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Never Say Never Again: The Bond film that should never have been?

It’s a Bank Holiday Monday. It’s raining cats and dogs outside. And you’re at  a loose end. Anything on the box? Well, as is often the case there’s a Bond film, but it’s that one from the early ’80s with Connery in it. You know, the one he came back for long after his ’60s heyday; the one that isn’t supposed to be ‘official’. So do you give it a try or a berth as wide as Connery’s middle-aged belly?

For me, a big Bond fan, it’s an interesting question. Because this flick is a curiosity, an anomaly, a  real black sheep among its Bond contemporaries. But does it deserve the low opinion it seems to have cultivated for itself? Is it really as bad a Bond film as all that? And how on earth did it come to be made in the first place? Well, settle back into your favourite chair with a dry Martini, because – like Val Doonican – I want to tell you a story, a bloody good one…

It starts way back  in 1961, a year before the first ‘official’ Bond film Dr No , made by Albert R ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s Eon Productions, was even made – and Bond creator Ian Fleming is in trouble. Eager to get his literary sensation on to the big screen, Fleming had worked on a screenplay along with friend Ivar Bryce, fellow scribe and screenwriter Jack Whittingham and Irish film producer Kevin McClory. However, having proceeded to turn the ideas into a novel entitled Thunderball - the ninth in his long line of 007 books – Fleming now found himself being taken to court by McClory and Whittingham, their claim being it was unfair the former should get sole financial reward from a story they had originally authored just as much as he had.