His name was Connery. Sean Connery.
October 5, 1962: A film premieres, Doctor No. It is the 1st film based on a character created by Ian Fleming, a former officer in the intelligence division of Britain's Royal Navy. His agent number is 007. His name? "Bond. James Bond."
Eon Productions Ltd. was formed by Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to make films based on Fleming's James Bond novels, which began in 1953 with Casino Royale.
On October 21, 1954, the CBS anthology series Climax! adapted Casino Royale. They Americanized it: Barry Nelson was cast as American CIA agent Jimmy Bond, while the CIA agent Felix Leiter became British MI6 agent Clarence Leiter. Peter Lorre played Le Chiffre, the villain played by Orson Welles in the 1967 spoof version, and Mads Mikkelsen in the 2006 reboot.
This version is not well-regarded. Nevertheless, Nelson was the first man who played a live-action version of Bond.
Broccoli and Saltzman didn't know if turning the novels into films would work, especially in America. If successful, they would make more money there than in the rest of the world put together. If unsuccessful in the U.S., it wouldn't matter how successful it was in the U.K. and elsewhere: They would be doomed. So they chose Doctor No, the Bond novel that they thought would be the cheapest to produce. It worked, and subsequent Bond films had bigger budgets.
Most of the familiar Bond tropes started here:
* The opening "gunbarrel sequence" and opening titles, both designed by Maurice Binder, who would continue to design opening titles until his death in 1991.
* James Bond, Agent 007 of MI6, Britain's international security agency, played by Scottish actor Sean Connery, then 32 years old, looking cool as hell, killing the bad guys, getting the girls, and dropping mad quips.
* Bond's boss, known only as M, played by Bernard Lee, approving of his results, but not always his methods.
* Bond's playful banter with M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny, played by Lois Maxwell. (The character doesn't get a first name, Eve, until Skyfall in 2012).
* Exotic locations, in this case Jamaica, which had been granted independence by Britain after filming was completed, hence it was still a colony in the film.
* A spectacular lead "Bond Girl": Swiss actress Ursula Andress, as the revenge-minded Honey Rider. There wouldn't always be a suggestive name, but Goldfinger would have Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, You Only Live Twice would have Mie Hama as Kissy Suzuki, The Man With the Golden Gun would have Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight, Barbara Bach's Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me would be Agent XXX, Moonraker would have Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead (at least they made her a brilliant Ph.D.), Maud Adams would have the title role in Octopussy (though not mentioned in the film, her real name was given as Octavia Smythe in the book), GoldenEye would have Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, and The World Is Not Enough would have Serena Scott Thomas as Dr. Molly Warmflash.
* Unfortunately, as was all too common in Fleming's novels, there was also racism: Dr. No is portrayed as half-Chinese, and Wiseman wears "yellowface" makeup. This would be even worse in the 1967 film You Only Live Twice, when Connery was made up to "look Japanese."
If you can get past Bond's hyper-macho attitude, and the fact that the film views the world through a lens that is still tinted by the British Empire (which had, in real life, already given way to the British Commonwealth), the film is a good adventure with a satisfying conclusion.
Dr. No was a big success, allowing Eon to spend big thereafter. The 3rd film, Goldfinger in 1964, is generally considered to be where they hit their stride. Connery stepped aside temporarily for George Lazenby in On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, and was asked back for one last go-round in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.
Roger Moore took the role up from 1973 to 1985. Timothy Dalton played 007 in 1987 and 1989. After a bit of a gap, due to legal proceedings, Pierce Brosnan held the role from 1995 to 2002. It was then rebooted with Daniel Craig in 2006, and his 5th and last Bond film, No Time to Die, was released in 2021. Since Craig became the 1st Bond to die onscreen, the series will have to be rebooted with a new actor.
The Bond films inspired other spy films, such as The Ipcress File and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. And TV shows, like The Avengers (not to be confused with the Marvel Comics superhero team), The Prisoner, and, in America, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mission: Impossible. There were also spoofs: The TV show Get Smart, Dean Martin's Matt Helm films, and James Coburn's Flint films. Eventually, Mike Myers would produce and star in the Austin Powers films.
October 5, 1962 was also the day that "Love Me Do," The Beatles' 1st single, was released. It only hit Number 17, but it launched the one British phenomenon of the next 60 years that was bigger than the Bond films. In an article for the BBC's website yesterday, Mark Allison wrote:
The serendipity of this moment probably passed entirely unnoticed at the time, but the world we inhabit today is still enjoying its aftershocks...
Bond represents an explicit projection of imperial power, conveniently arriving at just the time that Britain's ability to wield such power in the real world was on the wane...
The Beatles themselves might have recoiled at the idea that the peace-and-love mantra of their music had anything to do with the violence and destruction wrought on screen by 007. But together, these two fashionable institutions wove a new national myth that Britain was not only benevolent and exciting, but cool. From the ashes of former imperial power had risen a cultural behemoth.
Cliché Alert: Timing is everything. Indeed, Dr. No's director, Terence Young, felt that the secret to his film's financial success was little more than timing. "I think we arrived not only in the right year, but the right week of the right month of the right year."
In a 2016 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, Ben Atha of the British rock band Ivan Camp played the then-current Craig version of Bond, "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Mike Myers' copycat Austin Powers, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist stepped in as the Connery version of Bond.
*
October 5, 1962 was a Friday. It was midweek for football, and preseason for the NBA and the NHL. But baseball was played. Specifically, Game 2 of the World Series, at the old Yankee Stadium. The San Francisco Giants beat the New York Yankees, 2-0. Jack Sanford pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Ralph Terry.
From 1956 to 1966, there was only one Cy Young Award for all of Major League Baseball, and Terry should have won it. Had there been one for both Leagues, as there has been since 1967, Sanford should have won it for the National League. Instead, it was given to Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who didn't win a Pennant, having lost a Playoff for it to the Giants, as they had back in New York in 1951.
Willie McCovey hit a home run. This was the 1st Series where neither team won back-to-back games. The Giants won Games 2, 4 and 6. The Yankees won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7. Game 7 was won by the Yankees, 1-0, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, with Terry pitching a 4-hit shutout. In the bottom of the 9th, the Giants got the tying run on 3rd base and the winning run on 2nd, with McCovey at bat. But this was not the modern era: No closer was brought in. Terry got McCovey to hit a line shot that 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson caught, and the Yankees won the World Series.
Auto racing is not a sport, but Michael Andretti, part of a racing dynasty, was born on this day.
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