Happy Birthday, Guy Hamilton! Born today in 1922 as Mervyn Ian Guy Hamilton, this French-born English film director made twenty-two films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including four James Bond films.
Typically, British stiff-upper-lip war dramas and action adventures laced with moments of sophisticated comedy were his trademark.
Hamilton was a son to where his English parents were currently living. His father was a press attache to the British embassy, and Hamilton spent his youth in Canada and France.
Years later, Hamilton attended school in England. Hamilton's first exposure to the film industry came in 1938, when he was a clapperboard boy at the Victorine Studios in Nice.
In 1939, at the outbreak of the World War II, Hamilton escaped from France by the MV Saltersgate, a collier bound for French North Africa; one of the other five hundred refugees aboard was English playwright, novelist and short story writer W. Somerset Maugham.
Having travelled from Oran, Algeria to the British Overseas Territory and headland Gibraltar on Spain's south coast before arriving in London, England, United Kingdom.
There, Hamilton worked in the film library at Paramount News before being commissioned in the Royal Navy; he served in the 15th Motor Gun Boat (MGB) Flotilla, a unit that ferried agents into France and brought downed British pilots back to England.
During this service, Hamilton was left behind for a month in occupied Brittany, France; he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).
After the war, Hamilton wanted to get into film production and managed to get a job on a second unit in Dartmoor on a Trevor Heid picture.
He was then put under contract by British film producer, director and screenwriter Sir Alex Korda as a third assistant director. Over the next few years, he worked his way up to a first assistant director.
Hamilton later said, "I found that working with bad Directors was infinitely more useful because you watched them get into trouble three times a day and puddle around and you say, you know, I won't do that, I don't want to fall into that trap."
While there, Hamilton worked on a film for French film director Julien Duvivier ('Pépé le Moko'). This was the 1948 British black and white drama/adaptation film 'Anna Karenina' starring Vivien Leigh.
Hamilton also later worked on a film for English film director Carol Reed ('Odd Man Out', 'The Third Man').
"I was devoted to Carol," said Hamilton later. "He made my life easy because I followed him around like a little dog while learning my trade. If you’d ask him a question, he’d always answer it...Carol Reed was the biggest influence on me and on everything that I did."
The following year, Hamilton was reunited with Reed on the 1949 British black and white film noir drama/mystery film 'The Third Man', in which he doubled for Orson Welles.
Two years later, Hamilton worked on John Huston's 1951 British/American Technicolor adventure/war film 'The African Queen'. Hamilton is credited as an assistant director.
Hamilton had his first experience with larger-budget films towards the end of the decade, when he replaced the sacked American born Scottish director and teacher Alexander Mackendrick ('The Ladykillers', 'Whiskey Galore!', 'Sweet Smell of Success').
This was on the set of the 1959 British-American black and white adaptation/romance film 'The Devil's Disciple', featuring Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster.
Three year later, Hamilton turned down an offer to direct the 1962 British spy thriller/action film 'Dr. No', the first James Bond feature. This in turn was handed over to British film director and screenwriter Terence Young.
Hamilton followed with his first James Bond film (and the third installment of the franchise) with the 1964 British spy mystery/thriller film 'Goldfinger'.
Hamilton was also able to successfully merge the series' mix of action adventure, sexual innuendo and black humour.
The powerful tycoon Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) has initiated Operation Grand Slam, a cataclysmic scheme to raid Fort Knox and obliterate the world economy.
However, James Bond, armed with his specially equipped Aston Martin, must stop the plan by overcoming several outrageous adversaries.
The following year, 'Goldfinger' won an Oscar for Best Sound Editing (Norman Wanstall). This occurred at the 37th Academy Awards in early April 1965.
'Goldfinger' was based on British author, journalist and naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming's titular 1959 thriller spy fiction novel. It is the seventh book in his James Bond series.
The film's budget of $3 million was recouped in two weeks 'Goldfinger' broke box office records by grossing $125 million at the box office in multiple countries around the world.
The Guinness Book of World Records went on to list 'Goldfinger' as the fastest grossing film of all time. Demand for the film was so high that the DeMille cinema in New York City, New York had to stay open twenty-four hours a day.
In his 1999 review, Roger Ebert said: "Of all the Bonds, "Goldfinger" (1964) is the best, and can stand as a surrogate for the others. If it is not a great film, it is a great entertainment, and contains all the elements of the Bond formula that would work again and again."
Later that same year, 'Goldfinger' was ranked #70 on the BFI Top 100 British films list compiled by the British Film Institute.
'Goldfinger' is currently the highest-rated James Bond film on Rotten Tomatoes. Ebert later declared this to be his favourite Bond film and later added it to his "Great Movies" list.
On AFI's 100 Years...100 Quotes list, "A martini. Shaken, not stirred." ranked in at #90. The line "Bond. James Bond" from 'Dr. No' ranks in at #22.
In a 2003 interview, Hamilton said that the contemporary Bond films relied too heavily on special effects and not as much on the spectacular and risky stunts of the Bond films of his era.
"I know that I’ve made some bad pictures, but when I was making a film, I knew I had to do the best I could with the material that I was working with," he said. Sometimes I wished I had a more cooperative or a better writer, but that’s the same for everybody."
Hamilton worked in particular with Sean Connery and Roger Moore, helping to increase the film franchise's popularity worldwide.
He often praised the actors highly. Of Connery, he said, "You don't tell Sean Connery how to play James Bond."
In 2015, Hamilton told Filmtalk that he preferred the earlier Bond films: "Now we see nothing but explosions and bang bangs and the stunts are not really very interesting with the trick photography: the FX man is always on top of it.
When we did stunts, the stuntman jumped out of a six-floor window into a wet sponge and if he missed the sponge, he could seriously hurt himself, but at least you knew he jumped."
On April 20, 2016, Hamilton passed at his home in Majorca, Spain. He was 93.
Moore later wrote on his Twitter account that he was "incredibly, incredibly saddened to hear the wonderful director Guy Hamilton has gone to the great cutting room in the sky. 2016 is horrid."
Among his Bond credits, Hamilton is also known for directing 'Diamonds Are Forever (1971), 'Live and Let Die' (1973), and 'The Man with the Golden Gun' (1974).
according to his personal life, Hamilton had been married twice. The first was to English film and television actress Naomi Chance. The second was to Algerian actress Kerima (Miriam Charrière). Kerima had been married to Hamilton until his death.
Hamilton maintained that, in his opinion, although the Bond films defy the formulaic, one of the golden rules in their production is to put the money up on the screen, particularly with the sets and stunts, which should look as expensive and spectacular as possible.
Hamilton had been active from 1938–1989.
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