For the second James Bond film, "From
Russia with Love", it was decided to shoot a publicity
image of
Connery with
his Walther pistol. The publicist Tom Carlile devised a
series of poses and the photographer David Hurn was commissioned
for the photo shoot.
When Connery arrived at the photo
studio, together with Tom Carlile and representatives from
United Artists, it was discovered that nobody had brought
James Bond’s small Walther automatic pistol.
Hurn recalled that "by chance it
happened that I practised air pistol target shooting as
a hobby and the
pistol I used was a Walther. It was decided between Tom
and myself, that... we would use my pistol for the pictures
and presumed that should anyone have doubts on their seeing
the name Walther on the gun they would be reassured..."
"In
theory Tom should have had the long barrel of the air pistol
removed by airbrushing during the designing of the
actual poster - in practice, for reasons, unknown,
this was never done."
The series of publicity shots was used for
From Russia with Love (1963) and then the following three
films: "Goldfinger", "Thunderball" and "You
Only Live Twice". |