As the spy we all love celebrates his sixth decade on screen, Roger Crow looks back on that first 007 movie, and with the assistance of fellow aficionados, assesses the style and inspiration of Ian Fleming’s iconic creation…

007#01

DR. NO

AT 60

A Porthmadog cinema in August 1973, just down the road from where The Prisoner was filmed. It’s nine years to the day since writer Ian Fleming died, but most of the punters couldn’t care less. For one five-year-old celebrating his birthday, what unfolds is retina-searing magic.

Live and Let Die is terrifying, thrilling entertainment, and when it’s over the kid visits a local toy shop where he spies a model Moon buggy. The ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and 007 gun barrel logos are hints of what came before.

“So there are more James Bond films?” he thinks while playing with the new purchase, unaware that for the past 11 years, Bond has cast a similar cinematic spell for millions of fans. And that pattern has been repeated for decades, with different films, different locations around the world. And millions of viewers.

Chances are you know the whole story, but come with me anyway in Infinity’s spacious Aston Martin (don’t touch that red button). And for those wondering where we’re going, the answer is simple...

BACK IN TIME

When Ian Fleming wrote his first spy novel in the early 1950s, he had no idea Casino Royale would change his life, and the world. Secret service agent James Bond, who was supposed to look like a cross between US singer Hoagy Carmichael and Ian himself, captured the imaginations of many.

Bond was tailor-made for the big screen, and though forever on Her Majesty’s secret service, that scene where bad guy Le Chiffre whacked Bond’s crown jewels with a carpet beater might have put Casino Royale on the cinematic back burner. Fleming was a man on fire, hammering away at his typewriter like someone possessed. The larger-than-life characters and door-die adventures poured out of him like creative juices from some enormous cocktail shaker. Okay, rubbish analogy, but you get the idea. And then, in 1958, the sixth Bond novel would alter everything.

Bond could obviously reach a much wider audience on the big screen, and with producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman as driving forces, Dr. No became that template for every 007 offering that followed, not to mention hundreds of pale imitations and spoofs, including Austin Powers.