But 007’s real history is stranger, messier and more surprising than the official iconography can make it look.
So, think you know everything about James Bond? These 14 deep-cut facts might prove otherwise.
1. The first person you see playing 007 in the official film series is not Sean Connery
The famous gunbarrel opening of Dr No (1962) was designed by Maurice Binder, but the figure who turns and fires at the camera was stuntman Bob Simmons, not Connery.
One of the oddest corners of Bond publishing history is The Adventures of James Bond Junior 003½.
The novel shares a title but not the same continuity as the later James Bond Jr animated series (airing 65 episodes in 1991), which makes the whole thing even stranger: Bond’s nephew had a literary adventure decades before many fans would associate the idea with Saturday morning TV.
3. Bond was almost the star of a 1950s US TV series
In 1958, CBS commissioned Ian Fleming to write outlines for a proposed Bond television series. The series was dropped, but Fleming recycled some of the abandoned material into short stories later collected in For Your Eyes Only (published in 1960).
Holness played James Bond in a South African radio adaptation of Moonraker, produced for Springbok Radio by the Durban Repertory Theatre. The exact broadcast date is usually given somewhere in the mid-to-late 1950s, and no recording is known to have survived, but Bond reference sources identify it as the first radio adaptation of a 007 novel and one of the earliest performed versions of Bond in any medium.
5. Some very familiar actors have played Bond on audio
Beyond just the Bob Holness radio adaptation of Moonraker, Toby Stephens later became the BBC Radio 4 Bond for a run of Fleming adaptations beginning with Dr No in 2008. That gives Stephens a particularly odd Bond distinction: he played villain Gustav Graves opposite Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day, then went on to play Bond himself on radio.
So depending on how generously you define "playing Bond", the 007 club is far bigger than the six official Eon leading men.
6. There was almost a rival Bond film franchise
The long-running Thunderball rights dispute – which began when Ian Fleming turned a film treatment co-authored by writer Kevin McClory into a novel – meant Kevin McClory retained certain rights connected to that story, eventually leading to Sean Connery’s unofficial 1983 Bond film Never Say Never Again.
That rights battle did not just produce one unofficial Bond film – it created the recurring possibility that 007 might exist as competing screen franchises – one official, one not.
During filming, Lazenby broke his arm while attempting stunt work. In the Piz Gloria laboratory scene, Bond’s coat is draped over his arms to conceal the cast, because Lazenby could not get the coat on properly over it.
8. Pierce Brosnan was noticed by Cubby Broccoli years before GoldenEye
Casting director Debbie McWilliams has said Brosnan became “a known quantity” during filming of For Your Eyes Only (1981), when he visited the Corfu shoot with Cassandra Harris, his then-partner, who had been cast in the film. According to McWilliams, people on the production, including Cubby Broccoli, noticed him there.
Lashana Lynch’s role as Nomi – the new agent 007 – in No Time to Die (2021) became one of the film’s biggest talking points — but the casting process almost passed her by.
10. The corkscrew jump in The Man with the Golden Gun was not invented for Bond
The corkscrew car jump in The Man with the Golden Gun is one of the most technically impressive stunts in the entire franchise — but it was not created from scratch for 007.
So the Bond production did not invent the stunt — it recognised it, licensed the idea and immortalised it. The only thing that remains unique – and some would argue unforgivable – is the slide-whistle sound effect that accompanies the finished sequence.
11. Several classic Bond performances were dubbed
Ursula Andress’s Honey Ryder in Dr No was famously dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, while Gert Fröbe’s Auric Goldfinger was voiced in English by Michael Collins. Van der Zyl also provided voice work elsewhere in the early Bond films.
12. Bond songs took decades to top the UK chart or win an Oscar
Bond themes are some of the most famous film songs ever recorded, but their chart and awards success was surprisingly delayed.
Adele’s Skyfall – released in 2012 – became the first Bond theme to win Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in 2013, 50 years after Dr No launched the Eon series.
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