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Albert R. Broccoli Date of Birth: 5
April 1909 Albert Romolo ('Cubby') Broccoli may have produced some 40 odd movies, but he is destined to forever be associated with just 16 of them - the 16 James Bond films he oversaw before his death. Broccoli's early live gave little indication of the path his adult life would take. Ultimately, he would create and guide one of the most successful and long-running of movie franchises, one that would eventually outlive him. But in his early years, Broccoli worked a number of menial jobs, many of them for relatives - one position saw him working as an assistant undertaker, which goes some way perhaps to explaining why Broccoli's James Bond films are so full of undertaker references. Broccoli's father, Giovanni, had left their native Calabria in Italy and settled in Long Island along with thousands of others immigrants hoping for a better life. But things hadn't gone according to plan - Giovanni had found work as a civil engineer, but his real ambition was to go into truck farming. Sadly, his ambitions were thwarted and the Broccoli children, the young Albert among them, were forced to work in the family garden, growing and selling what vegetables they could to help keep the family afloat. Giovanni relocated the family to Florida, where he hoped that his new citrus farm would improve their lot. And it might have worked had a hurricane not obliterated the farm in the late 1920s, leaving the family destitute. Following Giovanni's death, Albert moved in with his grandmother, who was now living in Astoria, New York, and began training as an assistant pharmacist. That wasn't to his liking, however, and he jacked it in and went to work for his cousin DiOrta who ran a successful casket company. Broccoli was taken on as office manager and he was soon teaching himself the skills required of any good salesman and accountant. Broccoli did well in his new career, but he again got itchy feet. When another cousin, Pat DeCicca, invited him to travel out to California, Broccoli didn't need much persuading. It was DeCicca, who was at the time married to actress Thelma Todd, who gave Broccoli his first taste of the Hollywood high life and the young man was hooked. As his extended holiday in Hollywood drew to an end, Broccoli decided that casket making was not the trade for him and decided to stay. To keep his head above water, he took to selling beauty supplies in and around Los Angeles and, thanks to the business acumen he'd developed back in New York, he was soon making a tidy living. Broccoli entered the film industry at the bottom, finding work as a lowly 'gofer' for Howard Hawks on his film The Outlaw (1943). Broccoli clearly loved the movie industry and learnt quickly, making plenty of useful contacts along the way. One of his most influential was producer Howard Hughes, who personally took over The Outlaw after Hawks was fired. On a recommendation from Joe Schenck, Broccoli was offered a contract at Twentieth Century Fox where he worked as production assistant on several films. But his days in the business were, temporarily, numbered - with the States dragged into World War II by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Broccoli joined the US Navy to do his bit for the war effort. On VJ Day, Broccoli immediately left the navy and headed straight back to Hollywood where he found employment - and some considerable success - as an agent with the Famous Artists Agency. His employer was Charles K. Feldman who, like Broccoli, would later become a producer, one of his projects being the disastrous Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967). Broccoli used his time under Feldman to learn more of the tricks of the film-making trade and spent much time with his wife mingling with the Tinsel Town elite. Slowly but surely, he was building up to fulfilling his ultimate ambition - to produce his own movie. But these were hard times in Hollywood. The war had placed an enormous drain on the American economy and money wasn't as freely available as it had been before the war. Certainly an untried wannabe like Broccoli was going to find it particularly hard going. Things began to change for Broccoli in 1951 when he hooked up with a former school friend, Irving Allen who had gone on to work as a Hollywood director. Both men were struggling to achieve what they really wanted within the industry and decided that working together, they might stand a better chance. So it was that Broccoli relocated to London, partnering Allen in the formation of Warwick Pictures. Ever the shrewd businessman, Broccoli saw a way to ease financial burden of film production by making use of the British government's Eady subsidy, which offered producers financial incentives to employ British talent in the production of their films. First out of the gate came The Red Beret, a modest war film that led to Broccoli's first meeting with two of the other main creative forces behind the early Bond films, scriptwriter Richard Maibaum and director Terence Young. The film was a massive hit for Broccoli and Allen and quickly followed through with an adaptation of Mark Robson's novel Hell Below Zero, which like The Red Beret, starred popular American actor Alan Ladd. It was another hit, and Warwick never looked back. Broccoli and Allen were soon the leading independent producers working in Britain, turning out a string of successful crowd-pleasers and, more importantly, introducing Broccoli to many of the talents that he would call upon when her turned his attention to James Bond. But tragedy was to cloud Broccoli's meteoric success - his wife developed cancer and Broccoli was forced to return to New York to look after his children as his spouse lay dying. It was during this stressful period that Broccoli first gravitated into James Bond's orbit. He received a call from businessman Ned McLaine, a friend of Fleming's from London, enquiring if the producer might be interested in buying the rights to the then massively popular Bond novels. Despite his own personal difficulties, Broccoli was delighted at the prospect of filming the most successful popular novels of their day and a meeting was hastily arranged between Fleming, McLaine and his brother Jacques, Fleming's agent Bob Fenn and the two Warwick executives. But things didn't quite work out as Broccoli had hoped - Allen was less than impressed by what he heard and stormed out, dismissing Fenn's request for $50,000 for the rights to the whole oeuvre as excessive. Inevitably, the partnership was doomed - by 1960, Warwick Films was dissolved and Broccoli was left alone to pick up the pieces. But Broccoli was to get a second chance at Bond when, in the Summer of 1961, he was introduced to fellow American producer Harry Saltzman by scriptwriter Wolf Mankowitz. In the three years since Broccoli's disastrous meeting with Fleming et al, Saltzman had bought the rights to the novels but had failed to secure financing. With just 28 days left on his option, he met Broccoli in June 1961 and the two men, though initially wary of each other, decided to join forces. The rest is film history. Broccoli and Saltzman were to spend the next few years creating one of the most successful film series of all times, one that would eventually outlive both of them. Such was Broccoli's commitment to the series that, with the sole exception of an adaptation of Fleming's children's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968, he would work on nothing but Bond films until his death in 1996. In 1975, Harry Saltzman sold his share in Eon Productions (it has been suggested that it stands for "Everything Or Nothing", though Broccoli always denied any knowledge of that), the company he had set up with Broccoli to produce the Bond films. Broccoli gradually introduced members of his family to the upper echelons of the production team, beginning with his step son Michael G. Wilson and later his daughter Barbara, both of whom would inherit the series after Broccoli's death. In 1981, Broccoli's services to the industry was recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they awarded him the Irving G. Thalberg Award in recognition of his career. In 1995, after a six year lay off, the Bond
films were successfully reinvented with Goldeneye, introducing a
new Bond in the shape of Pierce Brosnan and setting the series
off on one of its most successful runs since its heyday in the early
60s. Sadly, it was to be last film that Broccoli worked on. He died
the following year, leaving his beloved Bond films safely in the hands
of Wilson and Barbara. Even now, the series always
begins with the title: Albert R. Broccoli Presents... * = television 1954 1955 1962 1963 1964 1965 1967 1968 1969 1971 1973 1974 1977 1979 1980 1983 1985 1987 1989 1992 1995 2000 NO DATE 1943 1953 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1963 1970 SEE ALSO MAGAZINES Cinefantastique July 1989 pp.35, 58 (USA) Classic Images August 1996 p.56 (USA) L'Ecran Fantastique 10 pp.14-17 (France) Empire October 1996 p.18 (UK) Eyepiece January / February 1985 pp.28-29 (USA) Eyepiece May / June 1987 pp.98 - 104 (USA) Eyepiece August / September 1996 pp.27-28, 30-33
(USA) Film and TV Technician May 1987 p.1 (UK) Film Francais 5 July 1996 p.16 (France) Film Review September 1996 p.8 (UK) GBCT News March 1979 pp.12-14 (UK) The Hollywood Reporter 12 January 1970 p.3 (USA) The Hollywood Reporter 6 December 1978 p.9 (USA) The Hollywood Reporter 12 April 1982 pp.3-9 (USA) The Hollywood Reporter 14 July 1987 pp.S14 - S22 (USA) Premiere August 1996 p.23 (UK) Screen International August 1976 p.11 (UK) Screen International 26 March 1977 p.6 (UK) Screen International 9 September 1978 p.4 (UK) Screen International 23 June 1979 p.17 (UK) Screen International 4 July 1981 p.14 (UK) Screen International 20 February 1982 p.2 (UK) Screen International 11 June 1983 p.18 (UK) Screen International 8 September 1984 pp.1, 2 (UK) Screen International 12 January 1985 pp.1, 2 (UK) Screen International 27 September 1986 p.48 (UK) Screen International 8 May 1992 p.3 (UK) Screen International 17 November 1995 pp.22-38 (UK) Screen International 5 July 1996 p.1 (UK) Stills October 1984 p.3 (UK) TV Times 24 February - 2 March 1977 pp.2-5 (UK) OTHER SOURCES National Film Theatre programme September 1998
pp.18-21 (UK)
Last Updated: 15 October, 2008
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