10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About James Bond

The arrival of “No Time to Die” in U.S. theaters on Oct. 8 will mark the end of the Daniel Craig chapter in the 007 film franchise. It will also be a relief for the long-suffering James Bond fans who have been waiting patiently for a film originally scheduled to hit theaters in November 2019.

James Bond fans love to debate the highs and lows of the series, but this long-running endeavor includes many surprising facts that even the staunchest addict may not have known.

In advance of “No Time to Die,” here are 10 surprising facts about the 007 experience that you may not have known.

1. The Most And Least Profitable Bond Films: When measuring the series’ films by their box-office take, the more recent productions would obviously benefit from higher ticket prices: the 2012 “Skyfall” had the greatest U.S. domestic box office with $304.4 million in ticket sales while the 1962 “Dr. No,” the first entry, brought in $16.1 million when first released stateside.

However, Forbes magazine number crunched box office take with inflation adjustments, and the results were strikingly different: the 1965 “Thunderball” turned out to be the most popular 007 film with $590 million in contemporary-level profits while the 1989 “Licence to Kill” had the lowest intake with $81.1 million.

2. The James Bond Show? Most James Bond fans are aware that the character’s first on-screen appearance involved American actor Barry Nelson in a one-hour episode of “Casino Royale” broadcast in 1954 on the CBS anthology series “Climax.” Ian Fleming was paid $1,000 for this adaptation of his 007 novel.

What is not as well-known was CBS’ interest in making a television series based on Fleming’s characters. The original deal involved Fleming creating the outlines for 32 episodes, but the series never advanced beyond the planning stage. Fleming would later adapt three of the outlines into short stories published in his 1960 anthology “For Your Eyes Only.”

3. Jane Bond? The first attempt to make a feature film out of a Fleming novel occurred in 1955 when Fleming sold the film rights to “Casino Royale” to Hollywood producer Gregory Ratoff, who assigned Lorenzo Semple Jr. with the task of creating a screenplay.

Semple would later recall that “we thought that James Bond was kind of unbelievable and, as I recall, even kind of stupid.” Ratoff’s solution was to recast James Bond as a woman, proposing melodrama icon Susan Hayward to be a “Jane Bond.”

Nothing came of the effort. Hayward would win an Academy Award for her 1958 “I Want to Live!” and Semple would later change his mind about 007 and pen the screenplay for 1983’s “Never Say Never Again.”

4. The Lost 007: One adaptation of Fleming’s work is considered to be irretrievably lost: a 1958 radio drama based on “Moonraker” that was broadcast live over the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Details of the production are sketchy, but it is known that British-born actor and announcer Bob Holness played Bond while members of the Durban Repertory Theatre rounded out the cast. The production was not recorded and no surviving script has ever been located, so this early offering remains a missing piece in the 007 canon.

4. The First Big Screen Bond: Although Sean Connery is credited as the movies’ first Bond, he was not the first Bond on screen. In the pre-title credit sequence with Bond being tracked by a criminal’s gun barrel, the actor playing Bond in that brief moment was not Connery, but rather unbilled stuntman Bob Simmons.

Simmons would be used again in the opening of “From Russia With Love” and Connery would finally appear in that trademark opening sequence in “Goldfinger.”

5. Roger Moore’s 007 Debut: Everyone knows that Roger Moore took over the Bond role, his first in the character occurred in the 1964 variety show “Mainly Millicent.” In a sketch, Moore performed as Bond while Millicent Martin played a Russian spy.

Although a great deal of British television from the early 1960s is considered lost, Moore’s sketch has survived and can be found online:

6. That Other Connery: The year 1967 saw an official 007 film with “You Only Live Twice,” a parody 007 with the all-star “Casino Royale,” and a strange little Italian film about James Bond’s brother played by Connery’s real-life sibling Neil Connery.

Titled “O.K. Connery” in Italy and “Operation Kid Brother” in the U.S., the film included several actors from the 007 series: Anthony Dawson from “Dr. No,” Daniela Bianchi from “From Russia with Love” and Adolfo Celi from “Thunderball” plus series regulars Bernard Lee (M) and Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny) — the latter claimed she earned more money from appearing in this film than from all of the 007 films she made combined. The full film can be found online:

7. George Lazenby’s Candy Bar To Stardom: When Connery decided not to continue with the series after 1967’s “You Only Live Twice,” a challenge arose to find someone to inherit the iconic role. The surprise choice was an Australian-born used car salesman-turned-male model named George Lazenby, who never acted in films before.

While Americans never heard of him, British audiences knew Lazenby as the well-tailored and beaming (though dialogue-free) presence in a series of television commercials for the Big Fry candy bars, a gig that he landed in 1967 while “You Only Live Twice” was being readied for release. Never seen outside of the U.K., here is one of the surviving commercials:

8. And Yet Another 007: In 1973, the BBC series “Omnibus” presented an hour-long episode titled “The British Hero” that depicted how heroic characters in British literature were depicted over the years. Christopher Cazenove played 007 in two brief recreations of scenes from “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds Are Forever.”

The “Goldfinger” segment was the more unusual of the pair because it offered Fleming’s original concept of a tied-down Bond facing death by chainsaw rather than by the laser used in the 1964 film.

The episode was never broadcast outside of the U.K. A print is known to survive, but it has not been made available for home entertainment viewing.

9. And The Best Song Oscar Goes To: While many of the theme songs to the Bond movies have become chart-toppers and won music industry awards, relatively few ever snagged an Academy Award nomination as Best Original Song and even fewer won the celebrated honor.

To date, only two Bond movie theme songs won an Oscar: “Skyfall” from the 2012 film of the same name and “Writing’s on the Wall” from 2015’s “Spectre.”

Bond theme songs nominated for the Oscar include “Live and Let Die” (1973), “Nobody Does It Better” from “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) and “For Your Eyes Only” (1981).

10. A Fan Film Universe: Not everyone can be James Bond, but it seems that nearly everyone with a camera wants to make a 007 film. Type in “James Bond fan film” on YouTube’s search engine and you will be happily surprised at the variety of homemade Bond romps, ranging from intriguing to full-fledged feature films. There is also a documentary encompassing this unlikely but entertaining genre:

Photo: Sean Connery and Shirley Eaton in “Goldfinger” (1964), courtesy of United Artists.