Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (35 page)

Company:
Charleston RiverDogs (a class A minor league baseball team in South Carolina)

Promotion:
“Free Vasectomy Day”

The RiverDogs announced they’d be offering a free vasectomy to anyone who showed up at the ballpark on June 15, 1997—Father’s Day. The idea didn’t go over too well with the general public, particularly the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston.

The RiverDogs’ marketing VP defended the idea—“Some men find it very useful,” she claimed—but less than 24 hours later, the promotion was canceled.

Company:
Kellogg Co.

Promotion:
They put a photo of Miss Venezuela (19-year-old Alicia Machado), winner of the 1996 Miss Universe contest, on boxes of Special K cereal in her native country.

“In Venezuela,” said news reports, “where beauty queen titles launch careers, Special K cereal boxes featured the 19-year-old brunette sitting on an inflatable globe above the slogan, ‘Nothing to hide.’ Buyers who stocked up on the cereal in the hope of keeping their figures trim now want their money back.”

The reason: Four months after winning the crown, Machado had gained 11 pounds and had acquired the nickname “the eating machine.” Local newspapers were flooded with angry letters, and after a slew of bad publicity, Kellogg’s discontinued the promotion.

Company:
Weight Watchers

Promotion:
An ad campaign featuring Weight Watchers spokeswoman Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York.

Ferguson appeared on brochures and in ads saying that losing weight is “harder than outrunning the paparazzi.” A week later her former sister-in-law, Princess Diana, was killed in a car wreck while trying to outrun the paparazzi. The ad campaign was quickly withdrawn.

Sean Connery is so closely associated with the role of James Bond that it’s hard to believe he was initially a longshot for the part. Here’s the story of how Ian Fleming’s 007 thrillers found their way onto film.

B
OND-AGE FILMS

In the late 1950s Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, two movie producers, teamed up to turn Ian Fleming’s Bond novels into action films.
Thunderball
was their choice for the first Bond film, but it was tied up in a lawsuit between Fleming and some other writers. So they settled on
Dr. No.
They shopped the idea around to every film studio in Hollywood…and were rejected by nearly everyone. Finally, United Artists agreed to back the film—as long as they didn’t want to spend a lot of money.
Dr. No’s
budget was set at a paltry $1 million.

Casting Call

The first task was to find the right James Bond. Broccoli and Saltzman knew what kind of actor they were looking for: a top-notch British performer who was willing to work for low-budget wages, and who would commit to making several sequels (in the unlikely event that
Dr. No
was successful).

But as Broccoli and Salzman quickly realized, no actor like that existed. Broccoli’s friend Cary Grant was one of the first people to say no; many others followed. Stage actor Patrick McGoohan rejected the role on moral grounds (too violent); and up-and-coming British actor Richard Johnson refused to commit to a multipicture deal, fearing it would hurt his career. (Both men later ended up playing James Bond knock-offs on TV and in film.) Ian Fleming suggested either David Niven or Roger Moore; Niven wasn’t interested, and Moore was already committed to “The Saint,” a TV detective/spy series.

SERENDIPITY

Not long after it was announced that
Dr. No
was being made into a film,
The Daily Express
, which ran the James Bond comic strip, held a readers’ poll to see who should be cast as Bond. The winner was Sean Connery, a little-known Scottish actor and former Mr. Universe contestant. Connery was beginning to build a following in Great Britain, and had recently been interviewed by the paper.

At about the same time, Cubby Broccoli and his wife saw the Disney film
Darby O’Gill and the Little People
, in which Connery played a “farmer and country bumpkin.” Neither of the Broccolis was particularly impressed with Connery’s acting, but Cubby Broccoli liked his accent, and Mrs. Broccoli thought he had the raw sex appeal that the Bond part needed.

Coincidentally, a short time later film editor Peter Hunt sent Broccoli several reels of a film he was working on called
Operation Snafu
, with the recommendation that one of the stars—Sean Connery again—would make a great Bond.

TOUGH GUY

Connery’s career prior to the Bond films was nothing to brag about, but he still played hard to get. When Broccoli asked him to test for the part, he refused, telling Broccoli, “Either take me as I am or not at all.”

“He pounded the desk and told us what he wanted,” Broccoli recounted years later. “What impressed us was that he had balls.” The producers finally tricked him into auditioning on film by telling him they were experimenting with camera setups.

Mr. Right

Connery came from a working-class background and he showed up at the audition wearing grubby clothes, but by the time he finished his screen test Broccoli and Saltzman knew the search for Etoneducated Bond was over. “He walked like he was Superman,” Broccoli recalled, “and I believed we had to go along with him. The difference between him and the other young actors was like the difference between a still photo and film. We knew we had our Bond.” Connery remembers getting the part somewhat less romantically:

      
Originally, they were considering all sorts of stars to play James Bond. Trevor Howard was one. Rex Harrison was another. The character was to be a shining example of British upper-crust elegance, but they couldn’t afford a major name. Luckily, I was available at a price they could afford.

Casting an unknown in the lead part did not go down well at the studio—one executive rejected him and told the producers to, “see if you can do better.” Connery did not impress Ian Fleming, either. “I’m looking for Commander James Bond,” he complained, “not an overgrown stuntman.” But Connery stayed.

THE BOND THEME

Composer Monty Norman created the musical score for
Dr. No
, and while Broccoli and Saltzman were happy with his work on the rest of the film, they didn’t like his theme song. So they hired a new composer named John Barry. They told him they needed a song exactly 2-1/2 minutes long to fit into the soundtrack where the old song had gone. Without even seeing the film, Barry composed the “James Bond Theme,” one of the most recognizable themes in Hollywood history. He was paid £200 (less than $500) for his effort.

BOND MANIA

Dr. No
premiered in 1962 and was a smash hit. The film earned huge returns for Broccoli, Saltzman, and United Artists and launched the most successful film series in history. By 1997 a total of 20 Bond films had been made, including 7 with Sean Connery, 1 with George Lazenby, 1 with David Niven, 7 with Roger Moore, 2 with Timothy Dalton, and 2 with Pierce Brosnan, who signed on for 2 more through the 21st century.

Dr. No
and the second Bond film,
From Russia with Love
, also launched a “Bond mania” complete with 007 toys, board games, spy kits, decoder rings, cartoons, toiletries, clock radios, and even lingerie. The fad peaked in 1965, but continued well into the 1970s, inspiring numerous TV knock-offs such as
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy
, and
The Avengers.

For the Boys

But the success of
Dr. No
went beyond launching a spy fad or a film series, as Suzanna Andrews writes in The
New York Times.

      
Dr. No
also marked the beginning of the big-budget “boy” movies that today dominate the film industry, movies marked by action, special effects, and men who never fail. In spirit and style, Bond is godfather to such movies as
Lethal Weapon
and
Die Hard
, and many films that star Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

UNTIMELY END

James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming, did not live to see the full impact of the genre he created: in 1964, after only two Bond films had been completed, he died from a massive heart attack brought on by years of heavy drinking and a 70-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. He was 56.

In his lifetime Fleming earned nearly $3 million in book royalties; but his heirs would lose out on many of the profits his work generated after he died. Less than a month before his death, Fleming, who suspected the end was near, sold 51% of his interest in the James Bond character to reduce the inheritance taxes on his estate. He collected only $280,000, even though it was worth millions.

FOOD NOTES

Ian Fleming made James Bond into a connoisseur of fine wine, women, weapons, and food, but Fleming’s own tastes left a lot to be desired, especially when it came to food. As his friend and neighbor on Jamaica, Noel Coward, recounted years later,

      
Whenever I ate with Ian at Goldeneye (Fleming’s Jamaican hideaway) the food was so abominable I used to cross myself before I took a mouthful….I used to say, “lan, it tastes like armpits.” And all the time you were eating there was old Ian smacking his lips for more while his guests remembered all those delicious meals he had put into the books.

BOND’S FIRST MARTINI

      
“A dry Martini,” [Bond] said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

      
“Oui, Monsieur.”

      
“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”

      
“Certainly, Monsieur.” The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

—Casino Royale,
1953

When Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone mill be famous for 15 minutes,” he obviously didn’t have animals in mind. Yet even they haven’t been able to escape the relentless publicity machine that keeps cranking out instant celebrities.

H
EADLINE:
Cat Makes Weather Forecasters Look All Wet

THE STAR:
Napoleon, a cat in Baltimore, Maryland

WHAT HAPPENED:
A severe drought hit Baltimore in the summer of 1930. Forecasters predicted an even longer dry spell, but Frances Shields called local newspapers and insisted they’d have rain in 24 hours. The reason: Her cat was lying down with his “front paw extended and his head on the floor,” and he only did that just before it rained. Reporters laughed…until there
was
a rainstorm the next day.