Bond's 50th Anniversary - Thunderball?

With the release of Skyfall, the Bond movies are 50 years old. So, here's an article on Thunderball from a 1964 issue of LIFE magazine. Thunderball was not the first Bond film. It was the 4th.  Somebody dropped the magazine on my desk, and it just may be my favorite Bond movie, so in it goes. It certainly has my favorite Bond girl: the positively dreamy Domino. Also, be sure to scroll to the bottom for a snooty review of Thunderball from the same issue.

Here's an interesting thing: Roger Moore just said that Daniel Craig is hie favorite James Bond. Wow! Pretty cool guy. LINK

There's a lot of pictures in today's post, so so keep it from getting too vertically-scrolly, the images are small, and you can click on each for the big version where you can actually read the text.

Below is the review of Thunderball by Richard Schickel. It's a comparison with another spy movie of the time: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. He really seems to hate Thunderball, because it's not gritty and realistic. Uuuh, yeah. Rich? Adventure movie. he also says that, with Thunderball, the producers are "straining, straining, straining to top themselves". Hah! I guess movie reviewers feel like their friends will make fun of them if they give a positive review to an action movie. I wonder how he feels about the film now?