20 Things You Didn't Know About From Russia With Love (1963)
18. The Wives Have It
Cameo roles in the Bond films have become quite famous over the years with Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli’s stepson and current producer of the films, Michael G. Wilson famously making fleeting Sir Alfred Hitchcock-style appearances in Goldfinger (1964). And then in every Bond film from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) onwards.
However, in From Russia With Love, the filmmakers’ wives get the key cameo roles.
During the sequence in which James Bond meets Mehmet (Nusret Ataer) - one of the late Kerim Bey’s many sons - at Beograd (a.k.a Belgrade) station, producer Harry Saltzman’s wife, Jacqueline is leaning out of a window on the Orient Express in front of Red Grant whilst he discreetly observes Double-0 Seven.
Later, in the film’s closing scenes, whilst Bond and Tatiana Romanova (a.k.a. Tania) share a romantic interlude in a Venetian gondola, they are being filmed from the Ponte della Paglia by a tourist couple. The female tourist is Dorothea Bennett, who was a novelist and screenwriter, as well as being the first wife of the film’s director, Terence Young.