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Historien om de engelskspråkiga lobbykorten för James Bond-filmerna: Del III av III
Av: Simon Firth
Publicerad:
2026-01-27
2026-01-27
Detta är del III av III av en exklusiv artikelserie på webbplatsen From Sweden with Love. Del I och del II.
Lobbykort är 28x33 cm kort som, likt namnet antyder, visas i biografens lobby. De ska inte förväxlas med de 25x20 cm stora Front of the House (FOH) korten i Storbritannien, eller de amerikanska färgkortseten (Colour Still Sets), som visas i biografens lobby. Det nämndes tidigare att priserna på dessa kort förblir måttliga. Trenden bland säljare och gallerier av filmföremål är att sälja några av dessa kort som upplevs vara mer värda styckvis, i motsats till de kompletta set som ursprungligen skickades till biograferna. Detta är förvisso en övning i kapitalistisk profitverksamhet, men om det finns en marknad för denna transaktionsmetod måste man anta att den finns där för att utnyttjas.
Denna artikel hänvisar endast till produktionen i Storbritannien, USA och engelskspråkiga territorier – inga kommentarer kan göras om internationella lobbykortsuppsättningar på europeiska och utländska språk. Bond-serien hittills i historien (2025) omfattar 27 officiella och inofficiella filmer och har totalt producerat inte mindre än 60 lobbykortsuppsättningar med 492 kort, vars sammanställning finns i slutet av denna artikelserie.
The James Bond Double Bill lobby cards
Before home media and streaming became such an accepted part of our lives, the only way to see a Bond film a second time around was when these films were re-released in the cinemas as a double bill. This practice continued until For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Octopussy (1983) but there were only four double feature films that had an accompanying lobby set produced.
James Bond is Back to Back was the first such outing in 1965 which showcased Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963). A numbered set of eight produced in cost saving black and white – after all, its main release had swallowed the main marketing budget – four cards were devoted to each film. The titling and graphics were displayed along the bottom. There have also been unsubstantiated reports, albeit by collectors of established standing, that this set of eight cards also appeared in inked in colour or maybe even true colour. This said, only odd cards were spotted in New York so the theory is that these were only reproduced for a limited number of NY theatres.
A UK lobby card for the 1965 double bill of Dr. No and From Russia with Love. All rights reserved.
The next outing was for Goldfinger (1964) and Dr No in 1966 and quiz show fans will be delighted to learn that they are still being catered for with the anomaly that this double bill had two lobby sets produced; one in colour and one in black and white. Not only that, but the card numbering for each set was juxtaposed so colour card one would be the same as b/w card six. The paper stock for the colour set was of a lesser quality than the b/w set and the colouring was inked in as opposed to true.
UK lobby card number 2 for the 1966 double bill of Goldfinger and Dr. No. All rights reserved.
Thunderball (1965) and From Russia with Love was released as the Biggest Bond Sale in 1968. This is a superbly produced set in “true” colour with a bright and vibrant yellow border. The layout is similar to that of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice (1967) with black and white poster graphics each side. Even though this is not the earliest of the double sets, this is said to be the most valuable because it was produced in fewer numbers. Thunderball is once again represented with an ‘unused scene’, this of the Largo beach briefing. Quite why this ‘scene’ and the Paula (Martine Beswicke) ‘scenes’ were used again and again is beyond comprehension. After all, the film had by then been released for a number of years and quite obviously, they were not ‘deleted scenes’ at all, but simply marketing shots.
De brittiska lobbykorten för dubbelvisningen av Thunderball och From Russia with Love från 1968. Alla rättigheter förbehållna.
The last double set was for Thunderball and You Only Live Twice and released in 1971 with a black and white set of cards set against a light red, almost pink border. Titling and graphics was placed along the bottom with the poster graphics creeping up each side. Again, four cards were devoted to each film. Paula’s beach knife attack ‘scene’ also made a reappearance.
De brittiska lobbykorten för dubbelvisningen av Thunderball och You Only Live Twice från 1971. Alla rättigheter förbehållna.
In 1970, there was a mini festival of Bond films given the all-encompassing title of Viva James Bond. Posters were produced and films included in the festival were Dr No through to You Only Live Twice. The standard poster graphic was used for the entire series of lobby sets and indeed, the layout was identical throughout. The cards were white, with the title positioned at the bottom against red and the titillating graphic to the left. By titillating, this is correctly reported as the painted girl at Sean Connery’s feet indeed showed nipples through a beaded brassiere – quite daring for the time and was probably more in keeping with the Playboy and Ian Fleming image of Bond as opposed to the Filmic Bond. The images were all black and white shots tinted to a deep red.
The images for Dr No were all fairly standard having been reproduced from previous lobby outings. From Russia with Love exposed an off camera shot where Daniela Bianchi was feigning fright at Connery’s gun in the initial bedroom scene. The images for Goldfinger were standard excepting a couple of hitherto unseen Fort Knox shots. Would it cause surprise if it were claimed that both the ‘unused scenes’ were once again showcased for the Thunderball set? And You Only Live Twice brought the series to an end with an unremarkable if well produced set.
Just to clarify the unused scene shots for Thunderball, it is interesting to note that there were actually a number of different versions of these ‘scenes’ or posed publicity shots used throughout the Lobby Card producing period. There were two versions of Paula’s Knife Attack; for the main release set, Paula was defending herself with a knife and an over the head lunge while her left arm was held by one of the frogmen. For the Viva James Bond and Thunderball/You Only Live Twice double sets, she is further away from the frogmen, her arm is not held and her stance is more crouched.
Largo’s Beach Briefing is even more interesting as there are no less than three versions in existence. The main release set is a high wider-angle shot with more frogmen in view and Largo holding the spear gun in both hands and pointing it towards our right. The Thunderball/From Russia with Love set is a low angle shot, with fewer frogmen and with the spear gun in Largo’s right hand pointing to our left and his left hand pointing to our right. The James Bond Viva set image is again low angled but with the spear gun in both hands but pointing to the sky and our left. Quite why such dedication is given to covering this ‘scene’ in all its variations is totally lost to this reviewer. While readers of this article will have long known these scenes were posed publicity shots, Joe Public, at the time of the films’ release, would not and potential confusion could have been removed if the shots were removed from the marketing.
In 1984, perhaps in response to Never Say Never Again (1983) having just been released, MGM had the idea of creating a James Bond Festival to re-release all the films from Dr No to For Your Eyes Only. Even though promotional material had been created including posters and lobby cards, this festival never came to full fruition with only a sporadic and limited release of strange double bills such as Moonraker (1979) and From Russia with Love. The reasons for this are not known but if the production of lobby cards is anything to go by, perhaps the solidarity and organization of the film company couldn’t sustain such a festival. While the historical production of cards had moved from the US to the UK by 1985, sets had always numbered eight and if produced by the US, had been numbered. It is at this point that documentation of the MGM Festival production may retain the odd question mark as the Lobby sets no longer came as the habitual set of eight. Some films warranted a set of four cards, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) had a set of seven, From Russia with Love had six and other films are ‘covered’ by the odd four or five cards. The author has sets for all but unlike with the other lobby sets whereby one could collect a whole set or odd cards to complete a set of eight, with the MGM series, one may never know whether what one has constitutes a set or not. All in all, a very unsatisfactory position to be in. However, in the table below is listed what is believed to be the correct card tallies following investigation with various established and long-term collectors. These include a number of cards that are incorrectly titled and perhaps go some way to explaining the rushed and unplanned nature of the festival and why it never took place. An example of this would be that three From Russia with Love cards are entitled On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one OHMSS card is entitled From Russia with Love, and three The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) cards are entitled Moonraker. One would think an identification of your lead actor would be a bare minimum of marketing credentials... All the cards are produced in an identical fashion. The images are card sized with a simple credit in the form of “actor” as James Bond in “title”. The border is white. Overall, the quality is vastly inferior to those of the main release cards. The prints are hazy; they appear to have been made from positive prints by making a negative from a release print as opposed to using true stills, and as the images have been blown up to card size, the inferiority is magnified.
The set for Dr No provides us with the penultimate quiz show point for this report. One of the cards has a shot of Connery and Ian Fleming talking on the Dr No control room set. One must but wonder whether, following the incorrectly titled cards mentioned above, the producers of these sets figured Fleming to be one of the principal actors. One may never know. Dr No was the only time Moneypenny graduated to lobby card status in a pleasant shot of her and Connery in the office.
The set for From Russia with Love is actually a quite accomplished set in terms of reproduction and choice of shots. This is of course, aside from the fact that the ‘Connery on the phone’, ‘Connery in bed with Bianchi’ and the ‘boat chase’ cards also turned up titled as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. As will become apparent, the selection process for most of the sets could well have been time dependent as opposed to what would best sell a repeat viewing of a film. Three cards have also been printed on a glossy paper as opposed to the normally accepted ‘card’. Goldfinger escapes by barely the breadth of a hair for any comment of note although the odd “dead card” is now starting to appear. Thunderball nearly escaped comment but for the oddest choice of two cards.
It is at this stage that the card selection process mirrors that of a Moonraker story element in that they ‘go in two by two’. For Thunderball, there are two cards that depict the pre-credits fight scene between Bond and Jacques Bouvier – the film time between these shots totaling maybe 10 seconds. One could attempt to extrapolate at length the wisdom behind such choices; perhaps it was deemed to be a key scene, perhaps it was a favorite scene of the marketing charge, or maybe one could excuse such choices as a direct result of lack of resource. Or perhaps it could just be labeled for what it was. Laziness. The one saving grace to this set is a nice shot of Bond and Domino on the beach, thereby raising its quality ever so slightly in this chronicler’s eye.
You Only Live Twice is the largest set thus far, exampling eight cards with a carefree re-introduction to the credits that shouted, ‘Sean Connery IS James Bond’; a crediting that at the time of the film’s main release in 1967, Connery fought to replace with ‘... as James Bond’.
Again, couple-Dom is omnipresent. To wit, there are two shots from the roof top foot chase, two shots from the bathtub scene and two shots on the volcano side. As previously mentioned, dead cards are now more liberally inserted into the mix. A dead card, a term given by collectors and dealers when assessing its true financial worth, is essentially a card not including any of the main actors and/or depicting a scene of merit-less worth - an example being a card with a shot of an empty set. The most noteworthy example of a dead card in this set would be James Bond running into a doorway away from a horde of ne’er do wells with his back to us. One will continue to wonder further at the selection process from this point on.
The set for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service sets itself above its main release counterpart in that it is a set of four, but still manages to showcase George Lazenby in exactly the same number of cards as its predecessor’s main release set of eight. That said here, one understands that his ‘presence percentage’ has climbed to 50%. Similarly to the main release set, there is a shot of the crew carrying equipment up the mountain. No doubt this last card was intended to be the clincher for all those potential viewers hitherto sitting on the fence as to whether to see the film that night. The guard fight at Piz Gloria card has also turned up as an incorrectly titled From Russia with Love card printed separately on lobby card type card and also on glossy paper. Indeed, these cards may be nothing more than typesetting cards that managed to find their way into the collector market.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) has a card whereby Leiter is promoted to lobby card status. Sammy Davis Jnr’s presence is also reinstated to the film in a card that shows Bond in the bath reading a book with Sammy’s face on the cover - this following his scene being cut out of the final film print. One is also treated to a shot of Bond on the Whyte House ‘can’. Tremendous.
The set for Live and Let Die (1973) has a card oddity similar to that of one of the Dr No main release cards showing the daytime image of the day-for-night shot of Bond, hang-gliding and kicking the guard over the edge when accessing Solitaire’s house. As for variety and selection of cards, this is perhaps the best of the MGM festival sets; cards all from differing scenes showing a good flavour for the film and no dead cards.
The Man with the Golden Gun set is another accomplished set offering a fully rounded selection; the odd previously unseen shot, and if we can count a shot of Scaramanga’s funhouse Bond mannequin in the guise of Moore, no dead cards. As an aside, the cards, ‘Moore boating along the canal’, ‘the karate fight’ and ‘Moore standing beside an Asian stature’, were also printed titled as Moonraker. The Spy Who Loved Me is represented by a set of seven; two of which show the train fight and four of which take one through the escaping of Atlantis scene.
Moonraker boasts an unseen underwater shot of Bond fighting with the snake together with a host of others having already been used to promote the film. Three shots take one through the space station. The one, faintly un-Bond like, portrait of Roger Moore sporting the Seiko watch has been printed flipped; so, Moore’s facial mole is on the left, hair parting on the right, watch on the wrong hand. However, the way the rest of this collection has been amassed, this should come as no surprise.
The last film for this festival was For Your Eyes Only and once again, the spirit of Noah rises from the dust of his Ark with two cards showing the poolside fight and two cards set on the beach following Countess Lisl’s death. With a full two hours from each film, quite why there is a prevalence of several cards from the same scene is curious. One must assume that a marketing person given to responsibility and professionalism, and with his clients’ best interests at heart, would wish to showcase a wide variety of entertainment to be had from the viewing of these films, thereby raising interest with the knock-on effect to increase admissions and, thereby, financial returns. But, as has been pointed out above, this festival never came to be and one can only wonder, or from the above, surmise why. Certainly the campaign through the lobby cards suggests a hurried and unplanned rush-to-market that was entirely destined for failure – not a result one normally associates with Eon Productions.
The prices for lobby cards are starting to spiral such that for the early main release sets, it is unlikely that one will find a dealer who will sell a complete set. Heritage Auctions and eBay do tend to sell complete sets but singularly. Dr No first release cards are now selling in galleries at £200 to £300 each making the collecting of a whole set in decent condition to be a financially monumental task. Anything associated with Bond has an accepted price inflation adjustment due to its ongoing popularity and collectors who are doing it solely for investment reasons are exacerbating the financially prohibitive situation.
Dallas-based auction house Heritage Auctions sold the wares of a well-known Bond collector who had decided to point his life in another direction. Within the lots was a curio. The Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, New York State is a 1923, one-screen affair with a Wurlitzer and enough architectural heritage to save it from the wrecking ball and the advance of modernity. Indeed, in 2002, the Galaxy Theatre Corporation agreed a long-term lease and further to investment, refurbished it to its pre-war luxurious styles through to adding an ornate chandelier in 2003. As well as showing first releases, the Lafayette also presents alternative programming and festival weekends. All of which brings us neatly back to the above mentioned curio; namely a set of 12 lobby cards advertising one to Spend a Weekend with James Bond by seeing the following: From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy who Loved Me, The Living Daylights, GoldenEye, Casino Royale (2006).
The question of how official they are deemed to be should probably be tackled first. These have been designed and printed for a specific theatre for a one-off festival. There appears to be no support or sponsorship for the event by MGM or Eon Productions other than what is implied by the use of copyright images, logos and title fonts. That said, they were created to advertise and market the release of these films for an otherwise well-known and respected cinema that boasts its own Wiki page. So, deliberating the definition of the word ‘official’ might in this case be a rhetorical exercise.
A set of 12, two cards devoted to each film, the design and production values are perhaps understandably basic. In the bottom white border, each of the film titles utilize the font and logo of the time, a border which is also home to a rather lonely and forlorn gun barrel logo and an equally friendless Walter PPK silhouette that has an image of the Bond actor in question squeezed into the hand grip. The UA logo may offer some clue as to the release date of this festival which might be only just after the release of GoldenEye. The only other items of note are a random numbering system whereby From Russia with Love Card 1 does not automatically denote Card 2 is also showcasing Russia. Rather it is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In fact, none of the adjacent numbers show the same film. Let us believe the designer was aiming for the scattered approach. And the last point being that, again, a deleted scene is used for Casino Royale which has Bond and Lynd frolicking around in the waves.
A penultimate addendum. Skyfall opened to massively critical acclaim amidst the 50th Anniversary of the film series together with perhaps the feel-good factor of the Olympics and James’ ‘turn’ during the opening ceremony. It also helped MGM to turn a profit with a $1.1bn worldwide revenue. There were a slew of posters and banners as part of the poster campaign which disappointingly ran very contrary in style to the Roger Deakins genius photographic content of the film being promoted. No lobby cards were produced. By this point, the lobby cards had become International sets and by and large, used mostly in the Eastern Asian markets. Two months prior to the film’s release date, it was thought that either Sony US or Thailand were to produce a set as some of their tent pole pictures earlier in the same year had been similarly accommodated. But it was not to be. However, an enterprising sole in Thailand concocted a set of 12 to perhaps fill this collectors’ market need but without the all magical word of ‘original’ in the advertising copy. Only a couple of sets were sold.
And irrevocably, onwards we go towards the digital marketing age.
The final addendum is in the recent acquiring of some cards of unknown origins. One set may or may not have Irish origins. The other set may or may not have South African origins. Both sets were created to promote From Russia with Love. While one set, perhaps of South African origins, is numbered in a way to confirm it would be a set of eight, the other set, perhaps of Irish origins is not numbered at all. Of the first set the author owns seven of the set of eight cards. Of the last set, he owns only one of the two cards shown; the other image was taken from an eBay auction. As to their provenance, absolutely nothing whatsoever is known of origins. Should anyone reading this article be able to provide knowledge, or to know someone who would know something, please do reach out.
Särskilt tack:
Robert Bryan
Peter Lorenz
Lee Pfeiffer
Phil Lisa
Steve Oxenrider
Jon Ogar
Medlemmar på Movie Poster Forum (numera nedlagt) och All Poster Forum
Text av Simon Firth. Översättning av Anders Frejdh. Copyright © 2026 From Sweden with Love. Alla rättigheter förbehållna.
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Författarens samling är grunden för denna exklusiva artikelserie. Del I och del II.
