who saw the James Bond double-features in 1970 and 1971? (1 Viewer)

[Richard--W]

Does anybody remember the double-features that played to packed theaters in the USA in the summer of 1970 and 1971? Each summer began with a James Bond double-feature starring Sean Connery in late May or early June, and then just before September, the summer ended with a different James Bond double-feature starring Sean Connery. Imagine four James Bond movies in one summer, two years in a row. The second year there was an overlap in the pairings. I was very young, still in grade school, and my friends and I spent all our allowance on these films. It was the first time my parents let me see a Bond film, although I'd been getting the toys at Christmas. Since it was a double-feature, you could enter at noon and stay all day into the late-night. I must have seen each film a dozen times.

I forget the order of the re-releases, but I found some posters on the net:








Looking back on it, I know now that these were the original dye-transfer 35mm prints. By todays standards they were dirty and scratchy -- especially DR. NO -- but we didn't have digital clean up in those days, and nobody was aware of their condition. The screens were HUGE, much bigger than the screens today, and the films LOOKED magnificent, filling a HUGE widescreen with rich color and deep atmosphere. The prints were pure eye-candy, not the skimmed-off, thinned-out, toned-down, desaturated xeroxes customers think are special today.

I don't remember this triple feature, unless it was the pairing from August 1971 after school started. I must have seen it, though:





You'll note that ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969) wasn't part of the program. This was a Sean Connery revival. It paved the way for his return in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER in December 1971. I remember the cheering when his name came on, the lines going around the block, the evening sell-outs. I didn't get to see ON HER HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE until the summer of 1972 or 1973, when it was re-released to support the second-run of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER:





To this day, I think seeing the original Bond films paired in the summers of 1970 and 1971 is the most fun I've ever had in a movie theater (and I've had a LOT of fun over the years). I was just the right age to find them very adult. They were hilarious, sexy, exciting, suspenseful, exotic, glamorous, and Sean Connery was more than just a movie star, he was a force of nature.

 

[dmiller68]

I would have and maybe I even did (I'll have to ask my dad) but I was only 3.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It was obviously before my time, but it sounded like one hell of a double-bill - thanks for sharing your recollections and the posters. Some of the double-feature trailers are included on the recent DVD/Blu-ray discs, and I thought those in and of themselves were pretty cool.

 

[Charles Smith]

Good memory-jogger, thanks. During a visit to NYC in summer of 1971 (I'm pretty sure) I went to a Dr. No. and From Russia With Love double feature in some shit-hole (by whatever my standards were then) Times Square theater.

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Richard--W

Does anybody remember the double-features that played to packed theaters in the USA in the summer of 1970 and 1971?


To this day, I think seeing the original Bond films paired in the summers of 1970 and 1971 is the most fun I've ever had in a movie theater (and I've had a LOT of fun over the years). I was just the right age to find them very adult. They were hilarious, sexy, exciting, suspenseful, exotic, glamorous, and Sean Connery was more than just a movie star, he was a force of nature.

GREAT memory jog, Richard. I distinctly remember seeing Goldfinger in that time frame, and how glorious the print looked. The one scene that stands out in my mind is Goldfinger trying to putt with a gold bar near the ball. The grass was such a deep brilliant green, the gold was so luminous...

 

[Gary Seven]

I do. I saw the double feature of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. I was about 9. That was my first intro into James Bond and have been a fan ever since.

 

[Jim*Tod]

I remember seeing these early 70's double features too, though James Bond double feature releases were fairly common from the mid 1960's on. I was lucky enough to see all of these either in their initial releases or the double feature reissues at the Loew's here in Richmond, which had a huge screen (They actually had an ad outside the theatre touting their "Panoramic Widescreen"!). The atmosphere of the theatre and the quality of presentation of course helped, but it was also the thrill of experiencing this with an audience of about 1000 people. Too bad this is something no home theatre can really duplicate. The Loew's has been revamped as the Carpenter theatre and painstakingly restored, though it is now a concert and performance venue. I saw THUNDERBALL in January of 1966 at the Loew's, my first Bond.


And yes... I don't think any of us brought up with Connery as Bond has ever really felt any of the actors who played him subsequently were REALLY Bond though I liked what Daniel Craig did on the most recent two Bond films.

 

[PatH]

I don't remember the doubles, though I bet I saw 'em. What I do remember is how I saw Dr. No--at drive-in in Fairfield TX. We had relatives in Teague TX and one night my mom took me over to Fairfield to see a triple feature. Get this: Disney's Snow White, Zulu and Dr. No in that order. After the first two, Mom asked if I was ready to go, but I told her this is why I came. We stayed. I was away at school for From Russia with Love and my brother told me with great glee about one patron who left in disgust after the teaser where Grant kills "Bond". At the time Goldfinger came along.our main downtown theater had sneak previews every Sunday of the movie that would open the following week, along with a usually obvious clue. Goldfinger "snuck' with Goodbye Charlie (Debbie Reynolds and I think Tony Curtis) which I haven't seen to this day. We arrived a few minutes early for the sneak and people were laying in the aisles and loudly saying "Jerk this." They knew what they had come to see. Shirley Eaton on the cover of Life had generated quite a buzz. And yes, a couple of people left after the Fort Knox raid and missed the demise of Goldfinger. These days I stay past the end credits on most occasions.


PatH

 

[RobertR]

That brings back another memory, Pat. I remember seeing Thunderball at the old Paramount Theater in Denver in 1966. Admission was 35 cents (!). I remember thinking how risque Bond was, after the implied nakedness of the steam room scene.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I remember two or three of the dads in my neighborhood (mine among them) taking a bunch of us and our friends to the Thunderball/You Only Live Twice double. We were all in junior high and felt terribly grown-up going to a James Bond film. I think I still had my James Bond attache case from the Sears Christmas catalog of 1964/65 - or at least the gun. Of course I wasn't allowed to see Goldfinger (which the toys were a tie-in to, despite being mostly based on the previous film, From Russia With Love) back then. I did watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and collected a number of toys from it as well. (Also became a big fan of The Saint and Secret Agent, AKA Danger Man, starring on actor who would be Bond and another who repeatedly declined the role.)

I definitely became a Bond fan and a member in good standing of the Church of Sean Connery. Roger Moore was OK (I was already a big fan of his from The Saint), but for me he was never really Bond and the plots of his run just got increasingly silly I think George Lazenby was better in the role than a lot of people give him credit for. Anybody immediately following Connery was going to suffer in comparison. I'd seen Timothy Dalton in a few other things before he took the Bond role, and thought he was a good actor, but not quite Bond. Or maybe I just didn't like the darker Bond they had him playing. Pierce Brosnan was another actor I knew and liked from American television, and he was a pretty good Bond, more in the light-hearted mode, somewhere between Connery and Moore. But he, too, never "clicked" for me. Bond is Connery, Connery is Bond. (Confession. I haven't seen either of Craig's efforts. I've caught a few minutes of Casino Royale on TV from time to time, but nothing I saw made me want to continue watching. I don't think he or the film looked particularly bad, they just didn't grab my attention and engage me for some reason.)

Regards,


Joe

 

[arkdog]

Double feature of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice was my introduction to Bond. My mother took my sister and I. They were shown at a grand movie palace, the Fischer Theater in Danville, Ill. Great four and a half hours!

 

[trevanian]

Double feature of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice was my introduction to Bond. My mother took my sister and I. They were shown at a grand movie palace, the Fischer Theater in Danville, Ill. Great four and a half hours!

That was my semi-reintroduction to Bond, after being in the theater for GOLDFINGER before I turned 4 (and yeah it scared the Hell out of me.) I saw TB/YOLT at the Jerry Lewis Cinema in San Jose, and it made me a lifelong Lucianna Paluzzi fan (I was just about 10, of course I felt that way.)

I remember loving TB, YOLT not so much, but that day did not turn me into the lifelong Bond fan I became (and stayed until the Craig era trashed things for me.) That honor is reserved for an ABC broadcast of GOLDFINGER, around 1972 or 1973. I turned it on during the golf game and was utterly entranced The Connery magic, I guess, because when I saw THE WIND & THE LION a couple years later (on a double bill with Roger Moore's GOLD!, which doesn't offer much besides a great Elmer Bernstein score), it was clear to me this was The Man.

Within months I had read all of Fleming except SPY WHO LOVED ME and gone through Pearson's bio of 007 about 4 times, and by the end of 1975, when ABC was running the Bond films very regularly, I was making my first 'long' (25min) Super8 movie, a bond parody of course. Wish I'd gotten to do the sequel, because while YOU ONLY DIE THRICE was a very typical kid's spoof, my script for MOONRIVER was actually downright clever and totally anticipated the notion of Bond in space (which is still easier for me to accept in amateur filmmaking than in an Eon-sanctioned effort.)

EDIT ADDON: Does anybody remember triple features of DRNO/FRWL/GF that played in 1976 and 1977? I saw those over & over again, even though FRWL's print was terrible (Bond and Tania on the boat was almost entirely shredded in the projector.) Probably haven't had five theatergoing experiences in my life more pleasant than seeing FRWL for the first time, it pretty much defines a great night at the movies for me.

 

[David_B_K]

That was my semi-reintroduction to Bond, after being in the theater for GOLDFINGER before I turned 4 (and yeah it scared the Hell out of me.) I saw TB/YOLT at the Jerry Lewis Cinema in San Jose, and it made me a lifelong Lucianna Paluzzi fan (I was just about 10, of course I felt that way.)

EDIT ADDON: Does anybody remember triple features of DRNO/FRWL/GF that played in 1976 and 1977? I saw those over & over again, even though FRWL's print was terrible (Bond and Tania on the boat was almost entirely shredded in the projector.) Probably haven't had five theatergoing experiences in my life more pleasant than seeing FRWL for the first time, it pretty much defines a great night at the movies for me.

I did see the triple feature of Dr. NO/FRWL/GF at a drive-in with some friends (one of their moms drove us), but it was around 1972. I remember because that was the first time I'd seen any of those films and when Goldfinger made its network debut in 1972, I had seen that triple feature. I cannot remember the year I saw Thunderball/YOLT as as a double feature, but it was after the triple. I think these were re-releases to try to milk a few more theatrical bucks out of them before they made their TV debuts. I saw several films theatrically a year or so before they made their TV debuts. I saw The Ten Commandments theatrically the year before it started its yearly ABC showing.

The first Bond film I saw was Diamonds Are Forever. I was about 14 at that time. I did not see any of the previous films before that because my parents would not let me attend such adult fare until 1971. By the time I saw the triple feature and double feature of the older films I had already read those books.

 

[Bob Cashill]

My introduction to Bond was a double feature of DIAMONDS and LALD. I was 8 or 9. I enjoyed DIAMONDS but fell asleep during LALD--and I still do.

 

[Sam Favate]

It wasn't 1970-71, but I did see the double-feature of The Spy Who Love Me and The Man With the Golden Gun in, I think, 1978.

 

[Johnny Angell]

My recollection is that after GF was such a monster hit they released FRWL and DNO with the tag line "James Bond is Back to Back".

 

[Osato]

Here's a few dates of double features:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/memories-of-007-double-features/

 

[Sam Favate]

Here's a poster I wish I had:

 

[Osato]

There was a moonraker / spy who loved me double bill as well.

Some of the radio spots for it are here:
http://www.the007dossier.com/007dossier/page/The-Spy-Who-Loved-Me-Radio-Spots

 

[Gary Seven]

I saw TB/YOLT at the Jerry Lewis Cinema in San Jose, and it made me a lifelong Lucianna Paluzzi fan (I was just about 10, of course I felt that way.)

Yep.... TB made me a lifelong Paluzzi fan as well. May I recommend "A Sensous Nurse".