‘It Was Going to Be a Low-Budget Flop’

The shells sequence, in which Ryder emerges from the ocean singing “Underneath the Mango Tree” — and Connery’s Bond joins in — turned around the expectations for the film.

“‘It was going to be a low-budget flop,’” says Blanche’s son Chris Blackwell, son of Ian Fleming’s muse and love, Blanche Blackwell, in the new Nicholas Shakespeare book Ian Fleming: The Complete Man. “It all changed when we watched the rushes of Ursula Andress emerging from the sea.”

He added: “It was electrifying. We suddenly felt, ‘Gosh, we’ve got a movie.’”