SALTZMAN, HARRY

SALTZMAN, HARRY (1915–1994), film producer. Harry Saltzman was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. While a child, he moved to the United States but is said by one biographer to have returned to Canada to serve in the Canadian military during World War ii. He did not see overseas duty but was attached to a Canadian Air Force supply unit. In the late 1940s he was back in the United States, where he spent several years working in early American and British television. In the 1950s he emerged as one of the pioneers in London's New Wave/Angry Young Man movement. His first major film work was with Woodfall, the company that produced Saltzman's well-received and money-making social dramas Look Back in Anger (1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and The Entertainer (1960). In the later 1950s he became interested in the James Bond series of novels, and paid writer Ian Fleming $50,000 for a six-month option, but could not interest a major film company until he teamed up with Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli. They founded eon (Everything Or Nothing) Films and Danjaq, S.A. (an amalgam of their wives' first names, Dana and Jacqueline). After agreeing to a film deal with United Artists in 1961, they jointly produced the Bond thrillers Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Liveand Let Die (1973), and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). Saltzman made other films on his own, including the Harry Palmer spy series (with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, "the thinking man's James Bond"). In 1975 Saltzman sold his interest in Bond to United Artists. He produced one more film, Nijinsky (1980), before he suffered a stroke at the age of 65 and was forced to retire.

[Joel Greenberg (2^nd ed.)]