Why has there never been a biography of Richard Maibaum written?

Silhouette Man

I've been wondering about this over the last while. Given Richard Maibaum's importance as a scriptwriter on the James Bond films between 1962 and 1989 isn't it exceedingly odd that there's never been an official or even unofficial biography written about the man who adapted and wrote screenplays for many of the earlier James Bond films?

I suppose that his contributions to scripts are covered in books like Charles Helfenstein's ones on OHMSS and TLD and Some Kind of Hero (2015) probably goes in-depth on this too, but I still think it would be great if we had a biography of the late, great man himself - Richard Maibaum.

heartbroken_mr_drax

Agreed. Some more background on his 80s work would be appreciated by me - because some of those plots are more complicated with more and more cooks entering the broth.

superado

I think the success of any biography of an important Bond contributor would depend if there are enough interesting events in the person's life and if those events are relevant enough to the prospective reader. Case in point, the bios and autobiographies I've read about Vic Armstrong (my favorite because it seemed the most varied with so many famous projects), Derek Meddings, Syd Cain and Bob Simmons were really interesting because of their Bond involvement as well as their work in other high-profile movies.

I have to confess all I know about Richard Maibaum is what has been shown in the John Cork featurettes and of course what's in the books about the film series, but my only takeaway is that he was a New York-based writer, which in itself evokes so much about that business associated with that geography in a particular time (I think of Mario Puzo, Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Simon). Maibaum's role was pivotal in the creation and establishment of the series, but it seems his later participation was less pronounced of course because of availability, but there was also the introduction of other writers and "new ideas" that the producers constantly wanted to infuse because of the changing times.

Similarly with Ken Adams, he had a prolific body of work outside of the Bond series, but his involvement in the series isn't actually as wide as it generally seems, so to a Bond fan there would only be that handful of Bond movies to serve as tentpoles in a narrative about his life and career.

Other books of Bond personalities I'm interested in reading are Cubby's and Christopher Wood's, of which reviews I've read were interesting enough even though Woods' role in the Bond world is pretty limited.

Barbel

There's plenty on Maibaum in this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Goldfinger-Ultimate-Bloomsbury-Movie-Guide/dp/0747538883 which I see is available very cheaply at the moment.

Silhouette Man

Barbel wrote:

There's plenty on Maibaum in this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Goldfinger-Ultimate-Bloomsbury-Movie-Guide/dp/0747538883 which I see is available very cheaply at the moment.

Yes, I bought that excellent little book back in November 2001. It's a great read and resource and I highly recommend it to readers here. -{