FIRST BOND MOVIE ARTWORK!

FIRST BOND MOVIE ARTWORK!

Most hardcore Bond fans are aware that in 1959, Irish entrepreneur Kevin McClory envisioned the making of a movie with Ian Fleming featuring James Bond.

At a time when the first seven Fleming novels had been turned down by the top film studios of the day, for being too violent, sadistic, and unbelievable, successful novelist, Ian Fleming had wearied of writing; was ‘bereft of new ideas’, and wanted to kill Bond off and go travelling.

British screenwriter, Jack Whittingham who had just gone freelance from the Ealing Studios team, was commissioned to write a film that would be acceptable to the British public and, with Ian Fleming’s permission, took the character of James Bond and created the very first original 007 screenplay entitled “Thunderball”.

‘Thunderball,’ therefore, was the very first screenplay of the movie series, and should have been the first produced film, however, the making of it was halted and held up by long drawn out legal complications, and, eventually, it came out as the fourth Bond film, and the biggest in box office terms.

Originally, a series of unique pre-production storyboard drawings by Stephen Grimes were created for the first concept of Thunderball and shown at the 1959 Venice Film Festival in a bid to raise interest for the proposed new project.

Represent the ‘First Imaginings’ of what a Bond film could look like long before production commenced on any of them, they now adorn the walls of the English city of Fulham’s restaurant, The Fulham Grill.

Local photographer Sylvan Mason (screenwriter Jack Whittingham’s daughter), however, has captured the art on canvas and has made them available to collectors.

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