On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[dustin]

Between the resignation of Sir Sean Connery at the beginning of filming You Only Live Twice (1967) and its release, Producer Harry Saltzman had planned to adapt The Man with the Golden Gun in Cambodia and use Sir Roger Moore as the next Bond, but political instability meant the location was ruled out and Moore signed up for another season of The Saint (1962).

[caroline]

Apparently the character of Draco was loosely based on Aristotle Onasis.

[kristen]

The pistol, the henchman tries to kill Bond with in the opening scene on the beach, is a SiG P210, the famous "Neuhausen" pistol.

[darrell]

Peter R. Hunt asked Producer Albert R. Broccoli to direct this movie during production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and he brought along with him many crew members, including Cinematographer Michael Reed.

[frances]

Joanna Lumley makes one of her first on-screen appearances in this movie. Unlike other "Avengers" actors and actresses (Patrick Macnee, Dame Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman), she is the only one to have appeared in a Bond movie before starring in The Avengers (1961). Despite having a very small part as one of Blofeld's girls, she spent two months on the production, dubbing the voices of a whole line-up of international beauties in German, Chinese, and Norwegian, in addition to teaching many of the actresses who played Blofeld's patients, how to crochet, which some of them can be seen doing on film. With time, some of the women preferred crocheting garments over attending parties for the cast. Joanna Lumley has also read an abridged version of the novel on BBC Radio 4.

[carl]

The motto, "Orbis non sufficit", given to Bond when he researches his own coat of arms before impersonating Sir Hilary Bray, is Latin for "The World Is Not Enough", which was used as a Bond movie title in 1999.

[nora]

Theatrical movie debut of George Lazenby (James Bond).

[nicholas]

Gabriele Ferzetti was cast as Draco after the producers saw him in Elio Petri's We Still Kill the Old Way (1967), but Ferzetti's heavy Italian accent also led to his voice being redubbed by English actor David de Keyser for the final cut.

[gabriel]

Although a continental European in the books and movies, "Blofeld" is actually an English family name, being an Anglicization of the Dutch name Blauvelt, or "blue field", which is also the meaning of Bleuchamps, the original family name in the movie. The original family name in the book, "Bleuville", means "blue town".

[phyllis]

During filming, George Lazenby (James Bond) was fooling around on horseback and caused Bernard Lee (M) to fall into a fence and tear his leg open. As no doctor was available, the local vet stitched the gash up.