A former agronomist, Albert R. ('Cubby') Broccoli entered the film industry in 1938 as an assistant director at 20th Century-Fox. He did not find his true calling, though, until 1951, when he moved to London. Soon thereafter, he formed Warwick Productions with director-turned-producer Irving Allen. The two proved a fairly prolific team over the next seven years, specializing in crime dramas and action adventures, especially those set in exotic places. Broccoli earned his first credit on "The Red Beret/Paratrooper" (1953), the first of three films featuring visiting U.S. star Alan Ladd, whose status had slipped. Broccoli and Allen ventured into a U.S. co-production with the war drama, "Cockleshell Heroes" (1955), directed by and starring Jose Ferrer. The two teamed regularly with director John Gilling for five films beginning with the jungle misfire "Odongo" (1956) and also worked on five with another U.S. star who went to England to keep his career going, Victor Mature, including "Safari" (1956) and "No Time to Die" (1958).
In retrospect, Broccoli's early efforts with Allen were fairly routine, but the films were generally competent, watchable and produced with professional brio. The black comedy "How to Murder a Rich Uncle" (1957) was an offbeat project, and "Fire Down Below" (1957) featured, in Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth and newcomer Jack Lemmon, a higher profile star cast than usual. Broccoli and Allen's last effort together was also one of their more intriguing items, "The Trials of Oscar Wilde" (1960), a fairly tame but nonetheless intelligent and, for its day, provocative drama about the writer's infamous criminal trials for homosexuality. Broccoli formed another partnership, Eon Productions, with producer Harry Saltzman. After they acquired the rights to works by Ian Fleming and met with United Artists, the two made history producing Broccoli's biggest and most influential works. The James Bond films would become the longest-running and most financially successful series of films in English-language film history.
"Dr. No" (1962) actually wasn't a runaway boxoffice smash, but it undeniably set the pattern for much of what came: handsome, skilled cinematography and art direction, done on an increasingly large scale as the series progressed; plenty of well-crafted action set pieces; travelogue appeal via lavish location shooting; and a very tongue-in-cheek attitude mixing enjoyably plotted spy nonsense, glamorous sexcapades and Cold War rhetoric in roughly equal proportions. Broccoli and Saltzman also had a flair for casting, boosting the well-cast Sean Connery and later Roger Moore to full-fledged screen stardom as the witty, sexy and in-control agent Bond. Broccoli did make a typical Bob Hope comedy, "Call Me Bwana" (1963) early on in the series, and later came the enjoyably whimsical musical "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968), but the Bond films understandably came to completely dominate his output.
The James Bond films quickly found their audience market, and critical acclaim and praise from within the industry were not long in following. The second Bond film, "From Russia With Love" (1963) won a BAFTA Award for its cinematography, and "Goldfinger" (1964) and "Thunderball" (1965) both won Academy Awards in other technical categories. (The latter film even made the Ten Best list of the NEW YORK TIMES Film Critics.) Broccoli and Saltzman later formed a second production company, Danjaq S.A., to handle the Bond films, though Saltzman left the team and sold out his share after "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974). Broccoli continued on, though, and brought on another producing collaborator, Michael G. Wilson, beginning with "Moonraker" (1979). His daughter Barbara served as an assistant director for "A View to a Kill" (1985) and became an associate producer for the next two films. "Licence to Kill" (1989) marked the veteran producer's last credit, but the entertaining legacy managed to survive the end of the Cold War, and Broccoli had long since earned considerable respect both within and outside the industry. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire and, in 1982, was given the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Barbara Broccoli, now a full producer, continued the Bond tradition with Wilson into the 90s, yielding one of the most popular Bond films of all with "GoldenEye" (1995).