Bond trivia

In conjunction with the opening of James Bond's latest movie, here's some trivia that might interest you:

• Sean Connery was NOT the first actor to play James Bond. It was Barry Nelson. He played "Jimmy" Bond opposite bad guy Peter Lorre in an excruciating adaptation of "Casino Royale" for a 1954 episode of TV's "Climax!"
  
• Ian Fleming based James Bond on Dr. John Dee, the first British secret agent.
• Fleming picked the name James Bond because he was looking for a "flat, quiet" name. James Bond was the author of a book Fleming was reading, "Birds of the West Indies."
• The first Bond movie, Dr. No, was made for just under a million dollars.
• Ursula Andress' voice in Dr. No was not her own. It was dubbed by Monica Van der Syl.
• Dr. No was titled License to Kill in Italy.
• In James Bond movies, the armorer who supplies Bond with all his gadgets, is referred to as Q. The Q stands for "Quartermaster."
• Desmond Llewellyn, who played gadget-master Q, appeared in 17 Bond films.
• In the novel upon which Goldfinger was based, the character of Pussy Galore is a lesbian.
• Tom Jones recorded the Thunderball theme, and fainted after singing the sustained high note at the song's climax.
• The longest James Bond film was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, at 140 minutes.
• George Lazenby, who starred in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, was the only one who played James Bond once.
• Smirnoff is the brand of vodka used in all of James Bond's martinis.
• The first 007 movie in which Bond kisses Moneypenny was On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
• The evil organization Bond is often pitted against is SPECTRE. It stands for SPecial Executive for Counter Intelligence Terrorism Revenge Extortion.
• Another nefarious enemy of Bond is an organization called SMERSH. It's a Russian acronym for SMERt SHpionam, meaning "Death to Spies."
• The Man With The Golden Gun was the first James Bond film to be shown at the Kremlin.
• Moonraker is the only Roger Moore Bond film where he does not draw his Walther PPK.
• Roger Moore's contract demanded that he be provided an unlimited supply of hand-rolled Monte Cristo cigars.
• Steven Spielberg was in discussions to direct For Your Eyes Only when George Lucas offered him the opportunity to direct Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Steven Seagal was the martial arts instructor for Never Say Never Again.
• The practice of using a disclaimer in movies stating "no animals were mistreated during production" got its start in Never Say Never Again. The disclaimer was the result of controversy over a horse jumping off a cliff in the film.
• The villain in A View to a Kill, Max Zorin, was originally going to be played by David Bowie.
• Christopher Walken was the first Academy Award-winning actor to star in a Bond film. He co-starred in A View to a Kill.
• The satellite dish used at the end of Goldeneye was the same used in the film Contact.
• Pierce Brosnan's contract for Goldeneye specified that he could not appear in any other film wearing a tuxedo.
• Goldeneye is the nickname of Bond creator Ian Fleming's beachfront house in Jamaica where he wrote the James Bond novels.
• The first James Bond film to ever be released on DVD was Goldeneye.
• According to Goldeneye, Bond's parents were killed in a climbing accident.
• The pre-credits action sequence in The World is Not Enough runs about 15 minutes, the longest in any Bond film to date.
• Moonraker contains excerpts the themes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Magnificent Seven.
• Among the places where James Bond has made love are on a train, in a forest, in a plane, in a submarine, on a motorized iceberg, and in a hospital.
• Bond films have been nominated 10 times for Academy Awards, five times in technical categories and five times in musical categories.