Fathom

Fathom (1967)

The world's most uncovered undercover agent!

While touring abroad in Europe, beautiful American skydiver Fathom Harvill gets wrapped up in international intrigue when Scottish spy Douglas Campbell recruits her to help him on a secret mission. Before long, Fathom realizes that no one around her, including the mysterious Peter Merriweather, can easily be trusted, leading to various adventures that involve bull fighting, beaches and, of course, romance.

Date of release
1967-08-25
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (42)
Runtime
1h 39m
Genres
Action, Comedy, Drama
Director
Leslie H. Martinson

Casting

Interesting facts

Fathom is a 1967 British spy comedy film directed by Leslie H. Martinson, starring Raquel Welch and Anthony Franciosa.

Production

The film was made by 20th Century Fox to cash in on the film adaptation of the comic strip Modesty Blaise, which featured a female secret agent. It was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr and directed by Leslie Martinson who had just made the film of the TV show Batman. Semple says the studio were attracted by the fact that he and Martinson had made Batman so quickly and cheaply.

Semple said "Fox bought a novel called FATHOM, about a big, tall girl. She was called Fathom because she was six feet tall. They thought that would be their Modesty Blaise."

He wrote the script in Boris Karloff's old house. Semple wrote the first twenty pages "making it up as I went along... I made every page exciting".

Semple says he sent the first twenty pages to Fox and David Brown and Richard Zanuck liked it. They gave it to John Koch, who they wanted to produce. Koch insisted on writing the script with Semple line by line.

The lead was given to Raquel Welch, who was only 5 feet, 6 inches tall, so they had to make up explanations of why she was called Fathom. She was a 20th Century Fox contractee who had leapt to fame with Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C.. This inspired Fox to give her her first starring vehicle.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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