The most christmasy film of all the Bond films is undoubtedly “On her Majesty’s Secret Service“. John Barry even wrote a christmas song for it. Hal David wrote the lyrics (as well as the lyrics for “We have all the time in the World”).
The song “Do you know how Christmas trees are grown?” was performed by the Danish singer Nina.
She was born Nina Magdalene Möller-Hasselblach in 1932. At the time of OHMSS she was in a musical duo with her husband, the Baron von Pallandt. The duo was called Nina & Frederik.
Contradictory to what many believe the duo Nina & Frederik did not win the Eurovision for Denmark in 1963 with the song “Dansevise”. That duo was Grethe & Jörgen Ingmann.
Although the couple divorced in 1975, she is still the Baroness von Pallandt.
Frederik joined an Australian crime syndicate, doing drug smuggling before we ended up dead, shot in the head in 1994.
I have found various statements that John Barry recorded a theme song for OHMSS with Nina at an early stage of production that was never used, dropped for “We have all the time in the world”. The song’s title is “The more things change” and is stated to have been recorded during the same studio sessions as “Do you know how Christmas trees are grown”.
There are difficulties to verify this information, and find reliable sources. Please link if you have any!
The best publication about OHMSS is Charles Helfenstein’s “The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and he makes no mention of such a recording at all.
What he does mention however are two alternate versions of “Do you know how Christmas trees are grown?” for two foreign markets: France and Germany. Isabelle Aubret recorded the french “Savez-vous ce qu’il faut au sapin de Noël?” and Katja Ebstein sang “Wovon träumt ein Weinachtsbaum im Mai?”. These two singles are hard to find and make exclusive items in Bond collections.
Nina van Pallandt also worked as an actress and she has appeared in famous films like The Long Goodbye and American Gigolo. Click here for her full list of movies on imdb.com
007 Under the Mango Tree 
Posted on December 25, 2014
0