“Who created James Bond?’ The obvious answer of course is Ian Fleming. But who really made the character come to life? People tend to ask this about any or all of the actors chosen to assume the Bond mantle over the 35 years since the world was introduced to James Bond on the big screen. First they point out one actor´s pluses versus another actor´s faults, but they´re missing the larger picture.  Who gave us the James Bond we have come to think of as a cultural icon?  Who made him into a superstar? Terence Young. Some of you are asking, “Terence, who?’  And that is exactly the point. Terence Young was the original director, the man Albert “Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman chose to bring Doctor No to life, and he is the man who took Bond from the written page and turned him into a living, breathing cultural icon.  How did he do it?  Simply put, Terence Young WAS James Bond. As English as one could be, Young was born in Shanghai in the second year of World War One, Young's family moved back to England as quickly as possible and the boy was immediately put into public school (private school for our American readers).  There, he had an almost Bondian problem with authority and his adventures with some of the local ladies seemed to be more important to him than his studies.  Hhmmm... where have Bond fans heard that before…? He finished his education at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge.  Although he received a reputation as somewhat of a rake, his quiet, careful demeanor seemed to belay the notion that Young was anything other than a young man with cinematic dreams. He began his career as a screenwriter in the early 1930's.  His work in that field was notable for its high, erudite dialogue, but try though he might, as he said later in life, he "didn't have the knack" and felt that the process was too slow.  Then, after serving in World War Two, Young returned to the world of cinema and in 1948 found himself in the Director's chair for the first time.  "Directing was exactly what I was looking for.  No rewriting day after day, you simply told the story, one scene at a time." Terence Young was 46 when he received the rather lackluster assignment of Doctor No.  To most filmmakers in England at the time, Ian Fleming's Doctor No was a dark comic book view of the world of espionage.  It had been through numerous rewrites and finally a script with more holes than substance had been accepted for production.  Actors stayed away in droves and once initial casting was announced, they felt vindicated.  The first (and probably only) James Bond film would star as nearly complete an unknown as the hero, backed up by a beautiful but talentless actress whose majority of screen time would be spent in a bikini. The British press made light of the entire concept.  Even Sean Connery stated that most of his friends believed his acting career was about to come to an ignominious end.  Luckily for Connery, Terence Young thought so too. Young had mixed feelings about the project.  Here he was the man who had directed The Red Beret a few years earlier and a man of some reputation.  Young was a gentleman in an industry filled with con men and hacks.  Around Pinewood he was easily recognized, dapper, always ready with a witty rejoinder, seriously on his toes.  When Broccoli and Saltzman approached him, reminding him that he would be working with basically the same team (and some of the actors) from The Red Beret (American title: Paratrooper), Young was delighted, but then came the scripts. From the early drafts on it was clear to Young that Broccoli and Saltzman were not interested in taking Fleming´s character straight from the page.  Fleming's Bond was rather humourless, a dark, tough man who did his job and suffered both physically and mentally for it.  No, the producing team wanted a hybridized hero, half tough talking American Private Eye (with an English accent) and half lady-killer.  Young thought it could work, especially with Richard Maibaum´s rewrites, but there was an element missing.  What it was, he couldn´t put his finger on, but he soon would. As pre-production on Dr. No began, the initial James Bond search, which has now become a worldwide media event, began with a number of screenings.  It seemed then as it does now, that every dark haired actor in the United Kingdom was up for the part, but according to Saltzman, they found their James Bond after a private viewing of Darby O´Gill and the Little People’, in the brash young Scotsman Sean Connery. Fleming, thrilled to see his character finally make it to the silver screen had presented a list of his own, topped by his personal favorite, David Niven, but Broccoli and Saltzman carefully shunted Fleming aside and went on with their search.  The producers wanted an actor who could play what was in their minds the English equivalent of Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade.  They wanted a big, burly actor who would be believable in the action sequences and acceptable in the character's detective work.   Dr. No was on its way to becoming a British police procedural with a tough-guy hero.  Would it have worked?  Probably, and Dr. No would have been exactly what people expected it to be, a one-shot.  When the producers handed the project to Young, he was less than enthusiastic with the film's prospects.  Where could the character go that would mean trodding new ground rather than the detective story with science fiction elements that he had been handed? Young, watching Connery onscreen, felt he was too big, too muscled, and too dependent on his size and facial expressions to make much of a screen hero.  But there was something in the way Connery moved.  In most every other way, Connery was too aware he was onscreen, too mannered, as if once the camera came on, so did Connery, but when the man moved suddenly, he left that camera sense behind and he moved naturally, as Saltzman said, “Like a big cat.’  Young realized that the key to the character, the essential basis of James Bond was there, the dichotomy between the physical, the lover, the fighter, and the mental, the cunning, the detail, and the spy.  He knew they´d chosen the right man. But now that he had his actor, where to begin?  Where else but with this new actor´s weaknesses. Minutes into his first interview with Connery, Young knew more about the fledgling actor´s past than he felt he needed to know.  The sometimes truck driver and even coffin polisher was set to become a superspy with no real credits behind him other than a few roles in such extravaganzas as Tarzan´s Greatest Adventure, which definitely wasn´t. Certainly Connery had played one role that Young found interesting, his role opposite Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place.  In the opening scenes, Connery talked softly over a radio, assisting in a bomb-disposal until Lana Turner showed up and kissed him.  Though the scene was rather heavy handed, and Connery too young to pull off the part, Young saw something he could work with. Charm.  The one thing no one can accuse the Bond of the books of possessing to any great degree.  Young reasoned that a 1962 audience might not buy a hero who simply did his job and in the meantime slept with any woman he felt like, without seeming as derelict as the villain he was disposing of.  Young knew that if James Bond were going to differentiate himself from the standard, run of the mill hero, he needed three things that heretofore the character was lacking.  Style, wit, and charm.   Was Sam Spade charming?  Phillip Marlowe?  No.  Their magnetism relied upon a novelist´s scratch of the pen or a female character that was there simply to fall for the hero.  James Bond in the books suffered from the same malady, but what if Young and Maibaum could come up with a different approach.  What if Bond CHARMED the ladies into bed.  What if Bond could be taken back to the Errol Flynn personae that Fleming truly believed he had created.  Bond would be a man of action like Flynn´s Don Juan, but now, for the first time, he wouldn´t just kiss the girl then swing out the window on a conveniently placed rope.  This character was spending the night.  James Bond was about to become irresistible to women AND he was going to bed the female characters with handsome good looks, and charm. It was Young who decided that Bond´s charm lay not only in his appearance and actions, but also in his dialogue.  He knew he had an excellent writer in Richard Maibaum and that they shared a sense of humour based on wry remarks and witty comebacks, so they had an immediate starting place.  Young had read the first dismal drafts of the script, mostly sad parodies of the somewhat Science Fiction-esque subject matter. Who, even in 1962, would take a mad Chinese man with metal claws seriously?  No one, Young realized, unless he and Maibaum could make certain the hero was grounded, a real person who could bleed if cut.  They realized that the mostly male audience the film was expected to bring in would have to relate to Bond, especially if they were supposed to follow him around a world filled with swimming pool nuclear reactors and “dragons’. Young started by making Bond human.  Not the real, gritty humanity from the books because Broccoli and Saltzman had told him early on that the screen Bond would have to be tough, smart, and in Young´s opinion, one dimensional, but Young wanted more.  He wanted some of the essentials of the literary Bond to remain and fought for example to keep the end of the tarantula scene intact where Bond goes into the bathroom and throws up.  So it was that when Maibaum delivered the final script, Young knew the story and the characterization would work, but now the screenplay called for a rather erudite lead, someone who could pull off Maibaum´s carefully paced dialogue and Connery definitely didn't fit the bill.  Young knew what he had to do. When Connery arrived, far before filming began, Young saw his best opportunity to mold the actor in his own image.  As Lois Maxwell related in one of Connery´s many biographies, “Terence took Sean under his wing.  He took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat.’  Some cast members remarked that Connery was simply doing a Terence Young impression, but Young and Connery knew they were on the right track.  Then, late in pre-production, when Connery was almost ready to make his debut, Young took Connery on a lunchtime trip into downtown London, to his own tailor on Saville Row.  It was time for Connery to “put on the suit’ as it were.  It was time for Connery to become James Bond. By the time Connery showed up for his first days filming, Young had changed everything about him.  Connery no longer talked with his hands, one of Young´s most infamous pet peeves.  He still moved perfectly, but Young had coached him on WHEN to move.  Connery was already far from being a hack actor when he came to the series, but Young knew how to make Connery shine, and he did.  Young had taken elements of his own personality and passed them on to Connery.  He had turned Connery into a gentleman, and then he turned that gentleman into James Bond. When Dr. No came out, it was a surprise hit in England, then From Russia With Love sealed the Bond niche in the marketplace.  Young had done his job and felt that with FRWL Bond had been taken about as far as he could be without moving drastically away from the thriller genre into the general entertainment field.  He was right, from Goldfinger on, James Bond was no longer a civil servant spy, he was a superspy. For Goldfinger, Broccoli and Saltzman brought in a new director, Guy Hamilton, and Young moved on, but he returned for Thunderball, delivering what he considered a good Bond film, which moved slowly because of the massive underwater sequences.  He also managed to bring Connery´s full force to the part for the final time. In 1989, shortly before his death, Young was asked what he thought of the Bond series. He stated that he had turned down directing more of the films simply because they didn't appeal to him, because the character had been taken "as far as they could go without turning repetitious".  However, he did state that there was one story that still interested him.  The last one.   It was true, Young had offered to make one final Bond film, but it would have to be the last film in the series.  Young felt that only with the knowledge that James Bond would not return could there be any further character growth.  He pictured an aging Connery finishing his final mission.  A Bond knowing that his life as a secret agent was over, sadly turning the keys of the Aston Martin over to a heartbroken Q, then walking silently out the door, leaving the ghosts of his adventures to haunt the faceless gray building off Regent´s Park. The Bond Young created has altered our perceptions of the character for all time, even causing fledgling readers a few problems as they begin their foray into the literary world of Ian Fleming.  Where's the wit, the style, and the swagger of the movie character?  Those qualities are not in the books to any great degree, they exist solely in the films, the literary Bond being a more human, more serious character in nearly all respects.  Still, looking back on the film series, no other director touched the heart of the literary character more often than Young did.  True, the opening scenes of The Living Daylights most completely caught the Bond of the books, but it cannot be credited to John Glen's workmanlike direction, it has to go down to the film's temporary adherence to Fleming's short story, the source material. It´s true, Ian Fleming created James Bond, but Terence Young gave that character life.  Fleming had given us a semi-realistic secret agent whose exploits were above the norm.  Young took that character and gave the modern world a hero of our own, a St. George to slay new technological dragons armed not with a sword, but with his trusted Walther PPK, and in doing so he redefined the character for millions of people around the world. Copyright © 1997, 2007 Robert Cotton

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