Returning from the greens of the golf course to the greens of his artist's pallet, Cliff continued to work on the Bonds. The next one up was Thunderball. I asked Cliff what his involvement was on film?

“Not a lot really. One small bit I remember was that Frank George had made a model of the Vulcan aircraft, which was to crash land into the sea. Well, they shot it and unfortunately it looked like a model. So we were called in to optically put on a load of spray off the back edges of the wings to give it more of an impression of power.”

Cliff apologised that he couldn’t remember more about his work on that particular film and put it down to old age. I don’t think that age has much to do with it. When you’ve worked on as many films as Cliff has it must be difficult to remember what you did on everyone, even if they were Bond films. One thing Cliff did remember was once again how much fun it was to work on the Bond films… apart from one.

“You Only Live Twice was a bit of a nightmare. I was involved with all the volcano stuff. The crew did a lot of location shooting in Japan of volcanoes, but of course none of them had the opening at the top or a helicopter pad. So they were all opticals. We printed in all the shots of the doors opening and looking down into that huge wonderful Ken Adam set.”

Cliff’s nightmare returns as he points out that to get that type of shot one needed to be quite high up.

“The cameraman and I were positioned precariously on top of a Savoy crane, 150 feet above the set floor. Freddie Young was the director of photography on this one, but he didn’t come up. He used to get on the radio and ask, ‘What’s it look like fellas?’’ We’d nervously call back, ‘Fine, fine’ and that kept him happy.”

The crane was used to hoist the helicopter up and down into the set. A simple operation on the face of it, but there was much more to it then that.

“It was quite dangerous really,” says Cliff. “When that helicopter came out of the volcano the crane driver didn’t have much more than four feet to spare either side of the rotors. Then, when it cleared the opening of the volcano, there was more turbulence outside the set then inside and there was quite a bit of swaying about on that crane. It took a bit of doing I can tell you. In fact I swear that was where I developed the good grip on my right hand, because I never ever took my hand off of that crane for the whole day.”

Obviously Cliff didn’t spend the whole of the production 150 feet up in a crane holding on for dear life, he was also responsible for a number of other mattes and opticals.

“Do you remember that bit when the Ninjas are trying to get into the volcano? It’s after Bond and the girl had gone up to the crater’s edge and throw a stone into what they thought was a lake, but turned out to be metal. Well, that was all shot on ‘D’ Stage at Pinewood Studios, the whole thing. Then it was my job to optically reduce it and paint around the edges to make it look much, much bigger. In fact the actual matte painting is hanging in EON’s head offices as we speak. I also worked on the sequence where Bond slides down the chute and ends up in Tanaka’s office. In the set there were a couple of TV monitors that Tanaka turns around to show Bond an action replay of his arrival. This was put in optically later because when that scene was shot, the shots of Bond chasing the girl were yet to be filmed. I also did the TV screen in the back of the Toyota and the smoke trails from ‘Little Nellie’.” A sequence that Cliff felt was spoilt by some below standard back projection.

It’s been well documented that around this time Sean Connery was becoming somewhat disillusioned with the whole Bond thing. Did Cliff’s occasional golfing partner ever confide in him about it? Cliff’s answer of “No” was quick and sure, but after a few moments thought he added, “I don’t know, I always found Sean great fun, but I think he was a bit funny about that. I can always remember a remark that Cubby made, ‘I don’t know what Sean’s got against me, I only made him a millionaire.’ Which was very true.”

Cliff went on to give his theory of this rift and it all boiled down to money (Doesn’t it always?)

“Sean didn’t think he was getting his fair share, and he was convinced the producers were making a fortune. Which was great shame because I think he was the best James Bond.”

There aren’t many that would disagree with Cliff, but the Bondwagon rolled on with Cliff as a happy passenger. The next stop was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A new Bond and a new director in the guise of Cliff’s old friend, Peter Hunt. Cliff was once again involved in the mattes, which included an exterior shot of Piz Gloria, the mountain behind the hanging body of Campbell, the casino reflection in the hotel swimming pool (Where Bond is reacquainted with Tracy) and one of the most admired sequences in the film, the avalanche.

“It was a very small set up,” Cliff remembers. “The trees weren’t that much more than a foot and half tall and the snow was bags and bags of salt.”

Apparently the whole model was set up on the small matte stage at Pinewood, that was soon to become Cliff’s permanent base when he set up his own special effects and optical company, Westbury Design and Optical in the early Seventies at the studios.

He agrees that the avalanche sequence worked very well and put it down to Peter Hunt’s excellent editing technique. Reiterating Cliff’s admiration for the man he felt was very important to the Bond films, I asked him what was so special about working with Peter.

“It was a very small set up,” Cliff remembers. “The trees weren’t that much more than a foot and half tall and the snow was bags and bags of salt.”

Apparently the whole model was set up on the small matte stage at Pinewood, that was soon to become Cliff’s permanent base when he set up his own special effects and optical company, Westbury Design and Optical in the early Seventies at the studios.

He agrees that the avalanche sequence worked very well and put it down to Peter Hunt’s excellent editing technique. Reiterating Cliff’s admiration for the man he felt was very important to the Bond films, I asked him what was so special about working with Peter.

“The beauty of it was with Peter, if I had done a matte painting, I’d take it down to show him. He would say ‘Fine, I’ll cut it in.’ He would then cut that shot into the picture and in the evening when he showed the rushes to Cubby he wouldn’t say a word; he’d just run the sequence. Then at the end of it he’d say to Cubby, ‘What did you think of the matte shot?’ Cubby would say, ‘What matte shot?’ Peter would only then tell him where the matte shot was and Cubby would admit that he hadn’t seen it on first viewing. Now some other directors would put that matte on a loop piece of film and tear it to pieces. Sometimes you would even get an art director who would say, ‘I don’t really like that third brick from the top.’

Cliff rolls his eyes as he remembers some of the over fastidious viewers of his paintings, but smiles once again when he thinks of Peter Hunt.

I asked him if he had any say in the mattes he created. “Oh yeah, you could input your own ideas. The production doesn’t commission a matte unless they know they want it in the picture. They’re not going to spend time and money on a painting and see it left on the cutting room floor. So by the time they’ve decided that they wanted a matte, I would receive a sketch from the art director and then I’d be on my own really. I’d liaise with Peter most of the times and yes, he would let me put my ideas forward.”

Cliff goes onto say that he felt it was a shame that Peter didn’t get to direct more Bonds.

 “He did some very good stuff on that film an I thought, to be honest, that George Lazenby was pretty good as James Bond, but he was such an awkward monkey. He just wouldn't play ball. So under the circumstances I think Peter made a good job of directing. That scene at the end where Bond’s wife is shot, he handled that quite brilliantly.”