Sir Ken Adam
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2004
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the man who's designed some of the most famous film sets ever made. Sir Ken Adam was the production designer on seven of the James Bond films - including Dr No, Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever. His bold designs skilfully created the lairs of a string of arch villans, perhaps best typified by the headquarters of Blofeld in You Only Live Twice - which was built inside an extinct volcano with an artificial lake placed on top.
Sir Ken Adam began life as Klaus Adam, born into a middle class family in 1920s Berlin. As Hitler rose to power the Adam family were forced to flee to Britain. Klaus adopted the name Keith during the war when he became a fighter pilot and the only German to fight for the RAF. He became known as Heinie the Tank Buster in recognition of his daring raids across the continent. After the war he changed his name again to Ken and trained as an architect. This led to work in the film industry; first as a draughtsman, and then as an art director and eventually as a production designer. He won two Oscars: the first for Barry Lyndon, which he made with Stanley Kubrick in the 70s, and The Madness of King George.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Java Jive by Inkspots Book: Propylaen Kunstgeschichte - The History of Art Luxury: Sketchpad and felt pens to design
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a film designer. He's created some of the most famous places in the world, |
| 0:35.0 | the Pentagon War Room in Dr Strangelove, the warehouse prison in the Ipcress file, |
| 0:40.0 | and the numerous layers of James Bond's arch enemies from Dr Noes under the Caribbean |
| 0:44.8 | to blowfelt inside the crater of a volcano. |
| 0:48.0 | And whizzing through the many fantastic places he's conjured up are his legendary cars, the lotus that turns into a submarine and the |
| 0:55.0 | wonderfully idiosyncratic chitty chitty-chitty bang-bang. |
| 0:58.5 | He was born in Berlin, his family fled to this country from the Nazis and he, although a native German, became an |
| 1:04.5 | R.A.F. fighter pilot in the last war. |
| 1:07.1 | Now knighted for his work in films, his is a story befitting a man who creates enthralling |
| 1:12.4 | places that entertain us all. |
| 1:14.7 | He is Sir Ken Adam. |
| 1:16.7 | I'm sure it's been hard work all of this, Ken, but you can't help thinking it must have been |
| 1:20.8 | a lot of fun as well just really allowing your |
| 1:24.1 | fantasy to fly yes I think a lot of fun and a lot of anxiety too I think those two |
| 1:30.7 | go together what fear that these things would not work? |
| 1:34.1 | You're having designed. |
| 1:35.1 | No, but you work under normal stress and responsibility |
| 1:39.4 | and knowing all that you've come up with a good design, but you could not ignore the cost factor. |
| 1:47.0 | And also, of course, however clever the design, the thing actually had to work, didn't it? |
| 1:52.0 | I mean, the ejector seat in the |
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