Looking for Mr Bond: 007 at the BBC Timeshift

Ever since a British secret agent named Bond - James Bond -

embarked on his first mission,

a large global corporation has been keeping tabs on his every move.

So...

There's such a lot of Bond to see, isn't there? Is there no end?

Now, after more than 60 years of tracking 007 in print

and on screen...

Thank you. Ready, guys?

..we open up the BBC vaults to reveal the forgotten files

on the world's most celebrated secret agent.

The world's most famous hero assumes a natural position.

# He's tall and he's dark... #

Through candid interrogations...

'How much of that action do you enjoy?'

I enjoy all of it. I... Particularly the love scenes.

# Mr kiss, kiss, bang, bang... #

..technical briefings...

But this glides away to let the missile come out of the volcano.

..and foreign assignments,

we assess Bond's ability to survive in a changing world.

The Bond movies generally are simply a licence to print money.

His transgressions, his victories and his innermost secrets explored.

This is the sort of question that you should not be asking.

This is a licence to view James Bond -

unguarded, unrestricted and unseen.

In 1964, the BBC filed a report from the United States' gold bullion

depository at Fort Knox.

And their man on the ground bore more than a passing

resemblance to the spy himself.

Oh, incidentally, that's not Fort Knox. It's a film set here.

Goldfinger in Buckinghamshire, Pinewood. And I'm not James Bond.

He's a fictitious character.

Sean Connery had taken a break from filming Goldfinger to reveal for

the BBC, for the very first time,

the true identity of Bond's armourer, Q.

My name's Boothroyd. Geoffrey Boothroyd.

Certain inaccuracies in the book made me write to Fleming

and say that I didn't think Bond was going to last very long

if he used a .25 Beretta pistol, which is a lady's gun,

and not a very nice lady at that.

Well, this is the gun Boothroyd objected to,

Bond's favourite Beretta.

Bond was using the shoulder holster at the time.

But his favourite holster was shammy leather,

because you see, it didn't spoil the line of the jacket.

I take you over now to a film clip, you'll see here, where

Major Boothroyd is convincing 007,

in the company of M, of Fleming's mistake.

From now on you carry a different gun. Show him, armourer.

Walther PPK.

7.65mm with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window.

Takes a Brausch silencer with very little reduction

in muzzle velocity.

-The American CIA swear by them.

-Thank you, Major Boothroyd.

Having exposed Q's real identity,

the BBC sought to uncover the model for Bond himself.

But his creator proved evasive.

People do connect me with James Bond simply

because I happen to like some of the things that James Bond does, but he

is a sort of mixture of commandos

and secret service agents that I met during the war.

But of course, entirely fictionalised.

I certainly haven't got his guts, nor his very lively appetite.

However, his close friend

and neighbour in Jamaica was far less guarded.

I think that James Bond was Ian's dream fantasy of what...

..he would like to be.

Ruthless and dashing and...

It's got, as Ian had, a schoolboy quality.

And further revelations came from a certain flirtatious secretary.

The first meeting with Ian was at a reception after

we'd finished From Russia With Love.

And suddenly he said, "Moneypenny, I want to thank you,

"because when I first wrote

"about Miss Moneypenny, I described

"her as a tall, elegant woman with

"the most kissable lips in the world."

And he said, "You are so perfect..."

And he was coming closer and closer

to me, much to my delight!

And when he was about this far away,

I said, "What do you want me

"to say - 'Prunes' or 'Cheese'?"

And he said, "Prunes."

And just as he was about to kiss me

his wife said,

"Oh, Ian, Bedford wants to speak to you."

Moneypenny may have been smitten,

but there were those who did not warm to Fleming at all.

As BBC viewers found out

when Malcolm Muggeridge quizzed a former MI6 agent turned spy novelist.

I'm not sure that Bond is a spy, seems to me that he is more

some kind of international gangster with, as is said, a licence to kill.

He is a man with unlimited movement,

but he is a man entirely out of the political context.

It's of no interest to Bond who, for instance,

is President of the United States.

But these highfalutin intellectuals had failed to

notice that it was actually the President himself who had

brought Bond to the world's attention.

In an article for Life magazine in March 1961, John F Kennedy had

included From Russia With Love in a list of his ten favourite books.

And this was just the break that two movie moguls needed.

American Cubby Broccoli

and Canadian Harry Saltzman had already bought

the options on Fleming's novels, and with paperback sales rocketing after

Kennedy's endorsement, they flew to New York to secure the deal with

United Artists that would put James Bond on screen.

Normally the question from the distributors was who was

going to play in it, Cary Grant or James Mason or someone.

When you surprise them by telling them you don't

want a known name, you want an unknown,

he's afraid and confused

and it's a little more difficult to get the financing.

But under pressure to cast a leading man, the producers

stood their ground for a little-known Scottish actor called Sean Connery,

who they believed best displayed the degree of masculine virility

that Bond demanded.

Cubby and I went through, I would say, 200 actors.

I liked the way he moved,

and the fact that he had a lot of acting experience.

But he moves extremely well.

There's only one other actor that moves as well as he does,

it's Albert Finney. They move like cats.

Very light. For a big man to be light on his feet is most unusual.

However, Fleming remained equivocal, thinking Connery to be

an over-developed stuntman without the social graces to play his hero.

But his opinion was swayed when female friends

of his pronounced Connery as most definitely having "it".

I met Fleming two or three times and we got on very well,

I liked him enormously.

-DIFFERENT INTERVIEW:

-He had such curiosity,

and his knowledge was...och, so wide.

Terrible snob, but terrific companion.

But I think, in the main, he wanted somebody unknown.

That they would not overshadow the character of James Bond.

To the British public,

James Bond perfectly caught the mood of the times and brought

a sense of reassurance to a country in the grip of Cold War spy mania.

If there was a third man, were you in fact the third man?

No, I was not.

Well, he's a free agent, as I said, at the present time,

to go as he pleases.

Dr No, released on the same day as The Beatles' first single,

introduced a new emblem for a modern Britain.

And when Bond's silhouette, or rather that of stuntman, Bob Simmons...

GUNSHOT

..came sauntering across cinema screens,

audiences broke into spontaneous applause.

It was with Goldfinger, the third film in the series,

that the producers served up their winning cocktail.

And the pre-title sequence is a stimulating aperitif of its own,

with all the Bond ingredients.

Beginning with a typically witty gadget,

the sequence combined sleek interior sets...

..stylish posturing...

EXPLOSION

..flagrant seduction of a dispensable femme fatale...

SHE GASPS

..and graphic violence.

All culminating in a perfectly delivered throwaway line...

Positively shocking.

And a door slam to cue a knockout song.

MUSIC: Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey

# Goldfinger

# He's the man

# The man with the Midas touch

# A spider's touch... #

As both an establishment figure and icon of pop culture,

James Bond was an easy target during what was the satire boom of the early 1960s.

# Beckons you to enter his web of sin

# But don't go in! #

Shirley Bassey doesn't think much of you, for a start.

I mean, she says you've got a cold finger, Goldfinger.

LAUGHTER

How she ever found that out, I don't know, but that's her business.

Casino Royale and Diamonds Are Forever,

From Russia With Sex.

# Fish finger

# He's the man The man with the fishy air

# A fishy stare! #

GUNSHOT

For Your Thighs Only, Dr In The Know, Carry On Spy,

Moon Finger and Muckraker.

EXPLOSION

WOMEN SCREAM

Oh, well. There goes Cuba.

There's such a lot of Bond to see, isn't there? Is there no end?

We're proud to present tonight Bye-bye Bondy - the latest,

indeed one might almost say the last episode in 007.

It was a black letter day for Bond.

He received someone, and lost no time in getting to the office of M, his chief.

When Bond entered, M was inscrutable as always.

David Frost's co-host, MM, Millicent Martin,

would spoof Bond on her own show.

And her choice of guest star would prove prophetic.

Perhaps monsieur would like to take drinks on the patio?

Yes, that's quite a nice little piscine-o you've got there.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It was almost as if he was auditioning for the part

a decade early.

A nice secluded corner.

Over there, Mr Bond?

Yes, well, I, er, am on holiday. Thank you.

Yes, Mr Smith.

-Oh, oh!

-Yes, and I'm "Oh-Oh-Seven," as if you didn't know.

James Bond, what are you doing at my hotel?

And what, may I ask, is Sonia Slokova, Russia's master spy,

doing staying at my hotel?

HE GRUNTS

By 1965, nothing, it seemed, could match Bond.

Not even The Beatles.

The soundtrack to Goldfinger outsold the mop-tops.

And during the filming of Thunderball in the Bahamas,

Bond mania reached new heights.

Or, rather, further depths.

A press release, given to the BBC on location,

described the hysteria around Connery

when a group of American students swam out to his filming boat.

"Speak to us," one of them called to him.

"You are our leader and we are your people."

The globe-trotting spy was now a trend-setting brand,

whose personality and paraphernalia saturated public life.

The Bond films set a complete style and had a tremendous influence

on design throughout the whole range of the visual arts.

Did it come as a surprise to you, in fact, the population took up many

of the, sort of, Bond images and carried them?

We never expected that tremendous success.

But after the first we saw there was a market,

the second we very carefully accentuated the successful parts.

Bond's iconic car from Goldfinger, the Aston Martin DB5,

proved a gift for merchandisers.

And Corgi's miniature version would go on to sell in its millions.

Whoops! Hello, there.

Now, this is the star of the show, I think, because this is the model

of the car that was made for James Bond in Goldfinger.

You press that knob there...

Out come the two overriders and the machine guns.

Now, you've got somebody sitting next to you in the car, and you don't like him.

Just watch the roof.

Wahey! Out you come.

There goes Odd Job.

Now, every child could have their very own Bond gadget.

Or, if you had the clout, you could just pop along to the factory

and pick up a scale model for your son.

But some BBC pundits were worried that Bond, as a commodity,

was just a smokescreen for a character with very little depth.

There's no mystery about James Bond.

It's too easy, you see, with all this imitation equipment.

The man himself is nothing, with due respect, Mr Connery.

Personally, I have never been able to

collapse into the arms of Mr Bond.

I see a sort of new hero emerging now...

The new one on the way is the transvestite...

LAUGHTER

..like Danny La Rue, a splendid...hero.

As production began on the next Bond bonanza

and amidst rumours that Connery was getting itchy feet in the role,

the BBC undertook a more probing investigation into the current

state of 007.

And for such a special assignment, they sent in their top man.

Japan, Pinewood style, and the first day shooting on the fifth

film in the cinema's most spectacular saga.

They're spending £3 million on You Only Live Twice,

but it'll probably earn ten times that around the world.

To write the script,

which involved an entirely different plot to the book,

the producers had drafted in an old chum of Ian Fleming's,

but for the author of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory,

writing a Bond film would be a very different confection.

Did you have a certain number of things that you had to do?

For example, Bond normally goes through women in a film, doesn't he?

I don't know what you mean by going through them.

Well, he disposes of them. They get killed, they sacrifice themselves.

-Yes.

-Are you up to ration?

There's no question that you must stick to that sort of formula,

I think, cos I asked that when I went in first. They said, "Oh, yes."

I said, "He wants a woman, doesn't he,

"to chase around and fall in love with?"

And they said, "Well, three would be better."

Whicker was on hand to watch the pre-title sequence being shot.

-Better?

-No, just different.

Like Peking duck is different from ketchup.

A clever tease in which Dahl flips Bond's

weakness for women into his undoing.

-Darling, I give you very best duck.

-That would be lovely.

We've had some interesting times together, Ling.

I'll be sorry to go.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

Stop, cut, cut!

'So, James Bond's been shot where it hurts most, in bed.'

-As Whicker slipped deeper under the covers...

-Test three, take one.

You are a slippery customer, aren't you?

..he turned his beady eye on to a bevy of girls submitting

themselves to the casting session.

'Bond's birds seldom last more than ten minutes before something

'frightful happens to them,

'but during their brief, passionate posturing,

'they brave piranhas and death rays for the pleasure of sharing

'his bedroom and his vodka martinis.'

What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

You are a handsome looking brute.

'Eager to surrender their cinematic all, they're screen tested.

'They're still not exposed to the real James Bond.

'They have to make love to his substitute.'

Cut.

And to better understand the Bond girl vetting process,

Whicker sounded out the film's director, Lewis Gilbert.

Well, you know, there's a sort of classic tradition of Bond girls,

but this one is a German or Swedish girl,

but obviously, she must be pretty glamorous,

but we are trying to do something different with a Bond girl.

This time, we'd like to try and find somebody who can act.

So, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

Is it a bit too disfiguring when she goes very hard in?

-No. Let him have his main speed.

-Mm-hm.

But as Whicker found out

when he followed the production to Japan, wherever

in the world Bond went, there was an expectation to conform to his values.

The Ama pearl diving girls went on strike,

frightened of over exposure. They're actually starlets and models.

There's even a lift girl from the Tokyo Hilton.

But east is east and none of these big city pearl divers wanted

to be photographed in a bikini.

They resisted the American public relations man who was after

some Japanese cheesecake.

-Let me explain...

-I understand what you want.

You don't understand what...

I want to get all of them lined up in modern bathing costumes...

-Right, you want them to take off their tops.

-Yes. No.

They don't want to.

-I don't care what they want.

-What's the trouble, Cubby?

Oh, it's not really serious.

We have eight Ama girls,

or girls who are supposed to be Ama girls, they're Japanese...types.

And the production department is having a difficult time

getting them to remove their...

Not their brassieres or anything, just their outer garments.

They feel that they're not accustomed to

walking around in bikinis.

'Not until Broccoli got there, they weren't.'

But there was further trouble in paradise and Whicker's cameras

were there to capture the Bond wagon slowly coming off the rails.

He's an actor, he's here to do a job.

He's not just a publicity idol for them.

He's here and he's not been given the privilege

and respect of Japan for a certain amount of privacy.

Connery felt he was no longer a human being,

but a public institution and not so much an actor as a commodity.

With fears of becoming typecast, of being overshadowed by gadgets

and a gargantuan man-made volcano,

Connery thought it was time to hang up his holster.

I'm very tired because I've been... It's a long uphill grind.

I'm...

I've had a long sort of innings, as it were, and I want to change

direction now, take another breath and do something else.

-So, this is your last Bond film?

-Yes.

With Sean Connery's departure,

the Bond franchise faced its first crisis.

Connery had owned the part completely and a replacement seemed unthinkable.

Although, Cubby Broccoli remained optimistic.

This won't stop us from making another Bond cos an audience out

there want to see it.

We'll present what we have for their approval.

You'd have a headache breaking in a new Bond, actually,

-wouldn't you, after five?

-Everything is a headache.

In early 1968, the hunt was on for an actor to fill Connery's shoes,

when a 29-year-old Australian model and used-car salesman called

George Lazenby suddenly swaggered into Broccoli and Saltzman's office.

I was standing there in a Connery suit, a Connery haircut,

Rolex watch, crossed arms, saying,

"I heard you're looking for James Bond."

Broccoli had deep reservations about hiring a clothes peg,

as he referred to Lazenby.

So, over four months, they tested him against the rest of the cast, until

finally Harry Saltzman said he wanted to see Lazenby in a fight scene.

They got this big Russian guy.

Well, I knocked him on his butt cos I didn't know how to miss.

I thought, "Oh, my God, when this guy gets up, he's going

"to kill me." He was a real Russian wrestler, you know?

But he was OK and Harry stepped over him and says,

"We're going with you."

Aside from the small matter of finding a new Bond,

On Her Majesty's Secret Service would see him get hitched

and in choosing an actress of Diana Rigg's calibre,

the producers hoped to increase the power of the film's romantic scenes.

The BBC caught up with Rigg on location in Portugal to ask

her what she felt the issues were for women in Bond's world.

From the woman's point of view,

mainly the fact that the women are victims

and in our society at the moment, women are being very busy,

trying to prove that they aren't victims,

but Ian Fleming definitely, definitely puts them

in a sort of subsidiary position and Bond uses them.

They are vessels,

either for his lust or to get to the big bad boss or something.

They are ciphers. They are not real people.

Alongside Rigg, these ciphers come in the form of a deadly harem

under the control of the arch-villain Blofeld.

But in this story, Fleming at last allows Bond to fall in love.

In a sense, it's a game, but also it's quite a clever trick

because the man who heretofore has been absolutely unobtainable

suddenly decides through love or whatever to marry this girl

and he subscribes, but Ian Fleming only allows him to subscribe for

an hour after his wedding and then I get a bullet through one ear

and out the other.

GUNFIRE

It's Blofeld.

Blofeld.

You know, it's quite a good trick because it means

he has all the right motives, deep down, underneath.

In other words, he is prepared to get married, if he loves the girl.

But then by some terrible trick of fate, she's taken away from him

and he's suddenly available for all those females again.

Slightly embittered, you know.

But becoming Bond was to leave Lazenby embittered too.

Reports had circulated that he was awkward and arrogant on set,

overwhelmed by the responsibility of the role.

The critics rather brutally pounded him with such comments as

"His "lines carry about as much conviction as an insecticide

"salesman at a flea circus",

but in spite of the critics, Mr Lazenby appears to know

his own mind and has maintained a stubborn sense of individuality.

He grew a beard, for instance,

and refused to shave it off for the film premiere.

Anyone can understand that James Bond isn't a real person and they're

not going to mind the fact that I haven't had a shave for a month.

Everyone knows that James Bond must have a beard, even though

you never see it in the film.

What about the reports that you were deliberately awkward and hostile?

Well, they were true in a way because I was very uptight lots of

the time because I didn't understand exactly what was going on.

And the only person you can ask...

The only person who knew what was going on was the director.

And he didn't really feel that an actor was important in the role.

He felt that you could get any guy, put him in that part

and make him James Bond, providing he looked similar to what the

public feel James Bond looks like. And this came...

That vibration came off the director on to me all the time.

Lazenby had begun to fear that Bond wasn't quite as far

out as he could be in 1969.

This was now the era of peace, not war, he thought.

Well, how about the director? Did he agree with your idea of Bond?

Well, no.

They had a set formula, which was a winner previous

and you can't blame them for not agreeing with me

because I was a learner.

I felt quite confident that if they did change it,

like putting pop music behind it,

rather than the sort of light music

they have, and things like that, it

would have lifted the whole thing up

again into another decade, 1970.

ENGINE REVS

Lazenby, feeling that Bond had no place in the emerging

counterculture, kept the beard and hit the road.

With Lazenby gone, a plan was hatched to lure back Sean Connery,

who was only too aware of the strong bargaining position

he now found himself in, as he candidly let slip to the BBC.

Having been away for four years, I think

one had made the point too with the lack of success of the one

previous, the one that I wasn't in anyway,

and coming back in to do this one,

the wicket was better for me

to make the conditions of not being so much a pawn in the circumstances.

Also, I didn't think I got a fair piece of the cake.

-You mean financially?

-Yes.

Connery had been tempted back,

not only with the promise of a tremendous fee,

but also by the quality of the script,

drafted by a young American screenwriter called Tom Mankiewicz.

I hope that Guy Hamilton, the director,

and myself, with the assistance of Tom Mankiewicz,

who has written the screenplay,

which incidentally I think is probably the best one they've had,

certainly construction wise for a beginning and a middle

and an end of a story. It's a very good script.

I hope it's got enough... I think that there's humour in it.

And for this moment in a Las Vegas casino,

Connery and Mankiewicz shared the writing honours.

Hi, I'm Plenty.

-But of course you are.

-Plenty O'Toole.

-Named after your father, perhaps?

-Would you like some help?

On the craps, I mean.

That's very kind of you.

The camp and breezy tone of Diamonds Are Forever, with its liberal

use of smutty humour, was a new throw of the dice for the Bond franchise.

To see if this gamble was paying off,

the BBC despatched one of its top entertainers to Sin City.

Derek Nimmo arrived just as Connery was shooting his first scenes,

a frenetic car chase on the downtown strip...

..involving real pedestrians.

And you couldn't get much closer to the action than Nimmo did...

..as he almost found out to his peril.

-What the hell are you doing?

-I'm...

Sean?

What are you doing here?

-Derek Nimmo?

-I'm terribly sorry. Why are you driving on the pavement?

I'm making Diamonds Are Forever.

It's a film.

A film. Oh, I see, you're not in trouble then?

As a matter of fact, I rather am in trouble.

I was here for the gambling and I won quite a lot really,

but I'm down now to about 1,700 and I don't quite know what to do.

Well, if I were you, I'd get the hell out of it.

Connery's swift exit after Diamonds Are Forever would cause the producers

to begin their hunt for what would be the third different

Bond in less than four years.

But many, including Connery,

were feeling the series may have run its course.

I came back for the one, that was the understanding.

I'd do the one and I've got other things I want to do.

I mean, it's perfectly possible that the cycle has ended.

But far from ending the cycle,

it was Mankiewicz's sparkling one-liners and Connery's

tongue-in-cheek approach that would set the tone for the coming films.

Sean Connery was the first screen Bond, but now that he no longer

plays the role, United Artists have laid him to rest. "Sean who?"

they say. "No, no.

"There's only one James Bond and that's Roger Moore,"

who of course just happens to be the latest.

Lowering his gun and raising his eyebrow, Roger Moore seemed to

continue from where he'd left off on the Millicent Martin Show in 1964.

Black queen on the red king, Miss...?

Solitaire.

My name's Bond.

James Bond.

I know who you are,

what you are and why you have come.

You have made a mistake.

You will not succeed.

Did Solitaire know something we didn't?

Moore determined to play the role for laughs.

But there were concerns as to whether he could really cut it as James Bond.

When you took over from Sean Connery, because it was new and

because it was different, people all said,

"Oh, well, Roger Moore is not my idea of 007.

"And he's not like Sean Connery and it's a great failure."

I mean, do you mind that kind of hammering?

Erm... No, not really because I say it before they do.

I think the first time they went to see Live And Let Die was

just to see if I was going to be as bad as they thought I would be.

With the uncertainty of a new Bond,

the producers had felt panicked into chasing current cinema trends, but

James Bond sat uncomfortably in both a Blaxploitation milieu

and a kung fu craze.

Stand back, girls.

In 1975, Harry Saltzman, beset by financial difficulties,

was forced to sell his share in the Bond franchise to United Artists.

The break-up of his winning partnership with Cubby Broccoli,

together with the lukewarm reception

for The Man With The Golden Gun couldn't have come at a worse time.

By the mid-1970s, film production in Britain was in harsh decline,

but undeterred, Broccoli resolved to go for broke with his next venture,

The Spy Who Loved Me, determined that Bond would keep the British end up.

Obviously we do make the picture for a worldwide market

and I think that's the hope of the British industry.

We feel we have to do something more outrageous, more bizarre

and more unique.

For Broccoli and the Bond franchise,

this would be a very symbolic leap of faith.

The film's audacious opening stunt was filmed from multiple angles,

but they went with a single shot and the whole world held its breath.

JAMES BOND THEME TUNE

Such was the confidence in The Spy Who Loved Me

and the feeling that it might just prove

the saviour of the British film industry, that the BBC,

in collaboration with the Open University,

secured unique access to the film's production, as the basis for a

course on, promisingly entitled, Mass Communications and Society.

GUNSHOT

My name is Bond.

James Bond.

The resulting eight-part series examined all aspects of Bondiana,

from giving Bond a new soundtrack for the 1970s...

I was very anxious to write a song that I thought was completely

different than any of the songs that

have been written for the Bond films.

And I also didn't want them to quite be about the villain.

I wanted a song written about Bond.

I thought it was time that he be pretentious enough

and vain enough, in fact, to have a song written about him.

..to the usual pressures of being a Bond girl.

The one thing that sometimes I don't particularly like is the...

Let's say the sex symbol part of it,

as most of the Bond girls have been because that is not at all my scene.

And cameras eavesdropped as set designer Ken Adam explained his

concept for the film's centrepiece to director Lewis Gilbert.

-My feeling is as the submarine goes in...

-Into darkness.

Into darkness, you know, with a high fin, I think that will

give you a very good...

I discussed with Claude yesterday actually, I thought the best

way of showing the set was to suddenly switch on all the lights.

SIRENS BLARE

The 380ft long set is a life-size mock up

of the interior of a 600,000 tonne supertanker,

containing three submarines,

floating in 1.2 million gallons of water.

As if that wasn't enough to keep the 400 guests wondering,

girls from the cast stripped off their minks in sub-zero

temperatures, all in the name of publicity.

The film is costing over £6 million and this set alone, £1 million.

Appropriately, 007 himself arrived in futuristic style.

And then with his adversary, a female Russian super spy,

accompanied the ex-Prime Minister

around the world's largest film stage.

Believing they had a hit on their hands, United Artists spent

a record 4.4 million on worldwide publicity.

And who better to front it than the man himself?

My name's Bond, James Bond, and I'm licensed to kill.

There's a royal premiere tonight, it's the latest Bond,

The Spy Who Loved Me. It has women, action and me.

So have you tonight on Nationwide at 6:20.

I'm Roger Moore, so watch The Spy Who Loved Me and you'll

love James Bond.

It still works - on the third take.

Roger, you do spoof the part a bit, don't you?

-You think it's funny, in a way.

-Well, of course, the...

The whole thing is that you must not laugh at it.

You must let the audience know that they are invited to laugh with you.

And so it's all a spoof, it's fun.

The film's most topical gag came in the form of its

larger-than-life-villain, Jaws.

Bond's most formidable foe since Oddjob.

This marvellous man who plays Jaws, he is 7'2".

When he was grappling with you in the railway carriage,

what was it like?

-Is he...

-It was hell.

He is a very gentle man, very nice, but he's very heavy.

And when he had me squashed up against that wall...

Like 20st pushing this bone here right through to the back.

Yes.

Bond's highly choreographed confrontations with Jaws

were a large part of the film's phenomenal success.

BOND GROANS

TRAIN HORN BLARES

And so popular was this mighty-mouthed adversary

that when the production jetted off to Rio de Janeiro

for the next movie, they did the unthinkable.

We've done something in this film that's never been done in any

Bond film - we've had to bring him back.

And really that's partly because there's so many people

round the world that wrote in saying, "Is he going to come back?"

So we had to bow to that kind of thing.

We should stop altogether at one point...

and be suspended and be looking ahead at what...

At, you know, the other cable car.

From high jinks over Rio to laser battles in outer space,

Moonraker was, quite simply, out of this world.

But James Bond would come hurtling back to Earth

for an unusually close encounter.

-BARRY NORMAN:

-It is being said, at the moment, that another

rival James Bond film is going to be set up with your own

original James Bond, Sean Connery, playing the part.

Does that worry you at all?

Well, that's a, that's a legal thing.

I'm not going to get into any legal, erm,

discussions about it.

But would it worry you if, if such a film were to be made?

Nothing worries me if I'm making a good film.

Broccoli may have brushed off the question,

but Barry Norman was on to something,

and by the summer of 1983 - look who was back.

38... Roll camera.

Connery was in production on the aptly-titled

Never Say Never Again - a remake of Thunderball -

the film rights of which resided with an independent producer.

It seemed quite a good idea after all these years,

and the moment I said, "Yeah, OK, I'll do it,"

there was a terrific furore.

With Roger Moore then in production on Octopussy,

the press looked to stoke up a bitter rivalry,

but the 00s were having none of it.

I...made it quite clear at the outset

that I was not in any way going to get involved in any silly race

in terms of rivalry or whatever. As you well know,

I've known Roger 20 years or so. And I did say to him,

"You know, they're going to try and play a sort of hype business,

"but you shouldn't really pay any attention to it."

And, erm, we didn't.

However, the BBC hardly remained impartial themselves.

Good evening from the Warner Theatre in Leicester Square,

where the crowds are already beginning to gather

because James Bond is back - the real James Bond,

at least, the real one in many people's eyes.

Not Roger Moore, the pretender who has usurped the role

for the last 12 years, but the original - Sean Connery.

Welcome back, James, as it were. I must put it to you,

this is rather unfair, but I was looking at the 00 rule book,

and it turns out that it's automatic retirement at 45 -

-did you know that?

-Yeah, well, I've got two years yet.

MICHAEL WOOD CHUCKLES

By the mid-1980s, James Bond had become something of a

-middle-aged man's fantasy.

-Do you hear the muttering?

Do you listen out for what people are saying about the movie?

Or about you specifically?

"Oh, it's old Moore again," they say.

-LAUGHTER

-"Old Rog."

Roger Moore seemed to be a long way from leaping over crocodiles.

Approaching 60, he now jogged about in a suede blouson.

What was it you were just running away from, then?

A bad cigar.

-38...

-And in rather less exotic locations.

We're in the Amberley Chalk Pits Museum in Sussex,

it's a goldmine...presumably in San Francisco, or near

San Francisco.

And, er...

the mines are about to be blown up to flood Silicon Valley,

because Zorin, Christopher Walken, is going to take over the

world's production of microchips.

But when the action itself involves the chief villain,

a peroxide Walken, escaping at 5mph in a mine cart...

..a damsel in little distress...

James!

..and a blow-up Grace Jones...

..the writing seemed to be on the wall.

A View To A Kill was to be Roger Moore's farewell to the character

he had inhabited since 1973.

Having led the field, Bond was now in danger of being eclipsed by

a new breed of imitator -

the all-American action hero. But...you can't keep a good man down.

A new man is about to take on the villains who want

to cause mischief around the world - we have a new James Bond.

After Connery, Lazenby and Moore, now it's...Dalton,

Timothy Dalton. A Welsh actor who's more used to playing Shakespeare

than secret agent.

And it was to be a stagey entrance.

In the pre-title for The Living Daylights, not one,

but three 00 agents are presented to us in a training exercise

on the Rock of Gibraltar...

No!

HE SCREAMS

But it's only when one of them falls to his death

that we first catch sight of a new hard-edged James Bond,

both brooding and Byronic.

And inevitably, the comparison game began.

-BARRY NORMAN:

-Well, now, how will the new James Bond

differ from his various predecessors?

I don't make those comparisons.

I have a script called The Living Daylights,

a character called James Bond and...

..I did my best to make it as well as I can. I can't think of...

..copying or being different to. I try to be original.

I studied the books and tried to bring THAT Bond into this film.

Your comrades in the Soviet Union...

GUNSHOTS AND SCREAMS

GUNSHOT

How much of the stunt work does Timothy Dalton do himself?

This is the sort of question...that you should not be asking.

Cinema is magic.

When people pay their money and go and sit inside a cinema,

they must believe.

And programmes like this...

I mean, betray all our tricks. You wouldn't expect a conjuror

or a magician to give his tricks away.

Now, the truth of the matter is that I do as much action as I can.

GUNFIRE

That is...until it came to the bedroom action,

which would see Dalton's Bond forego the usual casual liaisons

for a Hitchcock-ian love story.

FAIRGROUND SCREAMS

Take me on the wheel.

I think this film... It's not just an action adventure film,

it's the first time we've seen what could be called

a romantic mystery thriller. There's an honest and good

relationship with the leading lady.

However, the press were keen to make Bond's monogamy

more topical than the producers had perhaps intended.

With headlines that this was a safe-sex Bond for the AIDS era.

But a more likely explanation is that it was all part of

Dalton's aim to return to Ian Fleming's Bond,

who was far from being the kind of Casanova that everyone imagined.

He has, sort of, one girl per book, approximately.

And that's one a year. I think that's... He's a bachelor...

INTERVIEWER CHUCKLES QUIETLY

..and he moves around the world pretty rapidly,

and, um, I didn't see any great harm in that, myself.

Fleming's Bond is...

a man who often was extremely vulnerable.

You read passage after passage after passage throughout the books

where...his insides were taut and wrenching with nerves.

Where, you know, he'd have to have a drink or a pill

just to stay calm, in order to do the job he had to do.

Coming hard on the heels of Roger Moore's long and light-hearted reign,

the world was not quite ready for Dalton's taut

and unsmiling secret agent.

His second outing - Licence To Kill - still rated the most violent

Bond film to date, would be his last.

And by the early 1990s the franchise was in jeopardy,

plagued by a series of legal disputes over copyright.

This was a time of dramatic political shifts in Europe,

and 007, the quintessential Cold War hero, suddenly seemed obsolete.

It was to be the longest hiatus in Bond's film history.

But in 1994...he was back.

Pierce Brosnan, the new Bond, unveiled a few minutes ago,

made his name as an action man in the US TV series Remington Steele.

Now he has to prove the Bond formula and the character

can still work in the '90s.

It was a shaky start, though, as shown when the BBC

caught Brosnan off-guard.

Well, now I'm joined from Central London by the new 007,

-Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan, congratulations.

-Thank you.

Are you going to be bringing anything new to this role?

-Er, myself, I'm new. Erm...

-Yes, but what's going to be different?

Well, I think we have a... With the story outline we've got now

we have, um...

He hadn't a clue. But by the time cameras caught up with him

on location, he was the model Bond.

The main task at hand is really getting this film

and telling the story.

And we are doing that,

we have a wonderful director in Martin Campbell...

who's very hungry for this, and likewise myself

in wanting to get it right.

For a new Bond and a new director, it was a daunting task.

What we're filming today is the streets of St Petersburg.

We built this set here at Leavesden, as you can see.

I've got an 18-week shoot, I've got four units at any one time.

Right? You can hear them all yelling and screaming around the corner -

they probably want me to get round there.

-BARRY NORMAN:

-On the day we turned up on set, Brosnan was concerned

that we weren't seeing Bond in quite the right light.

I'm going to be doing action tomorrow...

I will be more Bond tomorrow, I promise you, Barry.

I'm sorry it's a bit boring today, and it's...

..this is all she wrote, you know.

Tomorrow I have the gun and I have the girl.

And Brosnan was true to his word.

And ACTION!

The next day, he swapped his Russian run-around for something

a bit bigger - in a scene that took six weeks to film.

As well as witty action scenes, director Martin Campbell,

together with his screenwriters, set about bringing back the familiar,

such as Bond's old Aston Martin DB5.

But there was nothing predictable about their recasting of M.

And in handing HER the line that had been coming to Bond

for more than 30 years.

I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur,

a relic of the Cold War...

whose boyish charms, though wasted on me,

obviously appeal to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you.

Point taken.

Stella Rimington, the Director General of MI5 at the time,

was convinced that they had merged fact and fiction in

casting Judi Dench.

I can't imagine,

that had my appointment not been publicly announced,

the producers of the James Bond film would EVER

have thought of making M a woman. I was quite taken aback, actually,

because she did look quite like I looked in those days.

I had a jacket without a collar and a sort of three-quarter length...

Which is exactly what she was wearing.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

But despite their similarities, the true inspiration for a female M

was revealed on Pebble Mill by no less than the former

Miss Moneypenny herself.

Cubby Broccoli called me to say that they wouldn't be using me.

And I said, "Well, that's all right, because I want to play M."

So, all those years ago, I had given them the idea that

there would be a tremendous element of surprise if the new Bond

walked into M's office...

the chair swivelled around...and there was Moneypenny.

And she never called him James again, because she was the boss.

Did I see the other day that Judi Dench has been cast in that part?

-Yes, and I feel rather betrayed, actually.

-I bet you do.

-Yes.

-So, so...

-Because it should have been me.

And even if... I mean, she's a lovely actress,

but it just should have been me.

Across four films,

Pierce Brosnan successfully reinvigorated the franchise.

And turned Bond, once again, into a major box-office attraction.

But with 2002's Die Another Day, they stretched believability

beyond the limit. James Bond was now at the mercy of CGI,

be it an invisible car or even kitesurfing a tsunami.

The last seven years have gone very quickly.

You... You know, there's a certain, obviously, maturity.

And just as you're getting the hang of it,

they're talking about someone else coming along. Show business.

It's always been like this. I remember when Connery stepped down.

It was like, "Who's going to be the next guy?"

So, it's the big circus. And the family...

The Broccoli family have always done it really well.

Sure enough, two years later, with talk of his fifth Bond film,

Brosnan learned that he would no longer be the main attraction.

The circus was moving on, and its ringmasters were now scouting

for a new and younger man to top the bill.

We have decided, after the last film, to go back

to a more realistic Bond. Sort of go back to basics.

Go back to the classic Bond and...

we hope that that's something the audience will appreciate.

I think people are looking for something

a little less frivolous today.

The world's changed a lot. And Bond always changes with the world.

But the world was in for a shock.

Finally, the name's Craig, Daniel Craig.

After months of speculation, the coveted job of being the next 007

has been landed by the 37-year-old English actor.

But after four decades of tall, dark and handsome -

are we ready for the first blond Bond?

I want to make the best film we can. The most entertaining film we can.

And it's not a question of redefining...

but it's a question of taking it somewhere,

maybe where it's never gone before.

Craig had noble intentions, but for the man with the golden hair

the backlash would be vindictive.

Websites were set up saying he was too ugly, too scrawny,

too blond. But any doubts the world had,

disappeared within minutes of Casino Royale's first major

action set piece.

And Jonathan Ross was on hand to talk to the principal players

on location in the Bahamas.

How's it working out with the crazy Frenchman? You've got this

Frenchman who jumps off buildings for fun, I believe.

Yeah, he's got quite a big part at the beginning of the movie.

He's, I think, the world's best freerunner.

So we're including him in the action sequence right at the beginning

of the...of the movie. And it's tough, it's a very tough sequence.

I have to climb on the platform.

And after I climb on the girder on the top.

And on top I have to jump to the crane, and to the crane

I have a fight with Bond.

You know, we're not relying on a lot of CGI for this.

I will be doing stuff and some of it will be me,

and some of it won't be me, for obvious reasons.

But can I stop you? Are you going to do the freerunning? Cos I know there's that character early...

-I've done some of it, yeah.

-How's that.

-Good!

-Terrifying?

-Nah, it's...

You know what, I've had to knuckle down and get over

a few things. I'm kind of approaching every day

as it comes, really. And I get on set and I'm suddenly 200 feet

up in the air and I go, "OK, well, you signed up."

LAUGHTER

As well as being truthful to the action scenes, Craig was keen

to be faithful to the spirit of the book. And to show

-the raw vulnerability of 007.

-He's not infallible.

I just wanted to sort of see him make a few mistakes.

Because then, the drama of it is sort of better

when he gets it right. I want to make the audience, sort of, go,

"Oh, my God, it's all going to go wrong." Believe that

it's going to go wrong, and then when it goes right it's much more exciting.

And it's his tangled relationship with the enigmatic Vesper Lynd

that causes Bond to bare his soul.

My character is not like a classic Bond girl -

she's more like a character from '40s movies, you know, quite dark.

Very complex, many layers.

You know, she's an equal match to Bond.

She's, you know, very mysterious and the relationship that they

have is very unusual. And it's a love story.

It's like there's blood on my hands. It's not coming off.

Let me see...

This was a romance not seen since the days of Dalton and Lazenby.

But for all the new intensity in Craig's interpretation of the character,

there was still one Bond convention that was inescapable.

-Have you said the line yet?

-I have.

-You have?

-Mm.

-Was it OK?

-I...mmm. Yeah.

-How many takes?

We did a few, we did a few. And it wasn't much of that...

We were outside, there was a lot of wind, erm...

That must have been quite nice, in a way, though?

-It was nice to get it out of the way.

-Yeah.

I was... I didn't think about it. I didn't think about it

until the moment, and we did it and, you know.

It's at a very key moment in the movie, as well, which is...

It's hopefully, you know, going to hit home...

The name's Bond...

James Bond.

It's meant to...

The resounding success of Daniel Craig's 007

and of James Bond as a British cultural icon

was celebrated in 2012,

as part of the London Olympics opening ceremony.

-But, James, I need you.

-So does England.

In a sequence filmed in secret, the world's most famous spy,

having given 50 years of dedicated service to his country...

Oh, the things I do for England...

..with his own brand of unbending patriotism...

What do I do to blow up the room? Whistle God Save The Queen?

..and loyalty to his monarch...

I'm having it patched directly to Buckingham Palace.

Well, I'm sure Her Majesty will be fascinated.

..James Bond was finally granted an audience with the Queen.

HE CLEARS THROAT

Good evening, Mr Bond...

MUSIC: James Bond Theme by Monty Norman