CAIN, SYD

Contributed by: The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia by Steven Jay Rubin

(April 16, 1918–November 21, 2011): Resourceful British production designer who joined the James Bond series as location art director on Dr. No, and later served as art director on From Russia with Love, production designer on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and supervising art director on Live and Let Die.

Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, Cain received his first job as an uncredited draftsman on director Charles Frank’s drama The Inheritance (1947). Fifteen years later, he jumped to art director on director Norman Panama’s Bing Crosby / Bob Hope comedy The Road to Hong Kong (1962), which featured a plethora of future Bond veterans, including Peter Madden (From Russia with Love), Irvin Allen (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), Walter Gotell, Bob Simmons, and the two lady island assistants of Dr. No—Michel Mok and Yvonne Shima. Three years later, and once again working with director Terence Young, he received his first credit as production designer on The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, which also featured other members of Young’s “stock company,” including Anthony Dawson, Bernard Lee, and Desmond Llewelyn, and Thunderball’s Reginald Beckwith, Leonard Sachs, and Michael Brennan.

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