In the previous nine installments of this series we recalled the history of Quinn Martin’s 007 TV series from its creation in 1958 to the airing of its series finale in 1970 and the 007 franchise’s debut on the silver screen with the release of Dead Reckoning in 1971. In this chapter we’ll look back at the making of the second 007 movie, Not In Our Stars.

The second chapter in the 007 film saga, Not In Our Stars, represented a major departure from the norm for the Bond team. In contrast to the high-tech wizardry and larger-than-life villains that had been the franchise’s bread and butter since the first days of the original TV series, Stars would portray Bond needing to rely on decidedly low-tech methods to take down a crime lord who was at the center of a conspiracy to kill undercover Scotland Yard officers in Latin America. The glamorous locales which had been a staple of the Bond franchise for nearly twenty-five years would for the most part be absent from Bond’s sophomore adventure on the silver screen; most of the story would unfold in back alleys and run-down apartment buildings. And the real-life tenements where many of the key action sequences would be shot were often every bit as dangerous as any of the traps which Bond’s adversaries had laid for him in previous 007 adventures.

Indeed, during the first day of principal photography at Stars’ main location shoot in southern Venezuela two of the film’s assistant producers were assaulted in a botched mugging attempt by one of the neighborhood street gangs known to roam the district where the movie’s opening sequence was being shot. The would-be muggers were eventually caught, but the incident left everybody on the Stars production crew rattled, not to mention the movie’s cast; after that platoons of armed guards were stationed on the set to prevent a repeat of the incident. And whenever cast members went into town on a day off, they usually did so accompanied by one or more security personnel toting machine guns or automatic pistols. At one point an assistant director joked to a New York Times correspondent who visited the set during the third week of principal photography that it was sometimes hard to tell where the movie left off and the real world started, there were so many guns around.

And it wasn’t just crime that posed a problem for the cast and crew of Stars-- weather also affected the movie’s shooting schedule. Ken Annakin, who had returned to the director’s chair for a second go- round with the 007 franchise, found himself having to reschedule at least a dozen scenes during the second week of principal photography because the humidity of the Venezuelan climate was playing havoc with his camera crew’s equipment. An entire reel’s worth of important sound effects recordings was nearly lost when the delivery van hired to take it from Caracas’ main airport to the Stars set got stuck in a mudhole caused by the previous day’s heavy rains.

Then there was the political turmoil plaguing Venezuela at the time Annakin and his production stuff arrived. Tensions between left and right were present in all Latin American countries in the early 1970s, but the problem seemed to be particularly acute in Venezuela; at least a dozen times during Annakin’s stay in the country filming had to be delayed or even halted altogether because political rallies had turned into riots. There was even an unfortunate incident where a gang of right-wing extremists opened fire on a production staff car after mistaking the driver for a well-known local left-wing activist; fortunately for all parties concerned no one inside the car was hit by the gunshots, but the incident still constituted a black eye for the Venezuelan government, which had promised to keep the Stars cast and crew safe.

After the gunfire incident the number of security personnel who were assigned to guard the Stars cast and crew was doubled, and an ex- Scotland Yard undercover detective flew over from London to oversee a series of escape & evasion drills intended to teach the Stars company ways they could safely extricate themselves from trouble should things go awry again. The Venezuelan ambassador to Britain, in an effort to calm the fears of studio executives in London and Hollywood, hastened to reassure them the Caracas government would spare no expense to put the perpetrators of the attack behind bars. (Venezuelan police agents later found two of the shooters hiding in Maracaibo disguised as oil rig workers; a third shooter died trying to escape across the border into Colombia.)

But in spite of this and other incidents, the Stars cast and crew generally enjoyed their time in Venezuela. One thing that they particularly liked about filming in that country was its proximity to the beaches of Guyana, Suriname, and Brazil. Whenever the chance presented itself, cast or production crew members would charter a jet to fly to the beach resort of their choice for some much-needed R & R. Studio accountants sometimes grumbled about having to pay for so many plane tickets, but that grumbling was largely muted in the face of the potential profits to be gained from the second installment of the Bond film saga.

Principal photography for Not In Our Stars was finished in late January of 1974; post-production work on the film wrapped up about a month later. Then it was time to break out the heavy artillery of 20th Century Fox’s PR machine to hype Stars to the movie-going public all around the world-- with particular attention given to Britain, where a revival of Bondmania had happened during the weeks of Dead Reckoning’s phenomenally successful initial box office run there. Even behind the Iron Curtain, where the 007 books and movies had been banned for years by Communist regimes, people were eagerly awaiting the chance to view bootleg reels of the new movie(with said bootlegs usually supplied by local dissidents or by Western intelligence agents eager to capitalize on an opportunity to stick it to the Warsaw Pact).

Stars premiered in New York on Easter weekend and went into full nationwide release in the U.S. about two weeks later. As had been the case with Dead Reckoning, Bond’s sophomore adventure on the big screen quickly spiraled up to the top of the box office ladder; it went on to become the highest-grossing feature film of the summer of 1974 and the third-highest grossing movie of the entire year. Stars even played a modest role in the final act of the Watergate scandal-- it became the last movie to be screened by Richard Nixon in the White House theater before he resigned the presidency. The two journalists whose articles in the Washington Post were responsible for the Congressional inquiry that ultimately brought Nixon down were also huge fans of the movie; a well-known if somewhat apocryphal legend even claims the two first met their primary source, “Deep Throat”, at a late night screening of Not In Our Stars.

And it wasn’t just American audiences that went for Stars in a big way; the movie was also a huge hit in Canada, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Mexico during its first theatrical run and also enjoyed considerable box office success in many South American countries(with the notable exception of Argentina, where age-old tensions between the rulers of that country and the British government over the Falkland Islands may have colored audiences’ perceptions of the movie). And as had been the case with Dead Reckoning, bootleg reels of Not In Our Stars found an appreciative if somewhat furtive audience with apparatchiks behind the Iron Curtain.

It would be nearly seven years before the cameras rolled on the next Bond movie. But when it finally saw the light of day, it would be one of the primary catalysts for a groundswell of interest in the 007 saga that would bring Ian Fleming’s creation full circle and back to the medium which had first made Bond a global pop culture icon....

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