My contact with Albert R. Broccoli (Cubby) started when I received a phone call from Jerry Cassidy.
“Are you the Revox people?” Jerry asked. “Yes, I replied.
“We’re the Bond people” he retorted. I was impressed. “We want to get a Revox tape recorder” he continued. So a deal was done and I was soon on my way to Audley Square in Mayfair with an A77 in the back of my light blue Jaguar E-Type Coupe.
I carried the machine into the offices of Eon Productions who had bought most of the Fleming scripts, met with Jerry and took the A77 upstairs to what turned out to be Cubby’s office. It was also Harry Saltzman’s office. Their two partners desks facing one another as indeed they should for they had jointly purchased those remaining Bond scripts.
I set the machine up with a tape handed to me by Jerry. In walked a big man who asked me in a warm and friendly to play the tape which I then did. To the tinkling of a piano came a voice with the lyric “Oh you Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang…..”. It sounded a bit thin and weak to me but when it was later orchestrated – Wow!
Ian Fleming had written children’s stories as well as the famous Bond series and Cubby had bought the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang script personally. By chance Cubby’s second wife Dana, had seen that the original silver model of the car was to be auctioned by a major London Auction House and she bought it and gave it to Cubby for a Birthday or Christmas present. Apparently this moved Cubby to look again at the script and led to the idea of making Chitty Chitty Bang Bang into a musical became a reality.
I met with Cubby on a number of occasiona after that. He wanted to discuss what could be done to improve the quality of the sound in cinemas. For years RCA and Westrex had controlled cinema sound installations and although magnetic strip systems had helped to improve quality beyond the original optical system Cubby still felt that a quantum change was needed.
At that time Ray Dolby was living in London. Ray and I had become good friends, meeting often for gormet dinners. I mention to Ray that Cubby was very interested in improving sound quality in cinemas and it the sound recorded into the soundtrack in the first place. Ray took this on board and started working on it. Whether he met with Cubby over this matter I don’t know.
Cubby knew that I had an office in LA and asked me to comment and advise on the installation of a good sound system in his property in Beverley Hills. He had bought the mansion previous owned by the assassinated Dominican Dictator, Trujillo. Likewise I was asked to comment on the installation carried out by Wesley Ruggles Jnr in Cubby’s Mayfair home. At that time Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Cubby and his second wife Dana, was about ten? years old and bounced around the room as I carried out my inspection. Now, of course, she is joint Producer of the current Bond films. Dana had a brother, Robert, who died three weeks before his forthcoming marriage to Susanna Sinclair, a very dynamic lady of Russian/Italian and Scottish decent, who has now become a close friend of mine.
Cubby knew Wesley through his contact with his father, Wesley Ruggles, a famous American Actor and prolific film producer. At that time Wesley had a deep interest in sound and worked with (for) Clive Sinclair at the River Mill in St Ives.
Small World,.