Merry Saltzman, the firstborn child of Harry Saltzman, who co-produced the first nine James Bond films, has died. She was 77.
Saltzman died Oct. 30 at her home in San Jose, California, after a brief battle with cancer, family members told The Hollywood Reporter.
Saltzman served as an associate producer on the 2019 feature Mermaid Down, and four years earlier, she announced that she had secured the rights to a stage project she was calling James Bond: The Musical. The show, a parody, was designed to open in Las Vegas or Broadway but never made it.
Saltzman was born in Manhattan on Dec. 21, 1946, to Herschel Saltzman, a Canadian, and the first of his three wives, Tanya. Before the movies, her father served as a wartime spy, and she “helped in an amazing way to enlighten his work and contribution to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and in the U.S. secret service OSS,” her family noted.
Soon after her birth, Merry and her mother traveled with rare postwar permissions to such cities as Algiers, Paris, New York and Washington, and by 9, she saw her dad produce such films as Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (1955) and The Entertainer (1960).
Harry Saltzman secured the movie rights to the Bond books from novelist Ian Fleming in 1961, and he and Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli produced the first nine 007 films, from Dr. No (1962) to The Man With the Golden Gun (1974).
Meanwhile, Merry was spending time with the likes of Fleming, Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Michael Caine and Cary Grant and playing hide-and-seek between palm trees in Goldeneye, Jamaica.
“Although she inherited our father’s creative spark, she chose a quieter life outside Hollywood’s spotlight, finding happiness in simpler moments and sharing her warmth with everyone around her,” her family said.
Her survivors include her life partner of 35 years, Larry Lang, and her brother, Steven. Two other siblings, Christopher and Hilary, died in 1991 and 2019, respectively. Her father died in September 1994 of a heart attack at age 78 during a visit to Paris.
Donations in her memory can be made to the American Cancer Society.
