Ratoff was so impressed by his creation that in March 1955 he bought the full screen rights to Casino Royale for the then princely sum of $6,000. Fleming was on something a roll at this time, penning a screenplay based on his then current novel Moonraker for Rank who eventually dithered for so long over whether to commit to the project that it simply never got made.

In 1956, Fleming, produced a 28 page script titled James Gunn - Secret Agent for Henry Morgenthau III, a New York based producer who had entered into a deal with the Jamaican government, hoping to turn the island into a major film production centre. Given that Fleming had fallen in love with Jamaica and set up home there [living in a huge mansion he dubbed Goldeneye], the writer seemed the perfect choice to assist Morgenthau in his frankly rather oddball scheme.

Morgenthau saw the Gunn treatment as the springboard for a whole TV show and felt that the cachet attached to Fleming's name would be sure to attract US TV executives and their money and influence. The half-hour pilot would pit secret agent Commander Bond against Oriental super-villain Doctor No who, working with German scientists, was planning to sabotage the West's attempts to reach space by interfering with a launch site based in the Caribbean.

Fleming decided to throw in his lot with Bryce and McClory and for the next couple of years the threesome, joined by another of Fleming's friends, Ernest Cuneo, worked away on a number of possible screen treatments for Bond.

Though relations between Fleming and McClory were often strained, the partnership seemed to have been successful enough for Kinematograph Weekly to announce, on 1 October 1959, that McClory had in fact begun pre-production on James Bond of the Secret Service which would reflect McClory's love of water sports and feature a number of underwater scenes. Shooting would begin, we were assured, some time in February of 1960.

Broccoli had been in the film industry for years and, in 1952, had teamed up with Irving Allen to create Warwick Films which turned out plenty of cheap and now forgotten quota quickies throughout the 1950s, one of which had been the war film The Red Beret [1952], directed by Terence Young and co-written by Richard Maibaum, both of whom would also figure prominently in the Bond story.

In fact Broccoli and Maibaum had already considered their own version of Bond in 1958 when the producer asked Maibaum to read the novels and see if he could come up with a workable treatment. That version never made it, finally killed when Warwick Films folded in 1960.

The beginnings of Bond's film career went virtually unnoticed by the trade press, except for a few brief notices announcing the forthcoming film as one of a slate of productions being readied by Saltzman and Broccoli. But while the rest of the world carried on blissfully unaware of what was coming, the producers had hired writer Richard Maibaum to work on a treatment based on Thunderball.

But that messy court case surrounding the novel was to rear its ugly head and frightened Saltzman and Broccoli away, though not before Maibaum had actually finished his first draft screenplay. Instead, they turned their attentions to Dr No which was now being prepared by Maibaum and Wolf Mankowitz.

But there was one vital element still missing from the production - Saltzman and Broccoli didn't have anyone yet to play Bond. On 5 October 1961, Kinematograph Weekly announced that production on Dr No would not now take place until the following year, allowing the producers to concentrate on their search for a star.

A national newspaper ran a competition looking for the screen Bond and had whittled down more than 1,000 contestants to a more manageable six, all of whom were screen tested by EON at Twickenham studios. Of the six, one man emerged as the clear leader - a young model named Peter Anthony. But he was ultimately deemed unsuitable, though as consolation, he was offered a small part in the film, though he eventually failed to appear.

Others who were reportedly being considered for the role at this time included Richard Johnson [who would later play another fictional British secret agent, Bulldog Drummond], Roger Moore, Rex Harrison, Trevor Howard, Max Von Sydow and Patrick McGoohan. The latter was reportedly offered the role but he turned it down, appalled by the character's brutality and wanton behaviour. Broccoli himself, meanwhile, was keen on pursuing Cary Grant for the role. Fleming favoured either David Niven, Moore or his cousin, Christopher Lee, with his neighbour in Jamaica, Noel Coward, as Dr No, all of whom were deemed unsuitable for one reason or another. In fact Coward himself turned down the part, famously sending a telegraph to the producers which simply read: "Dr. No? No! No! No!"

The first time that Sean Connery's name went into the hat was at a dinner party attended by Saltzman and his wife at the Polish club in London. Also present were producer Benjamin Fisz, and editor Peter Hunt [then finishing off work on a comedy, On The Fiddle, for Fisz and himself a key player in later Bond films]. During dinner, Saltzman mentioned the problems that he and Broccoli had been having in finding the right man to play Bond when Fisz mentioned to Hunt that Connery, who was appearing in the still unfinished On the Fiddle, might fit the bill.

Hunt screened a couple of reels of On the Fiddle featuring Connery for Saltzman, while in the States, Broccoli had already seen Connery's work in the successful Disney comedy-musical Darby O'Gill and the Little People [1958]. Connery, a former naval rating, milkman and labourer, had been toiling away in film and TV since 1957, never really achieving the sort of roles that would best suit his obvious talents.

Meanwhile, Saltzman and Broccoli had employed Terence Young to direct Dr No after Bryan Forbes, Guy Green and future Bond director Guy Hamilton had all passed on the project. The dapper Young took Connery under his wing and immediately took him off to his shirt makers in Paris and London and insisted on being present at all of Connery's wardrobe sessions. Young's attention to detail was to result in an image that has remained constant throughout over 30 years of film-making.

While Young had been preparing for the shoot, Saltzman and Broccoli had been looking for the first in a long series of Bond girls - the hunt was on for the big screen Honey Ryder whose spectacular entrance in the novel (she emerges naked from the sea) was clearly going to have to be altered to suit 1960s cinematic tastes. It was Young who had first spotted Ursula Andress in late 1961, allegedly spotting a picture of the young Swiss actress wearing a wet T-shirt on office wall of Darryl F. Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century Fox. Zanuck had no plans to use Andress in anything and gave Young the photograph to take back to London with him.

In late 1961, after considering Andress for almost a month, Broccoli asked for advice from Columbia's casting chief Max Arno who was suitably impressed by the actress' looks. Arno's word was good enough for Saltzman and Broccoli who had Andress flown from Los Angeles to New York and on to the set in Jamaica at the end of January.

The EON crew arrived in Jamaica on Sunday 14 January 1962 and began shooting two days later, taking in locations at Palisadoes Airport, Kingston, Montego Bay and Oncaros. Much use was made of local talent to play smaller roles: Dolores Keator was cast as Strangways' secretary Mary Prescott because she owned the house that the crew were shooting in; other local amateur actors took the tiny roles of the Chief of Police and the construction worker who watches the car carrying the thugs pursuing Bond as it careens over the edge of the cliff. Keeping it in the family, the bartender seen at Puss-Feller's club was a relative of costume designer Tessa Welborn.

When the main unit relocated to Laughing Water to shoot the scene where Honey Ryder memorably emerges from the sea, they found themselves literally just down the beach from Goldeneye and Fleming himself visited the set with friends and neighbours Noel Coward and Stephen Spender and visiting journalist Peter Quennell. Fleming even spent some time with Connery advising him on the best way to play Bond.

Fleming returned to the set on 17 February when the crew had moved on to Falmouth to watch the crew staging the scene wherein Bond and Honey hide behind a sand bank after being shot at by No's guards aboard a boat. The sequence had to be reshot after a detachment of American sailors, alerted by the sound of gunfire, rushed to the scene to see what was going on!

Jamaican location work finally came to an end on 21 February with some material still left unfilmed due to a change in the weather. He was able to pick up a few scenes later, but for now the production was heading back to the UK and Pinewood Studios where production designer Ken Adam had been constructing his vast, awesome sets.

On Friday 30 March, the main shooting schedule came to an end and the all-important post-production period began. While Peter Hunt pieced together Young's footage, Broccoli commissioned Monty Norman to write the soundtrack. The men had worked together before, on the ill-fated stage musical Belle which had died a nasty death. This didn't put Broccoli off, however, and he had offered Norman the chance to fly out to Jamaica to get a feel for the place and for the production.

Back in the UK, Norman began work on his calypso-flavoured score and work was proceeding nicely when someone suggested that the film should begin with a distinctive theme tune. Rifling through his back catalogue, Norman came across a song that he had composed for an un-produced stage musical of the satirical novel A House For Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul. The distinctively strident little tune was just what he was looking for.

But Norman's contribution to the finished film was to be somewhat less than he had expected. Though the tune was felt to be almost right, something was missing. Noel Rodgers, then head of music at United Artists, called in composer John Barry and his ensembles The John Barry Seven and The John Barry Orchestra to overhaul the piece. Barry's masterstroke was to let his guitarist, Vic Flick, loose on the main riff before his brass section kicked in to awesome effect. Exactly how much of Norman's original still remained is unclear as there are clear precedents to the theme tune in Barry's own work. But whatever it's parentage the distinctive twangy guitar into has been heard in every one of the 'official' Bond films made since and has become an integral part of the Bond mythos.

By July 1962 Dr No was in sufficient shape for Young to hold a private screening at the Traveller's Club in London attended by Ian Fleming and his wife Anne, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Beesborough, John Sutro and Peter Quennell. The event was far from the success that Young might have hoped. Anne Fleming, in a letter to Evelyn Waugh, noted that "it was an abominable occasion" and was appalled at the gales of laughter that greeted the scene of the tarantula crawling up Bond's body. Fleming himself hated what he saw. Following another preview in Leicester Square he took his research assistant Peter Garnham to a pub and dismissed the film as "Dreadful. Simply dreadful."

By October that same year, Fleming's attitude had softened slightly: he told Time that fans of the books would be disappointed that those who had never read Bond's adventures in print would "find it a wonderful movie."

Dr No was unveiled to the British press at the London Pavilion on 2 October 1962 and it opened to the public there three days later before going on general release on the 8th. The press were divided, but the public adored the film and Dr No was a huge success. The film had its US premiere on Thursday 7 March 1963, a star-studded event on Broadway [Connery was in attendance as were Leonard Bernstein, Phyllis Newman, Faye Emerson, Patrice Munsel, Zsa Zsa Gabor and many others] followed by an equally glamorous supper party at the Tower Suite. Despite a generally positive reception, United Artists were still unsure of what they had on their hands, however, and delayed its release in the States until 8 May 1963. It repeated its success Stateside and the impressive return on the film's $1 million outlay virtually ensured that a sequel was to follow.