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ARTICLES
This page features a set of articles on various aspects of the Bond legacy, which merit a few more lines than what most topics in this site get. This will be the most dynamic page on this site with new articles which will explore lesser known facets of the Bond legend and thus satisfy the appetite of trivia lovers. Click here to view some good articles about Bond.
THE 'THUNDERBALL' CONTROVERSY
In 1958,when Fleming met Kevin McClory, an Irish producer and script writer at a private screening of one of the latter's movies, 'The Boy and the Bridge'. Fleming developed a 'considerable respect' for McClory's talent and soon McClory was suggesting a James Bond picture. Ernest Cuneo wrote a short story, he, Fleming and McClory met at Ivor Bryce's (Fleming's longtime friend and who was to back the movie) house in Essex and a plot was created, which Fleming agreed to develop into a script for a film. They even formed a film partnership named Xanadu. He continued to work on the screenplay and Jack Whittingham joined the partnership and expanded the script which was known as 'James Bond, Secret Agent' (alternative titles: 'Longitude 78 West' and 'James Bond Of The Secret Service'). Whittingham worked on the screenplay through 1960. But the group were having problems finding backers - MCA (the company that Bryce had approached to fund the film) announced that they wanted to make the film but not with McClory as producer.
The project collapsed, Xanadu went bust, Ernest Cuneo sold his rights to Fleming for one dollar(supposedly) and Fleming completed 'the book of the film' which was published in 1961. McClory then sought an injunction against Fleming and Bryce on the grounds of plagiarism, which was denied. The case reached London's High Court, with McClory suing for 'plagiarism and false attribution', claiming the novel was based on scripts that he himself and Whittingham had worked on. At Bryce's instigation (who felt the stress was killing his friend) Fleming settled out of court. Through a Deed of Assignment, McClory was given the film rights to 'Thunderball' while Fleming kept the publishing rights (the book is thus 'based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and Ian Fleming').
Kevin could not find enough backing for making the movie until his 1965 collaboration with EON productions by virtue of which he co-produced "Thunderball" in exchange for abandoning all claims for another 10 years after the initial release of the film. In 1976 the rights came back to him and he started making plans for another Bond film. This time he wrote an original script along with Len Deighton and Sean Connery himself, called "Warhead 8".(Trivia gold: The movie was to have Orson Welles directing as well as playing Blofeld). EON waged a legal battle and he was forced to make only a direct remake of "Thunderball". The result was "Never Say Never Again" in 1983. Recently, he has approached Sony for making an independent Bond flick using the script he had earlier developed and the matter once again landed up in the courts.
Today, McClory is fighting MGM/UA for using scenarios and the idea of the SPECTRE organization developed by him and demands his share of profits from all the movies thus made. (That comes to quite a tidy sum). He calls it "The Greatest Act of Piracy in the History of the Motion Picture Industry". His case was thrown out by a federal District Court April 4th, 2000 and he has since appealed to a higher court.
THE ORIGIN OF 007
Fleming derived his idea of using 007 as Bond's designation from the sign used by a 16th century English philosopher, alchemist and mathematician, Dr John Dee. Born in 1557 in the village of Mortlake, now in West London, Dee was a brilliant scholar, who studied philosophy and maths at Cambridge University, and went on to develop sea navigation on mathematic principles. He was also an alchemist and was famous for his experiments in this subject. He also dabbled in astrology and metereology.
It was the Earl of Leicester (who was a student) who introduced Dee to Queen Elizabeth the First as she was to become the new Queen. He choose January 15th, 1559 as the the most auspicious date for Elizabeth's coronation and soon became the court astrologer. He also headed a group of secret service agents who informed the Queen of the goings on in the Continent, specifically Spain. All his communiqués to his Queen were signed with a secret code, two circles symbolising his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen, guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. Seven was considered a sacred and lucky number to alchemists. It looked something like this.
A few interesting things about his life: His library at Mortlake was the greatest of its day, containing 4,000 books (in contrast the library at Cambridge University contained only 450). In 1588 when King Philip of Spain sent 125 of his best ships to attack his enemies in the English Channel, Dee correctly predicted that terrible storms would destroy the mighty Spanish fleet and proposed delaying the sailing of British ships. When most of the Spanish ships were lost or damaged, the English ships fell on the rest and easily disposed of them. It is believed that Dee put a spell on the Spanish and sent the huge waves crashing down on their ships. (It is more likely, however, that because he knew about meteorology, he had anticipated the storm scientifically). William Shakespeare based the character of Prospero in The Tempest on Dee's exploits. For more details visit this site.
Ian Fleming came upon the 007 figures when reading a biography of Dee and found it perfect to symbolize Bond's license to kill.