ABOVE: LOT #85 - Kevin McClory's shooting script for Thunderball and corresponding storyboard notebook, the script cover with typescript label, numbered 4, titled THUNDERBALL (Shooting Script) 30th November 1964, 138pp. of mimeographed typescript, original blue paper covers, this script with several differences to the final version; accompanied by a spiral bound notebook, signed on the cover in red felt pen Kevin McClory, containing 52 printed storyboards titled Vulcan "Ditching" & Underwater Sequences, each labelled in black felt pen in an unidentified hand, pasted in pairs onto 26 separate pages, each – 3x6½in. (7.7x16.5cm.), the last page and inside back cover inscribed in blue ballpoint pen in an unidentified hand with various production details including $100,000 for charter...Speak to McClory about Hidrofoil...money in Nassau...Lock up 2 man sub...,4to. original buff paper covers.  Sold for £10,000 ($14,690)

007 IN NEW YORK

Kevin McClory, in his famous court case against Ian Fleming for plagiarism in 1963, won the film and television rights to Thunderball. He was also assigned the copyright in the film scripts and the right to use the character of James Bond in any scripts or film of Thunderball. In 1975 McClory, accompanied by Sean Connery, travelled to New York in order to scout locations for their new 007 project then entitled James Bond of the Secret Service. The script, co-written by McClory, Sean Connery and Len Deighton (thriller writer and creator of the Harry Palmer character immortalised on screen by Michael Caine) included scenes inside and outside the Statue of Liberty, where the villainous SPECTRE has a secret base from where they launch robotic sharks to keep away any prying intruders i.e. Bond. The shot of Connery with the Twin Towers behind him (below right) is rather ironic in hindsight, as SPECTRE was an international terrorist organisation (SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence Terrorism Revenge and Extortion).