From Russia With Love

Agent 007 Sees Red (Sweden)
Love and Kisses From Russia (Belgium)

Released: 1963
Produced by: EON

Best Line:
Bond: "M and I once had an interesting experience in Tokyo..."

Worst Line:
Kerim Bey (about to sleep with a young girl): "Back to the salt mines..."

Undercover

Producer Hubbell Robinson originally bid $10,000 to make a 90-minute TV spectacular of the book in 1959, to star James Mason and be sponsored by the Ford Motor Company (imagine Bond driving a bulky Ford instead of an Aston Martin).

The budget was $2,000,000. Director Terence Young said they spent what almost amounted to the entire budget of Dr. No on test footage of actresses.

Daniela Bianchi was the runner-up in the 1960 Miss Universe pageant, as Miss Italy. As with Ursula Andress, the producers had her voice dubbed.

Richard Maibaum (to Cinefantastique): "My favorite of all the Bond girls is Daniella Bianchi. She didn't really want to be an actress. She would sit on the set and read an Italian novel and eat chocolate and when Terence would get peeved, he would scream at her, 'You cow!', but she would just shrug and laugh."

Bianchi would appear in only a few more films, including Operation Kid Brother (starring Sean's brother Neil Connery), before retiring to private life.

Celebrated spy novelist Len Deighton (the Harry Palmer series) reportedly wrote the first draft (he later wrote Warhead with Kevin McClory and Sean Connery).

During the helicopter sequence towards the end of the film, the inexperienced pilot flew too close to Sean Connery, almost killing him.

This author's favorite James Bond film; Best story, best villains, best Bond.

The gypsy girl fight between former Miss Jamaica, Martine Bestwicke (Zora) and former Miss Israel, Aliza Gur (Vida) was intensified by their dislike for each other. Director Terence Young had developed a crush on Bestwicke (he used her again in Thunderball) and Gur, used to more attention, took it out on her in the scene.

Author Ian Fleming makes a cameo appearance in this movie. He appears in the scene where the train passes a set-up rendezvous for Bond, just after a shot of the Bond's contact waiting by his car. In the following shot Fleming stands in the distance, resting on his cane as the train pulls away.

At the wrap party, Pedro Armendariz, dying of cancer, and Ian Fleming discussed Pedro's friend Ernest Hemingway, who committed suicide rather than face a lengthy fatal illness. A month later, Armendariz had a pistol smuggled into his hospital room and killed himself.


Films, main The Sixties

Main Page


Return to COMEDY ON TAP