Roger Moore famously described his Man With the Golden Gun co-star as “a diseased sex maniac with unnatural lusts” due to his outrageous behaviour behind the scenes. On set, of course, it was business as usual, with a riotous array of sexual innuendos and a veteran screen legend flashing his ‘third nipple.’
Things were rather more troubling higher up, with writer Ian Fleming and producer Albert Broccoli both unhappy with the story. Published posthumously, it was Fleming’s final completed Bond novel, and personal letters revealed he wasn’t happy with it and had considered stopping writing the series altogether, before he died of a heart attack in August 1964.
Broccoli later said of the Bond franchise: “I can’t say there is a single one I’d like to completely redo if I had the chance, although there are parts of The Man With the Golden Gun I’d change.”
After a troubled shoot, disappointing box office returns almost signalled the end of the 007 big screen franchise forever. It ‘only’ took $97million only a $7million budget, compared to Live and Let Die the previous year which banked $161million.
Roger Moore himself was unhappy with director Guy Hamilton’s attempts to make his character more physically aggressive, especially where Bond grapples with Maud Adams’ character Andrea Adams and threatens to break her arm. He was also always very opposed to running on screen, fearing he looked awkward. So this is the only 007 outing where you will see Moore burst into motion (after the karate scene).
Of course, the actor, still retained his trademark with and sly humour, no more so than off-screen during a problematic shoot with the models for the title sequence, which as usual included plenty of suggestive, naked writhing and silhouettes.
Legendary title designer Maurice Binder recalled how he was forced to find a hands-on solution to a public hair situation: “There was a dancer in The Man with the Golden Gun and she was nude. I used some rippling water, which covered her body, so we got away with that, but when she danced around sideways, some inappropriate hair stuck out. She wouldn’t shave.”
Binder tried various angles and lighting but nothing worked so decided to coat her pubic hair with Vaseline. The model herself handed him the brush and instructed him to fix the hair as he needed.
Sir Roger Moore and producer Harry Saltzman were both on set at the time and the quick-witted star turned and joked: “If you’re the producer of this film, you’re not getting the perks!”
No doubt, he was equally amused when the cast was accidentally booked to stay in a bordello. Co-star Hervé Villechaize, who played Nick Nack, was probably quite happy as he famously spent much of the shoot propositioning women and hiring prostitutes.
Moore was not amused and: “I used to say, ‘Don’t touch me. You are diseased… he was a sex maniac. He had a lust for ladies, unnatural.”
Veteran star Sir Christopher Lee’s naked body also caused a stir when his character Scaramanga was given a prosthetic third nipple. This physical condition is called a supernumerary o accessory nipple, and is referred to in the film as a superfluous papilla. The Austin Powers spoof Goldmember also gave Mike Myers’ eponymous lead a third nipple.
The nipple has become an unforgettable piece of Bond trivia. They say elephants never forget and one person left with sour recollections of his experience with the shoot was a poor chap who made 2,600 pairs of elephant shoes for a proposed stamped scene in Thailand. Twenty years later and he reported that he still hadn’t been paid…
One thing none of us can ever recall is M’s real name – because it is never fully spoken on screen. In 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, Gogol calls him Miles, but The man With the Golden Gun novel reveals that his name is actually Vice Admiral Sir Miles Messervy KCMG.
