The “sexiest scene” in James Bond history, according to the guy who wrote 13 007 movies
As much as it might upset a vocal minority of purists and perverts, sex scenes aren’t as important to the James Bond franchise as they used to be. Not that they were ever all that important from a storytelling standpoint, but you get the idea.
The franchise is obliged to move with the times, so the days of 007 treating women as nothing more than notches on his bedpost are over. That doesn’t mean he’ll be hanging up his fornicating hat for good, but if we see the next iteration getting his kit off and falling into bed, there’ll probably be a reason for it.
The days of innuendos, double entendres, characters called Pussy Galore and Holly Goodhead, and Bond remarking that he thought Christmas only comes once a year look to be consigned to the past, especially with Amazon at the helm and the largely sexless Denis Villeneuve directing the next instalment.
He had a good run, though, with Bond cutting a swathe through the opposite sex for decades before modernity caught up. As far as the saga’s most prolific screenwriter, who was there from the Sean Connery days to the Timothy Dalton era, there’s one scene that’ll never be beaten as the sexiest ever.
Richard Maibaum was the Neal Purvis and Robert Wade of his day, albeit more prolific. He penned 13 of the first 16 Bond flicks, scribbling the scripts for Dr No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, and Licence to Kill.
That also means he wrote more of 007’s boudoir encounters than any other screenwriter, and while he was patting himself on the back, he credited it more to the actor than his prose. “My favourite of all the Bond girls is Daniela Bianchi,” he said. “The great thing about her was, could there be anything more ridiculous than a cypher clerk working for the Russians who sees a picture of Bond and falls in love with him? She made it stand up.”
The star’s Tatiana Romanova smouldered opposite Connery in From Russia with Love, leaving Maibaum feeling a little hot under the collar. “My god,” he exclaimed. “The scene in the stateroom is probably the sexiest scene in the Bonds.” So sexy, in fact, that it’s remained a key part of the casting process ever since.
Although it might change now that the Broccoli family have been bought out, every aspiring 007 since Connery has performed that towel-clad scene as part of the audition process. Sadly, Maibaum died in 1991 and was unable to pass judgment on whether Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig had any moments steamier than Bianchi’s electric exchange with her Bond, but it’s doubtful he’d think himself usurped.
It’s debatable if it’s the franchise’s most titillating moment, but if the guy who’s written over half of the entire Bond back catalogue thinks it can’t be beat, then he’s better placed than almost anyone else to comment.
