We think of the Bond films as being conservative in terms of nudity, and this appears conservative if you analyze it superficially, but this was groundbreaking nudity in 1963! I know it’s nothing by today’s standards, but if you exclude softcore films, this would have been one of the top four nude scenes of 1963, just behind Brigitte Bardot in Contempt, Elke Sommer in Seduction by the Sea, and Jayne Mansfield in Promises! Promises!
Daniela, the first runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant in 1960, and the first woman ever to appear nude in a Bond film, retired from acting 58 years ago (!!), but is still alive, according to the internet. She turned 84 just three weeks ago.
Weird trivia: Daniela later appeared in “O.K. Connery” AKA “Operation Kid Brother” (1967), which starred Neil Connery, the actual kid brother of Sean Connery. It was, appropriately enough, a spy spoof. Neil played the challenging role of Neil Connery.
The Bondmania of the 60s inspired many copycats and spoofs. One of my local TV stations ran “Super Spy Theater” after hours on one weekend night, paired with “Chiller Theater” on the other night. As was typical for local TV stations in those days, Chiller Theater had a “scary” host. I don’t remember whether Super Spy Theater had a smooth host.
More Bond:
Virginia Hey topless in The Living Daylights (1987)
Denise Perrier in Diamonds are Forever (1971)
She isn’t naked, but she was Ursula Andress – seen here in Dr. No. (1962)
She had that weird scene with Lotte Lenya in which Lotte leers at & gropes Daniela to show us that she’s a lesbian, but they didn’t follow up on that in the slightest, so I could never figure out why they bothered to do something a little risky like that for no apparent purpose. Unless it’s supposed to be the insinuated reason Daniela chooses to save Bond and kill Col. Klebb at the end: she has made love to Bond and is now certain of her feminine sexuality, so she’s angry at Klebb for hitting on her, and shoots her. That’s the *only* reason I can think of for the brief lesbian scene to be in a 1963 movie.
Also I think I heard in a documentary or DVD commentary of the film that a body double was used for the nude scene, but can’t remember for sure.
Speaking of copycats, it had slipped into the dungeon of what’s left of a memory but I sorta recall Matt Helm with Dean Martin. Kraft has never made anything as cheesy.
If the theme is nudity in Bond films, I recall theat Barbara Bach had a brief see-through shower door scene in The Spy Who Loved Me. Don’t know if you could actually see anything though.
That’s a confirmed body double.
Great find, scoop – I must have only seen the ABC Sunday night movie version of this all this time
I’d really like to learn more about the opening title sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me. It was really when I started to be interested in naked gymnastics.
I assumed you were talking about the Rick Sylvester’s ski-parachute jump – still the greatest opening stunt from any Bond film.
But the naked gymnastics were nice, too. Maurice Binder did those opening sequences, and according to his IMDB page he used to deliver them at the very last minute to get around the censors.
Great opening sequence, and the title song is second only to Goldfinger.