Dr. No was the sixth Bond novel written by
Ian Fleming and the first film in the long-running series. Who would have
thought back in 1962 that it would still be going 60 years later and at the
time ignite a spy craze in every film industry around the world. I
don't know if anyone really understands why it so caught the imagination
of people. It felt fresh, cool and fun. Kennedy was President. The world
was coming out from the gloom of the war and the rabid anti-communist thinking.
That the Movie Morality code was breaking down and it was sexually liberating
when Bond clearly shags the traitorous secretary twice while waiting to kill
a man. How much of the success was luck? Would it have had the same impact
without Sean Connery because a few actors turned it down or were rejected
(Cary Grant, David Niven, Richard Johnson, Patrick McGoohan) till they got
to him. He was hardly a star at the time - pretty much an unknown with his
best-known film being a child's movie - Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
David Niven? Perish the thought. Guaranteed that would have been the last
one in the series. Same with Ursula Andress - unknown - far from the first
choice and chosen from a picture someone saw. She had to be dubbed because
of her accent. Director Terence Young was also not a first choice but about
the fifth. Kismet. It all worked on a budget of $1 million. Incredible. The
deal for the book rights had been put together by Harry Saltzman and Cubby
Broccoli who got the rights for all of Fleming's Bond books for $50,000 with
the exception of Casino Royale and Thunderball. Fleming was to write four
more books after the deal (The Spy Who Loved Me, On Her Majesty's Secret
Service, You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun). They then
went around to the studios looking for financing but were turned down by
all except United Artists but they would only go in for $1 million.
This is a favorite of mine - not the top - that would go to Goldfinger and
From Russia with Love - but they established so many of the traditions that
would last going forward. The psychedelic credit sequence from Maurice Binder,
Bond turning towards us with the gun through the aperture, the classic theme
music that sends chills up your spine whenever it opens a film, Bond flirting
with Moneypenny, M calling him into his office, Bond at the gambling table,
the cigarette dangling from his mouth, women dropping their knickers at the
sight of him, the megalomaniacal villain intent on world domination and of
course his Bond, James Bond looking bored. The only thing this film didn't
have is Q and a big bang opening action scene. I expect they could not afford
it. This is a great film though - tapered down but so many classic
moments - his shooting Professor Dent in cold blood was shocking back then,
Ursula coming out of the water singing Under a Mango Tree in her white bikini
was an awakening for a young boy. It still is. She was flawless back then.
The well-adorned lair that was to become a trademark of spy films. The ending
in the boat with Ursula - another bit that became a part of the series.
I just finished up the book - one of Fleming's best so far - and the film
sticks to it surprisingly faithfully. It begins as does the film with
the three blind men. The film adds Leiter (Jack Lord) from the CIA and the
Professor but it actually tones down the book. In the book Dr. No sends Bond
through a torturous endurance test which at the end Bond falls 100-feet into
the sea and has to fight a giant squid! It is a wonderfully written section
but the squid would have taken the film into the realm of absurdity. And
it would have looked damn silly fighting a rubber squid. But the finishing
of Dr No in the film is so much better - his metal claws grasping at the
iron to climb out of the radioactive water. In the book, Bond dumps a ton
of guano aka bird shit on him. Fleming should have come up with something
better than that. And in the film Dr. No is part of S.P.E.C.T.R.E - not in
the book.
The book came right after From Russia with Love which in the last page Bond
is stabbed with poison from Krebs that kills in minutes. Well, he obviously
survived but was out of commission for months. So, M sends him to Jamaica
as a vacation and to see if he can figure out where Strangeways ran off to
with his secretary. Some vacation. He gets together with Quarrel (John
Kitzmiller) who he already knew from To Live and Let Die - book 2 - and his
worst book full of racist dialogue. The oddest thing about the book is that
the last ten pages are devoted to Bond having sex with Honey - Dr. No is
dead, so let's have sex. One might guess that the publisher came back and
said, where is the sex - so Fleming threw it in at the end. Had to be better
than being stabbed with poison but he probably needed to take time to recover
as well. Connery was to be in seven of the Bond films, Bernard Lee as M was
in eleven Bond films, Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny was in fourteen of
them and Desmond Llewelyn as Q who does not appear in this one was in seventeen
of them. All loved figures
