20 Things You Didn’t Know About Thunderball (1965)
1. “No Well-Dressed Man Should Be Without One!”
The rocket-powered jet pack that aids Double-0 Seven's escape in the pre-credits sequence is a particularly famous Bond gadget. Audiences loved it because it was unobtainable, cutting-edge technology for its time.
Technically known as the “Small Rocket Lift Device”, the jet pack or "Rocketbelt" was developed by Bell-Textron in the 1950s to assist troops in "jumping" over battlefield obstacles. However, its thrust only lasted for 21 seconds.
Two US Army experts advised on the scene in which James Bond flies from the roof of the Château d’Anet to the Aston Martin DB5 below; one of them, Bill Suiter, performed the stunt himself. To maintain Double-0 Seven’s debonair image, the stunt was to have been performed without a helmet, but Suiter insisted on adopting safety precautions. Sean Connery later filmed shots of Bond donning a crash helmet before taking flight against back-screen projection footage at Pinewood Studios.
The sequence was originally meant to end with a crane shot of Bond and his French assistant, Mademoiselle La Porte (Maryse Guy Mitsouko) driving away in the DB5. However, it was considered more appropriate to segue from footage of the Aston Martin’s high-intensity water cannons into Maurice Binder's titles sequence, which highlights the underwater theme of Thunderball.
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