Dana Broccoli, widow of Bond film producer, dies

Dana Broccoli, the widow of movie producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and the president of the company that owns the film rights to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, has died. She was 82.

Broccoli, a novelist and theatrical producer, died of cancer on Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills.

A service for Broccoli was held yesterday at the Church of the Hills at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles, church spokeswoman Margerita Fayad said.

Danjaq, the film company that Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman founded in 1961, bought the film rights to Fleming’s Bond novels.

Dana Broccoli became president of the Los Angeles-based Danjaq, which produces the Bond films and co-owns them with MGM, after her husband died in 1996.

Three Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan – Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day – were released during Dana Broccoli’s tenure.

The Bond films, now numbering 20, are the longest-running movie series of all time. Dr No was the first, released in 1962.

Dana Broccoli was also the creative force behind turning Chitty Chitty Bang Bang into a musical, for which she served as lead producer. The musical opened in London’s West End in 2002 and is scheduled to open on Broadway in spring 2005.

When Cubby Broccoli was searching for the actor to play Bond, he asked his wife’s opinion of a young Scot actor, Sean Connery, who had impressed him.

“He phoned me and asked, ‘Can you come here? I think I’ve found the guy, but I don’t know if he has sex appeal’,” Dana Broccoli once recalled in a Los Angeles Times interview. “I went and watched … and I said, ‘He’s fantastic’.”

Born Dana Natol in New York City in 1922, she met her first husband, Lewis Wilson, at Cecil Clovelly’s Academy of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall. Together they had a son, Michael.

After the Second World War, she and her husband joined the Pasadena Playhouse. After they divorced, she concentrated on her writing.

She met Cubby Broccoli when she brought him an idea for a movie.

“He never bought the story, but six weeks later, we were married,” she said in 1978. Soon after their 1959 marriage, they moved to London.

Dana Broccoli wrote two novels, Scenario for Murder and Florinda. The latter was adapted as a musical, La Cava, for which she wrote the book. It opened in London’s West End in 2000.

Broccoli is survived by four children, Michael Wilson, Tony Broccoli, Tina Broccoli and Barbara Broccoli, and five grandchildren.