Cover to the Danish edition of the From Russia With Love comic strip adaptation.
Title panel from the newspaper comic strip adaptation of “From Russia With Love” published in the Daily Express from February to May, 1960.
In Ian Fleming’s novel of “From Russia With Love” the movie poster for the 1953 movie “Niagra” starring Marilyn Monroe and Joesph Cotten covered the billboard that served as one wall of the shack where the Bulgarian hitman Krilencu makes his hide-out. Krilencu’s escape trap door is lined up with Monroe’s mouth. As this scene in the novel is set in Turkey, on the poster the movie title is spelled as NIYAGARA. (A detail that is duplicated in the artwork of the Daily Express comics strip adaption.)
As “Niagra” was produced by 20th century Fox rather than normal Bond distribution company United Artists, in the 1963 movie version of “From Russia With Love” the poster was replaced by one promoting a contemporary UA film “Call Me Bwana,” featuring Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg.
Bulldog Drummond was the British adventurer hero of a series of novels published between 1920 and 1954. He is often cited as a “proto-James Bond” in literature and pop-culture. Like Bond he had his own series of movies, 25 in total produced between 1922 and 1968, featuring different actors in the lead role. The poster above is for the first Drummond movie from 1922 starring American actor Carlyle Blackwell. (Another Bond parallel in having the first screen appearance of a quintessential British character played by an American.)
In the novel of From Russia With Love, The SMERSH killer Donovan Grant taunts Bond by comparing him to Drummond during their face off on board the Orient Express.
The Basilica Cistern - also known as “Yerebatan Sarnıcı” or The Sunken Palace is the largest several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul, Turkey. The cistern was built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. (More information on the Cistern and its history can be found here.) - In the movie “From Russia With Love” Kerim Bey, head of Station T (Turkey), keeps a boat moored on the underground reservoir and daily rows over from a set of underground steps near his office to an observation post under the Russian consulate where he had an ex-Royal Navy telescope installed so he can spy on Russian security meetings.
