Albert R. Broccoli

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Albert R. Broccoli
Image:Cubby cropp.jpg "Cubby" Broccoli
Born	April 5, 1909 New York, New York
Died	June 27, 1996 Beverly Hills, California
Occupation	Film producer
Spouse	Gloria Blondell (1940-1945) (divorced) Nedra Clark (1951-1956) (her death) Dana Broccoli (1959-1996) (his death)

Albert Romolo Broccoli, CBE (Hon) (April 5, 1909 – June 27, 1996) known to movie fans as "Cubby" Broccoli (a nickname used by a cousin), was a film producer who produced more than 40 movies, but will be best remembered for his contribution to one of the most successful film franchises in history, James Bond.

Broccoli was born into an Italian-American family on Long Island. The family moved to Florida, and on the death of his father Giovanni, Broccoli moved to live with his grandmother in Astoria, Queens in New York City. Having worked many jobs, including casket maker, Broccoli became involved in the film industry. He started at the bottom working as a gofer on the Howard Hughes' The Outlaw (1941), which starred Jane Russell. Here he met Hughes for the first time, while Hughes was overseeing the movie's production after director Howard Hawks was fired. Shortly after, he joined the United States Navy following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the War he returned to Hollywood to work as an agent at the Famous Artists Agency.

At the beginning of the 1950s Broccoli moved once more, this time to London. A shrewd businessman, he was able to make good use of the subsidy given by the British government to subsidise films made in the UK with British casts and crews. In 1962, Broccoli teamed with Harry Saltzman to create the production company EON Productions and its parent company Danjaq, LLC. Broccoli produced the first Bond movie, Dr. No, that year, and his involvement in the series continued until his death. His family, particularly daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael G. Wilson, have since produced the James Bond films. Besides the Bond movies, Broccoli produced the Dick Van Dyke classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, from the book by James Bond author Ian Fleming, and the Bob Hope vehicle Call Me Bwana, the only film made by EON Productions outside of the James Bond franchise. In 1981 he was honored with The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his work in film and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

According to E.J. Fleming's book The Fixers, about MGM's Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, Broccoli was involved in an altercation in December 1937 that killed actor Ted Healy, the original chief of the Three Stooges, although conflicting reports exist. The book states that Wallace Beery, gangster Pat DiCicco, and Broccoli beat Healy to death in the parking lot of the Trocadero nightclub. Afterward the studio sent Beery, their highest paid star as recently as five years earlier, to Europe for several months until the heat was off.

A thoroughbred horse racing enthusiast, Albert Broccoli owned Brocco, who won the 1993 Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita Park at Arcadia, California.

Broccoli married three times. In 1940, at the age of 31, he married actress Gloria Blondell (the younger sister of Joan Blondell); they later divorced in 1945 without having had children. In 1951, he married Nedra Clark, who died after giving birth to their daughter, Tina. In the late 1950s, Broccoli met and married actress and novelist, Dana Wilson (née Dana Natol), who died of cancer in 2004, aged 82.

Broccoli died at his home in Beverly Hills in 1996 at the age of 87 of natural causes. He was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles following a Roman Catholic Mass of Christian Burial, attended by some of the James Bond movies' cast members, including Desmond Llewelyn, Maryam D'Abo and Timothy Dalton.

Trivia

• Broccoli's fiscal acumen was matched by his warm personality and his kind sense of humor. Once, while on break from filming, several members of the 007 crew ordered food and drinks which they charged, sans permission, to "Cubby." When Sir Albert discovered this, he was not at all upset about having to pay for the crew's lunch. The only thing about this which did irritate him, in fact, was that they had spelled his name wrong on the bill!

References

Wikipedia information about Albert R. Broccoli This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Albert R. Broccoli". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.