Bullz-Eye is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first James Bond film with look back at every Bond movie, 007 One by One, along with a series of features about the Bond franchise, all laid out in our James Bond Fan Hub.

As the worldwide spy craze peaks, the James Bond series settles in for the long, tongue-in-cheek haul with this often maligned but very enjoyable entry, introducing the world to both ninjas and the original Dr. Evil. It also might have been the final appearance of Sean Connery as 007, except that it wasn’t.

“You Only Live Twice” (1967)

The Plot

A United States space capsule is hijacked, killing one astronaut. Naturally, the Americans assume the Soviets are at fault and world war seems a real possibility. There’s only one thing for the level-headed English to do: Stage James Bond’s death and send him on an undercover mission to Japan to expose SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s plot to dominate the world by partially destroying it.

The Backstory

With enormous success comes enormous pressures and change was very definitely in the air as “You Only Live Twice” began production. Now one of the world’s most bankable stars after the mega-success of “Thunderball,” Sean Connery was contractually on board for only one more film and starting to be seriously fed up with all the 007 insanity.

Behind the camera, original Bond director Terrence Young had had his fill and “Goldfinger” helmer Guy Hamilton was unavailable. Editor and second unit director Peter Hunt, who had been instrumental in the series’ creative success, badly wanted to helm the project, but producers Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman apparently weren’t ready for a first timer for Bond #5. Therefore, a new recruit was sought out to join the small fraternity of James Bond directors.

An old hand at period pieces and war films, Lewis Gilbert was hot off an Oscar nomination for a classic-to-be about a compulsive womanizer who could give Bond a run for his money. “Alfie” starred Connery’s good friend, fellow movie spy, and now award-winning box office rival, Michael Caine.

Lewis Gilbert also brought along one of the very few directors of photography who could have reasonably stepped into the very big shoes of series regular Ted Moore. Freddie Young had won the first of his four Oscars a couple of years prior for David Lean’s visually stunning 1963 70mm masterpiece, “Lawrence of Arabia.” For the sake of keeping things consistent, all the other key collaborators, were back on board in their regular roles, i.e., composer John Barry, credit designer Maurice Binder, and production designer Ken Adam. For once, they’d all have a nice budget to play with, too.

The script, however, was an issue. The novel “You Only Live Twice,” was the last Bond book published in Ian Fleming’s lifetime and the story was problematic for more than one reason. For starters, it was actually the third and final installment in what literary Bond fans call “the Blofeld Trilogy.” EON’s original intent had been to film the books in their original order. That way Blofeld, who had been teased as a character starting in “Dr. No,” would get his long-delayed onscreen introduction in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and finally suffer James Bond’s revenge in the follow-up, “You Only Live Twice.” Unfortunately, logistics made the ski chalet setting of “Majesty” impractical for the summer release EON and United Artists had their hearts set on.

The other problem was that the plot of Ian Fleming’s novel, which involved Blofeld setting up a lavish sanitarium for wealthy suicides, just didn’t seem to be the stuff of a James Bond movie. It also ended with Bond fathering a child with Kissy Suzuki. Only a few elements from the book would remain in the finished movie, most notably the Japanese setting, love interest Kissy, and friendly spy boss Tiger Tanaka.

There was also a problem with finding a writer. Richard Maibum, who had worked on every Bond up to this point, was deemed unavailable. A rumored screenplay by renowned author Kingsley Amis had been reportedly dismissed. Another script was commissioned by writer Harold Jack Bloom, but little of his work would remain in the finished film.

The final choice of screenwriter turned out to be an interesting one. Decades after his death, Roald Dahl remains one of the world’s most popular children’s writers with such film-friendly classics as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The Witches,” “Matilda,” and “James and the Giant Peach” all too his credit. He might have seemed a far likelier choice for writing an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s children’s book, “Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang,” the gig that was apparently keeping Richard Maibum busy. Nevertheless, Dahl had written his share of adult thrillers and had actually performed wartime espionage and been friends with Fleming. Scads of 007-inspired spy spoofs were upping the humor ante and this would be a somewhat more tongue-in-cheek Bond. Dahl’s dark sense of humor would be a plus.

The main thrust of the film’s new plot was apparently invented by Cubby Broccoli, however. Upon seeing a dormant volcano while scouting locations, he came up with the idea of using it as a giant villain’s lair. With the U.S.-Soviet space race at full swing, the Russian-Chinese split a topical news item, and terrorism on the rise, the idea of SPECTRE hijacking spacecrafts in order to start a world war on behalf of Red Chinese clients seemed like a natural.

The Bond Girls (Rule of 3 + 1)

Once again, 007 does the espionage nasty with three beautiful women on his Japan adventure. Shockingly, however, the movie’s main love interest is not one of them.

Ling (Tsai Chow) — This lovely lady of Hong Kong engages in mildly racist pillow talk with Bond and then reveals herself to be an accomplice in the spy’s elaborately faked death. Though her part is small, actress Tsai Chow was already a recording artists and a major star of the London stage in “South Pacific” and “The World of Suzie Wong.” Her very long film career would include parts in “The Joy Luck Club,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and the 2006 Bond reboot, “Casino Royale.”

Helga Brandt (Karen Dor) — The latest Bond villainess with preying mantis-like tendencies, the dangerous Ms. Brandt is the secretary/in-house assassin of the wealthy SPECTRE operative, Mr. Osato. She has her way with Bond, then fails at killing him. It’s only natural that she winds up a victim of SPECTRE’s signature approach to personnel management, which in her case means being fed to the CEO’s pet piranhas. Actress Karen Dor has enjoyed a very long career in German films and television that continues to this day. She also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s unsuccessful spy thriller, “Topaz,” and the modestly titled horror flick, “The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism.”

Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) — The lovely Aki at first appears to be an enemy agent, but quickly turns out to be an able helper and a willing Bond sex partner, until her untimely end. Actress Akiko Wakabayashi is known to genre geeks around the world and not just for “You Only Live Twice.” Monster mavens know her for appearances in two films by “Godzilla” co-creator Ishirō Honda: “Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster” and “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” The name of the lead character was changed from Suki to Aki at her request.

Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama) — Unusually virtuous by Bond girl standards, Kissy never actually gets to home plate with Bond, at least not during the actual movie. Nevertheless, this student of Japanese spy chief Tiger Tanaka proves an able aid to Bond, assisting in his not-so-believable transformation into a Japanese peasant and in foiling SPECTRE’s evil plans.

Actress Mie Hama was originally assigned to play Aki/Suki and was nearly let go from the project because of her difficulties learning English. As the story goes, Hama suggested the shame of being fired might force her to commit ritual suicide and the producers buckled. Her part, like that of nearly every other foreign player in an early Bond film, was eventually dubbed by another performer. Other roles include appearing alongside Akiko Wakabayashi in “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” She also made waves by promoting “You Only Live Twice” via a nude appearance in Playboy.

Friends and colleagues

Dikko Henderson (Charles Gray) — The avuncular, kimono-clad representative of MI6 in Japan only lives long enough to get Bond’s most famous cocktail preference wrong. The late actor, Charles Gray, was a wonderfully distinctive presence in well over 120 films and television productions. Today he is mainly remembered as the narrating “no neck” Criminologist who taught the world to dance the Time Warp in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — a film musical he claimed to have never seen. Gray would also have the rare distinction of being killed by SPECTRE and later heading it. He would return to the Bond series as none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld in “Diamonds are Forever.”

Tiger Tanaka (Tetsurō Tamba) — Bond makes a new friend who, for a change, survives the film. It makes sense as the bold but crafty head of Japanese intelligence has a personal subway train and routinely forces guests to arrive via trap door as a precaution. Actor Tetsurō Tamba was a venerable presence in sixties Japanese cinema and had also worked in England, making him a natural leader among the Japanese cast. With 242 credits listed on IMDb, he has appeared in a number of films well known to Western cinephiles and cultists including “Pigs and Battleships,” “Harakiri,” and the notoriously gory and campy 1991 midnight-show staple, “Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.” Also noted for his work as a spiritual teacher, Tamba passed on in 2006.

Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and M (Bernard Lee) — Bond’s unimpressed boss and his partner in flirtatious byplay return, this time dressed in full UK navel regalia. The comic business aboard one of her majesty’s atomic submarines is spry but brief, though they make an unusual appearance in the film’s final scene. Moneypenny/Lois Maxwell, we should say, looks adorable in uniform. We understand, however, that her hairstyle was thoroughly non-regulation for the English navy. Shocking.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) — With gadgetry now a major part of the series, an appearance by the irascible armorer is now mandatory. This time, the perpetually annoyed Q finds himself forced to trudge to Japan to deliver “Little Nellie” — a thoroughly souped-up and tricked out autogyro. If Desmond Llewelyn’s irritation seems believable, it might have helped that the actor disagreed with director Lewis Gilbert’s costuming choices. Japan might be a warm country, but Llewelyn wasn’t thrilled with the military-style shirt and shorts he was given to wear. He didn’t think the very proper Q would permit himself to wear anything other than his standard business attire

The Nemesis

Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) — After being teased for years, the face of Bond’s most intractable enemy finally appears onscreen in “You Only Live Twice.” He is, of course, as diabolical and likely to feed an underperforming employee to carnivorous pets as ever. Sporting Blofeld’s trademark white Persian cat and a nasty scar on his right eye, the great character actor Donald Pleasence was already familiar to movie fans for hits like “The Great Escape” and “Fantastic Voyage.” He went on to even greater recognizability to horror fans for his portrayal of the heroic Dr. Sam Loomis in the “Halloween” series of slasher films. By the time of his death in 1996, Pleasence had racked up well over 200 film and television credits.

Lesser Bond Baddies

Assuming they aren’t personally killed by Mr. Bond, the hench people in “You Only Live Twice” have somewhat greater longevity than they did in “Thunderball.” Still, SPECTRE’s personnel practices remain below industry standard.

Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada) — Helga Brandt’s industrialist SPECTRE employer tries to have James Bond killed innumerable times, with predictable results. He manages to avoid the pet piranas that finally get Miss Brandt, but he still winds up getting a surprise bullet in the chest from Blofeld. Japanese-American actor Teru Shimada had recently appeared in 1966′s “Walk Don’t Run” with Cary Grant, but was actually nearing the end of a decades long career that began in the early 1930s.

Hans (Ronald Rich) — Blofeld’s gigantic body guard is repaid for his loyalty and diligence by being allowed to live long enough to get killed during the final battle. English actor Rich’s career appears to be a short one, but TV geeks should note that he did appear as the giant alien Trantis in the 1965 season of “Dr. Who” and in various roles in the 1968 run of “Benny Hill.”

SPECTRE #3 and #4 (Burt Kwouk and Michael Chow) – It would be easy to ignore these two very minor characters if it weren’t for the interesting guys playing them. You may remember that Burt Kwouk, the very talented performer who brilliantly portrayed manservant Kato opposite Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, also appeared in a similar, slightly larger, role in “Goldfinger.” As for Shanghai-born character actor and citizen of the world Michael Chow, he is best known in the West as a classy restaurateur. The first Mr. Chow location opened in London in 1968, followed by editions in Beverly Hills, New York City and, eventually, Miami and Las Vegas.

License to kill

Bond’s career in extra-judicial killings of often disarmed enemies began with the unlucky Prof. Dent in “Dr. No,” but it reaches a new high here. Admittedly, there are several moments where the morality of the situation might be vague — or where we’re not sure whether Bond has actually killed an assailant or merely subdued him. Bond very definitely instantly slays the killer of his MI6 contact, Dikko Henderson (Charles Gray), however. True, the man’s act was cowardly but, morals and legality aside, it might have made more sense to keep the assassin alive and find out what was up. He also immediately dispatches both Aki’s poisoner — before he even knows what the intruder is up to — as well as the quickly disarmed would-be assassin who assaults him with a bo (a Japanese quarterstaff) in the ninja dojo.

The gadgets

Production designer Ken Adam, efx man John Stears, and the whole EON team attempt to create an airborne companion to Bond’s Aston-Martin with “Little Nellie,” a tricked up autogyro that’s a sort of cross between a helicopter and a toy plane. The film version is equipped with enough armory to take out a banana republic with machine guns, flamethrowers, and missiles. Minus the fancy weaponry, it was the very real and serious creation of designer Ken Wallis, a retired RAF pilot.

Many other gadgets are so casually integrated into the “You Only Live Twice” storyline you might almost miss them. Below are some of our favorites.

* Ninja cigarettes that eject bullet-like projectiles.

* The water-proof sarcophagus used to stage Bond’s “burial” at sea

* The “Bird 1″ ship, with a front opening used to capture U.S. and Soviet spacecraft.

* Trap doors that both Blofeld and Tiger Tanaka use to create unwelcome surprises for coworkers.

* A giant magnet on a helicopter deployed by the Japanese to pick up a car filled with SPECTRE henchman and drop it in the nearby Pacific. (Since it seems unlikely the occupants could have lived, we wonder if Japanese secret services also have something like Double-O authority.)

* Mr. Osato’s spiffy X-ray desk for spotting concealed weapons.

* A pocket safecracking doodad which would come in handy if Bond ever decided to go full time to the wrong side of the law.

Note: Both the Murphy bed used in Bond’s fake assassination and Tiger Tanaka’s personal subway are sometimes considered Bond gadgets. However, since both were examples of what was very common mid-sixties technology, we don’t think they qualify as Bondian gadgetry any more than would a blender or an electric can opener.

The exotic locales

With the exception of the opening, just about all of “You Only Live Twice” takes place in Japan and the film’s exteriors were shot largely in the then-emerging economic powerhouse. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, director Lewis Gilbert, and cinematographer Freddie Young spent considerable time scouting Japanese locations. Their work paid off both in terms of visuals and, at least in the aforementioned case of the dormant volcano which became Blofeld’s lair, story ideas.

The outrageous villains’ lairs and good guy haunts

With the Bond films established as a series of reliable blockbusters, resident production design genius Ken Adam was allowed to go to town with a series of extraordinary sets, which meant more work and frayed nerves than ever. Adam has said that he and his staff were all but “living on valium” during the production of the film.

The most overtly spectacular set was obviously SPECTRE’s volcano-based super-bunker. Featuring a crater lake on top as camouflage, a rocket launch pad, and an internal light rail system, the Pinewood Studios set was very possibly the largest interior built for a film up to that point and one of the most expensive at $1 million. Ken Adam reportedly bragged that more steel was used in the set’s construction than in the London Hilton.

A more modest Adam classic is the lattice-work dome in which hot-headed U.S. and Soviets are persuaded to put off worldwide thermonuclear war while the intelligence boys at MI6 do their work. The design seems to have been influenced by R. Bunkminster Fuller’s then trendy geodesic domes.

Moving on, we’re also impressed by the apartment of the short-lived MI6 contact, Henderson. It’s a cheerful mix of British and Japanese design cliches. Tiger Tanaka’s underground office is, however, more up to the minute. Clearly, the EON team had noticed Japan’s increasing fascination with futuristic technology which was fueling the nation’s post-war economic renaissance. Similarly, the offices of bad guy Mr. Osato are an angular, half-insane variation on an ultra-modern mid-sixties interior.

The Opening

The “You Only Live Twice” pre-credit sequence is a departure from the “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” openings in that it is not actually a Bond mini-adventure. Instead, it’s a more complicated variation on the opening of “From Russia with Love”; it’s primarily a prologue designed to set up the story and tease us with another fake Bond death. Bond doesn’t even try to kill anyone. (He’ll make up for that later.)

We begin in outer space as a mysterious vehicle snatches an American space capsule, murdering an astronaut in the process. Next, we are in some kind of super-high level diplomatic meeting room in which the calm, thoughtful British must mediate between jingoistic Americans and nasty Soviets to avoid a rush to global thermonuclear war. Finally, we are in a garish Hong Kong boudoir as Bond has finished making love with the seemingly treacherous Ling (Tsai Chow). She traps Bond in a Murphy bed, where he meets an apparent quick end at the hands of machine gun wielding thugs. Afterwards, a police officer who appears to have known Bond philosophizes that, at least, Bond met his demise “on the job.”

A close-up of a shot of (presumably fake) blood fades out into an animated design reminiscent of a Japanese umbrella and we’re off for another striking credit sequence by Maurice Binder. As the lyrical title song plays, we are given Japanese-inspired abstract designs, shots of lava flowing inside a volcano, and the usual female silhouettes. Once again, we are being promised adventure, a bit of tasteless exoticism, violence and, naturally, sex, sex, sex.

The Music

By now, it was a foregone conclusion that composer John Barry would provide both the score and the title song. Barry’s “Goldfinger” lyrical collaborator, show tune specialist Leslie Bricusse, returns for one of the better songs in the Bond cannon. Barry seems to have decided to abandon the brassiness of “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” for a more romantic tune along the lines of “From Russia with Love,” only better.

Nancy Sinatra and her famous father, Frank, were friends of the EON team. So, it was only natural that she was brought on to perform the song, even though an earlier version had already been recorded by English singer Shirley Rodgers. The only difficulty was that the younger Sinatra, whose recent recording of “These Boots Were Made for Walking” had been a monster hit, was much more a rock and roll singer than a polished classic pop chanteuse. As Nancy Sinatra herself tells it, it took countless takes and a lot of editing to produce the sexy and charmingly wistful “You Only Live Twice” title track.

As for the instrumental score, composer Barry adds a bit of Japanese beauty to the mix, but it was the cosmos that inspired the most influential work. The haunting and majestic “Capsules in Space” is a definite influence on John Williams’ music for “Star Wars.”

Action Highlights

“You Only Live Twice” was instrumental in popularizing Asian martial arts in Western films and also for establishing ninjas as go-to pop culture badasses. The final battle, in which hundreds of ninjutsu-trained operatives invade Blofeld’s mega-lair, is certainly among the most spectacular fight scenes in the 007 cannon. It’s also probably responsible for a number of increasingly elaborate, you might even say overblown, Bond finales to follow.

An arguably even more thrilling set-piece, however comes much earlier in the film as Bond and Aki are pursued at the Kobe docks by a number of local SPECTRE henchmen. In a bold move, director Lewis Gilbert and camera-great Freddie Francis film part of the fight via a thrilling aerial shot of the ongoing action. Speaking of aerial shots, the airborne battle in which Bond and Little Nellie fend off “improper advances” from four machine-gun equipped aerial helicopters is an enjoyable blend of exciting aerial footage and back projection close-ups.

For those who enjoy a bit more hand-to-hand combat, we’re somewhat fond of a relatively brief but delightfully brutal fight between Bond and a sword wielding opponent, portrayed by uncredited Samoan-American pro-wrestler and fight choreographer Peter Fanene Mavia. Mavia, who unfortunately passed on at age 45, is today best remembered as the grandfather of wrestler-turned-action star Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.

The ninja camp training sequence is also an enjoyable spin on the “Spartacus”-inspired SPECTRE training camp in “From Russia With Love.” It was probably the first time a truly gigantic Western audience was exposed to Asian martial arts in a major motion picture. It also contains a surprisingly faithful homage to the fight scenes in the Japanese samurai films that were then being discovered in art houses throughout America and Europe.

The one-liners

James Bond (Prior to making love to the evil Helga Brandt): The things I do for England!

Hong Kong Policeman #2: [finding the fake-deceased Bond in Ling's Hong Kong boudoir] At least he died on the job… he would have wanted it that way.

Kissy Suzuki: No honeymoon. This is business.
James Bond: [pushing aside a plate of oysters] Well, I won’t need these.

Mr. Osato: You should give up smoking. Cigarettes are very bad for your chest.
Helga Brandt: Mr. Osato believes in a healthy chest.
James Bond (observing Brandt’s upper torso): Really?

Tiger Tanaka (showing Bond a projectile equipped cigarette): It can save your life, this cigarette.
James Bond: You sound like a commercial.

James Bond: Well, if I’m going to be forced to watch television, may I smoke?
Blofeld: Yes. Give him his cigarettes. It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.

James Bond (having just dispatched an adversary into Blofeld’s piranha-infested indoor pool): Bon appetit!

Tiger Tanaka: You know what it is about you that fascinates them, don’t you? It’s the hair on your chest. Japanese men all have beautiful bare skin.
James Bond: Japanese proverb say, “Bird never make nest in bare tree.”

[About to have his chest hair waxed so he can pass for Japanese]
James Bond: Why don’t you just dye the parts that show?

James Bond (greeting Q, who has brought Little Nellie to Japan): Welcome to Japan, Dad. Is my little girl hot and ready?
Q: Look, 007, I’ve had a long and tiring journey, probably to no purpose, so I’m in no mood for juvenile quips.

Cocktails and other beverages

Bond’s drinking is more under control than usual here, though the super spy gets to show his knowledge of the finer points of Japan’s native beverage, the rice wine known as saki. It’s usually served warm — 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit, he reminds us. Bond seems considerably less enthralled with some Siamese vodka. Most famously, 007 politely endures confusion regarding his cocktail preferences by the soon-to-be-slain Dikko Henderson. The MI6 man offers him a vodka martini “stirred, not shaken,” in an incorrect Tom Collins glass, which Bond accepts without complaint. At another point, he is tempted into some morning drinking by a bottle of Dom Perignon 1959.

Random facts

* There are a number of jokes about cigarettes and cigarette smoking in “You Only Live Twice.” Considering the historic U.S. Surgeon General’s Report definitively naming smoking as a serious health risk had only come out in 1964, the same year heavy smoker and drinker Ian Fleming had died at age 56 of a heart attack, it was a highly topical subject. (To this day, you will find more smokers on film sets than elsewhere.)

* Donald Pleasence was actually a last-minute replacement as the first fully on-screen Blofeld. Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast in the role and shot a few days worth of scrapped footage. The EON team decided that the bearded thespian’s grandfatherly appearance was too benign for the ultra-ruthless super villain.

* For whatever reason, Ernst Stavro Blofeld would, from this point on, be played by different actors with radically different looks in each film. Future Blofelds would include the relatively hulking “Kojak”-to-be Telly Savalas in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” who at least was as bald as the somewhat diminutive Donald Pleasence had been in the role. Blofeld would miraculously sport a full head of hair, however, when he was played by the aforementioned Charles Gray in 1971′s “Diamonds are Forever.”

* Donald Pleasence’s appearance and manner as Blofeld is pretty obviously the primary inspiration for Mike Myers’s Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers series. (Evil’s speaking voice is just as obviously inspired by “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels.)

* Fans trying to put together a complete biography of Bond have made much of the ever humble 007′s reminder to Moneypenny that, “You forget, I took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge.” This is a contradiction with the novels, where Bond was ejected from Eton College for an unsurprising infraction with female cleaning personnel and had to finish his education in Scotland.

* “You Only Live Twice” is actually the second time that Sean Connery, as a pre-coital Bond said, “The things I do for England!” The line was also shot during the filming of “Thunderball.” It made it into that film’s promotional material but was cut from the actual movie. Being too good a line to waste, it was re-used and included here.

* Ironically, screenwriter Roald Dahl’s World War II intelligence experiences were in some ways more Bondian than those of Ian Fleming. It was, in fact, his youthful gift for starting affairs with prominent women that seems to have attracted the attention of British spies working in North America trying to draw the United States into the war prior to Pearl Harbor. His most famous conquest in England’s service was playwright and conservative Republican politician Clare Booth Luce, the wife of the founder of Time magazine.

* When Mie Hama was unable to swim for her scenes, she was doubled by Australian actress Diane Cilento, an able swimmer who was married to Sean Connery at the time. Cilento, who passed on in 2011, is probably now best known for her supporting role in the 1974 cult classic, “The Wicker Man.” She also appeared in such notable 1960s features as “Tom Jones,” “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” and “Hombre.”

* Some have mistakenly said that the title, “You Only Live Twice” comes from a poem by Basho, Japan’s most famous poet. It’s actually from a not-quite haiku Bond attempts to compose in Basho’s style in Ian Fleming’s novel.

“You only live twice
Once when you’re born
And once when you look death in the face.”

Leslie Bricusse’s lyrics for the song, “You Only Live Twice,” equate the second life to falling in love. Much more romantic.

* By all accounts, Sean Connery and Diane Cilento had a pretty miserable time making “You Only Live Twice.” Spy mania and an aggressive Japanese press in particular seems to been a huge problem for the star and his bride. By the time “You Only Live Twice” was released, Connery had made it public that he would cease playing Bond. It turned out to be the first of three times that would happen.

The Romantic Ending

“You Only Live Twice” is, we think, the only Bond entry where the main romance seems to have gone not much further than passionate necking. Kissy abandons her resistance to Bond by the end of the film, but they are interrupted by an inopportune submarine and Moneypenny seems only to anxious to cut off any more funny business. All the more tragic as it looks like Bond and Kissy might not be allowed to see each other again.

“James Bond Will Return”

“The end of You Only Live Twice but James Bond will be back On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” read the final titles this time around. A similar credit was originally included at the end of “Thunderball” and later removed. In fact, James Bond did come back, but he would be George Lazenby.

Spy /spī/ noun: A person who secretly collects and reports information about an enemy or competitor.

Artists, in my experience, have very little centre. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception. – John le Carré, aka David Cornwell

If you should learn one thing from watching the Oscar-touted new film version of John le Carré’s classic of realistic Cold War-era cloak and dagger, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” it’s that people in the espionage business should not be show-offs. If everyone knows you’re a spy, you’re not doing it right.

Nevertheless, documents get released over time, old stories get told, and the end result is that we now know of a surprisingly large number of world-renowned writers, actor, and others who have worked pretty high up, and sometimes rather low down, in the field of intelligence. On the other hand, whether or not some of them were actual spies is a matter of how you define spying. That’s why we like the rather inclusive definition we’ve placed up top. On his website, John le Carré, who worked for several years at England’s MI-6 and whose real name is David Cornwell, at first tells us he was not a spy at all, but then jauntily describes himself as a “spook” four paragraphs later. By any name, spies are cagey.

While a lot of these people were probably mainly bureaucrats, we’d add that the same thing could be said for le Carré’s most famed protagonist. Whether portrayed by Alec Guinness in the 1979 television adaptation or newly embodied for the big screen by Gary Oldman, the seemingly gentle and harmless George Smiley is a man one underestimates at one’s extreme peril.

In any case, some of the notables below were pretty deep in the trenches of the spy game, and some probably even killed people. Some may not really have been involved with intelligence at all, we can’t be sure. That’s one thing about dealing with espionage – it’s like it’s all supposed to be a big secret or something.

MI-6 operative David Cornwell began writing novels under a mandatory pen name partly because he hated — hated, we tell you — James Bond. To young Cornwell, Bond was a “fascist” who might as easily have joined the Soviet SMERSH if only “the girls had been so pretty and the martinis so dry.” His 1963 novel, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” was a gripping, bitter tragedy and an instant classic, but becoming a famed author and an implicit critic of MI-6 wasn’t the stated reason le Carré/Cornwell finally quit. His espionage career had apparently already been ended by Kim Philby, the Soviet mole whose betrayal inspired “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” As to the rest of Cornwell’s story? To the extent the English gossip press will allow, the ex-spook has had a penchant for secrecy — at least until such time as his authorized biography will be released in 2014. Here’s some of what we’ve gathered in the meantime: Still a sometimes outspoken member of the English left at age 80, Cornwell was first hired to spy on the English far left. He soon graduated to join the spying establishment he later memorialized in his books as “the Circus.” Readers of le Carré’s “A Perfect Spy” will know of his shady father, who in real life mixed with such notorious British gangsters as the Krays. For now, the 1986 novel about a suspected double-agent is still probably your best source for clues about the real career of David Cornwell.

Commander Ian Fleming was no James Bond, but he could have persuaded you he was. A distant but often charming snob with a depressive side and a fervid imagination, 007′s creator was Codename 17F of British Naval Intelligence. Nicholas Rankin’s recent book, “Ian Fleming’s Commandos” describes how a cadre of soldiers under the future author’s command was tasked with pilfering German secrets, essentially spying on a mass level. That was next to nothing in the scheme of things, however. One early project involved Fleming and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the legendary founder of the OSS, the World War II-era ancestor of the CIA, in the mass reading and censorship of English and American mail. Some of Fleming’s proposed wartime intrigues have more than a hint of 007 about them, though the more imaginative scenarios had a way of not actually being used. One scheme involved a German plane stocked with English soldiers posing as Germans as a ruse to acquire the famed Enigma device. He also conceived of a plan to enlist Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist and self-proclaimed antichrist, in a plot to ensnare ensnare occult obsessed Nazi Party official Rudolf Hess, who inconveniently went and got himself captured. Another plan involved monitoring the forces of Spain in Gibraltar, but then fascist dictator Francisco Franco chose to sit out the war. The plan’s name may sound familiar: “Operation Goldeneye.”

Ian Fleming isn’t the only pop culture legend to have his World War II cloak and dagger activities exposed in a 2011 book. Jennet Conant’s “A Covert Affair” purports to be about the espionage and romantic activities of a certain future TV cooking institution named Julia McWilliams and her eventual husband, Paul Child. By all accounts, however, Conant’s book isn’t quite the tale of thefts of secret documents between kisses and boeuf à la bourguignonne that we might hope for, nor is it some dark tale of violent counter-insurgency. (Imagine a machine gun wielding Julia Child: “Bon appetit, motherfuckers!”) Indeed, the book has been derided by critics for really being more about the adventures of the couple’s friends and associates at the OSS. Among those friends was one Jane Foster, who was indicted as a double agent in 1957 and very briefly got Julia and Paul into unsavory McCarthy-era hot water, but the intrigue ended there. Whatever McWilliams and Child actually did for the OSS was, we imagine, like most spy work in that it was far too dull for anyone to write about. Later, the Childs were assigned to China and some of their labor no doubt involved cables from Mao’s communist forces and Chang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang. That might have been fairly interesting, but the only thing that seems to have got Paul and Julia excited, aside from each other, was the wonders of the local cuisine.

Yes, the German expatriate mega-star and pioneer in the field of sexual liberation was surely an inspiration for the “Inglourious Basterds” character of Bridget von Hammersmarck played by Diane Kruger. And, yes, the great star of cinema and cabaret really did volunteer for the top secret OSS. Even so, it’s stretching things to imply that the woman who aroused a generation in “The Blue Angel” and “Destry Rides Again” was any kind of secret agent. Unlike von Hammersmarck, Dietrich’s profound revulsion with the Nazis was well known and only moderated by the fact that she still had a mother and sister living in Germany; she would not have been much use as an undercover operative. On the other hand, Miss Dietrich really was very much a heroic fighter against fascism in World War II, allowing her German language recordings of American pop tunes to be covertly distributed in Hitler’s Europe, and she entirely deserved her Medal of Freedom. Even so, we’re mainly including her because this list could really use a little sexing up.

It’s easy to forget just how huge a star the slender English thespian was on both sides of the Atlantic. Leslie Howard used his immense power to give his Broadway costar, Humphrey Bogart, his big movie break in “The Petrified Forest.” And when David O. Selznick needed an actor who could romantically overpower ultimate A-lister Clark Gable for the affections of vivacious Vivien Leigh during the early portions of “Gone with the Wind,” Howard was the natural choice. Howard also had played a number of heroic and spy-like roles, so it’s easy to imagine him doing something dangerously top secret. That may be why speculation still persists about the mysterious 1943 plane crash that killed him. No one knows exactly why BOAC 777 from Lisbon was shot down by eight German fighters. One theory goes that Germany believed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was aboard. Or, perhaps, the Germans were trying to prevent a secret meeting that had already happened. Writer José Rey-Ximena asserted in a 2008 book that, through a former girlfriend, Howard had arranged a covert get together with Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, a natural ally to Mussolini and Hitler, and persuaded him to remain neutral in the war. If this is what happened, Howard may very well have shaved years off World War II, but also extended the reign of Spanish fascism for decades and ruined poor Ian Fleming’s Operation Goldeneye. Spying really is a messy business.

The man behind such movie classics as “Stagecoach,” “The Searchers” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” and very arguably the greatest of all American directors, the irascible but occasionally beloved John Ford was a Naval Reserve officer. Ford was busy on several fronts during the war, including making several documentaries and shooting secret footage for the OSS; he was wounded while filming the Battle of Midway and eventually cited for bravery. However, according to biographer Joseph McBride, the director took an active interest in spying for his Navy pals much earlier, including a now famous, seemingly casual 1939 Mexican fishing trip. Accurately or not, Ford was convinced he found evidence of a significant Japanese presence in the coastal areas of Baja as he and cinematographer George Schneiderman filmed and took stills. Meanwhile, buddies like John Wayne and Ward Bond were happily spending the trip fishing and drinking, but not necessarily in that order, and Ford undoubtedly took part in those festivities as well. Nevertheless, Naval Intelligence was impressed with the director’s report, and by the end of the war, Ford was an important advisor to William Donovan.

Who knew that the creator of Willy Wonka, “James and the Giant Peach,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” and the famous episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” involving murder with a frozen leg of lamb was also “one of the biggest cocksmen in America”? It might seem odder still if you know of author Roald Dahl’s problematic marriage to actress Patricia Neal and his generally unpleasant reputation in middle age. However, the surprisingly handsome young Dahl was a genuine war hero in the Royal Air Force and apparently blessed with immense savoir faire and a knack for bedding wealthy women traveling in key political circles. So it was that Canadian spy William Stephenson, who was working with English intelligence to lure the U.S. into the ongoing world war before Pearl Harbor, noted that Dahl had an amazing ability to gain entry to the corridors of power, as it were. Among Dahl’s lambs to the slaughter was one Clare Boothe Luce, a conservative Republican writer and politician opposed to FDR’s strongly anti-Nazi foreign policy who also happened to be married to Henry Luce, the powerful publisher of Time and Life magazines. We can’t claim any direct connection and we’re sure patriotism and Pearl Harbor played a huge part, but her support of FDR’s war effort became pretty strong when she was elected to Congress in 1942. We’re not sure if any of this background informed Roald Dahl’s amusing work on the screenplay for the fifth James Bond adventure, “You Only Live Twice,” but it couldn’t have hurt.

You’ve very likely never heard of cool and collected playwright-spy John Ashenden. Audiences disregarded 1936′s “Secret Agent,” an underrated Alfred Hitchcock-directed film version of the agent’s exploits, and there’s been only one BBC television adaptation since. Nevertheless, the Ashenden stories were big enough to launch the modern spy genre, and they were apparently all based on the personal experiences of Somerset Maugham, quite likely one of your English teacher’s favorite writers. With a medical degree in his background and a very dramatic love life involving both men and women, Maugham finished his 1915 novel, “Of Human Bondage,” while working as an ambulance driver alongside fellow World War I literati including Ernest Hemingway and e.e. cummings. The very busy Mr. Maugham was then recruited to travel to Switzerland to aide in efforts against a leftist pre-Gandhi Indian independence movement that espoused violence against the British imperialists. In return, the King’s government tried to kill many of the movement’s leaders in Europe, and Maugham was involved to some extent. Maugham was later asked to undertake a secret mission to Moscow to keep Russia in the war and Nicolai Lenin’s Bolsheviks out of power. No luck there, but after writing up the experiences with his usual flair for melodrama, Maugham racked up one more career success. Still, a spy’s lot is rarely a happy one. Winston Churchill had been deeply involved in the attempted Russian intervention. He used England’s severe Official Secrets Act to persuade Maugham to burn 14 of the 30 Ashenden stories.

If any actor ever earned his onscreen macho cred honestly, it was the magnetic, eccentric star of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” and “Dr. Strangelove,” not to mention such outstanding classic-era productions as “The Asphalt Jungle” and “Johnny Guitar.” You probably also remember Sterling Hayden as the bad cop whose good Italian meal comes to a downright nasty end in “The Godfather.” Ironically, early in his career, the future tough guy’s tough guy was sold as something of a pretty boy and had even pleased the gossip hounds by marrying his first co-star, Madeleine Carroll — the female lead of Alfred Hitchcock’s early spy entries, “The 39 Steps” and the aforementioned “Secret Agent.” After Pearl Harbor, however, all bets were off. Hayden, an experienced seaman, found himself using an assumed name and shipping supplies to leftist anti-Nazi partisans in Yugoslavia on behalf of William Donovan’s OSS. At one point, Wikipedia tells us, the strapping actor parachuted himself into Nazi-controlled Croatia and did…well, something very heroic, we’re sure. Hayden was, for his part, so impressed by the bravery of the partisans that some of their socialism rubbed off. For his troubles, the future General Jack Ripper received medals, a commendation from Yugoslavian strongman Marshall Tito and a 1951 summons from the hated House Un-American Activities Committee. That part of the story, Sterling Hayden would surely agree, was less heroic.

A passionate leftist, devout Catholic, and world class writer plagued with bipolar disorder, Graham Greene was probably the chief literary inspiration for the young John le Carré, Much of his most popular work was in the espionage genre and, even if you’re not sure who Greene is, if you watch a lot of movies, you may be familiar with “The Quiet American,” “The Human Factor,” “Our Man in Havana,” “This Gun for Hire” and “The Third Man.” He also famously worked for MI-6 during the Cold War despite political sympathies that have often been described as radical. Regardless, his books brilliantly explored the moral tensions that too often put the West on the side of the oppressors in places like Vietnam, Cuba and Africa. As to exactly what Greene did for MI-6, perhaps the reason we don’t know is that he worked underneath, and was good friends with, none other than MI-6 mole Kim Philby. Lest readers form any dark suspicions about Greene being a turncoat himself, it seems clear that he was probably ignorant of Philby’s duplicity. In any case, he remained free to bash U.S. and English foreign policy in very strong terms. If there were anything to prosecute him over, an excuse might have been found.

We considered leaving out this swing-era trumpeter turned CIA spook since he is far better known as a spy than for his youthful sojourn with the Harry James and Glen Miller orchestras. However, as the father of drummer-composer Stewart Copeland of the Police and Miles Copeland III, Sting’s manager and the founder of now defunct I.R.S. records, Miles Copeland, Jr.’s connection to show business and his involvement in some of the nastiest chapters in Cold War history surely rates a mention. Joining the OSS after Pearl Harbor, Copeland eventually became one of the CIA’s main Middle East specialists and seems to have been neck deep in a number of ill-conceived and immoral undertakings. By far the lousiest and most aggressively stupid of these was “Operation Ajax,” a 1953 CIA/MI6-sponsored coup which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the brutal regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Shah, of course, was in turn overthrown in the 1970s by radical Islamists who remain in power to this day. It appears that Copeland might also have been involved with operations protecting and giving arms to neighboring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, as well as the notorious MK-Ultra program, which explored the use of LSD and other drugs as possible chemical warfare agents. Copeland, who died in 1991, later retired to write. His first book was entitled “The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics.”

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but not many Jews have become famous playing baseball. Moreover, the clubby World War II OSS didn’t exactly make it easy for “ethnic types” to make their mark in the spy game. Boston Red Sox catcher Moe Berg did both. As described in the 1995 bestseller, “The Catcher Was a Spy,” Berg was a highly eccentric radio quiz show winner, amateur film cameraman, and Asiaphile who was recruited by the Office of Inter-American Affairs to shoot 16mm footage used in planning the post-Pearl Harbor “Doolittle Raid.” He later joined the OSS Balkans desk and, this might sound familiar, at one point parachuted into Yugoslavia to aid partisans. After that, Berg’s raw brain power led him to scientific espionage. At one point, he was sent to Switzerland to attend a lecture by quantum mechanics pioneer Werner Heisenberg. If the physicist had said anything to make Berg believe the Germans were close to developing an atom bomb, his orders were, we gather, “Shoot to kill.” Sadly, things went awry for Berg after the war. His requests to be assigned to the Israel desk were ignored. Berg was let go by the CIA during the mid-1950s and seems to have spent the rest of his life sponging off relatives. Nevertheless, he was a major league ball player, a spy and a Jew. A number of people have been one of those things, but he’s the only one we know who was all three.

He’s easily the least famous person on this list, but Oscar-winning screenwriter, film critic, and poet Paul Dehn co-wrote two of the greatest spy movies ever, and those movies could not have been more different from each other. 1964′s “Goldfinger” turned the increasingly successful, and increasingly tongue-in-cheek, James Bond series into an enormous worldwide craze. Martin Ritt’s classic 1965 film of John le Carré ‘s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” presented spying as a grimy, sad and morally bankrupt endeavor. (It also features the first ever film appearance of George Smiley.) Dehn, it turns out, was an ex-operative personally acquainted with both Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Moreover, on the DVD extras of the outstanding 2008 Criterion reissue of “Spy,” le Carré outs Dehn as a paid assassin during World War II. Since Quentin Tarantino clearly knows everything relating to movies — and knows it before we do — we can’t stop wondering if the courageous, highly intelligent, and apparently deadly former film critic Dehn might have been the inspiration for Archie Hickox of “Inglorious Basterds.” True, Dehn was gay — actually, we don’t really know that Archie isn’t — and he had the luck to survive the war. Dehn also went on to script 1974′s “Murder on the Orient Express” and all of the 70s sequels to the original “Planet of the Apes,” and we’re not sure if Archie would do that. Even so, until we hear directly from Tarantino that Paul Dehn wasn’t the inspiration for one of our favorite recent supporting characters, we’re going to assume he was.