Thunderball - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Thunderball or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Thunderball

[frederick]

If you look at the conference room there are nine 00 Agent chairs. Except for 007's face, the only other 00 face you see is a profile of the one to the far right.

[victoria]

Maryse Guy Mitsouko played uncredited French Special Agent Madame La Porte in the pre-title sequence. Her voice was dubbed by Catherine Clemence. Born Maryse Guy, she was a Eurasian striptease artist.

[morris]

Producer Albert R. Broccoli pursued Raquel Welch for the role of Domino after seeing her on the cover of Life Magazine. She had to drop out in order to appear in Fantastic Voyage (1966).

[violet]

In the trailer for this movie, Bond says the line, "The things I do for England." The line was cut from the final version of this movie, and then used in the next Bond movie, You Only Live Twice (1967).

[cameron]

A promotional movie, The Incredible World of James Bond (1965), was aired on American television on November 26, 1965, one month before the release of this movie. Narrated by Alexander Scourby, the forty-eight-minute documentary aired as a one hour special. It included footage of the filming at Silverstone Racetrack, Northamptonshire, and of the fight aboard the Disco Volante at Pinewood Studios. Media coverage of Martine Beswick, Luciana Paluzzi, and Claudine Auger, and archive footage of Ian Fleming at "Goldeneye", Jamaica. It is available on the Thunderball (1965) Ultimate Edition DVD.

[jesse]

The cargo plane which deployed the frogmen prior to the underwater battle is a Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter.

[janice]

Adolfo Celi's voice was dubbed by Robert Rietty, who previously dubbed the voice of John Strangways in Dr. No (1962), and later dubbed Wheelchair Man in For Your Eyes Only (1981). The reason for this was because Celi's thick Sicilian accent made his voice difficult to follow, even when speaking English.

[miriam]

According to Robbie Collin in the U.K. newspaper "The Telegraph", "Bond author Ian Fleming invented S.P.E.C.T.R.E. in 1959 to replace James Bond's usual, Soviet, enemies. Fleming believed the Cold War might be about to end and wanted to keep his spy thrillers relevant." Fleming's S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Executive Cabinet included "twenty-one people including former Gestapo members, Soviet spy group S.M.E.R.S.H., Josep Tito's (Josip Broz Tito's) secret police, Italian, Corsican, and Turkish organized crime gangs", its goals were "profiteering from conflict between the superpowers, eventual world domination", and its methods included "counter-intelligence, brainwashing, murder, extortion, using weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological and orbital)."

[camila]

The world premiere was held on December 9, 1965 at the Hibiya Cinema, Tokyo, Japan. The U.S. premiere was on December 21, 1965 in New York City, and this is sometimes mistaken as being the movie's world premiere. United Artists arranged one of the Bell Jetpack pilots to fly off the marquee of the Paramount Theater at 1501 Broadway, Manhattan, New York, as a promotion at the launch. Several United Artists publicity personnel, and the pilot, were arrested, as no one had sought permission from the authorities. The U.K. launch held dual premieres in London on December 29, 1965 at the Rialto Theatre and Pavillion Theatre, Piccadilly Circus. The after-party was held at the Royal Garden Hotel, and proceeds from the night went to benefit the Newspaper Press Fund.

[albert]

Bond's jetpack was actually flown by engineer Bill Suiter. He was one of only two people in the world qualified to fly it.

[mathew]

Ricou Browning directed the underwater sequences. He performed the same duty on Never Say Never Again (1983).

[lonnie]

Domino was Italian in the book. Her full name was Dominetta "Domino" Vitali.

[tom]

The most difficult sequences to film were the underwater action scenes. The first scene shot, at a depth of fifty feet, was the scene where S.P.E.C.T.R.E. divers remove the atomic bombs from the sunken Vulcan bomber. Peter Lamont had previously visited a Royal Air Force bomber station, carrying a concealed camera, which he used to get close-up shots of secret missiles (those appearing in the movie were not actually present).

[russell]

Main Title Designer Maurice Binder returned to the franchise to design the main title sequence for this movie, after being absent from the previous two Bond movies, From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964). He had designed the opening titles for Dr. No (1962), and continued on every Bond movie after this one, until his last on Licence to Kill (1989).

[ronnie]

An excellent swimmer Claudine Auger did all her own underwater scenes including a love scene with Sean Connery on the sea bed during which she lost her bikini top.

[steve]

This movie and From Russia with Love (1963) are the only Bond movies to use the wipe editing technique in scene transitions.

[javier]

It's rumored that a Royal Navy engineer approached the producers after this movie's release to ask them how they designed the mini-rebreather. Apparently, he had been working on something similar, but could not figure it out. He was devastated when the producers told them their secret. The actors were holding their breaths. The amount of time one had to breathe underwater in the movie, utilizing the Rebreather mini-aqualung, was four minutes.

[alyssa]

The Boeing B-17G-95-DL, 44-85531, registered N809Z, flown in this movie with the Fulton Skyhook recovery system (later used on U.S. Air Force HC-130 Hercules rescue service aircraft), was owned by Intermountain Aviation, a secretive company based at Marana Air Park, Arizona, which was revealed in the 1970s to have actually been a C.I.A. proprietary company, wholly owned by the Agency, set up to cloak discrete operations, as reported by author and B-17 historian Scott A. Thompson. This aircraft is now known as "Shady Lady", registered N207EV, with the Evergreen Aviation Museum, Portland, Oregon, where Howard Hughes' HK-1 Hercules, a.k.a. the "Spruce Goose", is also displayed.