Like many American males, I recently thought it might be enjoyable to re-visit the Bond movies in order. I gave up because Thunderball and For Your Eyes Only were so bad as to be essentially unwatchable.

The most fun about this aborted project was relearning some of the early movie history I knew as a kid but had basically forgotten. Of course, broccoli is a designed vegetable — some kind of cross between kale and cabbage, just like cauliflower — and Bond movie producer Albert Broccoli was the younger son of the Broccoli family responsible for that vegetable’s invention. Broccoli was so impressed with the Ian Fleming books that he decided to invest the family fortune. Despite not knowing anything about moviemaking, Broccoli acquired the rights to Doctor No, with the option to make the rest of the series.

Amusingly, broccoli was a small factor in a few ways for the franchise in the beginning. Sean Connery was not a fan, and his rather “tough” attitude towards the complimentary bowl of raw broccoli outside of the casting room impressed director Guy Hamilton. And the famous opening gun barrel sequence? Albert Broccoli knew film designer Maurice Binder slightly as a boy, since Binder’s father was the first large-scale importer of broccoli into New York.