Kevin McClory:Kevin McClory, who has died aged 80, was a screenwriter, producer and director. The Irish-born co-producer of two James Bond films, Thunderballand its remake, Never Say Never Again, he fought and lost a long legal battle for a share of the highly lucrative 007 movie franchise.
In 1958 he and Jack Whittingham began working with Ian Fleming on an original script with the working title Thunderball, which was to be the first Bond film. Fleming welcomed McClory's involvement, writing, "there is no one who I would prefer to produce James Bond for the screen". The project came unstuck, however, and the first screen Bond to emerge became a US agent, "Jimmy", in an American television production of Casino Royale.
All that remained of McClory's collaboration with Fleming was an unfinished screenplay that Fleming reworked in novel form as Thunderball,the ninth book in the Bond series and published in 1961.
Neither McClory nor Whittingham were credited and they took legal action, which was settled out of court in 1963. The novel was from then on acknowledged to be "based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and the author".
The litigation caused Harry Saltzman and Albert R "Cubby" Broccoli to launch the series of Bond films in 1962 with Dr Norather than Thunderballas they had originally intended. They came to an agreement with McClory over making a film of Thunderball whereby he received sole credit for the adaptation. In addition, McClory retained the rights to remake the film after a period of 10 years.
But in 1976 McClory's plan to produce a film, James Bond of the Secret Service, had to be abandoned in the face of threatened litigation by the Broccoli family.
An American producer, Jack Schwartzman, took the project in hand and, with the help of Warner Brothers, Thunderballwas remade as Never Say Never Againin 1983.
McClory was credited as executive producer, and persuaded Sean Connery to return to the role of agent 007 after an absence of 12 years.
Subsequent attempts by McClory to develop further Thunderball projects came to nothing. He secured backing by Sony for a project, Warhead 2000 AD, but it was scrapped following a legal challenge by MGM and United Artists.
Under the terms of an out-of-court settlement Sony ceded any rights to making a James Bond film. Prior to the settlement Sony had taken legal action against MGM claiming that McClory was part-creator of the cinematic Bond and was owed fees for all past films. A US federal appeals court in 2001 threw out the case, ruling that there had been undue delay in bringing the action.
Concluding the hearing, the judge said: "So, like our hero, James Bond, exhausted after a long adventure, we reach the end of our story."
Ironically, in 2004 Sony acquired MGM; however, the Bond film rights remained under the Broccoli family's control.
Born in Dún Laoghaire in 1926, McClory started his film career as a technician at Shepperton Studios, where he worked as an assistant to John Huston on films including The African Queen (1951) and Moulin Rouge (1952). He was associate producer on Mike Todd's Around The World in 80 Days (1956) and then wrote and directed the 1957 film The Boy and the Bridge.
His marriage to the heiress Bobo Sigrist was one of the society weddings of 1963. His second marriage, in 1977, to Elizabeth O'Brien, daughter of the racehorse trainer Vincent O'Brien, also made news.
He lived in Straffan House, Co Kildare, for many years and at Paradise Island, Nassau, Bahamas. In 1976 he sold 227 acres of land at Straffan for £340,000 - a record price of almost £1,500 per acre.
His legal tussles were not confined to issues of copyright. In 1971, at the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin, he was found not guilty of assaulting John Bailey, a former Bahamas magistrate, causing him actual bodily harm. Hugh O'Flaherty, prosecuting, said that a relationship between Bailey and McClory's wife [Ms Sigrist] may have given McClory "some sense of grievance".
In 1978, at the high court in London, the publishers Weidenfeld and Nicolson and former business associate John Bryce agreed to pay substantial damages in settlement of his legal action arising from allegations contained in Bryce's memoir, You Only Live Once. Leon Brittan QC, who later served in government under Margaret Thatcher, acted for him.
In 1988, Loughrea district court ordered him to have two boxer dogs put down after they savaged the woman owner of John Huston's former home at Craughwell, Co Galway. McClory had been staying in a basement apartment in the house.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, daughters Siobhán and Saoirse, stepdaughter Bianca, and sons Branwell and Seán.
Kevin O'Donovan McClory: born June 8th, 1926; died November 21st, 2006