Sean Connery wasn’t the first cinematic James Bond, apparently. Dirk Bogarde was to have appeared in a 1956 black & white film adaptation of Moonraker produced by Dayton Mace and written/directed by Orson Welles (who also appeared as villain Sir Hugo Drax, with Peter Lorre as his henchman, Krebs.)
A British film historian has found the completed footage from this first abortive Bond movie. The film was never completed because of a fight between the studio and the producer over a topless scene by the actress playing Gala Brand and the untimely death of producer Dayton Mace.
The principal cast was, to say the least, very neat: Dirk Bogarde (James Bond) Orson Welles (Sir Hugo Drax) Peter Lorre (Willy Krebs)
Brenda Bright (WPC Gala Brand) A.E. Matthews (M.) Stanley Baker (Asst. Commissioner Vallance, Bond’s Scotland Yard contact)
Susan Teale (Loeila Ponsonby, Bond’s secretary) Patrick McGoohan (Detective-Inspector Vivian)
Conrad Dwight was the cinematographer and Les Bowie was in charge of special effects.
Brenda Bright has no IMDb credits since this would have been her first film appearance. She was the girlfriend’s producer, but according to surviving crew members interviewed for the web article, she could actually act quite well. Patrick McGoohan was penciled in for a brief appearance as Detective-Inspector Vivian, Gala Brand’s fiancee (yes, fiancee, in the original book Bond did not get the girl, for perhaps the only time) but his scenes were never filmed.
The screen captures included with the article are quite amazing. The rocket base for the Moonraker ICBM looks like the rocket research base in Hammer’s Quatermass 2, rather than Fleming’s original conception of a missile silo. And Orson Welles’ Sir Hugo Drax looks a bit like Charles Foster Kane. The film, considering the principals involved, probably would have ended up being a one-off like the American TV adaption of Casino Royale, although perhaps, if it had been successful, there might have been one (or two) sequel(s).
Just a quick note – it wasn’t cinematic, but the first James Bond on screen was an adaptation of Casino Royale for the TV series Climax!. I have a copy on videotape. Interestingly, Peter Lorre played the villain, le Chiffre. Even more interesting, Orson Welles played le Chiffre in the godawful cinematioc version of Casino Royale.
As a friend of mine noted (and he’s a bigger Bond fanatic than I am), the Climax! version is the first instance in which Bond has a sense of humor. In the first books, Fleming made him all business and utterly humorless. But in the TV show the oddly American Bond (Felix Leiter, oddly, is British) cracks wise:
“Are you the man that was shot?”
Bond: “No, I’m the guy they missed.”
Just read the whole thing – pretty neat, and pretty well done. They mention the dual le Chiffre.
Just one minor complaint – the “globe-trotting scenarios” they complasin of was a Fleming feature – the movies didn’t invent it. One writer refers to it as “the Fleming Sweep”, and sees it as a defining element of the series (although not the earliest entries). I would’ve liked to have seen the completed Welles version (and would still like to see the scraps). Welles would be the perfect director and villain. Lorre would be better as one of Drax’ German engineers (and certainly bettter at that than as le Chiffre). And the plot wasn’t all that old and musty – they used it essentially as an episode of The Avengers back in the 1960s. The big problem, if any, was that it was overused by that point.
Incidentally, although I hated the 1979 Moonraker (Christopher Wood should be shot), I loved Michel Lonsdale as Drax. He should’ve gotten a bigger part, including the card game at Blades that didn’t appear in the book. I’ve long thought that Lonsdale got the part because Fleming describes Drax as “a Lonsdale sort of character”. Fleming, of course, didn’t have Michel Lonsdale in mind – it’s purely a coincidence. But I still don’t know what Fleming did mean.
I had a wacky thought on my way home last night – is it possible that the whole website is a put-on? It seems really strange that we’ve never heard about this before. Orson Welles certainly wasn’t shy about his doings, and Bond fans are perpetually rummaging through the attic, rooting out things, and publishing them in their newsletters. How could they have missed something this big?
If it’s fake, it’s impressive hackery. Of course, it’s much better if it’s true.
