“ALIMENTARY, DR. LEITER”

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

The comical medical response given by Bond (Sean Connery) in Diamonds Are Forever when Felix Leiter (Norman Burton) asks him where the diamonds are hidden on the body of the late Peter Franks (Joe Robinson). According to screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, when producer Cubby Broccoli first read the script, he felt that no one would get the line (which refers to Bond shoving the diamonds up Franks’s alimentary canal). However, on opening night when Bond said the line, a man in the fourth row of the theater laughed out loud. According to Mankiewicz, Broccoli turned to him and whispered, “It’s probably a doctor.”[1]

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[1] Tom Mankiewicz, interview by Steven Jay Rubin, Los Angeles, November 7, 1977.

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