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In
Remembrance: Kevin McClory
Kevin McClory, the screenwriter and producer who worked on the 1965
James Bond thriller Thunderball, has passed away on November
20, 2006. He was 80.
Born June 8, 1926 in Dublin Ireland, McClory’s career began at
Middlesex, England’s Shepperton Studios, where he worked as a boom
operator and an assistant to director John Houston during the
productions of The African Queen (1951) and Moulin Rouge
(1952). After serving as location manager for the World War II film
The Cockleshell Heroes (1955) for actor/director Jose Ferrer,
he re-teamed with Houston for Moby Dick (1956), this time
serving as Houston’s Assistant Director.
Following a stint as an Associate Producer on Around The World In
Eighty Days (1956), McClory wrote, directed and produced The
Boy And The Bridge (1959), the story of a boy struggling to cope
with the deaths of his parents during World War II.
McClory became involved with the Bond film franchise in a roundabout
manner. In 1958 he collaborated with Bond creator Ian Fleming and
writer Jack Whittingham in the development of either a James Bond
film or television series. Although the project failed to
materialize – partly due to the critical and financial failure of
The Boy And The Bridge – Fleming took several of the ideas that
were developed into a screenplay and converted them into the ninth
Bond novel Thunderball, published in 1961. Since Fleming did
not give either McClory or Whittingham any credit for the material
used in the book they created, the pair sued Fleming. Ultimately,
Fleming agreed to an out of court settlement in 1963 which awarded
the two writers credit on all future reprints of the novel and
McClory retained film rights to the book.
Armed with the film rights, McClory began preparation to bring
Thunderball to the silver screen in direct competition to the
Bond series featuring Sean Connery and being produced by Albert
Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s Eon Productions, which already had
three successful entries – Dr. No (1962), From Russia With
Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964) – to its credit. But by
the fall of 1964, McClory had a changed his mind and approached
Broccoli and Saltzman with an offering to collaborate on the film.
Broccoli and Saltzman agreed, granting McClory the sole on-screen
producers credit on the final film.
McClory didn’t stay with the series but didn’t end his association
with James Bond. In 1976 he announced his intention to exercise his
right to remake Thunderball under the alternating title of
Warhead and later James Bond Of The Secret Service.
However, legal entanglements kept the film appearing until 1983 when
it was finally released as Never Say Never Again with McClory
taking an Executive Producer credit. The film starred Sean Connery
making a return to the role of James Bond after a 12 year hiatus.
Although both films did well at the box-office Never Say Never
Again was still outperformed at the box office by rival Eon
Production’s Octopussy starring Roger Moore as Bond.
McClory would try to mount another Thunderball remake and
even tried to use his rights to the material as grounds to launching
a rival Bond series with Sony Pictures. After another round of legal
battles, the courts found in favor of MGM Pictures, the distributors
of Eon’s Bond films and against McClory, squelching any further
plans to produce an independent Bond pictures. |
