Agent 007 has come to pay his last respects to the shapely, black-veiled widow of a SPECTRE assassin. An oboe sighs mournfully. He goes to press her hand and bam! da-bam! bam!—a volley of brass suddenly screams bloody murder. Agent 007 knocks the widow head over high heels with a bone-jarring right cross to the jaw. Aha! Just as he thought: it was not the widow but the assassin himself.

Accompanied by thumping kettledrums, 007 methodically works the villain over with karate punches and a well-placed kick, then strangles him to death. A clatter of cymbals brings on a gang of bodyguards as 007 bounds onto a balcony, coolly dons his one-man rocket unit and goes whooshing up, up and away to a shattering chorus of gunfire and screeching trumpets.

So begins Thunderball, the latest James Bond free-for-all, accompanied by what English Composer John Barry calls "million-dollar Mickey Mouse music."

At 32, Barry can afford to be so disarmingly modest about his work. Since boarding the Bondwagon three years ago with Dr. No, he has become one of the most successful composers writing for films today. In the past year, his scores have accompanied an impressive flock of first-rate films, among them Séance on a Wet Afternoon, King Rat, The Knack and The Ipcress File. The LP version of Thunderball, released only a few weeks ago, is already high on the bestseller charts, following briskly on the heels of Barry's Goldfinger, which last year outsold all rock-'n'-roll albums except the Beatles'.

Barry was more or less raised in the flickering film world. As a teen-ager he worked as a projectionist in a string of movie theaters that his father owned in York. At 19, he played trumpet with a regimental army band stationed in Cyprus, took a correspondence course in composition. Later, he formed the John Barry Seven and made his calculated entrance into the movies by playing the accompaniment for a rock-'n'-roll idol named Adam Faith. Barry's first film score, Beat Girl, led to an invitation to doctor the score for Dr. No. He did it without ever seeing the film.

In the breakneck pace of film making, Barry is prized for his ability to turn out a score on demand. To meet a recording schedule, he composed the key parts of both Goldfinger and Thunderball in just two days. A lean, supercharged man with long sideburns, Barry is a swinger in the Bond mold—clothes with an Edwardian flair, fashionable Chelsea apartment, Pickwick Club, E-type Jaguar (white, XK), E-type wife (brunette actress, Jane Birken).