'He was the sweetest man you could ever meet,' says John, 'but because he'd been laid up ill for so long, he had very little energy left. He couldn't even play his trumpet, but he managed to sing our song, even if it was just one verse at a time. What I couldn't believe though was that at the end of the session, he came up to me and said, "Thank you for this job. Thank you for using me." I couldn't believe it. I should have been thanking him, and there he was, my hero, thanking me.'*Series editor Peter Hunt puts in a lot of energy, though overlong (would have cut whole safe-cracking sequence). Lazenby is OK, Diana Rigg one of the best Bond girls. Cheesy quips should have been jettisoned. Fantastic skiing sequences are cut rather too much with studio stuff, but that is the nature of the beast (otherwise there's commendably little back projection). Telly Savalas a bad idea for Bond villain. But Gabriele Ferzetti (Once Upon a Time in the West) excellent as Draco, Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt (great name!), Angela Scoular, Lois Maxwell, Bernard Lee, Joanna Lumley (fleetingly).
Frequently astonishing photography from Michael Reed (in Panavision) with a great second unit. John Glen edited and went on to become a Bond director himself.
*'A Sixties Theme' Eddi Feigel.
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