Development While
From Russia with Love was in production,
Richard Maibaum began working on the script for ''
On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the intended next film in the series, but with the release date set for September 1964 there was not enough time to prepare for location shooting in Switzerland and that adaptation was put on hold. With the court case between Kevin McClory and Fleming surrounding Thunderball
still in the High Court, producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman turned to Goldfinger
as the third Bond film. Goldfinger
had what was then considered a large budget of $3 million (US$ million in dollars), the equivalent of the budgets of Dr. No
and From Russia with Love'' combined, and was the first Bond film classified as a box-office blockbuster. that saw him denied a percentage of the film's profits. Broccoli and Saltzman turned instead to
Guy Hamilton to direct. Hamilton, who had turned down directing
Dr. No, felt that he needed to make Bond less of a "superman" by making the villains seem more powerful. Hamilton knew Fleming; both had been involved in intelligence matters in the
Royal Navy during the
Second World War.
Goldfinger saw the return of two crew members who were not involved with
From Russia with Love:
Bob Simmons as
stunt coordinator and
production designer Ken Adam. Both played crucial roles in the development of
Goldfinger, with Simmons choreographing the fight sequence between Bond and Oddjob in the vault of Fort Knox, which was not just seen as one of the best Bond fights, but also "must stand as one of the great cinematic combats", while Adam's design efforts on
Goldfinger were "luxuriantly baroque" Hamilton said Dehn "brought out the British side of things". Connery disliked his draft, so Maibaum returned. Dehn also suggested the
pre-credit sequence be an action scene with no relevance to the actual plot. After five days in the US, production returned to England. The primary location was
Pinewood Studios, home to, among other sets, a recreation of the Fontainebleau, the
South American city of the pre-title sequence and both Goldfinger's estate and factory. The end of the chase, when Bond's Aston Martin crashes into a wall because of the mirror, as well as the chase immediately preceding it, were filmed on the road at the rear of Pinewood Studios Sound Stages A and E and the Prop Store. The road is now called Goldfinger Avenue.
London Southend Airport was used for the scene where Goldfinger flies to Switzerland. Just three weeks prior to the film's release, Hamilton and a small team, which included Broccoli's stepson and future producer
Michael G. Wilson as assistant director, went for last-minute shoots in Kentucky. Extra people were hired for post-production issues such as dubbing so the film could be finished in time. To shoot Pussy Galore's Flying Circus gassing the soldiers, the pilots were only allowed to fly above 3,000 feet. Hamilton recalled this was "hopeless", so they flew at about 500 feet, and "the military went absolutely ape". The scenes of people fainting involved the same set of soldiers moving to different locations. Saltzman disliked the design's resemblance to a prison, but Hamilton liked it enough that it was built. The
comptroller of Fort Knox later sent a letter to Adam and the production team, complimenting them on their imaginative depiction of the vault.
Effects s were built for production, one of which had no gadgets.|alt=A silver-colour car; the plate reads "JBZ6007". "Before [
Goldfinger], gadgets were not really a part of Bond's world," Hamilton remarked.
Production designer Ken Adam chose the DB5 because it was the latest version of the
Aston Martin (in the novel Bond drove a DB Mark III, which he considered England's most sophisticated car). The company was initially reluctant, but was finally convinced to make a
product placement deal. In the script, the car was armed only with a
smoke screen, but every crew member began suggesting gadgets to install in it: Hamilton conceived the revolving number plate because he had been getting many parking tickets, while his stepson suggested the ejector seat (which he saw on television). A gadget near the lights that would drop sharp nails was replaced with an oil dispenser because the producers thought the original could be easily copied by viewers. can be seen in the trailer. Another car without the gadgets was created, which was eventually furnished for publicity purposes. It was reused for
Thunderball. Lasers did not exist in 1959 when the book was written, nor did high-power industrial lasers at the time the film was made, making them a novelty. In the novel, Goldfinger uses a
circular saw to try to kill Bond, but the filmmakers changed it to a laser to make the film feel fresher. Hamilton immediately thought of giving the laser a place in the film's story as Goldfinger's weapon of choice. Ken Adam was advised on the laser's design by two
Harvard scientists who helped design the water reactor in
Dr No. The laser beam itself was an optical effect added in post-production. For close-ups where the flame cuts through metal, technician Bert Luxford heated the metal with a
blowtorch from underneath the table to which Bond was strapped. The model jet used for wide shots of Goldfinger's
Lockheed JetStar was painted differently on the right side to be used as the presidential plane that crashes at the film's end. Several cars were provided by the
Ford Motor Company including a
Mustang that Tilly Masterson drives, Visually, the film uses many golden motifs, reflecting the novel's treatment of Goldfinger's obsession with the metal. All of Goldfinger's female henchwomen in the film except his private jet's co-pilot (black hair) and stewardess (who is Korean) are red-blonde, or blonde, including Pussy Galore and her Flying Circus crew (both the characters Tilly Masterson and Pussy specifically have black hair in the novel). Goldfinger has a yellow-painted Rolls-Royce with number plate "AU 1" (
Au being the chemical symbol for gold), and also sports yellow or golden items or clothing in every film scene, including a golden pistol, when disguised as a colonel. Jill Masterson is famously killed by being painted with gold, which according to Bond causes her to die of "skin suffocation". (While this is an entirely fictional cause of death, the iconic scene caused much of the public to accept it as a medical fact; an urban legend circulated that the scene was inspired by a Swiss model who accidentally died the same way while preparing for a photo shoot.) Bond is bound to a cutting bench with a sheet of gold on it (as Goldfinger points out to him) before nearly being lasered. Goldfinger's factory henchmen in the film wear yellow sashes, Pussy Galore twice wears a metallic gold vest, and Pussy's pilots all wear yellow sunburst insignia on their uniforms. Goldfinger's Jetstar hostess, Mei-Lei, wears a golden bodice and gold-accented sarong. The concept of the recurring gold theme running through the film was a design aspect conceived and executed by Ken Adam and art director
Peter Murton. ==Music==