RIP Vic Flick, The Guiter Player Who Performed The James Bond Theme

The Spy Command, a blog about James Bond and other cinematic spies, reports that Vic Flick, the electric guitar player who performed on the original James Bond Theme in Dr. No, had died.    

Vic Flick, who played electric guitar on the original 1962 recording of the James Bond Theme died this month, Yahoo! Movies said, citing a Facebook post by his son Kevin. He was 87.

 

The theme, which debuted in Dr. No, was written by Monty Norman and arranged by John Barry. Norman earned royalties for the theme. Barry’s work on Dr. No led to 11 scoring assignments on Bond films. He became a famous movie composer who won five Oscars (none for his Bond work).

 

You can read the rest of the piece and watch Vic Flick perform the James Bond Theme via the below link:

Vic Flick, guitarist, dies at 87 | The Spy Command 

 

You can also watch the Dr. No theme song via the below link:

   Bing Videos 

John Pearson, Biographer Of Ian Fleming, Has Died

As I've noted here before, as a teenager in the early 1960s, I saw Sean Connery as James Bond in in Dr. No and From Russia With Love. 

The great films inspired me to go out and buy and read Ian Flemings’s James Bond novels. Fleming's thrillers were the first books in my now extensive library. And I became a life-long Ian Fleming aficionado.

 I later read John Pearson’s biography of the late Bond author.

 At 12-years-old I knew I wanted to be a newspaper reporter and a crime thriller writer, and reading John Pearson’s biography of Fleming cemented those ambitions.

 

I loved how Pearson described Ian Fleming’s fascinating life as a naval intelligence officer in WWII, a globe-trotting journalist, and a world-famous thriller writer. The book is a must read for true Fleming and Bond fans.

I also enjoyed Pearson’s “biography” of Fleming’s fictional character, James Bond, and I enjoyed his book on the notorious London gangsters, the Kray twins.  

 Sadly, The Spy Command reports that John Pearson has died.

 

John Pearson, a British journalist whose works included a biography of Ian Fleming, has died at 91. His death was announced on Pearson’s Instagram page, maintained by his granddaughter, Lydia Pearson.

 

Pearson worked at The Economist, BBC and The Sunday Times, according to his biography on his website. At The Sunday Times, Pearson worked with Fleming on the Atticus column, described by Ian Fleming Publications as a “pseudonymous weekly column for publishing society gossip.”

 

Pearson, in a message on the home page of his website, said working with Fleming “was my springboard to becoming a writer.”

 

What followed was a series of non-fiction works and novels. They included the biography The Life of Ian Fleming in 1966 and the fiction work, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007 in 1973.

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

John Pearson, Fleming biographer, dies | The Spy Command (wordpress.com)

 

You can also visit John Pearson’s website via the below link:

Writer | John Pearson 

Martin Landau: TV's 'Mission Impossible' Disguise Artist, Dies At 89

The Spy Command, a website that covers James Bond and other spy TV programs and films, offers a piece on the death of actor Martin Landau.

Martin Landau, who gained fame as Mission: Impossible disguise expert Rollin Hand, has died at 89, the TMZ website said.

Landau died Saturday at the UCLA Medical Center "after a short hospitalization where he suffered unexpected complications," TMZ said.

Landau enjoyed a long career that began in the early 1950s. It included a number of espionage-related stories, including portraying Leonard, a henchman in the Alfred Hitchcock-directed North by Northwest (1959); a Cold War themed episode of The Twilight Zone; and playing Thrush operative Count Zark in The Bat Cave Affair, a second-season episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

But he was most famous for Mission: Impossible, where he appeared during the show's first three seasons.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/martin-landau-mis-disguise-artist-dies/

Note: I was a huge fan of Landau and Mission Impossible on TV when I was a kid (but I don't much care for the Tom Cruise film series that uses the Mission Impossible title). 

As noted above, Martin Landau also starred in an episode of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, a brilliant and clever TV show that I also loved as a kid. 

The episode that starred Landau and John Van Dreelen was a first-class Cold War espionage story.

You can watch the episode via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8VQdgg8Ypo 

And you can watch the original Mission Impossible intro and hear Lalo Schifin's forever cool Mission Impossible theme song via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Lss2IX3zA

Writers To Debate Whether Ian Fleming Or John Le Carre Is The Better Spy Novelist

Some years ago actor George C. Scott refused to accept an Oscar for his great portrayal of General Patton in the film Patton.

I agreed with what he said at the time, which was that art should not a competition. You simply can not hold up two great paintings and say, "And the winner is..."

So I can't say I like the idea of a debate on whether the late Ian Fleming (seen in the above photo) or John le Carre (seen in the below photo) is the better spy novelist, which, as the The Spy Command noted, will soon take place.

Intelligence Squared, which stages debates and presentations on various topics, will hold a debate this month whether Ian Fleming or John Le Carre is the better spy novelist.

Representing Fleming (1908-64) will be Anthony Horowitz, author of the James Bond continuation novel Trigger Mortis, according to the group’s website.

Advocating for LeCarre (real name David Cornwell, b. 1931) will be David Farr, who adapted LeCarre’s The Night Manager for the BBC. The debate is scheduled for Nov. 29 at Emmanuel Centre in London.

And yet...

Ian Fleming served as a British naval intelligence officer and assistant to the Royal Navy's Director of Naval Intelligence in WWII. He later wrote admittedly highly romanticized novels that featured a character by the name of Bond, James Bond. He said he wrote the books unabashedly for his own and the public's entertainment.

The novels are highly entertaining and they are far darker and more complex than the films, and some of them, like From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, are first-rate thrillers.

John le Carre, who, like Fleming, was a British intelligence officer, having served in both MI5 and MI6 as a young man, considers himself to be a much more serious novelist than Fleming, which means he is a much duller thriller writer.

As I wrote in my Philadelphia Inquirer review of le Carre's novel Our Kind of Traitor, le Carre wrote a talky thriller that unfolds mostly through dialogue. And he offers some very good, smart writing.

Le Carre has written, in my view, some fine spy novels, such as the "Karla" trilogy that featured a character by the name of George Smiley; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley's People, and The Honorable Schoolboy. I can't say I care much for his later novels, which are marred, as I wrote in my Washington Times review of John le Carre: The Biography, with his shrill leftist and anti-American views.      

The two novelists are very different, and I like them both, and they should not, like Scott said, be compared or be in competition.

And yet, I'm interested in this debate, because le Carre is often presented as the "realistic" antidote to Fleming's "fantasies," and le Carre has been highly critical of Fleming in the past.

You can read about the upcoming debate via the below link:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/writers-to-debate-whether-fleming-lecarre-is-better/

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/10/russian-crooks-corrupt-brits-at-large.html

And you can read my Washington Times review of John le Carre: The Biography via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/12/my-washington-times-review-of-john-le.html

And you can read my Crime Beat column, Spy Writer Vs. Spy Writer, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/spy-writer-vs-spy-writer-john-le-carre.html

Note: Below are photos of Sean Connery as James Bond and Alec Guinness as George Smiley:

Thriller Writer Donald Hamilton Discusses Matt Helm Films Based On His Novels In 1991 Lettter

The Spy Command website offers a piece on a letter the late thriller writer Donald Hamilton (seen in the above photo) sent to a fan that deals with his view of the Dean Martin films that were based on his Matt Helms novels.

Over on The Spy Command's Facebook page, reader Bill Groves shared a 1991 letter he received from Matt Helm creator Donald Hamilton.

In the letter, Hamilton commented about the four 1960s Matt Helm movies starring Dean Martin.

The films took Hamilton's very serious novels and made them into comedies that incorporated bits from Dino's variety show. The hero supposedly drank heavily (like Dean on his show) and was frequently surrounded by beautiful women. The Ambushers (1967) even had a joke referencing Martin's birthplace of Stubenville, Ohio.

As it turns out, Hamilton wasn't upset about the changes. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/1991-donald-hamilton-discusses-matt-helm-films/ 

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Donald Hamilton and Matt Helm via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/02/the-return-of-matt-helmtitan-books.html 

Through A Thriller-Writer's Eye: Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities," The TV Series

The Spy Command website reports that a TV series about Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities is in the works.

Actor Michael Weatherly’s production company is trying to turn Ian Fleming’s Thrilling Cities book into a television, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The story is mostly about Weatherly’s impending departure from the popular NCIS television series and Thrilling Cities only gets a passing reference.

“In the meantime, however, Weatherly said he’s busier than ever with his production company, Solar Drive Productions, which is working on turning the book Thrilling Cities, from James Bond author Ian Fleming, into a possible series,” the story by THR’s Kate Stanhope reads.

Thrilling Cities was a non-fiction book by Fleming. It was based on a series of stories he did for The Sunday Times about important cities around the world.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:    

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/thrilling-cities-the-series/

Note: When I traveled the world while serving in the U.S. Navy back in the 1970s, I carried a paperback copy of Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities with me.

I was pleased that I was able to visit some of the cities Fleming himself covered years before.

I read the Ian Fleming nonfiction book about his visits to the most interesting cities in the world some years earlier after I had read through his James Bond thrillers.

Thrilling Cities covered vice, crime, espionage and other fascinating aspects of the great cities. Fleming, a journalist as well as an author and former naval intelligence officer, originally published these stories in his newspaper, the London Sunday Times. 

Ian Fleming said he looked at places and things through a thriller-writer's eye.

"With his interest in crime and espionage, Fleming interviewed Charles "Charlie Lucky" Luciano, the exiled prince of American organized crime, in Naples. In Berlin, he interviewed a Cold War spy, and in other cities he interviewed detectives, crooks, journalists, authors and interesting people, " I wrote in my Crime Beat column on the book. "This is not your typical travel book."   

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Thrilling Cities and Fleming's other nonfiction book, The Diamond Smugglers via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/10/through-thriller-writers-eyes-life-work.html

A Look Back At Rod Serling's 'The Jeopardy Room,' A 'Twilight Zone' Spy Story

Although I disagree with the late Rod Serling's general worldview, I was and remain a huge fan of his 1960s TV program, The Twilight Zone. 

Serling (seen in the above photo) was the creator, writer, narrator and host of the clever and well-written suspense and supernatural TV show. The old show remains popular today and is often aired on cable TV. The DVDs of the show are also popular.

The Spy Command, a web site that covers James Bond and other spy fiction, offers a piece on one Rod Serling-written Twilight Zone episode, called The Jeopardy Room. 

The Twilight Zone, more than a half century after it ended its original run on CBS, remains fondly remembered — an example of how television can be imaginative and thought provoking.

It also, in its final season, deviated from its usual fare of science fiction and fantasy to present a spy story.

The Jeopardy Room, which originally aired April 17, 1964, is essentially a two-man play for television.

On the one side, we have Major Ivan Kuchenko (Martin Landau), a Soviet military officer who served 12 years of hard time in Siberia. He wants to defect to the West. Despite his long imprisonment, he still has information that would be of value to the West.

On the other side, there is Commissar Vassiloff (John Van Dreelan). He has tortured Kuchenko in the past. Moreover, Vassiloff fancies himself as the last of the “imaginative” executioners. Vassiloff has been assigned to kill Kuchenko to make sure he doesn’t reach the West. But Vassiloff wants to do it with style.   

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/the-twilight-zones-spy-story/

You can also watch the full episode of The Jeopardy Room via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRErEHpwB5g