11 Behind the Scenes Photos of the Best James Bond Movie

Goldfingerarguably the best James Bond film and the third to star Sean Connery as 007, was released in Britain 60 years ago.

Here are some Goldfinger behind-the-scenes pictures of Bond, his friends and his enemies.

Light on

Goldfinger is perhaps most famous for the demented way the titular villain kills his aide-de-camp, Jill Masterson, played by Shirley Eaton: He kills her by having her painted gold, leading to her death by skin suffocation.

Above, Sean Connery ensures that the real Eaton does not suffer from skin suffocation despite her gold body paint. She seems nice.

Sharply dressed man

For once, a Bond girl isn’t wearing the most revealing costume. Here’s Connery with Eaton and Bond creator Ian Fleming, who died the month before Goldfinger was released.

Roles in Hay

Connery and Honor Blackman, who play, uh, Ms. Galore, rehearsing an infamous fight scene in Goldfinger behind the scenes photo above.

We are not sure if we can safely write Ms. Galore’s first name, as our stories are syndicated to many different media platforms with lots of understandably sensitive filters.

True love

Sean Connery as James Bond with his true love: His iconic Aston Martin, one of the most beautiful movie cars of all time.

A fully restored Goldfinger Aston Martin DB5 was sold for $6.4 million in 2019.

Auction house RM Sotheby’s said at the time that it included such features as “hydraulic over-rider rams on the bumpers, a Browning .30 caliber machine gun in each fender, wheel hub-mounted tire cutters, a rear bulletproof rear fender, a radar scope in the dashboard, oil- , caltrop and smoke screen dispensers, rotating license plates and an ejection system for the passenger seat.”

Odd jobs

Harold Sakata, who played Oddjob, clowns around the set and shows that he’s no bad guy behind the scenes.

The fall guy

From left to right, actor-stuntman Bob Simmons, who played Bond in the gunbarrel sequence, Connery and Nadja Regin, who played Bonita.

The gunbarrel sequence is of course the opening segment of the film where Bond, wearing a hat, walks across the screen in profile and suddenly turns to fire his gun at the audience as the Bond theme plays.

Make-up

Eaton’s gold paint reportedly took 90 minutes to apply, but it was worth it: Her gold-painted image graced the cover of LIFE magazine as part of the promotional campaign for the film, the third of the 27 Bond films.

If you are a collector, her questions about LIFE is the issue of November 6, 1964.

She is painted above by make-up artist Paul Rabiger, who also worked on Bond films, including Thunderball, You only live twice and From Russia with love.

Good as gold

Shirley Eaton is smiling, even covered in gold paint.

Eaton, a British actress also known for Continue films, retired from acting in 1969 to devote herself to family, but in 1999 she published her autobiography, perfectly titled Golden girl.

It was a bestseller and she went on to publish three more books.

In the club

Harold Sakata as Oddjob and Gert Fröbe as Auric Goldfinger.

Orson Welles was among those considered to play Goldfinger, a gold magnate who is obsessed with the soft metal but wanted too much money. (Shouldn’t that have made him even more qualified for the role?)

Fröbe, a German actor, was dubbed by actor Michael Collins, who continues something of a Bond tradition: Ursula Andress was similarly cast in the original Bond film, Dr. No.

From Russia with love

Tania Mallet, who played Jill’s sister, Tilly Masterson, poses for an amateur photographer named Sean Connery.

Mallet, the English actress and model who sometimes signed her name with two Ts, had an origin story straight out of a Bond movie: She was a descendant of Russian aristocrats on her mother’s side.

She had auditioned for the role of Tatiana Romanova in the second Bond film, From Russia with lovebut the filmmakers passed because of her British accent.

How Sean Connery Became Bond

Ian Fleming, left, initially didn’t think Connery resembled the super-suave elegant James Bond in his novels, who of course resembled Fleming himself.

But he quickly saw the Scottish actor’s appeal, and in one of his novels after Connery’s casting, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, “even responded to Connery’s cinematic Bond by putting some Scottish blood in him,” as Nicholas Shakespeare wrote in new book Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, an extract thereof you can read here.

Did you like these Goldfinger Behind the Scenes photos?

You will probably love it too These photos from Dr. Nothe first James Bond film, with Sean Connery and Ursula Andress. You might also like this video 10 Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon.

Main image: A post of Sean Connery as James Bond and Margaret Nolan over a commercial about Honor Blackman as Ms. Galore in Goldfinger. Both original pictures from United Artists.