Despite Syd Cain being art director and designing the gadgets in a number of James Bond movies, an oversight and the cost of creating a credits sequence in the 1960s meant he was left out of the credits in Dr. No. Though it is one of the best Bond movies, Dr. No was made on a relatively tight $1 million budget and had to cut many corners during production, a far cry from the big budget franchise that Bond has evolved into.
Based on the novel by Ian Fleming, Dr. No launched the Bond franchise. The film follows Bond (Sean Connery) on a mission to Jamaica where he investigates a plot to disrupt American space launches. He tracks down the film's titular villain, Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), who has since become one of the series' most iconic characters. During the production of Dr. No, cutting corners was necessary on the technical side of making the movie. Sets were incredibly cheap, including Dr. No’s aquarium, which was some glass in front of rear projection of stock footage of goldfish. The movie also only hired one sound editor, but there usually would be two, handling sound effects and dialogue separately. These cost-cutting measures eventually led to one important player losing his credit in the movie because it would’ve been too expensive.
Art director Syd Cain was accidentally left out of the finished credits sequence in Dr. No. He was responsible for a number of the gadget designs and the Jamaica locations in the movie, and while his absence was a simple mistake, it was too expensive and difficult to fix. Rather than redoing the credits to put Cain’s name back in, producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli offered to give Cain a solid gold pen instead of credit on the movie, which Cain accepted (via The Charter House).
Creating a credits sequence in the 1960s was quite difficult and expensive. Decades before even basic CGI, redoing a credits sequence with animation depicting Bond's iconic shot at the camera and flashing neon dots would have required a ton of work, including creating new plates and putting it all back in front of cameras again. The expense and hassle of reshooting the credits was so great that it was cheaper for Broccoli to give Cain the solid gold pen than redo the credits to include him.
This mistake wasn’t made in future Bond installments. Syd Cain is listed in the credits for four later Bond movies: From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Live and Let Die, and GoldenEye. He was mostly responsible for designing and building Bond’s gadgets, though he was also behind the giant chess match set in From Russia With Love, which itself cost $150,000, a massive increase in budget from Dr. No just a year before.
Syd Cain’s designs were instrumental in achieve the early James Bond movies' unique look. Despite being left out of the credits, the story about Cain's exclusion makes sure that he’s not forgotten as one of the early contributors to the look and feel of the longest-running movie franchise in history.
