United Artists Corporation (UA) is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.^[1]

The current United Artists formed in November 2006 under a partnership between producer/actor Tom Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., an MGM company. Paula Wagner left the studio on August 14, 2008.^[2] Cruise owned a small stake in the studio until late 2011.^[3] It is now a fully owned subsidiary of MGM, which itself is owned by MGM Holdings.

History[link]

The early years[link]

Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith in 1919

The first United Artists logo, used until the 1967 sale to Transamerica

UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919, by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo.^[4] The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help the World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures.

They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over actor salaries and creative decisions, a process that evolved into the rigid studio system. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, is said to have observed, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams as its first managing director.

List of UA stockholders in 1920

The original terms called for Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith and Chaplin to independently produce five pictures each year. But by the time the company got under way in 1920–1921, feature films were becoming more expensive and more polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes (or eight reels). It was believed that no one, no matter how popular, could produce and star in five quality feature films a year. By 1924, by which time Griffith had dropped out, the company was facing a crisis: either bring in others to help support a costly distribution system or concede defeat. The veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president. Not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton. Contracts were signed with a number of independent producers, most notably Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda and Howard Hughes. Schenck also formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. They also began international operations, first in Canada, then in Mexico, and by the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.

D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin (seated) and Douglas Fairbanks at the signing of the contract establishing United Artists motion picture studio in 1919. Lawyers Albert Banzhaf (left) and Dennis F. O'Brien (right) stand in the background.

Still, even with a broadening of the company, UA struggled. The coming of sound ended the careers of Pickford and Fairbanks. Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally. Schenck resigned in 1933 to organize a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century Pictures, which soon provided four pictures a year to UA's schedule. He was replaced as president by sales manager Al Lichtman who himself resigned after only a few months. Pickford produced a few films, and at various times Goldwyn, Korda, Walt Disney, Walter Wanger, and David O. Selznick were made "producing partners" (i.e., sharing in the profits), but ownership still rested with the founders. As the years passed and the dynamics of the business changed, these "producing partners" drifted away, Goldwyn and Disney to RKO, Wanger to Universal Pictures, Selznick to retirement. By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor. It sold off its Mexican releasing division to Crédito Cinematográfico Mexicano, a local company.

Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (1940s and 1950s)[link]

The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers was founded in 1941 by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Walter Wanger – many of the same people who were members of United Artists. Later members included Hunt Stromberg, William Cagney, Sol Lesser, and Hal Roach.

The Society aimed to advance the interests of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by the studio system. SIMPP also fought to end ostensibly anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios – Loew's, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros./First National – that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of films.

In 1942, the SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors alleging monopoly and restraint of trade.

In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the major Hollywood movie studios – Loew's/MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros./First National, 20th Century Fox and RKO – to sell their theater chains and to eliminate certain anti-competitive practices. This effectively brought an end to the studio system.

By 1958, many of the objectives that led to the creation of the SIMPP had been obtained and SIMPP closed its offices.

The 1950s and 1960s[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

On February 16, 1951, two lawyers-turned-producers Arthur Krim (of Eagle-Lion Films) and Robert Benjamin approached Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for five years. If, at the end of those five years, UA was profitable, they would be given an option to buy the company. Since UA was barely alive, Pickford saw nothing to lose and agreed. Chaplin was against the deal, but changed his mind in late 1952 when the US government revoked his re-entry visa while he was in London for the UK premiere of Limelight. He sold his remaining shares of UA several years later.

In taking over UA, Krim and Benjamin created the first studio without an actual "studio". Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio, but did not own a studio lot as such. Thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance, or the expensive production staff that ran up costs at other studios.

Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel and John Huston, whose "Horizon Productions" gave UA one major hit, The African Queen (1951) and one slightly less successful one, Moulin Rouge (1952), based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Others followed, among them Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions, and a number of actors, newly freed from studio contracts and anxious to produce or direct their own films.

UA production-head Arnold Picker selected the properties the company would back. With UA's new success, Pickford saw a chance to exit gracefully, though she still held out for top dollar, walking away with $1.5 million in 1955. That same year, UA won its first Best Picture Oscar, for the film Marty. It starred Ernest Borgnine, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

UA went public the following year, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with the Mirisch brothers, Billy Wilder, Joseph E. Levine and others. In 1961, United Artists released West Side Story, an adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim stage musical, which won a record ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture).

In 1958 United Artists Records was created, initially to release soundtracks from UA films, but it later diversified into many types of music. In 1968, UA Records was merged with Liberty Records, along with their many subsidiary labels such as Imperial Records and Dolton Records. In 1972 the group was consolidated into one entity as United Artists Records. It was later taken over by EMI.

Also in 1958 UA acquired Ilya Lopert's Lopert Pictures Corporation a company that released foreign films in the United States to release foreign films that may have attracted criticism or cause censorship problems.^[5] In 1964 UA released the controversial Billy Wilder American made film Kiss Me, Stupid under the Lopert name. Lopert later became vice-president of United Artists in Paris.

In 1959, United Artists offered its first ever television series, The Troubleshooters (after failing to sell several pilots in the previous few years), an adventure/drama on NBC, starring Keenan Wynn and Bob Mathias, as employees of an international construction company.^[6] In 1960, United Artists purchased Ziv Television Programs and, using the idea of financial backing for television, UA's television division was responsible for shows such as CBS's Gilligan's Island and three ABC programs, The Fugitive with David Janssen, Outer Limits, a science fiction series, and The Patty Duke Show with Patty Duke and William Schallert. The television unit also had begun to build up a substantial – and profitable – rental library, having purchased Associated Artists Productions, owners of Warner Bros. pre-1950^[7][8] features, shorts and cartoons, as well as the Popeye cartoons, purchased from Paramount Pictures a few years earlier. (See note below at Film archives for more on this).

In 1963 United Artists released two Stanley Kramer films, the epic comedy It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the drama A Child is Waiting. In 1964, UA introduced U.S. film audiences to The Beatles by releasing producer Walter Shenson's A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965). (The group had already made wildly successful television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show).

At the same time it backed two expatriate North Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No (which was a sensation in 1962) and launched the James Bond series. The franchise has outlived UA's time as a major studio, still running half a century later. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, which made a star of Clint Eastwood.

In 1964, the French subsidiary Les Productions Artistes Associés released its first production, That Man From Rio. On the basis of its fantastic string of film and television hits in the 1960s, the company was an attractive property, and in 1967 Krim and Benjamin sold control of UA to the San Francisco-based insurance giant, the Transamerica Corporation.

UA released another Best Picture Oscar winner in 1967, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, and a nominee for Best Picture, The Graduate, an Embassy production that UA distributed overseas.

The 1970s[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

For a time the flow of successful pictures continued, including the 1971 screen version of Fiddler on the Roof. (However, the 1972 film version of Man of La Mancha was a failure.) New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sylvester Stallone, Saul Zaentz, Miloš Forman, and Brian De Palma. In 1973, UA took over the sales and distribution of MGM's films in Anglo-America, while Cinema International Corporation took over international distribution rights.

In 1975, Harry Saltzman sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the holding-company for the Bond films. UA was to remain a silent partner, putting up money, while Albert Broccoli took producer credit. Danjaq and UA have remained the public co-copyright holders for the Bond series ever since, and the 2006 Casino Royale release shares the copyright with Columbia Pictures, part of the consortium that now owns MGM/UA.

However, Transamerica was not pleased with UA's frequent releases of films rated X by the Motion Picture Association of America, such as Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris; in these instances, Transamerica demanded the byline "A Transamerica Company" be removed from the UA logo on the prints and in all advertising. At one point, the parent company expressed their desire to phase out the UA name and replace it with Transamerica Films. Finally in 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, UA's top executives, including Arthur B. Krim, chairman, Eric Pleskow, president and chief executive officer, Robert S. Benjamin, chairman of the finance committee, walked out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures, with backing from Warner (Orion would eventually be a part of MGM along with United Artists, while Warner retained the rights to the pre-1982 Orion library along with acquiring the rights to a few post-1982 Orion films.) The departures of Krim, Pleskow and Benjamin concerned several Hollywood figures enough that they took out an ad in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.

[edit] The Heaven's Gate fiasco

The new leadership of UA agreed to back Heaven's Gate, the pet project of director Michael Cimino, who had won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for his 1978 film The Deer Hunter. A western starring Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken, Heaven's Gate had an unusually protracted shooting schedule (Cimino reportedly wanted 50 takes for a single scene, for instance) which generated adverse publicity about runaway costs and Cimino's autocratic style. The almost four-hour film opened to scathing reviews and alienated audiences. Cimino pulled it in favor of a 149-minute version, but the damage was done. It turned out to be a colossal box office bomb, netting only $3 million in earnings compared to a budget of $44 million. United Artists recorded a major loss for the year due almost entirely to the Heaven's Gate fiasco. To Transamerica, it was only a blip on a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, but it soured the relationship forever. To the greater Hollywood community, it also signaled that UA was a company that could no longer produce bankable pictures. The Heaven's Gate fiasco may have saved the United Artists brand as UA's final head before the sale, Steven Bach, wrote in his book Final Cut that there was talk about renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures. Despite the financial ruin, UA's blockbuster franchise films (Pink Panther, James Bond, and eventually Rocky) were emphasized more heavily than the financially unsuccessful films.

United Artists Classics[link]

In 1981, United Artists Classics, which had formerly been a division of the company that re-released library titles, was turned into a first run art film distributor by Nathaniel T. Kwit Jr. Tom Bernard was hired as the division's head of sales, and Ira Deutchman^[9][10][11] as its head of marketing. Later the division added Michael Barker and Donna Gigliotti. Deutchman left to form Cinecom, and Barker and Bernard later went on to form Orion Classics and Sony Pictures Classics. The label mostly released foreign and independent films such as Ticket to Heaven and The Grey Fox, and occasional first-run reissues from the UA library, such as director's cuts of Joan Micklin Silver's Head Over Heels and Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way. When Barker, and Bernard left to form Orion, the label was briefly rechristened MGM/UA Classics before it was finally shut down in the late 1980s.

The 1980s and 1990s: MGM/UA[link]

Around 1980, Transamerica was retiring from the filmmaking business, and United Artists was put up for sale. MGM, led by Kirk Kerkorian (the company that United Artists had a 10-year distribution deal since 1974), made a bid for UA by estimating that MGM would pay UA $350 million in distribution fees if the expiring distribution deal was renewed and used the estimated amount to offer the $350 million^[12] to Transamerica to buy United Artists. Transamerica said yes and MGM absorbed UA. The studio, which was essentially bankrupt following the disaster of Heaven's Gate, cut its production schedule sharply. MGM and UA were merged into MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from 1981 to 1986. Because MGM was not able to drop out from CIC (which distributed MGM's films outside Anglo-America), which they had previously joined in 1973, UA's international operations were merged with CIC; the venture eventually changed their name to United International Pictures. MGM/UA would drop out from the venture in 2000, to have their films released internationally by 20th Century Fox.

UA was essentially dormant after 1990, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, and sold the MGM studio lot to Lorimar (now the location of Sony Pictures Studios), while keeping almost all of the MGM/UA library for himself (with the exception of the United Artists library). (See below for a note on the film library.)

As a result of the MGM split from Turner, United Artists and what was left of MGM/UA (at the time called MGM Entertainment Co.) was subsequently reorganized, and became MGM/UA Communications Co. after Kerkorian bought back the MGM trademark. As a result, both MGM and UA became merely brands of MGM/UA Communications Co. In 1988, a planned $400-million split between MGM and UA was announced by Kerkorian. He hoped to end up with at least 57% of the new MGM and retain its share of UA (at the time called United Artists Pictures, Inc.). 25% of MGM would go to a company controlled by Burt Sugarman and producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber, and 18% would be offered for sale to public holders of MGM/UA stock, but the plan fell through. Around this time, Viacom, Gannett, Disney, Republic Pictures, General Electric, CBS, Time Inc., Hearst, News Corporation, TCI, Globo of Brazil, Aaron Spelling's Spelling Entertainment and Sony all tried to purchase MGM/UA. Nevertheless, the studio was able to manage box-office hits such as Rain Man (winner of the 1988 Oscar for Best Picture), Baby Boom, and The Living Daylights. However, during this period, the company's fortunes languished greatly, losing money while its market share declined to 8% by the end of the 1980s. The sale of MGM/UA to an Australian company Qintex/Australian Television Network (owners of the Hal Roach library both MGM and UA distributed in the 1930s) in 1989 also fell through, due to the company's bankruptcy later that year. Eventually, in 1990, came the sale to Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti, who attempted to purchase Pathé the previous year. Parretti had bought a smaller company and renamed it Pathé Communications anticipating a successful buy of the original French company, but failed in that attempt, so instead merged MGM/UA with his former company, resulting into MGM/Pathé Communications Co. Having bought MGM/UA by overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992, also resulting in the sale or closure of MGM/UA's string of US theaters. On July 2, 1992, MGM/Pathé Communications Co. was renamed to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, and convinced John Calley, the well-respected and long-retired president of WB from the '70's, to run UA. Under his supervision, Calley revived two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films, and touched on an aspect of UA's past by giving the widest release ever to a film with an NC-17 rating, Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas's controversial Showgirls. MGM was sold by Credit Lyonnais in 1996, again to Kirk Kerkorian, resulting in the departure of Calley as UA president.

The 2000s[link]

During the 2000s, UA was repositioned as a specialty studio. MGM had just acquired The Samuel Goldwyn Company, which had been a leading distributor of arthouse films, and after that name was retired, UA assumed SGC's purpose. The distributorship, branding, and copyrights for UA's main franchises (James Bond, Pink Panther, and Rocky) were moved to MGM, although select MGM releases (notably the James Bond franchise co-held with Danjaq, LLC and the Amityville Horror remake) carry a United Artists copyright.

UA (re-christened United Artists Films) hired Bingham Ray, who previously founded October Films, to run the company in September 2001, and under his supervision produced and distributed many "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine; 2002's Nicholas Nickleby and the winner of that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, No Man's Land; and 2004's Undertow, directed by David Gordon Green, and Terry George's Hotel Rwanda, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Entertainment.

On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast, Sony and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion. Though only a minority investor, Sony closed MGM's distribution system and folded most of their staff into their own studio, and the movies UA had completed and planned for release (Capote, Art School Confidential, The Woods, and Romance and Cigarettes) were reassigned to Sony Pictures Classics.

In March 2006, MGM announced that it would return once again as a distribution company domestically. Striking distribution deals with The Weinstein Company, Lakeshore Entertainment, Bauer Martinez Entertainment and other independent studios, MGM distributes films from these companies. MGM continues funding and co-producing projects that are released in conjunction with Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group on a limited basis and is producing "tentpoles" for their own distribution company MGM Distribution.

Sony has a minority stake in MGM but otherwise MGM and UA will operate under the direction of Stephen Cooper (CEO of MGM and a minority owner himself).

The Tom Cruise era[link]

On November 2, 2006, MGM announced that actor Tom Cruise and his long-time production partner Paula Wagner were resurrecting UA^[13][14] (this announcement came after the duo were released from a fourteen-year production relationship at Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures earlier that year). Cruise, Wagner and MGM Studios created United Artists Entertainment LLC and the producer/actor and his partner owned a 30% stake in the studio,^[15] with the approval by MGM's consortium of owners.

The deal gave them control over production and development of films. Wagner was named CEO of United Artists, which was allotted an annual slate of four films with different budget ranges, while Cruise serves as a producer for the revamped studio as well as serving as the occasional star.

UA became the first motion picture studio granted a WGA waiver in January 2008 during the Writers' Strike.^[16]

On August 14, 2008, MGM announced Paula Wagner will leave United Artists to produce films independently.^[2] Her output as head of UA was two films, both starring Cruise, Lions for Lambs^[17] and Valkyrie, which despite mixed reviews was successful at the box office.^[18] Wagner's departure led to speculation that an overhaul at United Artists was imminent.^[2]

Since then, United Artists has merely served as a co-producer with MGM for two releases: the 2009 remake of Fame and Hot Tub Time Machine. Throughout 2010, continued debt and credit issues for MGM Holdings, Inc., United Artists' parent company had left the future of MGM and UA in doubt until it was resolved near the end of the year.

A 2011 financial report revealed that MGM reacquired its 100% stake in United Artists.^[15] MGM might continue to make new films under the UA brand.^[15]

Historical list of films[link]

• List of United Artists films

Film archives[link]

This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a specific audience. Please help relocate any relevant information, and remove excessive detail that may be against Wikipedia inclusion policy. (September 2009)

The value of film libraries has increased exponentially in recent years, even as ownership gets more fractured. Few studios had the foresight or ability to maintain control over every picture they produced or released.

United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film and television library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the RKO and pre-1950^[7][8] Warner Bros. libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, these catalogs now belong to Time Warner's Turner Entertainment unit.

Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, the copyrights of UA's output up until the 1970s belonged to the individual or company producing. UA managed to acquire full rights to a majority of these films later on. MGM-Pathé, now simply known as MGM (or, for legal purposes, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios), took over the copyrights to UA films (particularly the in-house productions) after the studio folded into the former company in 1990. Productions made after the company was revived by MGM in 1994 are copyrighted by UA. Still, the rights to many UA releases around this time reverted back to the producers.

Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures (today part of Paramount Pictures) or studios like Westchester Films (successor to Castle Hill Productions), and Classic Media (in most cases with distribution by Warner Brothers). A small fraction of UA's silent output is now owned by Kino International.

A number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s that are in the public domain are seldom shown. Of the hundreds of films UA distributed over eighty years, those it still owns outright are most of its own productions from 1951 forward, plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm a Bum and Howard Hawks' Red River (1948) with parent company MGM handling distribution. Until the early '90s, many of those films were released on home video by Magnetic Video, which later became CBS/Fox Video, in the United States and Canada and by Warner Home Video internationally.

The Big Four (Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith)[link]

• Charlie Chaplin's films, features and shorts are controlled by his estate, with most rights handled by French distributor MK2 and Janus Films.

• Most of the films Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith made at United Artists now rest with film restoration company Film Preservation Associates.

• In 1931, Mary Pickford considered destroying her films, afraid they might seem ridiculous to future generations of viewers; however, her friend Lillian Gish managed to persuade her otherwise.^[19][20] The rights to all of her films are now held by the Mary Pickford Foundation.

Disney, Lantz, and Twentieth Century Pictures' productions[link]

• All of the Disney shorts released through United Artists from June 1932 to May 1937, as well as the 1943 film Victory Through Air Power, were always owned by The Walt Disney Company. A number of these had been re-released through RKO (replacing the original titles) prior to the launch of Buena Vista Distribution in 1953.

• All of the Walter Lantz cartoons distributed by UA during 1947 up to 1949 are now held by Lantz's original home, Universal.

• The Twentieth Century pictures released by UA between 1933 and 1935 rest with the successor company, 20th Century Fox.

Collaborations[link]

Films made by UA in co-production with other companies rest with several studios in certain territories or under contractual agreements.

• As of the present, UA owns domestic distribution (including television syndication, theatrical, and internet) and the copyright to The Return of the Pink Panther. All other rights reside under Universal Pictures' Focus Features division in partnership with ITC and its successor ITV Global Entertainment Ltd.. Ironically, MGM/UA's rights are the result of their theatrical distribution license for the ITC/ITV library.

• In another twist of irony, UA also owns theatrical distribution rights to the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep (another ITC production originally released by UA) by virtue of MGM's distribution rights to ITC's theatrical output.

• Worldwide rights to Always are now with Universal Pictures, the film's co-producing studio.

• Most ancillary rights to Convoy (an EMI Films production) are now with EMI's successor company, StudioCanal, although its copyright and US home video re-release issues are with MGM, but an official home video/DVD re-issue has yet to be announced.

Independent producers[link]

• Rights to the UA-released Hal Roach films are owned by his estate. They retain the original film elements and licensed the distribution rights to RHI Entertainment, even though most of these are in the public domain.

• McLintock!, made by John Wayne's Batjac Productions, is in the public domain (though the music score is still under copyright). Batjac retains the original film elements, and licensed Paramount Home Entertainment the distribution rights to release DVD versions authorized by Batjac and Wayne's estate.

• Rights to the UA-distributed Hopalong Cassidy films are held by the late William Boyd's company, U.S. Television Office.

• Rights to Stanley Kramer's pre-1953 productions for UA (ex. Champion, The Men, High Noon), as well as a majority of the films made by Enterprise Productions (ex. Body and Soul, Arch of Triumph) are currently owned by Republic Pictures under Paramount, with Trifecta handling television syndication and Lionsgate holding video/DVD rights. Another Kramer production, the 1950 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac, is in the public domain.

• Rights to the The Caddo Company/Howard Hughes films produced by Hughes for UA are now owned by Universal (except for a few like Two Arabian Knights and The Front Page, which are in the public domain; home video rights rest with independent home video distributors like Flicker Alley and Reelclassicdvd.com).

• The pre-1941 Samuel Goldwyn films released by UA (as well as the films made during his tenure at RKO) are owned by the Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. Family Trust. The Samuel Goldwyn Company (with HBO Home Video) handled North American home entertainment distribution rights, which were later transferred to MGM (which had purchased Goldwyn's parent Orion Pictures in 1997). In 2012, the Trust transferred North American distribution to Warner Bros.^[21] and the global license to Miramax.^[22]

• The U.S. rights to The African Queen are now owned by Paramount Pictures (after years of changing hands as the result of a series of management changes involving Paramount's parent company Viacom). As of the present, Paramount handles theatrical distribution, while Trifecta Entertainment & Media manages television syndication under Paramount's license. ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. handles distribution outside ITU region 2 countries and U.S. territories.

• Ancillary rights to The Final Countdown are now with Lionsgate (successor-in-interest to Producers Sales Organization), however the video rights are held by Blue Underground.

• Lionsgate also now owns US DVD rights to Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (under license from Paramount Pictures, which owns US distribution rights on behalf of the film's rights holder, American Zoetrope, Coppola's company). Trifecta (also under license from Paramount) handles television distribution rights. International distribution rights have been farmed out to a joint venture between StudioCanal and Miramax.

• Rights to Mike Todd's Around the World in Eighty Days and the UA-distributed Lorimar films are now with Warner Bros.. Warner Communications bought the rights to Days from Elizabeth Taylor, Todd's widow, and successor company Time Warner bought the Lorimar library after they bought out the company in 1990.

• Saul Zaentz and his namesake corporation retains the rights to his UA-distributed productions, which includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film The Lord of the Rings. Zaentz licensed the distribution of these films to Warner Bros.

• Several of Otto Preminger's UA films remain under the control of his estate, with Warner Bros. distributing. However, Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm is no longer under copyright (though the music score still is).

• Rights to the Mexican films originally released by UA are now with Laguna Films, while others are in the public domain or owned by independent companies. That's because the US copyright laws did not apply worldwide.

• The 1951 film version of Scrooge is now held by its original production company, Renown Film Productions, with VCI Entertainment handling video rights.

The Selznick library[link]

• Rights to Selznick International Pictures and other later productions from David O. Selznick through UA and Selznick Releasing Organization are held by ABC (which is also owned by Disney). This excludes Gone with the Wind, which was originally released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and is now owned by Time Warner (via subsidiary Turner Entertainment Company) with TW's Warner Bros. unit holding distribution rights.

• Like Gone with the Wind, The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) is also owned by Turner. Unlike the case of Gone with the Wind, which Selznick sold to MGM in 1944, It is assumed that The Prisoner of Zenda was bought by MGM themselves because they planned to produce a would-be 1952 remake of the film and wished to better the original film (a similar situation occurred when MGM filmed a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1941, having also bought the 1931 version from Paramount). When the pre-May 1986 MGM library was bought by Turner Entertainment, both productions were included in the roster as well.

• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), Nothing Sacred (1937), A Star is Born (1937) and Made for Each Other are now in the public domain.

Pre-May 1986 MGM/UA library[link]

• The pre-May 1986 MGM films released through United Artists (and outside Anglo-America through Cinema International Corporation and United International Pictures) are also now with WB/Turner Entertainment.

• Some of the pre-May 1986 MGM/UA films made around the early 1980s still remain in the MGM library and were not picked up by Turner Entertainment due to most of these films produced by UA (ex.: Don Bluth's 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH; the 1983 film WarGames; the foreign rights to the 1976 Sidney Lumet film Network and the James Bond, Pink Panther and Rocky franchises).

• However, a specific film from the official UA library, the 1937 film The Prisoner of Zenda, has managed to enter the Turner library, thus part of the Warner catalogs. (See above)

• One WB film in the a.a.p. package, Rope, had its rights reverted to director Alfred Hitchcock in later years. His estate then sold the rights to Universal Studios in 1983.

• The 1975 documentary, Bugs Bunny: Superstar, is also now with WB/Turner, as it featured several full cartoons in the a.a.p. package.

• Most of the a.a.p. library (The Popeye cartoons and most of the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library) are owned by WB/Turner (The only exception is Rope.)

The Beatles' films[link]

• Rights to A Hard Day's Night (1964) are controlled by The Weinstein Company, in conjunction with Miramax Films and Lionsgate (the latter company currently holding home video rights under Miramax).
• The rights to Help! (1965) and Let It Be (1970), also distributed by UA, are now owned by the surviving members of The Beatles and the estates of the deceased members through Apple Corps, with licensing from EMI.
• Yellow Submarine (1968) is owned by Subafilms, the Beatles' production company. MGM continued to distribute the film for many years; however Capitol Records assumed video distribution for a Blu-Ray release in 2012.

United Artists Television[link]

UA Films on video[link]

United Artists originally leased the home video rights to its films (including the pre-1950 Warner Bros. classics they owned at the time) to Magnetic Video, the first home video company. Magnetic was purchased by 20th Century Fox in 1981 and was renamed 20th Century-Fox Video that year. In 1982, 20th Century-Fox Video merged with CBS Video Enterprises (which had demerged with MGM/CBS Home Video after MGM merged with UA) giving birth to CBS/Fox Video. Although MGM owned UA around this time, the latter studio's licensing deal with CBS/Fox was still in effect; however, the newly-renamed MGM/UA Home Video started releasing some UA product, including a few recent films. In 1986, the pre-1950 WB and the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television libraries were purchased by Ted Turner after its short-lived ownership of MGM/UA, and as a result CBS/Fox lost home video rights to the pre-1950 WB films to MGM/UA Home Video. When the deal with CBS/Fox (inherited from Magnetic Video) expired in 1989, the UA films began to be issued through MGM/UA Home Video. Up until then, international distribution was handled by Warner Home Video, including in the UK, Europe, Japan, and South America.

In the late 1980s, UA licensed the video releases for its more obscure titles to a small specialty video distributor called Wood Knapp Video. This deal lasted in effect until the early 1990s.

United Artists Broadcasting[link]

United Artists owned and operated two television stations between the years of 1968 and 1977. Legal ID's for the company would typically say "United Artists Broadcasting: an entertainment service of Transamerica Corporation," along with the Transamerica "T" logo.

Additionally, United Artists Broadcasting also held the permit to KUAB-TV in Houston, Texas, which would have possibly launched sometime around 1969 on channel 20; the station would eventually launch in 1982 under different ownership as KTXH.^[23] United Artists also owned one radio station, WWSH in Philadelphia, from 1970 to 1977.

UAB/Transamerica left the broadcasting business in 1977 by selling WUAB to the Gaylord Broadcasting Company and WWSH to Cox Communications.

See also[link]

• List of United Artists films
• United Artists Television
• United Artists Records
• List of film production companies
• Production company

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Bach, Steven. Final Cut. New York: Morrow, 1985.
• Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.
• Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
• Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
• Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.
• Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
• Thomson, David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1992.

External links[link]

• Official website
• United Artists at the Internet Movie Database

James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver; a new novel, written by William Boyd, is planned for release in 2013.^[1] Additionally, Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.

The fictional British Secret Service agent has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip and video game formats as well as being used in the longest running and the second-highest grossing film franchise to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2012, there have been twenty two films in the Eon Productions series, with a twenty third, Skyfall, due for release on 26 October 2012. The film will star Daniel Craig in his third portrayal of Bond: he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent productions of Bond films, Casino Royale, a 1967 spoof, and Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, Thunderball.

The films are renowned for a number of features, including the musical accompaniment, with the theme songs to the films having picked up Academy Award nominations on several occasions. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns and the gadgets he is supplied with by Q Branch.

Publication history[link]

Creation and inspiration[link]

As the central figure for his works, Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond, an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander.

Name

Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies; Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist’s wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born".^[2] He further explained that:

When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument...when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, (James Bond) is the dullest name I ever heard.

—Ian Fleming, The New Yorker, 21 April 1962^[3]

On another occasion Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, "James Bond" was much better than something more interesting, like "Peregrine Carruthers". Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."^[4]

Inspiration

Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war".^[5] Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind the lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war.^[6] Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job and Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale.^[5]

Hoagy Carmichael—Fleming's view of James Bond.

Tastes

Fleming also endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs and using the same brand of toiletries.^[7] Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming’s own as was his behaviour,^[8] with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his espionage career and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.^[5]

Looks

Fleming decided Bond should look a little like both the American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself^[9] and in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking… Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."^[9]

Background

It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give Bond both a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories.^[10] In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from Yverdon, Switzerland.^[11] Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920,^[12] while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.^[13]

Novels and related works[link]

Ian Fleming novels[link]

Goldeneye, in Jamaica, where Fleming wrote all the Bond novels.^[14]

Whilst serving in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming had planned to become an author^[15] and had told a friend, "I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories."^[5] On 17 February 1952, he began writing his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica,^[16] where he wrote all his Bond novels, during the months of January and February each year.^[17] He started the story shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, in order to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.^[18]

After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming showed the manuscript to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read. Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer.^[17] Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last two books – The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights – published posthumously.^[19] All the books were published in the UK through Jonathan Cape.

Post-Fleming novels[link]

After Fleming's death a continuation novel, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968.^[34] Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 workThe James Bond Dossier.^[35] Although novelizations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood,^[36] the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981, thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with Licence Renewed.^[37] Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote – Licence to Kill and GoldenEye – were novelizations of Eon Productions films of the same name. Gardner moved the Bond series into the 1980s, although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them.^[38] In 1996, Gardner retired from writing James Bond books due to ill health.^[39]

In 1996, American author Raymond Benson became the author of the Bond novels. Benson had previously been the author of The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984.^[54] By the time he moved on to other, non-Bond related projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelizations and three short stories.^[55]

After a gap of six years, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth.^[65] The book—titled Devil May Care—was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US.^[66] American writer Jeffery Deaver was then commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to produce Carte Blanche, which was published on 26 May 2011.^[67] The book updated Bond into a post 9/11 agency, independent of MI5 or MI6.^[68]

Young Bond[link]

The Young Bond series of novels was started by Charlie Higson^[69] and, between 2005 and 2009, five novels and one short story were published.^[70] The first Young Bond novel, SilverFin was also adapted and released as a graphic novel on 2 October 2008 by Puffin Books.^[71]

The Moneypenny Diaries[link]

The Moneypenny Diaries are a trilogy of novels chronicling the life of Miss Moneypenny, M's personal secretary. The novels are penned by Samantha Weinberg under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, who is depicted as the book's "editor".^[79] The first instalment of the trilogy, subtitled Guardian Angel, was released on 10 October 2005 in the UK.^[80] A second volume, subtitled Secret Servant was released on 2 November 2006 in the UK, published by John Murray.^[81] A third volume, subtitled Final Fling was released on 1 May 2008.^[82]

Adaptations[link]

Television[link]

In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 ($8,654 in 2012 dollars^[86]) to adapt his novel Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.^[87] The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as "Card Sense" James 'Jimmy' Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre.^[88] The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence", while the character Felix Leiter—American in the novel—became British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".^[89]

In 1973 a BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond). The documentary included James Bond in dramatised scenes from Goldfinger—notably featuring 007 being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam—and Diamonds Are Forever.^[90] In 1991 a TV cartoon series James Bond Jr. was produced with Corey Burton in the role of Bond's nephew, also called James Bond.^[91]

Radio[link]

In 1956, the novel Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond.^[92] According to The Independent, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".^[93]

The BBC have adapted three of the Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990, You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90 minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2011.^[94] On 24 May 2008, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of Dr. No. Actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day, played James Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet.^[95] Following the success of Dr. No, a second Bond story was adapted and on 3 April 2010, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Toby Stephens again playing Bond.^[96] Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis.^[97]

Comics medium[link]

In 1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of takings from syndication.^[98] After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed.^[99] To aid the Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look.^[100] The first strip, Casino Royale was published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958^[101] and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.^[102]

Most of the Bond novels and short stories have since been adapted for illustration, as well as Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun; the works were written by Henry Gammidge or Jim Lawrence with Yaroslav Horak replacing McClusky as artist in 1966.^[101] After the Fleming and Amis material had been adapted, original stories were produced, continuing in the Daily Express and Sunday Express until May 1977.^[100]

Several comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published through the years: at the time of Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology series.^[103] It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as part of its Showcase anthology series, in January 1963. This was the first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones and dialogue were changed for the American market).^[104][103]

With the release of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film.^[105][106] When Octopussy was released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying comic;^[103] Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill, although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used.^[107] New Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards through Marvel, Eclipse Comics and Dark Horse Comics.^[103][106]

Films[link]

The Eon Productions films[link]

In 1962 Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No, featuring Sean Connery as 007.^[108] Connery starred in a further four films before leaving the role after You Only Live Twice,^[109] which was taken up by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service.^[110] Lazenby left the role after just one appearance and Connery was tempted back for his last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.^[111]

In 1973, Roger Moore was appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die and played Bond a further six times over twelve years before being replaced by Timothy Dalton for two films. After a six year hiatus, during which a legal wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films,^[112] Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in GoldenEye, released in 1995; he remained in the role for a total of four films, before leaving in 2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role of Bond for Casino Royale, which rebooted the franchise.^[113] The twenty-third Eon produced film, Skyfall, was announced in November 2011, with release scheduled for 26 October 2012.^[114] The Eon Productions series has grossed $4,910,000,000 (over $12,360,000,000 when adjusted for inflation) worldwide, making it the second highest grossing film series, behind Harry Potter.^[115]

Non-Eon films[link]

In 1967, Casino Royale was adapted into a parody Bond film starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd. David Niven had been Ian Fleming's preference for the part of James Bond.^[116] The result of a court case in the High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983.^[117] The film, starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films. In 1997 the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal,^[117] which were then subsequently acquired by MGM, whilst on 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Schwartzman's company Taliafilm.^[118] Eon now currently (as of 2012) holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.^[117][119]

Music[link]

The "James Bond Theme" was written by Monty Norman and was first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No, although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of controversy for many years.^[121] In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel damages from the The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that Barry was entirely responsible for the composition.^[122] The theme, as written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another Bond film composer, David Arnold, as "bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock 'n' roll...it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes."^[120] Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films^[123] and had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the Bond Theme.^[120]

A Bond film staple are the theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known popular singers.^[124] Several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die",^[125] Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better"^[126] and Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only".^[127] For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt Bacharach's score included "The Look Of Love", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.^[128]

Video games[link]

In 1983, the first Bond video game, developed and published by Parker Brothers, was released for the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Atari 800, the Commodore 64 and the ColecoVision.^[129] Since then, there have been numerous video games either based on the films or using original storylines. In 1997, the first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64, based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film GoldenEye.^[130] The game received very positive reviews,^[131] won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for UK Developer of the Year in 1998^[132] and generated $250 million of sales worldwide.^[133]

In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the licence and released Tomorrow Never Dies on 16 December 1999.^[134] In October 2000, they released The World Is Not Enough^[135] for the Nintendo 64^[136] followed by007 Racing for the PlayStation on 21 November 2000.^[137] In 2003, the company released Everything or Nothing,^[138] which included the likenesses and voices of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, Judi Dench and John Cleese, amongst others.^[139] In November 2005, Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of From Russia with Love,^[140] which involved Sean Connery's image and voice-over for Bond.^[140]

In 2006 Electronic Arts announced a game based on then-upcoming film Casino Royale: the game was cancelled because it would not be ready by the film's release in November of that year. With MGM losing revenue from lost licensing fees, the franchise was removed from EA to Activision.^[141] Activision subsequently released the 007: Quantum of Solace game on 31 October 2008, based on the film of the same name.^[142]

Guns, vehicles and gadgets[link]

The Walther PPK is the most famous of Bond's handguns

Guns

For the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418^[143] until he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond,^[144] calling it "a lady's gun – and not a very nice lady at that!"^[145] Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65mm and this exchange of arms made it to Dr. No.^[146] Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains.^[147] In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M introduces him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world".^[146] Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308 target rifle in "The Living Daylights".^[143] Other handguns used by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.^[143]

The first Bond film, Dr. No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the Walther PPK,^[148] which the film Bond used in eighteen films.^[149] Since Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond's main weapon has been the Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.^[149]

An Aston Martin DB5 as seen in Goldfinger.

Vehicles

In the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4½ Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger.^[150] After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series.^[151] During Goldfinger, Bond was issued with an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.^[151]

The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage^[152], during the 1980s), the V12 Vanquish^[152] and DBS^[153] during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit;^[154] the BMW Z3,^[155] BMW 750iL^[155] and the BMW Z8.^[155] He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others.^[156]

Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger;^[157] it later featured in Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale.^[158] The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2,090,000 to an unnamed European collector.^[159]

Gadgets

The Little Nellie autogyro with its creator and pilot, Ken Wallis

Fleming's novels and early screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia with Love, although this situation changed dramatically with the films.^[160] However, the effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.^[161]

For the film adaptations of Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs that ran through the series.^[162] Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets, but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he described as "a classic 007 product".^[163] The gadgets assumed a higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in the later films.^[164]

Davey noted that "Bond's gizmos follow the zeitgeist more closely than any other...nuance in the films"^[163] as they moved from the potential representations of the future in the early films, through to the brand-name obsessions of the later films.^[163] It is also noticeable that, although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch, including the Little Nellie autogyro,^[165] a jet pack^[166] and the exploding attaché case,^[167] the villains are also well-equipped with custom made devices,^[163] including Scaramanga's golden gun,^[168] Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoes,^[169] Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat^[170] and Blofeld's communication and bacteriological warfare agents vanity case.^[163]

Cultural impact[link]

Cinematically James Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the release of Dr. No in 1962.^[171] The first parody was the 1964 film Carry on Spying showing the villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind (Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor).^[172] One of the films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer series, whose first film, The Ipcress File was released in 1965. The eponymous hero of the series was what academic Jeremy Packer called an "anti-Bond",^[173] or what Christoph Lindner calls "the thinking man's Bond".^[174] The Palmer series were produced by Harry Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond franchise, including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry.^[175] In 1966 there were twenty two secret agent films released attempting to capitalise on the popularity and success of Bond.^[176] The four "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin were released between 1966 and 1969,^[177] the "Flint" series starring James Coburn provided two films in 1966 and 1969,^[178] whilst The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture.^[123] More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer and comedian Mike Myers^[179] and other parodies such as the 2003 film Johnny English^[180] have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.

Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the quote "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No that the "signature introduction would become the most famous and loved film line ever".^[181] In 2001 it was voted as the "best-loved one-liner in cinema" by British cinema goers^[182] and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years Series.^[183] The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series also recognised the character of James Bond himself in the film as the third greatest film hero.^[184] He was also placed at number eleven on a similar list by Empire.^[185] Premiere also listed Bond as the fifth greatest movie character of all time.^[186]

The twenty two James Bond films produced by Eon Productions, which have grossed $4,910,000,000 in box office returns alone,^[187] have made the series one of the highest-grossing ever. It is estimated that since Dr. No, a quarter of the world's population have seen at least one Bond film.^[188] The UK Film Distributors' Association have stated that the importance of the Bond series of films to the British film industry cannot be overstated, as they "form the backbone of the industry".^[189]

Television also saw the effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,^[190] which was described as the "first network television imitation" of Bond,^[191] largely because Fleming provided advice and ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main character the name Napoleon Solo.^[192] Other 1960s television imitations of Bond included I Spy,^[178] and Get Smart.^[193]

See also[link]

James Bond portal

• Shaken, not stirred
• Sir Fitzroy MacLean, 1st Baronet
• The Battle for Bond
• 9007 James Bond Asteroid named after the character

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: James Bond

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James Bond

• James Bond Official Website
• Ian Fleming Publications Official Website
• Young Bond Official Website
• Pinewood Studios – home of Bond
• Pinewood Studios Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage Official Website
• Ian Fleming's 'Red Indians' – 30AU – Literary James Bond's Wartime unit
• James Bond at the Internet Movie Database