Fantastic Sean Connery book covers

It was with deep sorrow every Bond fan across the globe learnt that the first (if not counting Barry Nelson in the 1954 version of Casino Royale), and to many the best James Bond, Sean Connery passed away on October 31th, 2020. He reached the age of 90 and had a very long and successful career from the day he signed on to play James Bond in Ian Fleming's DR. NO. 

To honor his memory I wanted to share some fantastic Ian Fleming book covers from Sweden. They were released during 1965 in a series called "Zebra special" and had all paintings of Sean Connery on the cover. The paintings were done by Yrjö Edelmann (1941-2016) and are just fantastic to look at. 

Below you can find the cover designs using Connery's likeness. 

Casino Royale 

 

Live and let die

Moonraker

Diamonds are forever

From Russia with love

Dr.No

Goldfinger

Thunderball

The Spy who loved me

The new James Bond Folio Society release is...

It is that time of the year again one The Folio Society releases a new James Bond novel by Ian Fleming. It's a bit like christmas. Your parents are going to give you that present you wanted.

This time it is Thunderball that are being released. The one Fleming book with all the controversy about who actually wrote the story. Was it Fleming or was it Jack Whittingham or Kevin Mcclory. Or was it all of them together.

It was supposed to be the first film in the series but due to the ongoing lawsuit regarding the above the filming of Thunderball had to be delayed. In the end Fleming got the rights to the novel and Kevin Mcclory got the rights to film the story. I believe Jack Whittingham sold his parts of the rights.

Also in the settlement between the three parties it was agreed that in ALL forthcoming prints of Thunderball it had to say "The story is based on the screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming."

This must have been sorted out in some way or some publishers just did not care because in Thunderball novels released as early as 1966 the acknowledgments disappeared from some publishers. Others keep it as it should be. It would be VERY interesting to know why the acknowledgments are not in all later printings. Might it have to do with the film version of Thunderball being released in 1965? I would have loved for The Folio Society to keep it in. It is a big part of the history of Thunderball as a novel.

If you were to look in the PAN paperbacks from 1964 it clearly says: "The story is based on the screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming." To my knowledge. The latest release to carry this acknowledgment is the Blofeld trilogy from USA in 2010. 

Now let's forget about that!

The new Thunderball novel release is as beautiful as the rest of the books and the binding is the same. Fay Dalton has done seven drawings for the book containing Bond, Largo and Domino.

The book is on sale March 6, 2019. Price £36,95

Illustration ©2019 Fay Dalton from The Folio Society edition of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball

Illustration ©2019 Fay Dalton from The Folio Society edition of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball

The Folio Society edition of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball, illustrated by Fay Dalton, is available exclusively from www.FolioSociety.com

The man with the golden brush!

As Ian Fleming's books were being released in Sweden for of them was released with a cover drawn by a famous Swedish artist called Hans Arnold.

Hans was not born in Sweden but in Switzerland and moved to Sweden in his early 20's. He is famous for his strange and sexy drawings with huge amount of details.

Albert Bonniers Publications released all the James Bond books by Ian Fleming and turned to Hans when they needed a suspenseful and classic new cover for the books THUNDERBALL, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and OCTOPUSSY.

Hans Arnold died in 2010 and there is soon a documentary to be released about his famous drawings. I was able to catch an early screening of this film and during the end credits I could read and take notes of the names of his family.
Then I was able to contact them to ask if the original paintings were for sale or if the publishers owed them and had the rights.

I received a prompt answer saying that sadly a lot of Hans fine work has been sold during the years and the four paintings I was after was among these. I will continue to keep my eyes out and hope that some day they will be offered to me.

Below you will find his four James Bond covers.

Click here to see other iconic drawings by Hans Arnold.

THUNDERBALL - Notice how the black balloon actually is a bomb. 

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE - notice how the flowers actually sculls.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

OCTOPUSSY - Notice that the golden fish also is a cello. This book is very hard to come by even in Sweden.

Hans Arnold at his study.

Moonraker US cover restoration

Some people turn to yoga for relaxation and others turn to alcohol. I seem to have found a method for relaxation that I find both rewarding and fun at the same time. I retouch old James Bond book covers using Photoshop.

Being a James Bond collector is almost as being a hoarder. We collect far more then we need and even more then we have space for. Therefore I am extra happy when I decide not to buy a book and to just restore the artwork and be satisfied with a JPEG on my computer. As the saying goes "You can't bring it with you..."

So today, there was an auction on Ebay for a US first edition of MOONRAKER that I was planing to bid on. But instead I decided to just use a high resolution scan of the artwork and try to restore it. Especially since I am not to impressed with the design of the artwork that was made by Leo Manso.

Below you can see the finished restoration that took me about 40 minutes.

While doing this I came to think about something. Could the US Moonraker jacked design be the inspiration for the later UK jacket design for Thunderball. Both of the shows a skeleton hand. What is your opinion. Please comment below.

Click on the picture to see a bigger version. 

Thunderball UK first edition dust jacket.

James Bond poster auction coming your way!

Even if it has nothing to do with the books of James Bond I am also a poster collector. Therefore I sometimes write a few words on any type of James Bond auction coming our way.

And now there is one. It is the auction house Ewbank's in Surrey, UK that will have an upcoming movie poster auction that will feature many Bond posters, some of them, a bit rare.

The highest estimated value is £1200 but I believe that the below Aston Martin Poster is worth more then that since it is quite rare. It will be interesting to see what is sells for.

You can check out the poster auction yourself at this link.

Ewbank's also have another auction a few days earlier where you can buy a shirt worn in Casino Royale (estimated at £120) among other things. Also listed are a few Fleming books at a fair price.  Here is that link.

What a great birthday gift I got!

During December I turned 40 years old. To celebrate the occasion me and my wife travelled from Sweden to England. And one of the highlights of that trip was to meet some other James Bond fans and also arrange THE FLEMING WALK.

On the Friday during the weekend in England I meet with to new Fleming fans that I had not meet before. We decided to meet at the house of one of them and take a closer look at his magnificent literal James Bond collection. I dare to say that this must be the biggest Fleming collection in United Kingdom.

It was a very great day and we talked about all things book collecting, and other topics like Brexit and differences between UK and Sweden.

At the end of the stay the house owner presented to me a 40th birthday present. He had recently read my blog post about the value of the Domino letter and decided to give me one.
So there and then I received a 14th printing of the Pan Books Paperback version of Thunderball from 1965 with an original Domino letter.

I was stunned and very surprised by such a fantastic gift. It is truly nice, what social media has done to us fans and collectors. Something that years ago could be very lonely and nerdy is today very social.

So thank you so much for your kind gift my friend!

Below you can see a scan of the actual letter I received but to make it harder for fake letter to surface on the market I have changed the original colour of the letter. There are many small things that actually  needs to be looked at before knowing if your letter is an original.

JBIFC wrote an article about the letter last week. You can find that article here!

The different Swedish titles

If you live in a country where English is you native tongue I believe that subtitles or translations is not a normal part of your daily life. But if you, like me, live in Sweden then subtitling is something we get every day.

Title changes on books and films are also common even if you do not see them as often today as before, thanks to internet and day and date releases across the globe they are are not as beneficial as they used to be. The reason they do change the title is because the local managers simply think they will sell more units /admissions if they do localise them. 

Many of the James Bond continuation novels have sadly not been released in Sweden but all Ian Fleming novels has. Below is therefore a list of all the novels released in Sweden and the local title chosen for novel I have also added pictures of all 14 James Bond Swedish first editions.

Read them and weep of laughter.

Original title / Swedish title

Ian Fleming: 
Casino Royale / Casino Royal
Live and let die / Live and let die
Moonraker / Attack
Diamonds are forever / Death plays false
From Russia with love / Comrade killer
Dr. No / Death on Jamaica
Goldfinger / Goldfinger
For your eyes only / From a view to a kill
Thunderball / Thunderball
The spy who loved me / Beloved spy
On her majesty's secret service / In her majesty's secret service
You only live twice / You only live twice
The man with the golden gun / The man with the golden gun
Octopussy and The living daylights / Octopussy

Robert Markham / Kingsley Amis

Colonel Sun / Colonel Sun

John Gardner: 
Licence renewed / With a licence to kill
For special services / Special assignment for 007
Icebreaker / Icecold for 007
GoldenEye / GoldenEye

Sebastian Faulks

Devil may care / In the service of the devil

William Boyd
Solo / Solo

Charlie Higson
SilverFin / Silver fin
Blood fever / Blood fever

Below you can see all the artworks for the Ian Fleming Swedish first editions. 

 

Rare Hebrew James Bond book added to the collection

A few days back I noticed a very rare book on Ebay.

It looked just like the UK Pan Books movie tie in for FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (see photo below) but the text was in exotic Hebrew and the publication had been done in Israel. 

The price was not high. Including postage I paid £14 for the book and it arrived just a few days later.

It was then I noticed two funny things about the book.

First of all Hebrew is read from right to left so for me the book is read the other way around.

Secondly the story in the book is not FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. It is actually THUNDERBALL.

It is hard to tell when the book was published but it says "Copyright 1691 by Glidrose Publications". I think they mean 1961, the correct year when THUNDERBALL was published.

Since the cover design comes from the FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE movie tie in the release of this book must be after September 1963 when that cover was released in the UK.

My guess is that this book was released in spring/summer of 1965 in Israel and I consider it a fun thing to have added to the collection. Especially since the book and cover does not match each other.

Hebrew version 

UK movie tie in version

How much is actually the Domino letter worth?

If you are reading this the chance is quite big that, even if you are a James Bond fan, you have never heard about the rare Domino letter. So let me break down quickly for you what the Domino letter is.

Back in 1965 when the forth James Bond film staring Sean Connery was released, Pan Books re-released the novel THUNDERBALL for the fourteenth time in a movie tie-in version (cover below).

In that edition (and only that edition) there was a printed promotional notepaper added. It was made to look like a handwritten letter from Domino to James Bond. In the letter she is asking Bond to read pages 152-155 within the book the letter came with. On these pages in THUNDERBALL the Players Cigarettes are mentioned and they were also the company that used the THUNDERBALL novel for advertising. A lot like modern day product placement.

I am sure that Ian Fleming himself never got paid for this while writing his book and therefore the idea came up after his passing in 1964.

Most readers certainly threw this peace of paper away but some owners kept it. Some books might never have gotten read and therefore the letter is still there.

People who own this advertisement claim it to be worth quite a bit. A seller on Ebay says he wants $350 for it but excepts offer. There are also fake versions of the letter on the market and these sell for as little as £2. 

I myself do not have this letter in my collection but I was bidding on one today. The funny thing is that I was one of only two people who placed bids during the last hour. When I decided to bid it was at £62 and I bided up to £99 and stopped and lost the bidding to someone else who paid £101.

It is funny how we value our collections. One would think that such a rare piece of early marketing material would be as valuable as the sellers says but it is not often a bidding war on stuff like this happen. Most of the James Bond collectors would rather have other James Bond collectables in their collection. We are not many who wish to pay a lot of money for these kind of things and the market tell us what the current value is. I would say that the value for a Domino letter on the market is currently £101. Do you think I am right or wrong? Would you have paid £101 for the below peace of paper? Happy to read your comments below.   

If you wish to learn more about the Domino letter I suggest you head over to this site.

The Domino letter

The 14th printing of Thunderball from Pan Books UK

Ian Fleming's salary for the first James Bond film

In 1961 Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli formed Danjaq together to produce the first James Bond film. The name Danjaq was the first three letters from their wife's name Dana and Jacqueline.

Harry Saltzman had an option for the James Bond books that was running out and Albert R. Broccoli used his contacts with United Artists to make sure they had the funds to produce the film and a world wide distributor to make the film accessible to cinema owners.

Ian Fleming had tried to get his creation sold to a film or television producer for a long time and the only thing he had managed to sell was the first story Casino Royale that had been made into a one hour live TV broadcasting in the US in 1954. He was in other words also keen on getting a contract signed.
Fleming also had problems with a lawsuit at the time and was accused of stealing the story for his latest book Thunderball and a very costly trial was on its way. Therefore the story Thunderball were not able to be included in the contract either. 

On June 9, 1961 Flemings US agent created a contract to sell the rights to use his creation on film. The contract was quite simple and consisted of three parts.

1. Ian Fleming received $50,000 as a signing fee for the option. 

2. When the film went into production Ian Fleming received another $100 000 for the film rights. 

3. Ian Fleming would receive 5% of the producers profits.

Now it is that third rule that made me write this blog post. I am truly curious to know if the Ian Fleming estate still receives 5% from each Bond film being made or if they at least receive 5%  of a the incomes Dr. No makes every year from broadcasting, VHS, DVD and Bluray sales. In that case the Fleming estate is still in truly great shape.
Nowadays when you draw up these types of contracts you usually write that "all upcoming release formats are included" making sure to follow the trends and not being left out.

Does anybody know if the Ian Fleming estate still makes profit from the James Bond films? Have they ever comment on this?

Below is a press photo created to look like Ian Fleming is signing the contract for his creation. In real life this was signed long before Sean Connery was chosen to play the lead.