Bond keeps cashing in

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 20

Bond keeps cashing in

Tan Fleming wrote 14 books about James Bond, the Secret Service killer numbered 007, and with the.opening on Friday of “Moctnraker,” Il of them have been converted into movies. Those movies — the first was “Dr No” in 1962 — have been the screen equivalent of an endless oil field. No matter where you drill, it comes up money. United Artists, which has distributed all the Bond films, estimates that one billion people have seen them. According to the American show business newspaper, “Variety,” every one of the films has earned a fortune — sometimes a small fortune, like “Dr No” and “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” — and sometimes a large fortune, like “Thunderball” and "The Spy Who Loved Me.” According to “Variety,”

the Bond films have collectively earned $162.7 million in the United States for United Artists, their distributor. Probably, they have earned about the same amount in other countries. There has never been a series of movies with a continuing central character that has earned $3OO millionhlus — not Charlie Chan, not Andy Hardy, not Nice and Nora Charles, not Phillip Marlowe, not Roy Rogers, not Dirty Harry, not even Lassie — and there has never been a series of movies that managed to go on for 17 years, through wars, assassinations, elections and revolutions. The Bond movies survived the Cold War, the Vietnam war, the Mideast Wars, the civil rights movement, feminism, worldwide inflation, the end of the Beatles and three leading actors.