with the suggestion that it be retitled ‘Thunderball’.
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Fast forward to 1963, Bond has gone big-screen in a big way, and McClory is suing Fleming for plagiarism. Unwell (the author had only nine months left to live), Fleming acceded to Bryce’s suggestion that he settle out of court. The deal: Fleming retained rights to the novel, subsequent editions to carry the acknowledgement “based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and the Author” (my 2008 centenary edition has this in very small letters); McClory gained the literary and film rights for the screenplay.
This put producers Saltzman and Broccoli in the compromised position of having to bring McClory on board as producer for the film version. The deal they cut him allowed for remake rights, but not until ten years after the release of ‘Thunderball’. In the event, McClory waited almost twenty, producing ‘Never Say Never Again’ (featuring Connery in his unofficial return to the role) in 1983. The script was reworked by Lorenzo Semple Jnr with uncredited additions, on Connery’s insistence, from Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais (the background to ‘Never Say Never Again’ demands its own article); Irvin Kershner directed. ‘The Boy and the Bridge’ would remain McClory’s only directorial outing. McClory spent much of his career trying to kick-start his own rival Bond franchise and in the 90s unsuccessfully pitched a re-remake of ‘Thunderball’, under the frankly rubbish title ‘Warhead 2000’, starring Liam Neeson. It didn’t happen.
The Fleming-McClory/‘Thunderball’-‘Never Say Never Again’-‘Warhead 2000’ saga – spanning one novel, two films, and four decades – yielded enough material for a book of its own, Robert Sellers’s ‘The Battle for Bond’. Almost inevitably, this publication created its own flurry of controversy. The Ian Fleming Will Trust, apparently unhappy at the unapproved use of quotes from Fleming’s private papers, took action against the publisher, resulting in a hastily issued second edition, shorn of the contentious passages and unsubtly marketed as “the book they tried to ban”.
All of which brings us, 700 words into this review, to the film itself. ‘Goldfinger’ had made Bond an icon; ‘Thunderball’ rode its popularity to box office glory. Adjusting its box office take for inflation, ‘Thunderball’ is arguably the most successful entry in the franchise. Marking Terence Young’s return to the director’s chair (albeit for the last time on a 007 production), it establishes a few “firsts” in the
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The only lead is a French NATO pilot who was onboard the bomber; his sister, Domino (Claudine Auger), is holidaying in Nassau, so Bond convinces M (Bernard Lee) that it’s worth, ahem, checking her out, so it’s off to the Bahamas for a little sun, sea, sand and sex (oh, and a bit of spying, not that you’d notice) while the shadow of atomic destruction hangs over the free world. Unusually for a Bond movie, however, 007 doesn’t get his briefing from M till 45 minutes into the film. Terence Young spends a quite a bit of time setting out his stall, observing the intricacies of the SPECTRE plan – overseen by the suitably villainous Emilio Largo (Aldofo Celi) – with an attention to detail which brings to mind that of, say, John Frankenheimer charting the movements of Von Waldheim and LaBiche’s respective locomotives as if they were pieces on a chessboard in ‘The Train’. It’s easily my favourite part of the film.
When Bond gets to Nassau, commences his dalliance with Domino, starts staking out Largo’s operation and does his best to avoid death at the hands of SPECTRE hitwoman Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), the film settles into a steady plod. It’s never boring, and there are a few scenes which turn the heat up a bit – Bond’s encounter with Largo’s pet sharks; Fiona and her henchmen stalking Bond through a carnival – but there’s no major set-piece, nothing really iconic goes on and everyone just seems to be marking time ready for the big finale: an underwater battle followed by some derring-do on Largo’s hydrofoil yacht. But before we don the snorkel and oxygen tank, let’s cast an eye over the Bond girls.
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Adolfo Celi makes for a pretty intimidating villain; he’s ostensibly sophisticated in the way of most Bond nemeses, but Celi’s brooding physicality leaves you in no doubt that, under the surface, Largo is a thug – and a brutally efficient one at that. Speaking of “under the surface”, let’s effect an inelegant segue into the final section of this review (and with another 700 words on the clock since I last hit the word count button, it’s probably high time I started wrapping it up): the sub-aquatic stuff.
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With a budget of $9million – a huge increase compared to the incremental pattern of ‘Dr No’ ($1million), ‘From Russia with Love’ ($2million) and ‘Goldfinger’ ($3million) – the filmmakers invested a hell of a lot in the underwater sequences. Some $90,000 was invested in diving equipment alone, while Largo’s yacht set the production back a cool half million. You know that old saw about how it’s all up there on screen? That’s certainly true of ‘Thunderball’ … perhaps to its detriment. There are five major bits of sub-aquatic shenanigans: the scuppering of the hijacked bomber and its camouflage on the sea bed; Bond’s nocturnal assessment of the yacht; Bond’s escape from Largo’s shark pool; Largo’s transfer of the atomic devices to the yacht; and the harpoons ‘n’ scuba gear free-for-all which occupies most of the last quarter of an hour and seems like a hell of a lot longer. These scenes grow increasingly interminable, as if, having spent so much on them, Young and the producers were damned if they weren’t going edit every goddamn bit of undersea footage into the final cut.
In the climatic battle, Bond and CIA contact Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter)’s American reserves wear red wetsuits; Largo’s bunch of all-purpose bad guys – appropriately enough – wear black. So when you get a shot like this one (he’s a good guy) …
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Early release prints promised that James Bond would return in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, but production difficulties resulted in ‘You Only Live Twice’ being selected as the next instalment and the credit was dropped.
The theme song is by Tom Jones. Johnny Cash actually submitted a song. Johnny Cash. Someone laid it over the opening credits and posted it on YouTube. Here’s the link. If 2,000 words on what isn’t even in my top five favourite Bond movies isn’t enough to make you question your sanity, this just might.
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