8 Fun Facts About James Bond-Vol. 2

8 Fun Facts About James Bond-Vol. 2

July 26, 2013-  Here is our second installment in the 8 Fun Facts About James Bond series.  Enjoy.

1.   Ian Fleming's novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, (1962) has the distinction of being one of the least popular and most critically despised novels in the James Bond series.  This experimental tale is told from the perspective of the lead character, Viv Michele, a Canadian woman.   007 does not even appear in the story until the final third of the novel.  The 1977 Roger Moore film of the same name has no plot or character elements from the novel whatsoever.

2.   Christopher Lee, British film actor who began his career in the 1940's, and has starred as such great film characters as Dracula, Saramun the White, Count Dooku and 100's more, played James Bond villain, Francisco Scaramanga in 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun.  Lee was the first cousin to James Bond novelist, Ian Fleming, who never lived to see Lee play the part.

3.  The voices of the actors playing Bond villains, Auric Goldfinger and Emilio Largo, played by Gert Frobe and Aldolfo Celi, respectively, in the films Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965), were dubbed for the films due to the belief that audiences would find their think accents difficult to understand.

4.  Here is some insight into the universal impact that one movie series can have on the world.  It is estimated that more than one half of the entire world's population has seen, at least, one of the James Bond films.  This statistic may make James Bond the single most recognizable fictional character in the history of the world.

5.   Two universally recognized associations of the James Bond character are that his drink of choice is  a martini, "shaken, not stirred" and that he drives an Aston Martin, yet neither appears in any of the Sir Roger Moore films.  Moore felt distancing himself with certain associations of Sean Connery's version of the character would allow him to carve out his own, distinct persona as Bond.

6.   Sean Connery faces the issuance of an arrest warrant in Spain if he fails to appear to testify, before the end of the year, in a corruption investigation involving the sale of a home in Marbella, Spain to developers several years ago.   The property was later demolished and a scandal over zoning laws, money laundering, and political corruption ensued.   To date, Connery has refused to appear.

7.   George Lazenby, star of 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, was a Used Car salesman prior to being selected to fill Sean Connery's shoes in the role of the world's most famous secret agent.

8.   Skyfall (2012), the 23rd installment in the James Bond film series just surpassed Avatar (2009) as the highest grossing film ever in the history of Great Britain.  

I'd love to hear from you with any Fun Facts, or story ideas....