James Bond Designer Sir Ken Adam Dies Aged 95
James Bond production designer Sir Ken Adam has died, aged 95.
According to the BBC News, the 95-year-old Oscar-winning production designer died at his home in London on Thursday after a short time in hospital.
“Sir Ken’s famous sets include the triangular Pentagon War Room in Dr Strangelove and the villain’s headquarters in the 1962 James Bond film Dr No.” He also created the inside of Fort Knox for the 1964 Bond film, ‘Goldfinger’.
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Amongst Ken Adam’s most iconic work was the now legendary scene with Sean Connery’s James Bond strapped to a table, with Blofeld pointing a deadly laser at him. “Do you expect me to talk?” Bond pleads. “No, Mr. Bond,” Blofeld famously replied. “I expect you to die.“
But Sean Connery was a bit more nervous than he let on…
“Sean was absolutely terrified,” Adam said with a laugh. And for good reason – with laser technology still in its infancy back in 1964, the laser beam was just a prop designed by Ken Adam… and the table was actually being sawn from underneath as the laser headed towards Connery’s delicates.
And James Bond’s iconic Aston Martin ejector seat? That was his idea, too…
“The ejector seat was an idea that came from my days as a pilot,” he once told the LA Times.
Ken Adam’s other work included the titular car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
“As a person he was remarkable,” said his biographer Sir Christopher Frayling. “Roger Moore once said about him that his life was a great deal more interesting than most of the films that he designed.”
“He was a brilliant visualiser of worlds we will never be able to visit ourselves - the War Room under the Pentagon in Dr Strangelove, the interior of Fort Knox in Goldfinger - all sorts of interiors which, as members of the public, we are never going to get to see, but he created an image of them that was more real than real itself.”
Ken Adam died Thursday 10 March 2016.
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Picture Credit: United Artists, WENN
