28th October 1966: Lois Maxwell (left), Sean Connery (centre), Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama and Karin Dor (second from right) on the massive Pinewood set of the new Bond film ‘You Only Live Twice’, directed by Lewis Gilbert. (Photo by Larry Ellis/Express/Getty Images)
Sir Ken Adam was born Klaus Adam in 1921 in Berlin and escaped to England with his Jewish family before the war. He became one of only three Germans who flew in the wartime RAF.
His first major screen credit was production designer on the British thriller Soho Incident in 1956. He worked on the first Bond film Dr No and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. He then worked on the amazing and innovative sets for Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.
He later won an Oscar for the extraordinary production design for Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and most importantly of all designed the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car.
28th October 1966: Co-producers Harry Saltzman (1915 – 1994, left) and Albert Broccoli (1909 – 1996) on the massive purpose-built Pinewood set of the new Bond film ‘You Only Live Twice’, directed by Lewis Gilbert. (Photo by Larry Ellis/Express/Getty Images)
In conversation with Todd Longwell, Ken talked about the challenges building the You Only Live Twice set:
We were desperate because we had covered about two thirds of Japan and we were looking for some of the locations that Fleming had mentioned, and of course they didn’t exist. We went in two helicopters and on one of the last days on the Southern island of Kyushu we found this area of volcanoes and that triggered a lot of ideas. It was decided that it would be interesting to have the villain inside the crater. So then I came up with this design concept, and I’ll never forget [Bond producer] Cubby Broccoli asking me how much it was going to cost. I had no idea, obviously. And he said, “Well, will a million dollars be enough?” And I said, “Sure.” [laughs] A million dollars in 1966 was a fortune! But then my worries started, you know. Once he had agreed, I said, “Well, can I do it for a million dollars?”
Also, they were in trouble. In those days already, those Bond films had a release date in about 3000-4000 cinemas, and we didn’t have a script! And this was the first glimmer we had of something visually exciting happening. So he felt, I suppose, a million dollars would be a reasonable expenditure if I come up with a really exciting concept…
If someone does a skyscraper, it’s very easy to calculate, but I come up with a sliding lake of fiberglass 120 feet up on an inclination that was held by one cable, and nobody quite knew if it was going to work. And I realize that if something goes wrong, I’ll never work in film again. I had a lot of nervous moments.
28th October 1966: The massive purpose-built set of the new Bond film ‘You Only Live Twice’ at Pinewood Studios. (Photo by Larry Ellis/Express/Getty Images)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (GB, US 1968, Ken Hughes) image © Ken Adam Archive/Deutsche Kinemathek
Ken Adam: 5 February 1921 – 10 March 2016.
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