Above and below are the front and rear sleeves of four Japanese soundtrack pressings for the 1960s James Bond films Thunderball, From Russia with Love, You Only Live Twice, and Goldfinger. The themes were sung by Tom Jones, Matt Munro, Nancy Sinatra, and Shirley Bassey respectively, and pictured along with Sean Connery you see Bond beauties Claudine Auger and Shirley Eaton. Ms. Eaton, as wrong-place wrong-time Jill Masterson, had the dubious honor of being suffocated under a coating of gold paint, certainly one of the most infamous deaths of any Bond femme. We think these sleeves are great, and if you agree and want to see a lot more excellent 007 soundtrack art, check our previous posts here, here, and especially here.

James Bond soundtrack albums and singles, with production art covers, plus paintings by Frank McCarthy, Robert McGinnis and others.     

Check out this issue of the tabloid On the Q.T. from May of 1963. As always, at least one of the stars referenced on the cover is no longer widely known. In this case it’s Sabrina. She was a British model and television actress whose real name was Norma Sykes, but who became a legitimate one-name celeb based upon the anomaly of her forty-two inch bust and eighteen inch waist. Sabrina had a thing for royalty, and allowed her hourglass measurements to be thoroughly explored by such personages as the Duke of Kent, the Marquis of Milford-Haven, Prince Christian of the House of Hanover, Knight of the British Empire Sean Connery, and King Dingaling of Las Vegas Frank Sinatra. Sabrina did indeed have a specific diet she credited with helping maintain her figure, and if you absolutely can’t go to your grave without that knowledge, it’s here.

Scanning the cover again, we see Shirley Bassey has made an appearance. Bassey is a Welsh performer who sang, among other hits, the title track to the Bond film Goldfinger. What may not be immediately apparent to those unfamiliar with her is that she is black. So the photo of her with a white man speaks implicitly of interracial scandal without trumpeting it to the heavens in a headline. Perhaps that sort of restraint is why On the Q.T. called itself the class magazine in its field. Of course, on the not-so-classy side of the ledger is the banner concerning lesbians, with quotation marks around the word “pass.” Either this is to emphasize the word as slang, or to suggest that a lesbian’s quest to blend in with straight folk is fruitless. In either case, there's no doubt it implies this is a burning desire for all lesbians. How times change. These days, lesbians are considered chic and quite a few straight folk have a burning desire to associate with them—preferably after getting a good charge on the dvdcam and making sure the lighting is sufficient. We’ll have more from On the Q.T. later.

Assorted album sleeves from Argentine soundtrack maestro Lalo Schifrin, circa 1970s.

Today in 1964, Goldfinger opened in the United States. It was the third outing for 007, and the one that truly established Sean Connery as a global cinematic icon. The characters’ names are still the most delightful in all Bondage—Pussy Galore, Oddjob, and of course Auric Goldfinger, the man with the Midas touch, as Shirley Bassey so memorably sang in the theme song. One could easily argue that there have only been five good Bond movies. Goldfinger was certainly among that group.