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

(1963): A Bob Hope / Anita Ekberg jungle comedy produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. To publicize their rare producing detour from the Bond series, Broccoli and Saltzman featured the film on the billboard containing the trapdoor to the apartment of Bulgarian agent Krilencu (Fred Haggerty) in From Russia with Love. In the film, Krilencu crawls through Anita Ekberg’s mouth and is promptly shot by his longtime nemesis Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendariz).

In Ian Fleming’s original novel, the billboard was from the 20th Century Fox film Niagara (1953), starring Marilyn Monroe, whose mouth served as the trapdoor. Monroe died from an overdose of sleeping pills shortly before From Russia with Love went into production. It is doubtful that Niagara would have been used anyway, since the billboard sequence provided an excellent promotional opportunity for the producers’ own more recent film and their star Anita Ekberg.

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