Details have been released on a very special event to help celebrate the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the release of Goldfinger (1964). It will be held at the luxury cinema Kino Victoria, Oslo, in Norway, on Thursday, May 22, 2014.
Organised as a joint collaboration between the Norwegian James Bond-magasinet and the premier Swedish 007 website From Sweden With Love, the not-be-missed guests will include the Academy Award-winning sound designer Norman Wanstall, Bond girl Margaret Nolan (who played Dink, Bond’s masseuse), and the two-time Academy Award winner Sir Ken Adam, who is arguably one of the cinema’s foremost production designers, and helped make Goldfinger into one of the most celebrated movies of the 1960s, and certainly one of the most iconic entries in the James Bond series.
Norman Wanstall, who won his Academy Award for his work on Goldfinger, has also worked on a number of other James Bond movies, including Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), and (in 1982-83) on the non-EON 007 movie Never Say Never Again.
In addition to her acting role in Goldfinger, Margaret Nolan helped make the very imagery of the movie stand out in people’s memories by featuring in the film’s iconic main titles, and also in the classic tie-in posters.
Sir Ken Adam, of course, was responsible for some of the most memorable set designs in movie history. In addition to Goldfinger, he worked on six other James Bond films, including the ground-breaking volcano rocket base in You Only Live Twice, which is said to have inspired a whole generation of younger set-designers and general architecture students.
But it was arguably Goldfinger that really first brought Ken Adam to wide public acclaim. In fact, with its gadget-laden Aston Martin and unforgettable Fort Knox interiors, Sir Ken’s work on the movie in many ways laid the design template for many of the subsequent 007 films. It is also said that many members of the cinema-going public were convinced that the Fort Knox interiors designed by Ken Adam were the real-life interiors of Fort Knox, America’s most important fortified vault and bullion depository (Sir Ken in fact designed them from his imagination, and they were built at Pinewood Studios in the UK).
Another special guest at the Oslo screening will be the British Ambassador to Norway, Ms. Jane Owen. Various Norwegan celebrities will also be in attendance.
The special event will be the first time a gala performance of Goldfinger has been screened in Norway, and the event will present a beautiful, newly-restored print of the film, specially imported from the UK, and screened in Oslo’s newest and finest cinema.
In a joint statement, the event’s organizers, Morten Steingrimsen (of James Bond-magasinet) and Anders Frejdh (of From Sweden With Love), said that it will be ‘a grand celebration’ of the movie. They also revealed that Sir Ken Adam will be accompanied to Norway by the British academic and film historian Sir Christopher Frayling, who has published two books on the work of Adam.
The special screening of Goldfinger on May 22 will be followed by the bonus of a public screening, open to the general public on May 23 at the Oslo Kino, which Wanstall and Nolan will also attend.
For more information on the special event and asociated activities, feel free to contact Morten Steingrimsen on: steingrimsen@gmail.com or Anders Frejdh on: anders@jamesbond007.se
Did you know? For the climax to Goldfinger inside the Fort Knox vaults, where Sean Connery’s 007 battles with formidable henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata), Bond producer Cubby Broccoli declared that he wanted the fight to take place in a ‘cathedral of gold’. Sir Ken Adam certainly took him at his word!