Customer Reviews

The Battle for Bond

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Alot of the history of THUNDERBALL isn't new to me but Sellers writes a really entertaining and fascinating bit of history. I couldn't put it down until I had finished it -- in one seating. Great treasure of previously unseen material (Connery scouting the State of Liberty for the never made WARHEAD, production drawings, rare photos, etc). As it has been pulled off the market because litigation from the Fleming Trust (who could they be? Fleming's been dead since 1964, his wife died years ago and his only son died from a drug overdose in the early 1970's) so it is going to be harder to get. Worth the effort! In this you have -- in incredible detail and thoroughly enthralling -- the story of THUNDERBALL. Frustrated by earlier efforts to get his character to the big screen, he came in to contact with Kevin McClory -- an Irish film maker who had some kind of connection to Mike Todd's AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. The film maker convinced Fleming to join him in creating a whole new story that would involve Bond in an underwater epic to be filmed in wide screen. In the end it went nowhere and Fleming went to his summer residence Goldeneye to write his Bond novel for 1961 and -- without anyone's permission -- used the story he had devised with McClory and Jack Whittingham and called it THUNDERBALL. In the meantime along comes Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. Originally Richard Maibaum was comissioned to do a screenplay based on TB but McClory's lawsuits forced them to start the series with DR. NO. Not wishing to enrage Fleming, Broccoli & Saltzman did not pursue a joint venture deal on THUNDERBALL until after McClory had exhausted all means of getting his own Bond film off the ground and Ian Fleming was dead. In the deal that was struck, McClory was given the right to remake the film ten years after THUNDERBALL's release -- some wit once said that Broccoli & Saltzman didn't think the series would live that long. In the book you will get a good look at what did happen. Well worth the price of admission. A pity WARHEAD was never realized. It would have been a much better film than NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN.

There are many of us who do care to know the true story about Thunderball - have a look at the uk reviews! This is a landmark book and contains fresh information on this fascinating subject. Top marks to author Robert Sellers who tells an unbiased factual story about the origins of the Bond movies

Given that the 007 films of the official series from MGM/UA, produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Brocolli (now by the latter's daughter and stepson) have been cultural icons and guaranteed blockbusters since the mid-1960s, it is unsurprising that nearly every James Bond movie book focuses on them, but only scantly covers Irish producer Kevin McClory's attempts to bring Ian Fleming's super spy to the cinema (as well as others' makings of the television program Casino Roayle in 1954 and the 1967 film of the same name).

The Battle for Bond does just the opposite; it details McClory and screenwriter Jack Whittingham's collaboration with Fleming and others to develop the script of what they had hoped would be the first 007 movie, which never materialized, plus McClory's ensuing lawsuit against Fleming, alleging plagarism, after the author had developed a new Bond novel entitled Thunderball, that the Irishman claimed was based too closely on their script, the out of court settlement which gave McClory film and television rights to Thunderball, his agreement with Brocolli and Saltzman that made it the fourth entry of the offical series in 1965, subsequent efforts to produce other 007 movies and television projects (including Warhead, co-written by Sean Connery in the mid-1970s), all unsuccessful, except Never Say Never Again, the 1983 remake of Thunderball. Additionally, the book describes the productions of Thunderball and Never Say Never Again, based on interviews with cast and crew members, as well as some rare photographs, including that of Connery scouting locations for Warhead near the Statute of Liberty.

Whether you are a casual or serious fan of the world's most famous fictional secret agent, The Battle for Bond will be very informative and interesting, as it provides a history of 007 that has hitherto received little coverage. You owe to it yourself to read this book.

Robert Sellers' very impressive The Battle for Bond isn't a perfect book, but this incredibly well researched account of the long running feud between independent producer Kevin McClory, author Ian Fleming and producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli over the screen and remake rights to Thunderball is a must for any serious Bond fan. In the 50s McClory was expected to be the next big thing and was one of the first to realise the screen potential for Bond, creating an original treatment that smoothed away some of the rough edges of the novels and set the template for the screen Bond that would become such a box-office sensation in the 60s. But when his directorial debut flopped, the financing dried up and the picture went unmade. That would have been the end of it - if Fleming hadn't decided to turn the screen story into a novel without clearing the rights. One nasty lawsuit later, McClory owned the screen rights and Saltzman and Broccoli's EON Productions had to start their series with Dr No instead. When that became a huge hit, McClory suddenly found himself with an increasingly valuable property and EON found themselves facing the prospect of a rival picture cutting into their market - leading to an uncomfortable alliance to make Thunderball. The film was he most successful Bond ever, selling more tickets than any Bond film since - around a billion dollars worth at today's prices - but the clause allowing McClory remake rights after a decade proved a ticking bomb that would lead to decades of bitter litigation...

This book itself didn't go without legal challenges: rather fittingly, the first edition of the book was sued and recalled, not by EON but by Fleming's estate over reproduced correspondence. This revised second edition loses those but adds much new information that gives a blow-by-blow account of the ongoing feud, from Sean Connery and Len Deighton's rather OTT Warhead screenplay treatment from the late 70s to the chaotic production of Never Say Never Again, which starts to look more of an achievement after reading this simply because they were able to finish the film despite constant lawsuits and an uncompleted script. Away from the EON-sanctioned histories of the series, it's not blind to the faults of the films or of the people involved on all sides of the feud, allowing for a more balanced look at a destructive vendetta that would see McClory's huge cut of the profits eaten away as he continued his legal attempts to make a third film well into the 90s. The writing is often not equal to the research, occasionally falling into awkwardly conversational sentences that should have been caught in the editing stage, but it's a minor caveat considering the depth of information and research here. Undoubtedly one of the best books ever written about the Bond films, it's a riveting read for fans and those interested in the more litigious side of the film industry alike.

This book goes into great detail to go through the most controversial aspect of the James bond history: the writing of the novel Thunderball and its complicated journey to the screen twice.

The author does an amazing job analyzing everything and reserving judgment. In the end Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory wind up being both villains and victims. Its a sad story but an amazing one.

This is certainly a good book for the James Bond fan (I include myself).

It's probably worth reading for the general movie fan as well since one can see the roles of chance and chaos in any creative endeavor.

The simple story of producers Albert R. Broccoli & Harry Saltzmann finding the 007 books by Ian Fleming and creating the biggest franchise in movie history just didn't come about that easily. In fact, Broccoli & Saltzmann don't play very big roles in THE BATTLE FOR BOND.

The first third of the book meticulously chronicles Ian Fleming's attempts to get Bond on the silver screen, quoting or just reprinting the letters and cables between Fleming, his friends/business associates, the producer Kevin McClory and screenwriter Jack Whittingham. It quickly becomes a mess.

The middle third discusses the filming of "Thunderball" with plenty of interesting tidbits from actors and crew.

The final third follows the chaotic set of McClory & Sean Connery's "renegade" Bond film, "Never Say Never Again," as well as McClory's attempts to hang on to Bond to his dying day.

What jumped out at me while reading THE BATTLE FOR BOND was just how little happiness 007 and "Thunderball" brought to the principle personalities. Ian Fleming, already in failing health from 60 cigarettes a day and heavy drinking, slowly burned out and died of a heart attack just a few months after settling with McClory. Jack Whittingham also suffered from severe heart problems and risked death to participate in a trial that profited him nothing.

Sean Connery, the actor who would become the biggest movie star in the world in perhaps the most iconic film character of the 20th Century, was sick to death of Bond by 1965's "Thunderball" and miserable. He then returned to the role in 1983's "Never Say Never Again" and was even more miserable shooting that unorganized film.

And Kevin McClory, who begins this saga as a scrappy underdog but ends as a disgraceful, greedy thorn in everyone's side, ends a broken, bitter man, his last tenuous grasp on Bond finally wrenched from his dying fingers by the courts shortly before his death.

I wouldn't call it "The Curse of Bond," but it doesn't look like any of the leads really savored and enjoyed the success of James Bond and "Thunderball."

(Financially, Broccoli & Saltzmann would benefit the most but they don't play major roles in this book. There are plenty of people who complain about how cheap they were--Sean Connery first and foremost--but the author doesn't go into much detail about them.)

A worthy entry in the Bond lore.

The book features not one but two villains, but they are so beautifully brought to life you can see their characters in the round, as it were, humans with failings just like the rest of us. One was Ian Fleming himself, who comes across in THE BATTLE FOR BOND as a pop genius like Warhol with a great invention, the James Bond character, and yet a weakness for trampling over the rights of others out of his sense of clubby privilege which is fairly sickening after a few chapters. So when he employs others to help him sketch out a screenplay that will feature his Bond character, he doesn't even think twice about novelizing their joint effort and publishing it under his own name. He had what became the modern equivalent of the old fashioned "droit du seigneur," and the others were just pawns in his game.

The second "villain who's not really a villain" was the crazy swinger Kevin McClory, technically he was used and abused by Ian Fleming but he sure wound up with his pound of flesh didn't he! Author Robert Sellers, the one man who was able to pick up and tell the whole wretched and confused saga from beginning to end, makes you eventually loathe Kevin, even though he started out as the underdog. Kevin was the type of friend than which you'd rather have an enemy, so you hold him in your embrace just so you can see what he's doing with his hands.

The hero of the book winds up to be Jack Whittingham, a venerable and talented screenwriter whom BOTH McClory and Fleming took up, then cast aside. AND his daughter, the beautiful singer and office manager Sylvan Whittingham, who kept all the papers together for forty years and then finally, with the help of a faithful lawyer, Peter Carter-Ruck, brought all the pieces together to tell a strange and disturbing story of genius gone mad. As Sellers points out, the saga of Carter-Ruck is like a Shakespearean tragedy, but the same can be said for the sad and wasted life of Kevin McClory. At the very end of the book there's a great photo of a little girl, Jack Whittingham's granddaughter, Aimi, inspecting with all the unconscious grace of a child, the neatly cared for grave of her grandad. It's in Malta, of all places, an island he loved.

I did not know a thousand facts that Sellers lets on: that Julie Christie was considered for the role of Domino; that Luciana Paluzzi considered Claudine Auger cold and calculating; that Dirk Bogarde might have been James Bond--or Rod Taylor--both of them I guess, not so bad choices. The angry figure of Sean Connery permeates the flavor of the book like a simmering stew of bad feeling that will not go away. He's great, but like everyone else in the book bar the Whittinghams, his life has been misspent chasing money and licking wounded pride.

A saga big as BLEAK HOUSE and as captivating as CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, except for grown ups.

"Idiotic" is the word Sellers uses to sum up producer Kevin McClory's decades-long attempts to parlay his rights to Thunderball into a rival James Bond series. Idiotic is a strong word, but it's accurate, and the details of McClory's wrong-headed attempts to hijack the world's most popular film franchise makes for remarkable reading.
Reverent, but not a spiral-eyed fan, Sellers negotiates teams of lawyers more voracious than the sharks 007 used to fight; the details about the production of Thunderball are rarely found elsewhere. The book is gently nostalgic and even tragic in parts; the tale of the relics of this glorious movie rotting on the grounds of an abandoned Bahamanian mansion is enough to wring the heart of any serious Bond fan.
The Battle for Bond is a very low-budget production, and it could use a proofreading and a copy-editing, but that's immaterial compared to the hard labor and harder research Sellers put into untangling this dismaying story of hubris, folly and cinematic magic. Great stuff.

As someone who grew up with James Bond and was blown away by the original screening of "Thunderball" in the early sixties, I was fascinated to read this incredibly detailed account of how the movie got to the screen and how the future of the "James Bond" we see in cinemas to this day hung by a thread.

Not only is this a blow-by-blow of the twists and turns behind the making of the movie itself - which is reason enough for any Bond fan to buy the book - but also it gives the first in-depth account that I've ever seen as to how the cinematic version of James Bond was developed from the original Fleming creation. This is where the book becomes particularly fascinating for would-be authors, screenwriters and anyone interested in film production, as it gives a window on the creative process behind what is arguably the most commercially successful literary character in history.

Essential reading for Bond fans, as well as those who may want to create their own blockbusters some day.

Then this was written especially for you! The book offers a perspective (In this readers opinion somewhat biased) based on letters and various documents contrary to the popularly conceived notion that Kevin McClory was the "Bad Guy". The author often uses his scources liberally without citation, creating ambiguity in some aspects. Overall The Battle for Bond is thoroughly enjoyable for the Bond buff who noticed with curiosity that Thunderball is the only book in the original series featuring anyones name other than fleming as the author.