's
Toyota 2000GT Open-Top was ranked by
Complex in 2011 as the seventh-best car in the
James Bond series. ''
On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the intended next film after Thunderball (1965), but the producers decided to adapt You Only Live Twice
instead because OHMSS
would require searching for high and snowy locations. Ted Moore, the director of photography on the first four films, was unavailable because he was filming A Man for All Seasons'' and was replaced by
Freddie Young. Gilbert, Young, producers Broccoli and
Harry Saltzman, and production designer
Ken Adam then went to Japan, spending three weeks searching for locations.
SPECTRE's shore fortress headquarters was changed to an extinct volcano after the team learned that the Japanese do not build castles by the sea. The group was due to return to the UK on a
BOAC Boeing 707 flight (
BOAC Flight 911) on 5 March 1966, but cancelled after being told they had a chance to watch a
ninja demonstration. In Tokyo, the crew also found Hunt, who decided to go on holiday after having his request to direct declined. Hunt was invited to direct the
second unit for
You Only Live Twice and accepted the job. Unlike most James Bond films, which usually feature various locations around the world, almost the entire film is set in one country, and several minutes are devoted to an elaborate Japanese wedding. This is in keeping with Fleming's original novel, which also devoted a number of pages to the discussion of Japanese culture.
Toho Studios provided soundstages, personnel, and the female Japanese stars to the producers.
Writing The first draft was written by
Sydney Boehm based closely on the original novel. As the screenwriter of the previous Bond films,
Richard Maibaum, was unavailable,
Roald Dahl (a close friend of Ian Fleming) was chosen to write the adaptation, despite having no prior experience writing a screenplay except for the uncompleted
The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling. stating that he had to create a new plot though "I could retain only four or five of the original story's ideas." On creating the plot, Dahl said he "did not know what the hell Bond was going to do" despite having to deliver the first draft in six weeks, and decided to do a basic plot similar to
Dr. No. Gilbert was mostly collaborative with Dahl's work, as the writer declared: "He not only helped in script conferences, but had some good ideas and then left you alone, and when you produced the finished thing, he shot it. Other directors have such an ego that they want to rewrite it and put their own dialogue in, and it's usually disastrous. What I admired so much about Lewis Gilbert was that he just took the screenplay and shot it. That's the way to direct: You either trust your writer or you don't." Saltzman and Broccoli were able to persuade Connery by increasing his fee for the film, but geared up to look for a replacement.
Jan Werich was originally cast by producer
Harry Saltzman to play Blofeld. Upon his arrival at the
Pinewood set, both producer
Albert R. Broccoli and director
Lewis Gilbert felt that he was a poor choice, resembling a "poor, benevolent
Father Christmas". Nonetheless, in an attempt to make the casting work, Gilbert continued filming. After several days, both Gilbert and Broccoli determined that Werich was not menacing enough, and recast Blofeld with
Donald Pleasence in the role. He found it uncomfortable, though, because of the glue that attached it to his eye. Many European models were tested for Helga Brandt, including German actress
Eva Renzi who passed on the film, with German actress
Karin Dor being cast. Dor performed the stunt of falling into a pool to depict Helga's demise, without the use of a double. Dor was dubbed by a different actress for the German release. Actress
Tsai Chin played Ling, the Bond Girl who helped fake Bond's death. She would appear as Madame Wu in the 2006 James Bond thriller
Casino Royale. UA CEO Bud Ornstein met with
Toshiro Mifune in the
Canary Islands to try to convince him to play Tiger Tanaka, but he was already committed to appear in
Grand Prix. The film was shot primarily in Japan, and most of the locations are identifiable. In summary: • Tokyo: After arriving in Japan at Akime, Bond goes to Tokyo. The initial scenes are set in and around the
Ginza area. The
Hotel New Otani Tokyo served as the outside for Osato Chemicals, and the hotel's gardens were used for scenes of the
ninja training. A car chase using the
Toyota 2000GT and a
Toyota Crown was largely filmed in the area around the
Olympic Stadium used previously for the
1964 Summer Olympics.
Tokyo Tower and the centre of Tokyo can be briefly seen in a sequence where the villains' car is dropped in Tokyo Bay. Tanaka's private subway station was filmed at the
Tokyo Metro's
Nakano-shimbashi Station. A sumo wrestling match was filmed at Tokyo's sumo hall, the
Kuramae Kokugikan; this has since been demolished. •
Kobe Docks appears in a sequence when Bond investigates the ship
Ning-Po, and is involved in a fight. • Bond's wedding at a Shinto shrine was filmed in
Nachi. •
Himeji Castle in
Hyōgo Prefecture was depicted as Tanaka's ninja training camp. • The village of
Bonotsucho Akime was where Bond and his Ama wife lived and where the Ama scenes were shot. • The ryokan Shigetomi-so (now known as Shimazu Shigetomisoh Manor) was used as the exterior of Tanaka's house. •
Kagoshima Prefecture was the location for various scenes depicting Little Nellie (see below). • Mount
Shinmoe-dake in
Kyūshū was used for the exteriors of SPECTRE's headquarters. Most of the interiors were shot at Pinewood. The opening sequence in Hong Kong used some location footage of a street in
Kowloon. Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour is also shown, but the at-sea burial of Bond and the retrieval of the corpse was filmed off Gibraltar and the Bahamas. The scenes with the light aircraft ferrying Bond to his supposed death were shot over very English-looking countryside in Buckinghamshire, whereas this was supposed to be Japan. Large crowds were present in Japan to see the shooting. A Japanese fan began following Sean Connery with a camera, and police had to deal with fan incursions several times during shooting. The heavily armed
WA-116 autogyro "Little Nellie" was included after Ken Adam heard a radio interview with its inventor,
RAF Wing Commander
Ken Wallis. Little Nellie was named after music hall star
Nellie Wallace, who has a similar surname to its inventor. Wallis piloted his invention, which was equipped with various mock-up armaments by
John Stears' special effects team, during production. Jordan would continue work for the Bond series with a prosthetic foot. The concluding shots involved explosions, which the Japanese government did not allow in a national park; hence, the crew moved to
Torremolinos, Spain, which was found to resemble the Japanese landscape. The sets of SPECTRE's volcano base, including operative heliport and monorail, were constructed at a lot inside
Pinewood Studios, at a cost of $1 million. Locations outside Japan included using the
Royal Navy frigate , then in
Gibraltar, for the sea burial, Hong Kong for the scene where Bond fakes his death, and Norway for the Soviet radar station. Lewis Gilbert's regular editor,
Thelma Connell, was originally hired to edit the film. However, after her initial, almost three-hour cut received a terrible response from test audiences, Peter R. Hunt was asked to re-edit the film. Hunt's cut proved a much greater success, and he was awarded the director's chair on the next film as a result.
Music The soundtrack was the fourth of the series to be composed by
John Barry. He tried to incorporate the "elegance of the Oriental sound" with Japanese music-inspired tracks. The theme song, "
You Only Live Twice", was composed by Barry and lyricist
Leslie Bricusse, and sung by
Nancy Sinatra after her father
Frank Sinatra passed on the opportunity. Nancy Sinatra was reported to be very nervous while recording – first she wanted to leave the studio; then she claimed to sometimes "sound like
Minnie Mouse". Barry declared that the final song uses 25 different takes. There are two versions of the song "You Only Live Twice", sung by Nancy Sinatra, one directly from the movie soundtrack, and a second one for record release arranged by
Billy Strange. The movie soundtrack song is widely recognised for its striking opening bars and oriental flavour, and was far more popular on radio. The record release reached No. 44 on the
Billboard charts in the US, and No. 11 in the UK. Both versions of the title song are available on CD. A different title song was originally recorded by
Julie Rogers, but eventually discarded. In the 1990s, an alternative example of a possible theme song (also called "You Only Live Twice" and sung by
Lorraine Chandler) was discovered in the vaults of
RCA Records. It became a very popular track with followers of the
Northern soul scene (Chandler was well known for her high-quality soul output on RCA) and can be found on several RCA soul compilations. == Promotion ==