Production Notes - Goldfinger
With two smash hit adventures under his belt, James Bond was
looking pretty well unassailable at the box office and much was
riding on Eon's third 007 adventure. There was to be no room for
complacency on the Eon backlot.
But things got off to a slightly rocky start. Terence Young,
who had done such sterling work on both Dr No [1962] and From
Russia With Love [1963] and whose contribution to the creation
of the definitive screen Bond can never be underestimated, began
pre-production on Goldfinger in 1963 but decided to call it a
day when he failed to persuade Saltzman and Broccoli to give him
a percentage of the film's take. Young quit the project to work
on The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders over at Paramount,
leaving Saltzman and Broccoli to find a suitable replacement.
They again turned to Guy Hamilton, who had turned down the chance
to direct Dr No and who wasn't about to make that same mistake
again.
With new blood in the director's chair, it was felt that a fresh
perspective on the screenplay might also be valuable and Richard
Maibaum called in the talented Academy Award winner Paul Dehn
who had already scooped an Oscar for his first script (the classic
Seven Days To Noon [1950], co-written with James Bernard) and
who would later write the four sequels to Planet of the Apes [1968].
Again, Maibaum's familiarity with and love for the Fleming originals
ensured that a certain respect was maintained while adapting the
screenplay, which made some changes to the original story but
which kept the basic narrative and the spirit of the piece intact.
Indeed some of the changes were to improve upon Fleming's original
which suffered slightly from poor structure. Also making his mark
on the script was Wolf Mankowitz, now back on speaking terms with
Saltzman and Broccoli who contributed one of the most memorable
set pieces over lunch with the producers. Saltzman and Broccoli
had been at a loss as to how they could dispose of a body and
neither Maibaum nor Dehn were coming up with the goods. It was
Mankowitz who suggested putting the corpse in the boot of a car
then dropping the car into an auto-wrecker.
While the script was being finalised, United Artists started
to get cold feet over the inclusion of the sexually charged name
Pussy Galore - especially as she was openly lesbian in the novel,
something the script was playing down. Worried UA executives wanted
the name changed to Kitty and it was left to Eon's publicist,
Tom Carlile, to ensure that the name stayed as it was by leaking
it to the press. Fleet Street's gossip-hungry hacks did the rest
and UA now felt unable to go ahead with the proposed name change.
Meanwhile, the cast was being assembled. Connery was back - there
was never going to be any real question of that (though Connery
had expressed some mild concern about playing the role for a third
time) and the star was given a hefty pay rise to ensure that he
stayed on the team. Connery came to Goldfinger straight of the
troubled set of the Hitchcock thriller Marnie [1963], an experience
he had found less than pleasurable and it was no doubt some comfort
to be back on familiar ground.
Of the many memorable supporting roles in Goldfinger, the first
to be filled was the controversial Pussy Galore. It was a more
physically demanding role than any of the previous Bond girls
and the producers were looking someone who could combine femininity
with a physical presence to match Connery's. At the time there
was only one real choice - but Honor Blackman was already busy
elsewhere, earning plaudits and many fans as Cathy Gale, John
Steed's tough, no-nonsense sidekick on TV's The Avengers [1961
- 1969]. This didn't stop Saltzman and Broccoli, however, who
simply made Blackman an offer she couldn't refuse.
On 19 September 1963, Blackman handed in her notice to The Avengers
production office. The news was kept from the public until February
of the following year and Blackman's farewell episode, Lobster
Quadrille, contained a clever closing scene that pointed the way
to her new role.
Theodore Bikel was Saltzman and Broccoli's first choice for the
role of Auric Goldfinger and the Viennese actor screen-tested
for the part in December 1963. It was soon clear, however, that
despite the man's many talents (obvious in such films as The African
Queen [1951], Blue Angel [1959 and My Fair Lady [1964]) simply
wasn't right for the part. Hamilton recommended burly German actor
Carl Gerhart (Gert) Frobe, a big star in his homeland but scarcely
known elsewhere. Despite a thick and impenetrable Teutonic accent
(despite best efforts to coach Frobe on set, he was dubbed in
the final film by Michael Collins), Frobe was perfect for the
part of Goldfinger.
With the rest of the cast falling into place, and a $3.5 million
budget in his pocket, Hamilton set about filming Goldfinger, even
before pre-production was complete. On 15 January 1964 he took
a small crew to Miami to shoot aerial footage of the Fountainbleu
Hotel seen briefly at the beginning of the film. On the 20th of
the month, the tiny crew (which was basically just Hamilton, his
cinematographer Ted Moore and production designer Ken Adam with
a few technicians) shot scenes of Cec Linder and Austin Wills
as Felix Leiter and Simmons respectively.
Unfortunately, Hamilton's keenness to get going was to backfire
later. When he returned to Pinewood, he found it impossible to
match pick-up shots with the hastily filmed material from Miami,
resulting in strange hodgepodge of footage at the start of the
film that looks ill-matched and confusing.
The chase sequence, wherein Bond and Tilly Masterson drive the
Aston Martin DB5 from pursuing Auric Enterprises guards was shot
at Black Park, very near to the Pinewood studios complex. The
sequence was completed using a stunt team before Connery himself
arrived on set on 9 March to film the now famous pre-credits sequence.
By the end of March, production had shifted to Pinewood's E stage
and Gert Frobe had arrived to shoot his first scene, where he
has Bond strapped to a table, laser inching towards his groin,
and he gets to deliver that line of dialogue, still the finest
witticism in any Bond film. The sequence was more uncomfortable
for Connery that he might have imagined - Hamilton found that
the real laser the company had hired (Goldfinger was the first
film, incidentally, to feature lasers) wouldn't show up on film.
So he planned to have one optically inserted later and to get
the effect of the laser cutting through the solid gold table,
he had members of the effects crew crouching beneath the table
armed with an oxy-acetylene torch!
Desmond Llewlyn was back in harness as Major Boothroyd, now officially
re-christened Q, and his now familiar character was created almost
as an afterthought during filming. Llewelyn was called upon to
do the now obligatory scene wherein Q shows off Bond's latest
gimmicks and gadgets, but before filming began, Hamilton hit upon
the idea of having Q less businesslike than before and more impatient
with the childlike and cavalier Bond. Hamilton instructed Llewelyn
to play the part as a grumpy, short-tempered and impatient man,
defining a character that was to become as important to the Bond
mythos as Bond himself.
During April, the production moved next door, to Pinewood's D
stage, where the interiors of the Fountainbleu hotel were recreated
and where the now famous scene of Bond finding Jill Masterson's
gold plated body was filmed. By the end of that month, the set
had been visited by an ailing Ian Fleming - it was to be the last
time that the author was to see his creation made flesh. Fleming
was to die at 1 am on 12 August 1964, before he had a chance to
see the finished film.
It soon became clear that things were not all rosy in the 007
camp - some sort of pay dispute had been growing between Connery
and Eon, the exact nature of which is still unclear. Connery was
clearly upset about the amount of money that Eon were offering
him, despite his recent pay rise. What happened next is slightly
unclear and open to some conjecture - Connery suffered a minor
back injury while filming the scene in which Odd Job knocks Bond
unconscious with a karate chop. Connery was forced to rest and
returned home. By the time he was back in action, some sort of
deal had been struck and Connery now had a rise in his salary
and had been offered five per cent of all Bond films from Goldfinger
onwards.
May found Hamilton and his main unit decamping top nearby Stoke
Poges golf club to shoot the Bond and Goldfinger's game. It was
during this time that Connery, who had been introduced to golf
by Terence Young while making Dr No, cemented his love affair
with the game that was to last through the rest of his life.
As the production began to wind down, the crew staged the huge
battle sequences inside Ken Adam's extraordinarily realised Fort
Knox set. The production had been refused permission to use the
real Fort Knox, though Adam was allowed to have a look around
the outside of the building thanks to the intervention of Robert
Kennedy. Adam's extravagant sets bear no resemblance at all to
the real thing but provided a spectacular backdrop for action
director Frank Ernst's beautifully choreographed mayhem. During
the shoot, Harold Sakata was badly burned when he tried to retrieve
Odd Job's steel-rimmed bowler from an electrified gate. Sakata,
a true professional, completed the scene even though the flying
sparks left him in great agony. After nineteen weeks, production
finally came to an end on 11 July after five days in Andermatt,
Switzerland.
Post production work involved the usual editing, sound, music
and special effects chores, but also saw Hamilton, Moore and Broccoli
heading back to the States for some last minute shooting of establishing
footage for the Fort Knox sequence. The crew breached the gold
repository's 5,000 ft no fly zone and had to pay the 500 soldiers
who rushed in from from a nearby army base to investigate, $20
and a bottle of beer each to act as fainting extras! The scene
also marked the first appearance in the Bond history of Broccoli's
stepson Michael G. Wilson, then a law student, who was called
in to act as an assistant director. Wilson was to play an increasingly
pivotal role in Bond's big screen career, eventually taking over
the reins completely after Broccoli's death in 1986.
Goldfinger was more or less complete when Saltzman insisted on
one last change. He asked Peter Hunt to re-edit the scene where
Bond halts the countdown on Goldfinger's nuclear warhead - originally,
it was stopped with the counter at 003, but Saltzman just couldn't
resist stopping the countdown at 007. Sadly, this does lead to
a continuity error - Bond still says "Three more ticks and
Mr Goldfinger would have hit the jackpot."
Finally, Goldfinger was ready and was unveiled to an eager public
at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on Thursday 17 September
1964. It was a chaotic affair, with Kinematograph Weekly reporting
on 24 September that "5,000 fans fought the police outside
the Odeon Theatre. In the near riots, the massive glass door of
the theatre was shattered and police reinforcements had to be
sent for." Honor Blackman, one of the many stars attending
the premiere (though Connery was busy elsewhere, filming The Hill
[1964] in Spain), was nearly swept off her feet by the over-enthusiastic
crowds and had to be rescued by the police.
Blackman embarked on a tour of Rank Premiere Showcase cinemas
in and around London the week after the premiere and similar scenes
of Bondmania ensued here and across the country when the Goldfinger
road show moved on tour the country, calling at Leicester, Birmingham,
Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow throughout
October.
Inevitably, Goldfinger again shattered box office records, even
outstripping the success of From Russia With Love. So great was
the demand for Bond that United Artists re-issued Dr No, resulting
in what Kinematograph Weekly on 15 October hailed "staggering
figures" at the box office.
The success was repeated in the States when the film opened there
on 21 December 1964, quickly becoming the fastest earning film
made to that date. Bond was clearly here to stay and his influence
was to spread across the world - soon cinemas were awash with
secret agents from the States, Italy, Spain and even from the
UK.