Actor: Sean Connery
US Release Date: 8 Apr 1964
US gross, $ [adjusted]:24,796,765 [129,149,817]
Worldwide gross, $ [adjusted]: 78,900,000 [410,937,500]
World Premier - 10th October 1963 at the London Pavilion
Locations: SPECTRE island, Venice, London, Istambul, Eastern
Europe aboard the Orient Express through Yugoslavia,with stops in
Belgrade and Zagreb, the Aegean Sea.
Source for above info: The " mother " of all James Bond books - James Bond: The Legacy.
Happenstance
After the worldwide success of Dr.No , Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman gave the second chance to Terence Young to direct James Bond's second screen adventure, with Sean Connery as 007.
This movie started the tradition of the teaser (the short film which here surprisingly has a link to the rest of the film), the gun-barrel, the Bond musical number and lots of girls prancing about. Bond appears Walther PPK in hand in a garden. Bond is stalked silently around the elegant garden by the SPECTRE assassin Übermensch Red Grant (Robert Shaw) who deals an untimely death to the Bond look-a-like by means of a wristwatch that featured a garrote wire coiled inside. This suspenseful dress rehearsal of Bond's murder was repeated in The Man With The Golden Gun where a wax dummy likeness of Bond (Roger Moore) seen losing its fingers to Francisco Scaramanga's bullets. Later to the theme song, the credits are projected onto the body of a belly dancer.
And later, (an item not repeated in later Bond films) he meets up again Sylvia Trench, the lady he had bonded with in Dr.No . This makes her the only girlfriend to appear in two films, and it seems a deliberate attempt to tie the films together. When Bond's duty calls, Sylvia complains about the last time he went away, all the way to Jamaica!
Info taken from " MR. KISS KISS BANG BANG! ", the Granddaddy of all James Bond websites.
Coincidence
Bond is assigned to escort a beautiful Russian defector
Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) with a top secret decoding
device (the Spektor decoder), but the mission turns out to be
a trap set by SPECTRE. Tatiana Romanova works as an office
clerk in the Russian cipher department. After Honey's nature
girl in
Dr.No
, she was a step backward, but Daniela Bianchi (who placed 2nd
in the 1960 Miss Universe pageant) was a delight again for
Bond and the oglers.
Bond: You're one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen!
Tatiana: Thank you, but I think my mouth is too big!
Bond: No, it's just the right size, for me that is!
Enemy Action
The Best (with a capital B) Bond villain of all time, Ernst
Stavro Blofeld (rather only his hands and his white cat) are
shown for the first time. Later on the Orient Express, Bond
and babe (oops! sorry, fellow co-passenger) who are going back
to England meet the SPECTRE assassin Übermensch Red Grant whom
we saw murdering a Bond look-a-like in the teaser. What
follows next is one of the best hand-to-hand fights Bond ever
has but not before the mandatory talk about how SPECTRE wants
to dominate the world.
Bond: Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me
something!
Grant: You may know the right wines, but you're the one on
your knees!!
Grant: The first one won't kill you... not the second... not
even the third... Not until you crawl over here and you kiss
my foot!!
And for the first (and not the last) time in the series, Q's
gadget comes to the rescue when Bond disposes of the Red scum
with the help of a gas-spewing briefcase. Finally when they
get off the train and after a climactic battle on a boat where
Bond blows up all the baddies, they meet villainess Rosa
Klebb (Lotte Lenya) with her poison-spiked shoe. Needless to
say she is no impediment for Sean Connery who has perfected
the art of being James Bond in his second outing, smooth,
resourceful, witty, sardonic.
The success of the second venture in a huge way at the Box Office meant that Sean Connery returned as 007 in Goldfinger .
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