John Payne: The B-movie actor who almost made the first James Bond film
These days, franchise cinema is what keeps Hollywood going.
We all love rewatching old favourites so that we can revisit beloved characters, so franchises are the perfect solution – we get to come back to our favourite characters but in new situations. What could be better? While some franchises are infinitely more successful than others, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are few that have the sophistication and cultural associations that come with the James Bond series, which has been ongoing since the 1960s.
James Bond is the ultimate British character, suave and womanising, classy but unafraid to get stuck into some serious confrontation if need be. He doesn’t hesitate to throw himself into chaos and intrigue, and his fearlessness has made him an archetype – you either want to be him or be with him. Over the years, we’ve seen various actors take on the role of Bond, with the most iconic being Sean Connery, who first embodied the character in 1962’s Dr No.
Since then, we’ve seen Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, among others, play the 007 agent to acclaim, with almost all of the instalments in the long-running franchise produced by Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s Eon Productions. However, before the pair created the iconic series of films, Bond was almost turned into a movie by someone else, and it could’ve looked incredibly different.
Based on the books by Ian Fleming, Bond actually appeared on screen for the first time in 1954 when the American show Climax! adapted Casino Royale for an episode. With the American actor Barry Nelson playing the 007 agent, it was a rather different take on the story from how it turned out once Aeon got involved. Shortly after, an actor purchased the rights to Moonraker, hoping to create a feature film version that would kickstart a whole franchise.
John Payne – not Wayne – was the Hollywood star who hoped to play Bond, although he didn’t exactly fit the bill as an American. He had risen to prominence with a role in Miracle on 34th Street, although many of his credits existed in the realm of the B-movie. He asked Delbert Mann to direct the film, but it soon became clear that they were both experiencing creative differences.
Mann explained, “I suggested that he portray James Bond as an American FBI agent or former OSS agent, but he did not want to go in that direction. Payne did not want to change the locale to New York or Washington DC or San Francisco (Dick Powell’s suggestion). He wanted to remain completely faithful to Ian Fleming and shoot the picture in Technicolor and Cinemascope in London with a fully British cast and crew”.
He added: “He placed all emphasis on his fidelity to Fleming, whom I don’t think he ever met. He was obsessed with the creation of a certain noir element in the writing of the script and the big slam bang conclusion at the end when Bond saves London and the girl from total annihilation.”
Payne worked hard to try and bring his pulpy vision to life, but it ultimately did not work out. It’s hard to imagine what would’ve become of the franchise if it had been helmed by the American actor instead, although Mann thinks it still would’ve been good.
“In many ways [Payne] was on the same track creatively later followed by Broccoli & Saltzman. It didn’t really matter to me if John Payne’s James Bond was British or American, the story as he envisioned it was so gripping and exciting no one would have cared. John Payne’s James Bond would have been a hero like none other of that era. He would have been quite acceptable, I think, even to British viewers.”
We’ll never know what could’ve become of Bond under Payne’s supervision. Perhaps it’s for the best that Payne’s ideas didn’t work out, though, or we could’ve had an American Bond on our hands.
