By now, everybody in the Western world is aware that James Bond is celebrating his silver anniversary in the movies with the release of The Living Daylights, starring a brand-new Bond, Timothy Dalton, and a brand-new Bond Beauty, Maryam d'Abo. If you're a newcomer to Playboy's readership, you may not realize that this magazine's relationship with the world's most famous secret agent dates back even further--to 27 years ago, when we published our first 007 thriller. Bond Beauties, too, have long been identified with Playboy; several, among them Kim Basinger and Lana Wood, came to producers' attention via our pages. All in all, there have been 17 James Bond movies, 15 of them made by Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, who, with Harry Saltzman, acquired film rights to the Ian Fleming novels in 1961. The rest, as they say, is history.
James Bond himself is not only a Playboy reader but a Playboy Club keyholder. That's the message of at least two Bond films. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, one-time 007 George Lazenby reads a copy of the magazine while his combination safecracking/duplicating device is copying Blofeld's lawyer's files. In Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery plants his wallet--which contains his Playboy Club Key-Card--on the corpse of a smuggler. Going through the billfold, Jill St. John reaches the mistaken conclusion that James Bond is dead. That, movie fans, just isn't in the cards. It's estimated that half the world's population has seen at least one James Bond movie--in a theater, on TV or on video (CBS/Fox is rereleasing 14 tapes as a 25th-anniversary special). Then there are trivia books, an Official James Bond Movie Book--even a coincidental Iranscam connection: The yacht Nabila, seen in Never Say Never Again, belongs to wealthy Saudi arms-for-hostages middleman Adnan Khashoggi. Wonder what Ian Fleming would have made of that particular caper
