Dr. Yes

"This is an older, stiffer world, with Britain just five years removed from food rationing and America still in an era of Kramdens, Eisenhowers, and finned Caddies. It is a world unfamiliar with the catchphrases 'Shaken, not stirred' and 'Bond, James Bond,' where no ears have ever heard Monty Norman’s four-note Bond motif and no eyes have ever taken in Maurice Binder’s amniotic credit sequences of lissome women undulating in silhouette to lavishly charted John Barry arrangements.
"But it is also a world in transition. Transatlantic jet service is newly available to commercial passengers, thanks to the carriers B.O.A.C. and Pan American. G. D. Searle & Company, a pharmaceutical concern, is awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market one of its products, Enovid, as a birth-control pill for women. A scrubbed, fit group of U.S. military test pilots has just been introduced to the public as the Mercury Seven, America’s first astronauts. And the undeclared Democratic front-runner in the next presidential election is only 42 years old."

David Kamp in Vanity Fair marks the beginning of the James Bond movies.

As does Steven Zeitchik in the Los Angeles Times.