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You Only Live Twice - Premiere & Press
12th June 2007
MI6 looks back at the world premiere of You Only Live Twice in 1967, and what the press had to say...
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Ahead of the film's opening, the publicity campaign for You
Only Live Twice was facing opposition with the unofficial spoof
version of Casino Royale also opening the same year. United Artists
ensured Bond was on top with a stunning billboard that spanned
an entire block in New York City above the Astor and Victoria
theatres in December 1966.
Shortly before its release, two television specials were broadcast
to hype Sean Connery's fifth outing as 007. BBC 1 in the UK aired
a special edition of "Whicker's World" with a behind-the-scenes
look at the film, and NBC in the USA broadcast "Welcome
To Japan, Mr Bond", a special featuring skits by M, Q and
Moneypenny. Both can now be found on the Ultimate
Edition DVD.
Above: The banner stretched across
the Astor and Victoria theatres in New York City. The
billboard measured 260 feet wide by 60 feet high.
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On the night of June 12th 1967, the World premiere of You Only
Live Twice took place at the Odeon Cinema in London's Leicester
Square, sponsored by the Variety Club of Great Britain in aid
of the YMCA and Imperial Cancer Research Fund.
As with previous Bond premieres and blockbusters of the time,
the crowds began to gather outside the Odeon early in preparation
for the big event hoping to get a glimpse of the stars that would
be attending. What made the premiere of You Only Live Twice all
that more special was the appearance of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth
II and her husband Prince Phillip. The event would be their first
James Bond premiere and paved the way to future attendances.
Amongst the many cast and crew members, Sean Connery
and wife Diana Cilento were the star attraction, especially
as it was Connery's first British 007 premiere since From
Russia With Love. Connery looked very un-Bond-like as he
sported a bushy moustache and did not don his usual toupee.
Along with the usual press entourage were household names
such as Jerry Lewis, Phil Silvers and Dick Van Dyke, as
well as members of the production crew such as screenwriter
Roald Dahl and producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.
Guy
Hamilton, who had previously directed "Goldfinger",
was also in attendance. |
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Above: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth
II is introduced to (left to right) Dick Van Dyke, Diane Cilento
and Sean Connery at the premiere. |
You Only Live Twice broke the opening day record at the Odeon
Leicester Square in London, and instantly became the number one
film in the USA when it opened the following day. It took a total
of over $600,000 in Balitmore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles,
New York and Philadelphia over its first weekend, and scooped
almost $7m across 161 venues nationwide in its first three weeks.
Although slightly down on the box-office phenomenon of Thunderball,
You Only Live Twice was still a highly successful film taking
$43.1m in the USA, and a global box office haul of over $111m.
With a production cost of less than $10m, the profit margins
were staggering compared to other films of its time. The competition
for 'Twice' comprised of renowned classics such as "Cool
Hand Luke", "The Graduate" and "The Dirty
Dozen" - the latter being the only film that out-grossed
'Twice' during 1967.
What The Critics Said...
Sean Connery plays 007 with his usual finesse. Rest of cast
in the $9.5 million film is strictly secondary, although Akiko
Wakabayashi and Tetsuro Tamba register well as Bond's Japanese
cohorts. Donald Pleasence makes a suitably menacing German heavy
who appears in film's final scenes.
-- Variety
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Above: Two women stoop to get a better
perspective of Bond in the You Only Live Twice banner at
the Astor Theatre. (UPI)
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Really no better and no worse
than its predecessors, the fifth James Bond is rather less
enjoyable mainly because the formula has become so completely
mechanical (and Bond himself so predictably indestructible)
without any compensation in other directions.
-- BFI
The outer-space sequences would be more
appropriate in a grade school educational short entitled
Our Amazing Universe, and the volcanic climax is a series
of clumsy process shots that no one took the trouble to
fix. Even Connery seems uncomfortable and fatigued, as if
he meant it when he said that this would be his last Bond
film. It may just be an off year for 007
-- Time
Although there's a lot more science-fiction
than there is first-vintage James Bond in You Only Live
Twice, the fifth in a series of veritable Bond films with
Sean Connery, there's enough of the bright and bland bravado
of the popular British super-sleuth mixed into this melee
of rocket-launching to make it a bag of good Bond fun.
-- New York Times |
A great deal of money was spent on the fifth Bond epic in an
attempt to duplicate this mystique, but in You Only Live Twice
the formula fails to work its magic.
-- Chicago Sunday Times
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