![]() Director: Terence Young Year Of Release: 1962 Plot: British secret agent James Bond has been sent to the West Indies to investigate the disappearance of a fellow operative, John Strangway. Bond soon gets suspicious of Professor Dent, the last person to see Strangway alive, and discovers the scientist is working for an evil mastermind with a metal hand called Dr. Julius No. Tracking No to his secret lair, and meeting the beautiful Honey Ryder along the way, Bond may be the only person who can stop the doctors plans for world domination. |
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Today I want to talk about Blofeld. I realise some of you are already wondering why, as the villain and his organisation, SPECTRE, arent in Dr. No, but Im going to have to cheat, as I have a severe lack of early Bond movies, and so therefore no Blofeld films appear in the Movie-A-Day list. However it would be remiss of me not to write about the complex legal problems surrounding the villain and the story he first appeared in, Thunderball, at some point (indeed I promised to do so in the article centred on Day Of The Dead).
At least I have some excuse, as Thunderball was due to be the first Bond film, rather than Dr. No.
As all true Bond film fans will know, Blofeld first showed up in the second Bond movie, From Russia With Love, as well appearing in Thunderball (although hes not properly seen in either of these movies just his hands and the back of his head), You Only Live Twice, On Her Majestys Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever, as well as a pre-credits anonymous appearance in For Your Eyes Only.
However there was a good reason why he pretty much disappeared from the official film series in 1971 after Diamonds Are Forever, and it was due to a complex and seemingly never-ending series of legal battles over who actually owned Blofeld and his criminal organisation, SPECTRE.
The problem stemmed from the fact that United Artists and producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli making Dr. No from Ian Flemings book wasnt the first time there had been an attempt to get 007 on the big screen (Bond did make earlier TV and radio appearances, but nothing cinematic). In the late 50s, Ian Fleming collaborated with Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham on drafts of a James Bond screenplay, based on an idea by Ernest Cuneo, with the plan being that the eventual film would be made by McClory using special underwater camera developed by Todd-AO.
However this didnt work out and the plans were dropped, but thinking he owned the rights to everything theyd worked on together, Fleming decided to turn the screenplay into a novel, Thunderball, without crediting McClory or Whittingham.
It was published in 1961 and immediately attracted a lawsuit from McClory and Whittingham, who were more than annoyed that not only was Fleming taking all the credit but also the royalties. By this point, United Artist and producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli were planning a feature version of Thunderball, and it was with a script for a film based on that novel that Sean Connery first became attached to the main role. However due to the legal disputes and impending court battle, a Thunderball film was put on hold, and they decided to make the uncontested Dr. No instead, which hit cinemas in 1962.
The case concerning Thunderball came to the High Court in London on November 20th, 1963, with the judge eventually deciding that Fleming had to pay McClory damages of £35,000 and his court costs of £52,000 (before it reached court, Whittingham ceded his rights to McClory), and that future versions of the novel must be credited as based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming. Fleming was also forced to assign all screen rights to Thunderball to McClory, as well as the rights to all the drafts of the screenplay.
However thinking they were on safe ground, the producers of Dr. No did introduce the criminal organisation SPECTRE, and Blofeld then showed up in the next movie, Diamonds Are Forever. However there was a problem here, as while UA, Saltzman and Broccoli acknowledged they didnt own the screen rights to Thunderball, it was in that book and the screenplays that preceded it that Blofeld and SPECTRE first appeared. So did they own those villainous creations due to their appearances in later Fleming books?
They thought they did, as Fleming had sold them the screen rights to all past and future Bond novels (except, of course, Thunderball, as well as Casino Royale, which was already owned by someone else hence why it didnt become an official Bond film until recently, when the novel rights were purchased and brought into the fold), and Fleming had perfectly legally included Blofeld and SPECTRE in other novels, as it was only the Thunderball screen rights, not the print rights, hed had to give up.
McClory disagreed, and while there have been endless arguments over the years as to whether he personally came up with the name and idea for SPECTRE or not, he felt that as the character Blofeld and his organisation originated in properties he owned the film rights for, he also owned their use in any other Bond movies. It was partly because of this that the men behind the Bond movies did a deal with McClory, allowing them to film Thunderball, which hit cinemas in 1965, with the screen rights to the story reverting back to McClory after ten years (McClory also insisted on owning all the rights to the script of the Sean Connery Thunderball movie). This allowed them not only to make Thunderball, but also unproblematically use Blofeld and SPECTRE for the next few years.
Knowing McClory was due to get the rights back soon, after 1971s Diamonds Are Forever, the Bond films deliberately started using other villains (which was also partly due to fact not all of Flemings books had Blofeld or SPECTRE in them), aware that otherwise they might attract legal challenges from the already agitating McClory, who was keen to assert his ownership of Thunderball, Blofeld and SPECTRE. After the box office failure of 1974s Man With The Golden Gun, and with the Thunderball film rights back in his control, McClory announced he was working on a rival 007 movie called James Bond of the Secret Service. However it wouldnt be a Thunderball remake and would instead be based on a new story, co-authored by McClory and a now defected Sean Connery.
United Artists filed suit in court, challenging McClorys rights and saying that without Flemings permission, he couldnt make a rival Bond film that wasnt based on Thunderball (because even if he owned the Thunderball rights, could he really say he owned equal screen rights to the character of James Bond, who pre-existed McClory involvement and was indisputably Flemings creation?). It was because of all this that a Blofeld-like character was introduced in the For Your Eyes Only pre-credits sequence (although the producers were careful not to say who he was), as a sort of in-joke and f**k you to McClory, where the villain was quickly dispatched by throwing him down a chimney.
Due to lack of money, McClory backed down and said he wouldnt make the movie, but that changed a few years later when with the help of Warner Brothers and producer Jack Schwartzman, McClory got the financial backing he needed and was able to assert his Thunderball rights in court in a case against the trustees of Flemings estate.
This finally freed him up to make his own version of Thunderball in 1983, signing Sean Connery to return to the role of James Bond after a 12 year absence. Retitled Never Say Never Again, it was released the same year as the official Roger Moore starring Bond movie, Octopussy. After this, while McClory talked about making more Bond movies, due to the fact Octopussy made more money than Never Say Never Again, and because people were nervous about making a rival Bond movie that wasnt specifically based on the Thunderball story, nothing materialised.
In the late 80s McClory announced he was going to make a Bond film called Warhead 8, but that never happened, and then in 1996, it was said hed got Timothy Dalton to agree to play Bond again in a film called Warhead 2000 AD. While many thought this was just McClory agitating again, in 1997 Sony Pictures announced that using McClorys rights, they were revving up for their own Bond franchise, starting with another Thunderball remake.
This set up another colossal court battle, with MGM/UA (by this point MGM owned United Artists and therefore Bond) filing suit to stop the rival film. Sony and McClory then decided on gargantuan fight-back strategy, not only saying they had the right to start their own Bond franchise, but also claiming that all the 007 films were based on ideas originated in the Thunderball scripts that McClory owned, and therefore he was the co-author of the cinematic Bond and so should be paid money for all the movies from Dr. No onwards. McClory even described it as “The Greatest Act of Piracy in the History of the Motion Picture Industry”. Unfortunately for the arch-agitator, the legal case dragged on and MGM successfully got an injunction stopping any pre-production on a non-official Bond movie until the courts had made a final ruling.
Then, in 1999, Sony reached a deal with MGM out of court, where Sony agreed to cede all rights to anything James Bond related, and in return MGM would give up its partial film rights to Spider-man. This made Sony happy as it cleared the way for the long-planned Spider-man film series that had spent years in limbo while studios battled over the rights, but also completely put the kibosh on McClorys plans for his own Bond franchise. Despite this, McClory continued his court battle, but was rejected in both the initial hearing and the appeals court on his claim he was the co-author of the cinematic Bond, partly on the grounds that hed waited too late to file the suit. To add insult to injury, in 1997 MGM bought Orion pictures, giving them control over McClorys Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again.
With Sony ceding all their 007 rights to MGM and the studio saying that they believed that all of McClorys Thunderball claims have lapsed, many wondered whether this would lead the way to SPECTRE and Blofeld re-appearing in the Daniel Craig starring reboot, Casino Royale, and its sequels. However, apparently still shy of confronting the issue head on, the makers created a new criminal organisation, QUANTUM, instead.
Despite MGM saying McClorys rights had lapsed, he still said he owned them, and in 2002 he even offered them for sale, saying it would give the purchaser the rights to make a rival Bond series (as McClory still believed thats what he had the rights to), as well as ownership of Blofeld and SPECTRE, and film and literary rights to various James Bond outlines, treatments and screenplays, co-authored by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, Len Deighton and Sean Connery. The ad announcing the sale didnt include McClorys names, instead saying interested parties should contact a mysterious Dutchman called Marian van de Veen-Van Rijk, who nobody had ever heard of. Despite this, the producers of the official Bond movies were certain McClory was behind it and released angry ads of their own contesting the sale.
However, when no one could get hold of Marian van de Veen-Van Rijk, the whole thing disappeared and was never heard of again. It may have just been McClory deliberately trying to cause a fuss, especially as anyone buying the rights would have been on a hiding to nothing. His fight to be credited, and paid, as co-creator of the cinematic Bond, had the undesired effect of MGM being pretty much told they had the exclusive film rights to the actual character of James Bond, meaning that legally McClory might have been able to make films featuring Blofeld and SPECTRE, but he didnt have the right to use James Bond as the hero, unless the story was specifically based on Thunderball.
Kevin McClory died in 2006, aged 80, just four days after the release of Casino Royale. Since then, little has been heard about his contested film rights, although dont be shocked if the issue rears its head again.
TIM ISAAC
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