20 Things You Didn't Know About Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
17. The Nicklaus Line
Screenwriter, Tom Mankiewicz joined the Bond team on Diamonds Are Forever as Cubby Broccoli felt that British writers could not write credible American bad guy roles. David Picker recommended the writer after seeing his play, Georgy.
Mankiewicz estimated that Fleming’s novel provided roughly 45 minutes of the film’s screen time, but the screenwriter’s involvement was not all plain-sailing.
Cubby disliked Mankiewicz's line “Alimentary, Dr. Leiter” for the sequence where Bond informs CIA agent, Felix Leiter (Norman Burton) where the smuggled gems are being concealed. When two filmgoers at the premiere laughed at the line, Cubby explained that they were likely doctors and that the line was lost on everyone else.
Worse was Cubby's reaction to Mankiewicz's dialogue for Ernst Stavro Blofeld during the oil rig finale when he quotes French writer, François de La Rochefoucauld, claiming that “humility is the worst form of conceit”. Cubby called it “the Nicklaus line” and wanted it removed from the script, but Mankiewicz convinced director, Guy Hamilton to shoot the scene in such a way that the line could not be edited out. This upset Cubby and, even though French audiences enjoyed the line, he informed Mankiewicz that France was the least successful market for the Bond films.
Given the success of Diamonds Are Forever, Mankiewicz was invited to write the next Bond film alone, provided that he tempered his use of extravagant dialogue!