From Russia with Love/Trivia


 * Hey It's That Guy: Rosa Klebb is played by singer Lotte Lenya. For the rest of her life, new people tended to look at her shoes.
 * A very young Robert Shaw plays Red Grant.
 * Troubled Production: Pedro Armendariz (playing Kerim Bey) was critically ill and had to shoot all his scenes within two weeks. The script was constantly being rewritten all the way through. Major special effects (such as the wall of fire in the boat scene) failed putting the production desperately behind schedule. Director Terence Young and art director Michael White were nearly in a helicopter that could've killed them both. It's a tribute to the professionalism of the cast and some extremely clever filming by editor Peter Hunt (a lot of Rosa Klebb's dialogue was rewritten and refilmed simply by having Lotte Lenya perform against a back projection) that the film survived and became so successful.
 * Specially because they had to work against the clock to finish the film by the scheduled release in October.
 * What Could Have Been: Reportedly, Alfred Hitchcock was at one point interested in directing.
 * A tragic variant: like it says on the main page, From Russia With Love was chosen as the next film after John F Kennedy said it was his favorite Bond book. The advance print arrived at the White House on November 21, 1963. Advisers thought that Kennedy would enjoy the film, after he returned from his trip to Texas....