...Those Femme Fatales
were beautiful and
dangerous!
The villains: Le Chiffre, Mr. Big (Buonaparte Ignace Gallia), Sir Hugo Drax (Graf Hugo von der Drache), Jack Spang, Seraffimo Spang, Rosa Klebb, General Grubozaboyschikov, Dr. Julius No, Auric Goldfinger, GRU agents, Colonel von Hammerstein, Hector Gonzales, Aristotle Kristatos, Emilio Largo, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Mr. Sanguinetti, Sol "Horror" Horowitz and "Sluggsy" Morant, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (a.k.a. Comte Balthazar le Bleuville), Ernst Stavro Blofeld (a.k.a. Dr. Guntram Shatterhand), Francisco (Paco) "Pistols" Scaramanga, Major Dexter Smythe, Maria Freudenstein and her Soviet contact, Trigger - the KGB assassin, Lyutsifer Safin, Mr. Hinx and Tiago Rodriguez / Raoul Silva, Max Zorin.
The symbiotic relationship between the Bond franchise and Playboy Magazine was a natural one in the 1960's, each promoting the other. Ian Fleming's "The Hildebrand Rarity" was first published in Playboy in March 1960.
"Twenty-seven-year-old Hugh Hefner, a former sociology student at Northwestern University, started Playboy magazine in Chicago in 1953. The first printing of 50,000 copies, which featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover, sold out quickly.
"By publishing photographs of nude women and promoting the concept of sex as recreation, the magazine became a much-discussed phenomenon of American popular culture. Annual sales of Playboy grew from $4 million in 1960 to about $175 million at the end of the 1970s, when it had a circulation of about six million and ranked among the top 10 magazines (in terms of circulation as well as sales) in the United States." (SOURCE)
I just watched the 1977 release of The Spy Who Loved Me last night on Prime Video. Best remembered for two of it's characters, beautiful Barbara Bach and steel jawed Richard Kiel. Richard was the seven foot tall thespian playing the character of "Jaws". Such a hit Richard was invited back for a similar role in 1979's Moonraker. While beautiful Barbara Bach did a photo shoot for Playboy Magazine right before the release of The Spy Who Loved Me to help promote the movie.
Roger Moore rather hoped his co-star would be Brigitte Bardot but it was another B.B. that got the role: Barbara Bach. She was a real asset to the film and it boosted her career. On the set of 'Caveman' (FULL MOVIE) she met her co-star and future husband, former Beatles drummer Ringo Star. As of this writing Barbara is 75yrs old and yes, still married to Ringo. (Barbara Bach Photos Click Here)
'The Spy Who Loved Me' was a successful movie based loosely on a novel so bad that even it's author sought to disown it. This was the tenth novel of the series, very short, very sexually explicit, barely plotted and told from the standpoint of and in the voice of, a young woman named Vivienne Michel. Very disappointing to his fans. Here is an excerpt from the book penned by the hand of Ian Fleming.
"His skiis were flat against the snow. His heart was pounding. What was beyond the wide leering mouth that streched below him? He coiled himself like a spring. Then he was in the air, turning, turning, like a rag doll dropped from a window. He fought to reach his right arm behind his left shoulder, fumbling for a semicircle of metal on his haversack. There! He pulled and closed his eyes. Something behind him crackled like machine gun fire, and he had a billowing glimpse of red, white and blue.
.....In the town of Chamonix, an old man shaded his eyes against the sun and looked up into the mountains. A man had just parachuted off the Aiguille du Mort. He could see the Union Jack emblem on the parachute. English!
Fleming quickly admitted the error of his ways and sought to have the paperback version in the U.K. blocked. Fleming sold the film rights to the bulk of his books to Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli and made sure The Spy Who Loved Me novel was not included, only the title.
"The Spy Who Loved Me deals with Carl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens), the ocean-infatuated villain and his attempts to replace the “decadent civilization” of the time with underwater cities by hijacking American and Russian submarines, and attempting to use their warheads to start a nuclear Armageddon.
This forces the British Secret Service and the KGB to compromise and put the Cold War on hiatus, an arrangement that “unwillingly” places 007 alongside the remarkably capable but not too expressive Agent XXX, also known as Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach), whose boyfriend was killed by Bond in the pre-credit scene. This means 007 will have to spend a good deal of the time rescuing the one person in the movie who most wants to get rid of him (though hardly the only), a terrific subtext to the main plot and about as complex a human relationship as we ever got in the dozen years of the Moore Bonds." (SOURCE)
"First of all, they are financial. You don’t make a great deal of money from royalties and translation rights and so forth and, unless you are very industrious and successful, you could only just about live on these profits, but if you sell the serial rights and film rights, you do very well. Above all, being a comparatively successful writer is a good life. You don’t have to work at it all the time and you carry your office around in your head. And you are far more aware of the world around you. Writing makes you more alive to your surroundings and, since the main ingredient of living, though you might not think so to look at most human beings, is to be alive, this is quite a worthwhile by-product, even if you only write thrillers."
The adjusted worldwide gross of 'The Spy Who Loved Me' $894 million dollars, would place it seventh all-time among the Bond films, after Daniel Craig's 'Skyfall' and 'Spectre', Roger Moore's 'Live And Let Die', and Sean Connery's middle 1960's big three: 'Goldfinger', 'Thunderball', and 'You Only Live Twice'. Quite a comeback after 'The Man With The Golden Gun'.
"Bond is not a hero, nor is he depicted as being very likable or admirable. He is a Secret Service Agent. He’s not a bad man, but he is ruthless and self-indulgent. He enjoys the fight and he also enjoys the prizes. In fiction people used to have blood in their veins. Nowadays they have pond water. My books are just out of step. But then so are all the people who read them."
Roger Ebert Sez: "Not every man would like to be James Bond, but every boy would. In one adventure after another, he saves the world, defeats bizarre villains, gets to play with neat gadgets and seduces, or is seduced by, stupendously sexy women (this last attribute appeals less to boys younger than 12). He is a hero, but not a bore. Even faced with certain death, he can cheer himself by focusing instead on the possibility that first he might get lucky. He's obsessed with creature comforts, a trial to his superiors, a sophisticate in all material things and able to parachute into enemy territory and be wearing a tuxedo five minutes later. When it comes to movie spies, Agent 007 is full-service, one-stop shopping." (SOURCE)
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