Terence Young
Terence Young

Adapted from a 2016 post.

Film Finances Inc. had agreed to provide a "completion bond" for Dr. No and supply contingency funding to ensure the first James Bond film would be finished.

However, because of continuing cost overruns, Film Finances under its agreement with Eon Productions and United Artists, exercised its right to take over responsibility for the production as it began post production.

According to the 2011 book, A Bond for Bond, published by Film Finances, such an option was supposed to be a last resort. In 1962, Film Finances would end up doing it three times on United Artists movies, including Tom Jones, another film plagued by overruns.

Dr. No producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and director Terence Young would retain responsibility for creative decisions. Film Finances, however, now controlled the purse strings, author Charles Drazin wrote. The book reproduces documents in the archives of Film Financing.

Post-production included some additional film shooting to complete the movie, including shots of Bond (Sean Connery) in a shaft in Dr. No.'s headquarters, the agent laying on his hotel room when a tarantula arrives and two men exiting a hatch from the "dragon" that patrolled Crab Key.

Originally, these shots were to be performed over two days. With Film Finances now in control, they were done in a single day, April 26, 1962.

Other matters needed to be resolved. There had been 7,000 pounds (almost $20,000 at an exchange rate of $2.80 to the pound) in cost overruns for sets -- overages that production designer Ken Adam had anticipated and informed Saltzman about.

Film Finances agreed not to force repayment of the set overruns. In return, Danjaq SA, the holding company for Eon Productions, agreed on April 10, 1962 to grant 5 percent of Dr. No's profits to Film Finances.

However, Danjaq had the option to buy back Film Finances' profit participation for the sum of the 7,000 pounds (for the set overruns) plus an additional 2,500 pounds after Film Finances recovered all money advanced to finance the production. Danjaq ended up exercising the option, Drazin wrote. A copy of the agreement is on page 94 of the book.

Another issue was Terence Young's compensation. The director had agreed to defer as much as 10,000 of his 15,000 pound fee. More than 8,600 pounds was to be withheld from Young until it "had been earned back at the box office," Drazin wrote. (page 85)

This didn't  make Young happy.

"But I do feel, and I feel this most strongly, that Film Finances have behaved very shabbily to put it mildly," the director wrote in a letter to his lawyer (pages 95-98).

"When I got back from Jamaica, I expected to get a medal for what I had accomplished," Young wrote. "I have never in my life worked so hard, I have never on any location film had to put up with so many difficulties, and at the end I got no thanks whatsoever but was told Cubby and Harry made a mistake in ever taking me."

On page 99 and 100, there's a copy of a memo by Film Finances executive Robert Garrett about Young.

"I do not dispute that Terence Young probably worked very hard on location, but I do suggest he is a director who seems quite incapable of ever making compromises when things do not go smoothly."

In the end, Dr. No's final budget was more than 392,022 pounds (almost $1.1 million), according to a copy dated Jan. 11, 1963 filed by associate producer Stanley Sopel to Film Finances (pages 103-106). The sources of the money were 322,069 pounds from a Bank of America loan (the budget before overruns), 10, 063 pounds from United Artists and 59,890 pounds from Film Finances.

Film Finances, in a letter to Eon dated Jan. 21, 1964, said as of Dec. 31, 1963, it had been paid back with interest. From that point forward, author Drazin wrote, Eon would not utilize Film Finances' services for Bond films.

 Thanks to Gary J. Firuta for loaning the blog his copy of A Bond for Bond.