julian_craster

Clint Eastwood as James Bond ??

It very nearly happened, according to this profile......

Cubby Broccoli (from the DNB)

Albert Romolo [Cubby] Broccoli (1909-1996), film producer, was born on 5 April 1909 in Hoyt Avenue, Long Island, New York, the son of Giovanni Broccoli (c.1870-c.1932), a labourer, and his wife, Cristina, nee Vence (c.1884-1965), a former cook to H. N. Marvin, whose Biograph company had discovered the pioneer director D. W. Griffith. His parents had emigrated from Calabria. An uncle reputedly imported the first broccoli seeds to America, and as a boy Broccoli frequently helped him on his farm in Long Island. He was educated at Rye Free State Elementary School and at New York City College, where he studied journalism.

Having abandoned his studies to farm land in Florida's Okeechobee region Broccoli joined his cousin Pat De Cicco in Hollywood in 1934. Having been briefly employed at a beauty parlour and a jeweller's he became a production assistant at Twentieth Century Fox. Settling into Tinseltown society he married and divorced Joan Blondell's sister Gloria (1910-1986), also an actress, in the early 1940s, during which time he also became friends with tycoon Howard Hughes, who appointed him Jane Russell's chaperon during the shooting of The Outlaw (1943). Cubby Broccoli (who was nicknamed after the cartoon character Abie Kabibble) made further useful contacts while serving as entertainments officer for the US Navy's eleventh district, which assisted his rise at Charles K. Feldman's Famous Artists talent agency after the war.

In 1951 Broccoli received his first production credit, alongside De Cicco and Irving Allen, on Avalanche. Forming Warwick Films with Allen, he relocated to Britain and embarked on a series of pictures with Alan Ladd-The Red Beret (1953), Hell below Zero, and The Black Knight (both 1954)-even heading the second unit for the middle film's mission to Antarctica. In all he co-produced nineteen features with Allen, the most accomplished being Cockleshell Heroes (1955) and The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960). However, following the failure of their Eros distribution company the partnership was dissolved in 1960. Broccoli's private life was equally tumultuous in this period. He had married singer Buddy Clark's widow, Nedra, in December 1951. But in 1958, just two years after the birth of their daughter Tina, Nedra died of bladder cancer. In June the following year Broccoli married the actress Dana Wilson, nee Natol (1922-2004), in Las Vegas, with Cary Grant as his best man. She had a son, Michael, from her marriage to Lewis Wilson. Their daughter, Barbara, was born in 1960.

Broccoli had contemplated adapting the spy thrillers of Ian Fleming in the late 1950s but it was only after he went into partnership with Canadian producer Harry Saltzman that James Bond finally reached the screen. Sean Connery was cast as 007 in Dr No (1962), and an unexpected phenomenon was born. Laced with sex, designer violence, and exotic locations the series epitomized 1960s chic and tapped into the international fascination with 'swinging London'. It earned Eon Productions the chance to handle the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night. But, because of Saltzman's links with Bob Hope the company made the forgettable Call me Bwana (1963) instead.

Nevertheless Eon was on a roll, with each successive Bond outperforming the last at the box office. However, Connery was becoming increasingly worried about typecasting and, following From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), and You Only Live Twice (1967), he quit the series and Australian model George Lazenby was drafted in for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Broccoli was also keen to try something new and, in 1968, produced the children's musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, from a Fleming story. He and Connery briefly reunited for Diamonds are Forever (1971) before finally parting in an atmosphere of mutual mistrust and grudging admiration.

Although 007's distribution company, United Artists, wanted Clint Eastwood, Eon gave Roger Moore the licence to kill in Live and Let Die (1973). But the film was more notable for the growing feud between Broccoli and Saltzman, which resulted in an acrimonious split after The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). The episode typified Broccoli's ruthless approach to business, his ready sense of grievance, and his tendency to vilify his adversaries-characteristics that tempered the geniality of his autobiography, When the Snow Melts (1998). Yet there was no denying his energy and his commitment to the Bond franchise. In 1977 he renegotiated his deal with United Artists to ensure creative control over the series, while sharing the financial risk. Consequently he took sole producer credit on all but one of Moore's remaining outings: The Spy who Loved me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985). The latter saw his stepson, Michael G. Wilson, come on board as both co-producer and co-scenarist (with Richard Maibaum).

The recipient of the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg award in 1982, Broccoli was appointed honorary OBE in February 1987, while in France he was created a commander of the order of arts and letters. By then Timothy Dalton had assumed the mantle of 007 but neither The Living Daylights (1987) nor License to Kill (1989) were particularly successful, and critics began to doubt whether Bond had a place in the world of special-effects blockbusters and high-concept adventures. Yet Broccoli was sufficiently alert to the character's continuing popularity to fall out with yet another business partner, this time MGM/UA, over video and television rights to the series in 1991.

Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli supervised the Pierce Brosnan entry, Golden Eye (1995), which was billed as 'Presented by Albert R. Broccoli'. However, it proved to be Broccoli's last involvement with the Bond series, as he died of cardiac problems in Beverly Hills, California, on 27 June 1996, by which time, reportedly, half the world's population had seen a Bond movie. He was buried in Hollywood's legendary resting place, Forest Lawn, on 1 July 1996. He was survived by his wife, two daughters, and stepson.

David Parkinson

Sources C. Broccoli, When the snow melts (1998) + A. Lane and P. Simpson, The Bond files (1998) + E. Katz, The film encyclopedia, 3rd edn (New York, 1998) + www.uk.imdb.com, Jan 2001 + The Times (29 June 1996) + The Independent (29 June 1996)
Archives FILM BFI NFTVA, 'The world of James Bond: a tribute to Cubby Broccoli', ITV, 18 Aug 1996
Likenesses photograph, c.1975, Hult. Arch. [see illus.] · photograph, c.1976, repro. in The Independent · photograph, repro. in The Times