Why is this magnificent Scottish prole playing the quintessential English gentleman

I’ve heard Ian Fleming wasn’t crazy about the casting. And based on what we know about CIA and other intelligence people, a much more effeminate type would make sense. Although, field operatives seem normally masculine, if a bit too hopped up on the need for action.

The upper class of England destroyed the British Empire. Regular Englishmen and Germans would never have continued the insanity of WWI. And that would’ve meant no WWII.

But the “great man” Churchill loved his games with human lives.

If you liked the James Bond character, then Sean Connery was probably the ideal James Bond. If you didn’t much care for the character in the first place, then Roger Moore was better, because he always impressed me as not taking the part too seriously and playing it with one eye on the camera. I never watched a single James Bond movie after Roger Moore and Daniel Craig always looked the part of a James Bond villain.

Isn’t the next 007 to be played by a black woman?

Moore was original Bond. Connery replaces him. How is it taken?

I don’t think any actor could have been the ideal Bond. There were far too many boxes to tick. For example, Bond was meant to be a Commander in Naval Intelligence and capable frogman and diver. The only Bond who ever looked the part for that was Timothy Dalton.
Indeed, Bond should have been retired at the end of Dalton’s tenure. Bond was very much a Cold War hero. When he returned after Dalton’s departure, the Cold War was over and the Franchise increasingly had to cannibalise the plots of previously filmed books. I never found Brosnan or Craig convincing in the role.

Take the Dalton pill, bro.

when you think about it, the only ‘quintessential English gent’ who played Bond was Roger Moore.

Sean Connery – Scot
Pierce Brosnan – Irish
George Lazenby – Aussie
Timothy Dalton – proper actor, doesn’t count
Daniel Craig – not a gentleman

But then there was David Niven in the original (spoof) Casino Royale. Put the ‘quint’ in ‘essential’, I think.

And the next one… in these enlightened and vibrant days, the odds against a straight, white Englishman must be 99/1?

I wonder what percentage of Bond viewers have ever read any of the books. Less than 1% at a stretch, I would say,

I’d read that Fleming didn’t care much at first for Connery, a Scot’s Scot, playing the quintessential Englishman, but warmed to him and even started imparting Scot qualities into the character.

I never really cared for Connery in the role, and at first thought Moore was a better cast, but Pierce Brosnan played Bond with as much panache and more natural humour. I trust most of us would agree that Timothy Dalton was an outright disaster.

James Bond was – supposedly – born to a Scottish father (the ancestral family home was Skyfall, located in a damp and unappealing part of the Highlands, as depicted in one of the recent movies) and a Swiss mother.

Nothing English except the accent and manners he presumably acquired at Eton, which he is supposed to have attended briefly before being sent to Fettes, a Scottish school.

Lots of posh Scots are sent to English schools, giving them accents indistinguishable from those of their English-born classmates (I once worked with such a Scot, himself an Old Etonian).

The Bond novels might never have got off the ground if Fleming had gone ahead with the original title of his first, Live and Let Die. He was going to call it The Undertaker’s Wind.

Radical idea:

it simply doesn’t matter who plays 007.

Bond films live and die with the quality, the sheer fascination, of the bad guys. Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, even Live and Let Die, are terrific. Thunderball and Octopussy are very weak entries.

They have had a bad habit lately of making the bad guys in Bond films, indifferent, effeminate, and completely forgettable. You can believe Yaphet Kotto has a plan to take over the world heroin trade, I can’t even remember who the bad guy is in Quantum of Solace.

That being said I do think Dalton was by far the best actor in the role; the films he made just weren’t very good and he should have been given better material.

Never cared all that much for 007 movies, but Sean Connery was the more watchable Bond.
Moore and Brosnan were too unserious/comedic, Dalton miscast, the ones with Craig were awful (despite the critics loving them). They can use now a black lesbian now for all I care.

Probably a more interesting question (which almost never seems to get asked) is: who would have been the most convincing Blofeld? Personally, I think they should have cast Lord Rothschild.

Famously, Ian Fleming wanted David Niven to play James Bond.

Fleming variously insulted Sean Connery as “that fucking truck driver” or as “an over developed stuntman”.

Curious Ian Fleming factoid:

Following Rudolf Hess’ bizarre solo mission to Scotland, Fleming, who was high up in Royal Navy intelligence, suggested to the British cabinet that Aleister Crowley should be charged with the initial interrogation of Hess.
What the cabinet made of Fleming’s suggestion is not known.

In some spaces — being first, the first one is all that matters. And In this case, Mr. Connery was the it man for that role at that time — and was an international hit.

Fair thee well . . . and thanks.

————————————-

Quintessential Englishman : George Lazenby (Australian)

Wasn’t Moore’s Bond very much a re-run of Moore’s Simon Templar – “The Saint”? Always a touch of humour about the performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_(TV_series)

NBC picked up the show as a summer replacement in its evening schedule in 1966 because of the strong performance in the United States of the first two series in first-run syndication. The programme, therefore, ended its run with both trans-Atlantic primetime scheduling and colour episodes. It also proved popular beyond the UK and US, eventually airing in over 60 countries, and made a profit in excess of £350m for ITC.

First episode of The Saint – premiered 4 October 1962

First Bond film (Dr No) – premiered 5 October 1962.

Is it just me btw, or does Daniel Craig’s Bond resemble Vladimir Putin?

On the topic of Kipling, British Imperialism, Sean Connery, derring-do, ‘real man’ etc, the life story of the Victorian British Army captain, William Raikes Hodson, ‘Hodson of Hodson’s Horse’ is instructive.

In an unbelievable tight situation, during the Indian Mutiny, of the 1850s, Hodson found himself alone – with only a service revolver – facing a baying mob of literally hundreds of Indian Muslim fanatics, and oh, a couple of mughal prince captives of his. Literally backed into a corner, Hodson’s courage did not fail him, and he then and there summarily executed the hostages, cold bloodedly, with single shots to the brain. He then, in thorough public school English Victorian fashion, barked, growled and yelped at the mob – who all faded away!!!!!!

You won’t be too surprised to learn that Hodson was the son of an Anglican clergyman.

I heard once that as soon as Fleming saw Connery walk into the audition he said something along the lines of “That’s him. That’s James Bond”

I have no verification for that story but Connery does bare resemblance to Fleming’s brother.

David Niven sure looked right as an older retired sir James.

Anyone who has knows that James Bond the character is Scottish/Swiss not English.

I’ve read them all, and got them all …. and after the first post-Moore Bond movie I totally lost interest in them, they lost all their good spirited charm and humor.

I also got Kingsley Amis’ very amusing The James Bond Dossier.

One thing you learn reading the books is that Bond served in the Navy in the WWII … so he certainly should be retired.

The books are extremely silly but entertaining, the Amis book describes how Fleming wasn’t upper class but worshiped them a lot. And the most admirable upper class thing for Fleming was gambling at a posh Casino …

Reading the the books it’s hard to say if Fleming really believed that games like roulette required strategy and intelligence ….that is, was he rather stupid or not?

If memory serves, in the book ‘You only live twice’ there is an extended scene of Bond playing Rock Paper Scissors …. well, maybe that game is not in practice totally random, but Fleming makes it sound like Chess match between Grand Masters …

Sean Connery is to me the real James Bond, but to my wife, ten years younger, it is Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.

She likes the movies more than I do. In fact, I am very tired of the whole thing. It is formulaic and unreal to the point where I can no longer suspend disbelief.

the quintessential Englishman

Don’t be daft: in the novels he’s half Scots, half Swiss.

I wonder what percentage of Bond viewers have ever read any of the books.

I read the first eight as paper backs in the late 50’s and early 60’s as a teenager.

“I wonder what percentage of Bond viewers have ever read any of the books.”

In pre-pornified days Bond was a shocker. This New Statesman review of Dr No, by then-left-winger Paul Johnson.

https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/02/1958-bond-fleming-girl-sex

I have just finished what is without a doubt the nastiest book I have ever read. It is a new novel entitled Dr. No and the author is Mr. Ian Fleming. Echoes of Mr Fleming’s fame had reached me before, and I had been repeatedly urged to read his books by literary friends whose judgement I normally respect. When his new novel appeared, therefore, I obtained a copy and started to read. By the time I was a third of the way through, I had to suppress a strong impulse to throw the thing away, and only continued reading because I realised that here was a social phenomenon of some importance.

There are three basic ingredients in Dr No, all unhealthy, all thoroughly English: the sadism of a school boy bully, the mechanical two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude, snob-cravings of a suburban adult. Mr Fleming has no literary skill, the construction of the book is chaotic, the entire incidents and situations are inserted, and then forgotten, in a haphazard manner. But the three ingredients are manufactured and blended with deliberate, professional precision; Mr Fleming dishes up his recipe with all the calculated accountancy of a Lyons Corner House.

I thought Diamonds are Forever was excellent. Jill St. John was miscast as Tiffany Case.

I just never liked Bond films, the most I’ve watched is about 15 minutes at a time. They just seemed superficial and just plain boring.

Danger Man*, the TV show starring Patrick McGoohan, was far superior.

*Secret Agent

Graham Chapman as Australian Big-Game Hunter: “I love animals! That’s why I like to kill ’em!”

The Flemings I know best are the film director and the guy who discovered penicillin. Imagine doing Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in the same year. Now that’s productivity.

Or saving millions of lives by accident. We could use someone like that about now, presuming that you think saving millions of lives is a good thing. I’m not here to judge.

“‘De Undertaker blow de bad air out of the island night-times from six till six. Den every morning de Doctor’s Wind come and blow de sweet air in from de sea… Guess you and de Undertaker’s Wind got much de same job.”

— Live and Let Die

I guess at some point in the last 60 years, representing black accents by using “d” in place of “th” fell out of fashion.

I cannot answer the question properly, because I have always admired Sean Connery as a manly personality, but have regarded the James Bond idea as a farce.

First few Bond movies were good & watchable, but later Connery Bond films, as well as all Moore’s, treat Bond as it should be- a comedy. British spying was great until Soviets simply steamrolled over it (3rd, 4th, 5th,…. man), so that I could never take a British spy story arc seriously.

Also, his gadgets were ludicrous, as were super-villains. Only Bond girls were something…. I don’t know what, but they were.

The Bond character is as absurd as Harry Potter & I simply don’t get it why would anyone watch it. Except, of course- as a comedy.

They were going for different things at different points in the film series. They were ready to treat it lighter and with double entendres and more tongue in cheek in the Roger Moore era. A movie called Octopussy in the Sean Connery era? Wouldn’t have happened.

And darker for the Daniel Craig era. Which they made clear from the beginning of his first movie Casino Royale which opens with his first killing in a brutal black and white scene in a bathroom. And The Bond Girl betrays Bond.

…the burned-out jeep with the bundle of forged plans in the front seat designed to frustrate the Japanese advance; the carefully abandoned haversack full of misleading information; the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force member in the Allied Commander Lord Mountbatten’s HQ in Ceylon instructed to write letters about spurious troop movements to a non-existent boyfriend in the hope that they would be steamed open by enemy agents.

How much happened in the 20th century because well-to-do overgrown children wanted to LARP as spies and adventurers?

Incidentally, I believe some historians make the argument that German intelligence wasn’t fooled by this stuff, but passed it upstairs anyway, because German intelligence, or elements therein, were part of a rival faction, and sought to undermine Hitler et al. (This jibes well with the stuff on Admiral Canaris’s Wikipedia page.)

(My personal conspiracy theory is that the Allies, or elements therein, intended to use Germany to destroy Russia (and thereby communism), and vice versa, and that this explains much of the activity on the western front in the early years of the war: the Phoney War, France’s “defeat”, German restraint at Dunkirk, the half-heartedness of Germany’s attempts at subduing Britain, Rudolf Hess’s “peace mission”, everything Canaris did, etc, etc. Plans changed when the Russians turned the tide at Stalingrad: the Allies realised they were going to have to invade western Europe themselves, to stop the Russians taking it all; their friends in Germany tried to remove Hitler ahead of schedule, but failed and/or were betrayed by the Allies, who decided not to make peace with Germany as they’d promised. This makes as much sense to me as anything I’ve read from legit historians.)

Bond movies I thought were good (but never great):

Connery era:
Goldfinger
Thunderball

Moore era:
For Your eyes only

Dalton:
License to kill

Brosnan:
Goldeneye

That’s a lousy batting average. Most of the movies are too long and have needlessly complex plots, and the Moore and Brosnan era had too much campy humor even for the time period in which they were made (Goldfinger and License to kill are probably the most straightforward). The earlier ones also had ESL/dubbing issues with many of the actors, something that hurts a lot of 60’s-early 80’s European movies).

I never held it against the actors that most of these movies were not very well scripted or well paced.

I thought Dalton was much closer to the Bond of the books. I’d place him just a hair below Connery, though I know I’ll be ripped to shreds for that opinion. He was much more believable as a killer, less so as a womanizer.

More interesting than who played the best James Bond is why these books – which were awful – got turned into movies. Maybe it was a Space-Age thing, plus a Cold-War thing, and the former provided gadgetry and the latter provided rivalry, and…I still don’t understand why anyone who’d decided to make a movie with both would reach as low as an Ian Fleming novel for characters.

Good to see, in any case, Peter Fleming getting a little press here. I think I’ve read everything he published in book form. Even The Flying Visit, which I found in the Texas Tech library. News From Tartary inspired me to study Turkish and Russian. Brazilian Adventure is, I still think, the best book ever written about that country. Perhaps because Fleming’s party was out of the range of news for most of the expedition, it lacks details which would date it; it is mostly about Brazilians themselves, and from about my third visit in 1993 to my nineteenth three weeks ago, I have maintained the book still captures the place. (I’d found the volume in the UT Austin library in 1989.)

OT, here might be a fruitful topic: old travel books that somehow remain instructive. I’d add Brian Hall’s The Impossible Country, which even though Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore, and the book hardly said anything about Slovenia, has clued me to much in that country. On the other hand, I would not fully include Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express. It may still be a good introduction to Argentina but I think it really is way out of date on Central America. (Another, even OT-er mental exercise: remember when Nicaragua and El Salvador were in the news a lot? I do. Then they vanished. I daresay they’ve done well since. And maybe there’s a connection.)

I actually bought Dalton the most as a plausibly smooth and smart secret agent who could take of himself physically if necessary,though he wasn’t the most entertaining or charming (Connery, Moore, and Brosnan definitely best Dalton in that race).

Lazenby was too young and short-lived to get a chance to really lock into the role, but he did good in the fight scenes at least.

Craig is the worst. I suppose as a thuggish hitman or street instigator type operater I might buy him. But a high level spy? No way. He doesn’t have 1/50th of the required smooth charm and people skills.

I thought the inspiration for James Bond was supposed to be the playboy Serbian diplomat/spy, Duško Popov.

“Daniel Craig always looked the part of a James Bond villain.”

True, but he is by far the most muscular, masculine, kick-ass Bond. The other guys played the role as you say, “with one eye on the camera”. Craig looks as though he doesn’t need or use a stuntman. Not so much an English gentleman as a longshoreman’s son. Whereas the others would have been toast without their high tech gizmos (courtesy of Q), Craig is not the guy you want to climb into the Octagon with.

It’s been a while since I read it but I believe that Umberto (“Name of the Rose” etc) Eco was a fan of Connery as ?admitted in his essay on the narrative structure of the Fleming novels – in “The Bond Affair” of 1966.

And having had a quick look at the prices of copies of the book, I should have a good look for mine.

I guess at some point in the last 60 years, representing black accents by using “d” in place of “th” fell out of fashion.

I think it’s a plausible imitation of a Caribbean black accent, which is what I assume your quote was trying to represents.

Bond blended the attributes of the two Fleming brothers. Peter was the highly athletic commando type who got up to all kinds of worldwide adventures. Ian was the drinker and womanizer.

If Moore had come first, there would have been no franchise. Moore’s 70’s Bond wouldn’t have cut it in the 60s.

I used to think like this, but I have revised my view over time. Giving consideration for increasing budgets in later films, I think they basically peak with the first two, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, and go downhill from there. The first Timothy Dalton movie and the first Daniel Craig maybe break this trend. Maybe.

Bond’s mother was French-Swiss.

Connery actually did a surprisingly good job for the BBC in Shakespeare’s Henry IV as Hotspur. His reading of the lines wasn’t the most refined, but he brought a lot of energy to the part and then Hotspur isn’t the most refined character. Worth checking out.

Roger Moore was the only convincing Bond. Also the movies he was in were easier to watch because they were taking it all with a touch of humor.

Contrary to what others have posted, Ian Fleming DID like Connery as Bond, and even went so far as to retcon Bond into being Scottish in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Fleming’s original novels have also become somewhat underrated in spite of being still in print and the source of the world’s most popular movie franchise. Fleming’s characterization and plotting is economical and if you’re in the know or just up on your Cold War history, it’s obvious that the more outré elements were thrown in to help clear publication review.

They should stop with the bond movies for a while. They end up being more reflective of the era that produced them than anything else and every bond actor since Connery gets a mixed bag of good (or just ok) and bad films to work through.

Doesn’t this all come down to whether the Ian Fleming genre fiction was great literature that must be slavishly reproduced on film, or trashy source material licensed for ideas to be picked and chosen from? Isn’t the latter closer to the truth? If so, who cares who the best actor would have been to literally represent the books’ contents?

Moore was original Bond. Connery replaces him. How is it taken?

In this scenario, Moore gets the best scripts, I’m not convinced it gets to Connery.

I’ve always thought Connery was horribly miscast in that role. Patrick McGoohan would have been the best Bond.

Bond was very much a Cold War hero.

Ironically Bond rarely had any dealings with the Soviets at all. Its usually super villains threatening the economic status quo.

It’s still OK if you’re a wigger.

Maybe someday, with Deep Fake technology, they can make the perfect James Bond movie, with 007 being played by John Wayne.

Supposedly, both Cubby Broccoli and Ian Fleming both initially thought Connery was wrong for the role and it was their wife (Broccoli) and girlfriend (Fleming) who convinced them otherwise. As someone already noted, Fleming came to like Connery so much he wrote a Scottish background for Bond into later stories.

SC was just a total badass…..always spoke his mind and never apologized.

If all white men were like Sean nobody would DARE fuck with us…..but most white men are Paul Ryan pussies…..Sean was the real shit.

Sean, Mel, and Clint. The rest of Hollywood are cunts.

I once admired Deniro but now I hate him. When I was a kid I actually liked Rob Reiner…..but he’s turned out to be very possibly the most vile POS on this earth, ranking up there with Tim Wise.

I never accepted any of the other Bonds. SC was really the ONLY Bond.

I admire very few people, TBH, but SC is at the top of my list.

Not sure about that, but Fleming was on the record as saying that Bond, in his own mind’s eye, resembled Hoagy Carmichael. Fleming was initially skeptical about Connery, but changed his mind and thought that he did a good job.

Ian wrote a lot of himself into Bond, but I’d guess that the single best source for his character was his cruelly handsome older brother Peter Fleming,

I feel that people who are looking for a source for the worldly spy of fame are not looking for a source for Ian Fleming’s inspiration. There is a more recent biography of Ian Fleming that doesn’t gloss over the nastiness, like his seducing his friend’s wife and their honeymoon, but there is an earlier biography that explores the relationship of Fleming’s own life with the Bond books. Much of Fleming’s pedestrian life spent pursuing booze and vacations was spun into spy stories. For example, the plot of the novel Live and Let Die is essentially Bond flying to New York and taking a train down to Florida and then a boat in the Caribbean, and this is basically what Fleming did on his yearly vacations to the USA. The oyster bar Fleming frequented in NYC even features in the book. For those imagining that the novels are ripping spy stories, it comes as a shock how much of the books are Bond’s inner life. For example, the “Vesper” cocktail (which actually is delicious, but I believe is not a martini, but is actually a higher-alcohol-content variation of a cocktail called the “Old Etonian”, which Fleming would have been familiar with as an old Etonian) was made famous by Fleming’s novel Casino Royale, but what actually features in the novel is Fleming’s description of how and how well Bond can use the drink to find the right balance between inebriation and drunkenness in order to play cards well. That is 100% autobiography, I have no doubt. See also the obvious BDSM allusions in the end of Live and Let Die and Fleming’s own sexual obsessions.

If you don’t see Fleming’s rather pathetic life reflected in the novels, try his travelogue Thrilling Cities. Fleming was not an unskilled writer, and there are moments of literary merit like his initial description of taking off on an airplane, but as actual travelogue, the book is complete shit, mostly due to the fact that Fleming is an entirely uncurious drunk who is content to go to, for example, Hong Kong and just stay in his hotel and collect some salacious second-hand stories about old Hong Kong madames. Hong Kong! Seen from the perspective of the exoticism that enticed the original 60s and 70s movie-goers, Albert R. Broccoli is the true author of James Bond.

Fleming’s great service to literature was plowing his James Bond royalties into book collecting:

(1) He helped found and finance the great journal The Book Collector:

http://www.thebookcollector.co.uk/

And (2) he assembled a high-spot collection that was one of the principal contributions to the great Printing and the Mind of Man exhibition:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_and_the_Mind_of_Man

If YOU HAVE ACTUALLY READ THE NOVELS, Craig is the best Bond. But if you go by the movies, it’s probably a tossup between the other actors.

The upper class of England destroyed the British Empire.

The British Empire was mostly useless. And, if the Brits had held on to it much longer, Britain would have been thoroughly “Blacked.” Remember the wise words of De Gaulle:

Those who advocate integration have the brain of a hummingbird, even if they are very scholarly. Try to integrate oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a while, they will separate again. The Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. You think that the French body can absorb 10 million Muslims, who tomorrow will be 20 million and after-tomorrow 40 million? If we go for integration, if all the Arabs and all the Berbers of Algeria were considered as Frenchmen, how would you stop them from coming to live in the home country, given that the standard of living is so much higher? My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises [Colombey-the-Two-Churches], but Colombey-the-Two-Mosques.

Ian wrote a lot of himself into Bond, but I’d guess that the single best source for his character was his cruelly handsome older brother Peter Fleming, a taciturn wit and gifted shooter who was one of the more glamorous travel writers of the 1930s, a field in which numerous wordsmiths such as Waugh and Orwell competed.

Interesting side note: If you read the books, Bond is described as looking like Hoagy Carmichael:

https://flemingsbond.com/hoagy-carmichael/

Actually:

Sir William Samuel Stephenson CC MC DFC, (23 January 1897 – 31 January 1989) was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British Security Coordination (BSC) for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid. Many people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond.[1] Ian Fleming himself once wrote, “James Bond is a highly romanticizedized version of a true spy. The real thing is … William Stephenson.”[2]

The cinematic Bond mostly avoided the Cold War.In the Connery era, Bond spent most of his time fighting SPECTRE, not the Soviets.I think that For Your Eyes Only was the only Bond movie where the Soviets/Communists were the bad guys. In Octopussy , The Living Daylights, and A View To a Kill, the threat came from rogue Soviet operatives. Goldfinger is a partial exception, as the Red Chinese were in cahoots with the film’s main villain, the eponymous Goldfinger.

The literary Bond was rather different, with most of the early books concentrating on the Soviet menace: Casino Royale , Live and Let Die, From Russia, With Love, Moonraker (That one has holdover German Nazis conspiring with the Soviets to nuke London).

Ian Fleming initially thought Connery was too much of an “overgrown stuntman” to play the refined Englishman James Bond. Connery was a bodybuilder before he went into acting, so he was something of an Arnold before Arnold and not a proven actor like Cary Grant (Flemings preference for Bond but too old at that point). After Dr No, Fleming liked Connery so much that he wrote in Bond a Scottish father.

Another great choice for Bond would have been Christopher Lee, Fleming’s cousin and someone who was on the shortlist for Bond (along with future Bond Roger Moore). I personally think Lee would have been phenomenal; he had the cruel good looks that Bond is described as having and looks the part of the suave Englishman

One of the chapter names of Live and Let Die is titled “Nigger Heaven” (how one black man in the chapter describes Harlem). A lot of that book would be unacceptable today.

In fact, there’s a good bit of old-school race realism and Anglo-Germanic exceptionalism in the books. Bond is constantly trying to figure out the ethnic origins of each villain. He takes note that Mr Big, the black Live and Let Die villain, has some European ancestry judging by his thinner lips, and this explains why he’s the leader and not some thug. Same with Dr No, the half Chinese half European villain whose henchmen are mostly Chinese Negroes. Bond thinks Le Chiffre, the villainous accountant and card wizard, has jewish ancestry based on his earlobes and spends about a page determining that Goldfinger is a Balt based on looks alone. It’s a common habit of Fleming to give characters partial German ancestry to explain their leadership qualities or physical strength.

As I said on the other article about Connery, HE IS THE ONLY JAMES BOND IMO. I found the other James Bond movies sans Connery unwatchable.

Now if you want to talk about miscasting someone with a role they aren’t suited for, lets talk about Tom Cruise, cast as the 6’4″ or is it 6’5″ fictional Jack Reacher. I mean what is Cruise’s height? Isn’t he about 5’6″ to 5’7″ on a good day. What next, Mark Wahlberg, playing Larry Bird?

But in all fairness, one of the most iconic figures ever created in the fictional world of Hollywood, Rocky Balboa, was played by Sylvester Stallone, who despite his muscles was no heavyweight. Stallone who was probably 5’9″ or 5’10” with the right footwear played a heavyweight boxer. Stallone, despite his muscles is not a large man with a heavy bone structure. REAL life former boxer George Chuvalo remarked after meeting Stallone, that Stallone portraying a heavyweight in the movies was something of a stretch, he looked more like a welterweight to me stated Chuvalo. Hmm, me thinks Stallone might have been a natural 154-160 pound guy if he was in fighting shape and without the prior weight training. Plus, the movie screen makes you look bigger.

McGoohan plays a Bond-inspired character in Ice Station Zebra.

It would have been best for Broccoli to cast an American like Clint Eastwood or Adam West as Bond. (Both of them got the offer) Keeping the role for a Brit only served to mislead Brits into thinking they were somehow important players on the international scene, which they hadn’t been since 1920. And what a mess they left. In the heyday of Bond, the only British secret agents with guns were in Ulster and they were doing decidedly non-heroic things like shooting kids. Somehow that never made it into a Bond script!

If there was ever a guy that I wish I could morph into it was Sean Connery. Handsome and perfect size and the build to look great in clothes. On the other hand, Roger Moore was the worst of the Bonds, didn’t have the slight bit of edgyness the others had. Just my opinion.

In addition to all the known ones there’s a lost (sort of ) James Bond story called Per Fine Ounce. South African writer Geoffrey Jenkins was friends with Ian Fleming and in the late 1950’s they discussed writing a new Bond story set in the gold mining industry. Jenkins prepared a synopsis which later turned up in Fleming’s papers. The two planned to do on-scene research in South Africa, but Fleming’s death in 1964 ended that plan.
About a year later Jenkins took the synopsis to the publisher of the Bond stories and proposed writing a full manuscript. The company agreed, but ended up not publishing the full story supposedly because it was of low quality.
Exactly what became of the full manuscript is a mystery. Rumor says that the publishers still have a copy, but the company maintains that they sent it back to Jenkins after deciding not to publish it. Jenkins’ heirs have 18 pages, and allowed two pages to be shown on a Bond fansite in 2010, but deny possession of the full document. In the 1970’s Jenkins himself used some of the story’s thematic elements in his novel A Cleft of Stars, but for legal reasons was not able to use the Bond character or indeed any secret agent characters at all.
Getting back to my first sentence, the lost story is a “sort of” James Bond story because Jenkins rather than Fleming wrote it, however he collaborated with Fleming on the synopsis. Of course with the full manuscript being lost there’s no way to know how closely it adhered to the synopsis and therefore the extent of Fleming’s input.

Possibly the biggest British spy operation in the history of the British Empire was called British Security Coordination (BSC), based out of Rockefeller Center and led by the Canadian spy Sir William Stephenson–a man called Intrepid.

Ian Fleming was friends with Stephenson and worked with him. They owned property together in Jamaica. The James Bond character is probably based on Stephenson.

People forget that for much of American history, the British Empire was seen as the enemy of the United States and the biggest threat to our independence. Brits were often portrayed as villains and bad guys in American culture. After World War I, a large number of Americans believed that the British duped us into fighting that war. There was a huge backlash against the British here in the United States and a rise in anti-British sentiment.

Churchill set up BSC in 1940 to combat anti-British sentiment and produce anti-German propaganda in the United States. Churchill tasked BSC to use the black arts of spycraft to bring the U.S. into the war against Germany.

According to an August 2006 article in the British newspaper The Guardian, “BSC became a huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda.” The article stated that BSC represented one of the largest covert operations in British spying history and that as many as 3,000 British agents were “spreading propaganda and mayhem in a staunchly anti-war America.”

As explained in Thomas Mahl’s book “Desperate Deception,” the BSC engaged in kidnapping, honeypot operations against anti-war politicians and public citizens, the production of fake news, fake documents and fake poll results, the use of agent provocateurs, particularly against the American First movement, financial support of pro-war politicians and organizations, manipulation of elections, and possibly murder.

Ian Fleming was involved with this.

FDR was aware of the BSC and was friends with Stephenson. In fact, Stephenson convinced FDR to create the OSS, which later became the CIA. There is even a statue of the Stephenson in the atrium at CIA headquarters.

Personally, I think the James Bond books and movies were a continuation of the BSC’s propaganda operation meant to influence the American people to see the Brits not as enemies, but view the enemies of the British establishment as enemies of the American people. The goals of British foreign policy for more than a century has been to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the British on top. They are still pursuing those goals today.

Fleming loved wildlife and loved killing it.

Sounds like Theodore Roosevelt:

In hunting, the finding and killing of the game is after all but a part of the whole. The free, self-reliant, adventurous life, with its rugged and stalwart democracy; the wild surroundings, the grand beauty of the scenery, the chance to study the ways and habits of the woodland creatures—all these unite to give to the career of the wilderness hunter its peculiar charm. The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities can possibly atone.

-Theodore Roosevelt, The Wilderness Hunter

Ian Fleming was not Woke:

“It’s like this.” He began his antics with the pipe. “The Jamaican is a kindly lazy man with the virtues and vices of a child. He lives on a very rich island but he doesn’t get rich from it. He doesn’t know how to and he’s too lazy. The British come and go and take the easy pickings, but for about two hundred years no Englishman has made a fortune out here. He doesn’t stay long enough. He takes a fat cut and leaves. It’s the Portuguese Jews who make the most. They came here with the British and they’ve stayed. But they’re snobs and they spend too much of their fortunes on building fine houses and giving dances. They’re the names that fill the social column in the Gleaner when the tourists have gone. They’re in rum and tobacco and they represent the big British firms over here–motor cars, insurance and so forth. Then come the Syrians, very rich too, but not such good businessmen. They have most of the stores and some of the best hotels. They’re not a very good risk. Get overstocked and have to have an occasional fire to get liquid again. Then there are the Indians with their usual flashy trade in soft goods and the like. They’re not much of a lot. Finally there are the Chinese, solid, compact, discreet–the most powerful clique in Jamaica. They’ve got the bakeries and the laundries and the best food stores. They keep to themselves and keep their strain pure.” Pleydell-Smith laughed. “Not that they don’t take the black girls when they want them. You can see the result all over Kingston–Chigroes–Chinese Negroes and Negresses. The Chigroes are a tough, forgotten race. They look down on the Negroes and the Chinese look down on them. One day they may become a nuisance. They’ve got some of the intelligence of the Chinese and most of the vices of the black man. The police have a lot of trouble with them.”

–Dr No

IMO, Connery was the only actor to ever actually play Bond. Once Roger Moore became the character, there were no more Bond films, just car-chase/ explosion/ gadgetry displays, given the title of a Fleming novel or story, with the names of some of the characters. As such, the Bond character as told in the Fleming tales never appeared again in the 007 flicks.

I’ve been told that a few of the latest films with Daniel Craig are more based on the Fleming tales in the titles, but I haven’t seen any of them, having given up on 007 flicks once the formula was changed to garbage.

What you’re quoting is kind of a general Caribbean islander’s accent, not a general black accent. In Dr. No, there were a few Islander characters whose dialect would differ from that of black people in other places..

Great list. I would add On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, mainly for setting, score, Diana Rigg, and the bioweapon based threat.

I probably hold the films in slightly higher esteem.

Then, you have the films that had some great set pieces, yet could never put it all together. The Living Daylights falls into this category.

Tomorrow Never Dies should have been great, but they ruined it by revealing the big bad and his plot far too early.

Goldfinger revealed the big bad early, but held his main plot until later in the film.

“Was Sean Connery the Ideal James Bond?”

old fans universally seem to think so, younger fans have various opinions on who was the best Bond. Connery was certainly the best actor to play Bond. but was he the best Bond? it is a question similar to who was the best Dr Who.

i think it matters who you first saw as Bond. that guy will usually always be Bond to you, and the other actors will be some impostor that you never get used to.

on a related note it wasn’t until recently that i realized how bad the Moore movies were. not a comment on Moore as Bond really, so much as how campy and unserious the movies were. they just aren’t that good compared to other eras of Bond.

i’ve heard old fans complain about gadgets and starting to lose interest when Bond movies became about the trick technology Bond would get from headquarters at the beginning of the movie.

Isn’t the next 007 to be played by a black woman?

Yes, in the next bond film a black woman has been given the 007 designation because Daniel Craig is still distraught over the death of his girl friend, or something. I have seen the trailers, and while the stunts look great as always, the movie doesn’t look very good which is perhaps why its release has been pushed back again to Spring 2021.

Perhaps Sean Connery was not Bond as Fleming originally envisioned him, but SC’s good looks and his ability to deliver the dumb Bond lines make me think of him whenever I think of Bond.

This is perfect:

“I’ve heard Ian Fleming wasn’t crazy about the casting.”

Fleming reportedly warmed to the Magnificent Scot after Dr. No. Fleming had American musician and actor Hoagy Carmichael in mind, looks wise, for 007. Carmichael closely resembles Peter Fleming. Carmichael is featured in To Have And Have Not (1945), an entertaining gangster film directed by Howard Hawks. The Bogart-Bacall team are the leads.

The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only are quite good. But then there are the 5 other Moore movies.

Kingsley Amis, in the still-definitive (tho vastly out of date) James Bond Dossier, mostly about “Book Bond” but with a bit on the new “Movie Bond,” disparages Connery as someone who “could play a Edinbugh businessman but never a Scottish laird.” He’s alluding to the Scottish heraldry guy Bond disguises himself as in OHMSS, and as it happens, that film was the first to not star Connery.

Revisionism isn’t just for the Holocaust. Bond revisionists now consider George Lazenby to be the better Bond, and OHMSS to be the best Bond film (best cinematography, screenplay, music, Blofeld, Bond Girl, etc.) although possibly second to the Craig Casino Royale. Both, of course, non-Connery.

And yes, it was thought so at the time. Harry and Cubby desperately wanted Lazenby to sign on for a half dozen films, but he refused, thinking he’d made his point — I’m as good as Connery — and like Connery wanted to move on. Vengeful producers created the legend of OHMSS as a disaster; would a Hollywood producer named Salzman lie to you? Not even for a stainless steel delicatessen!

Operation Kid Brother (aka OK Connery, aka Operation Double 007) is actually quite a bit of fun and much better than one might think. Sean’s brother isn’t much good, but it’s full of actual Bond actors: Aldolfo Celi is a much better villain than in Thunderball, we get several Bond Bad Girls from earlier movies, we get to actually see Anthony Dawson as (kinda) Blofeld, it’s great to see Moneypenny and M out in the field (played by Lois and Lee themselves). Possibly the best Bond score — Ennio Morricone! His title song is so over the top that on Mystery Science Theater Crow said that “he couldn’t possibly live up to the song the wrote about him,” and that “he’s probably just an accountant named Wallace,” which is a nice shout out to The Untouchables, starring Sean Connery.

The question that always ran through my mind watching Connery as Bond was “Why is this magnificent Scottish prole playing the quintessential English gentleman?”

Fleming gave James Bond a Scottish father and a French-Swiss mother.

You can’t knock Connery, but I’ve always felt that Roger Moore seemed more appropriate for the part. Tall, more upperclass type, charming, but always a twinkle in his eye like he was a little in on the joke. Take the part too seriously (see: Timothy Dalton) and the Bond franchise loses its appeal.

Of course I also preferred Moore to Connery because Moore was Bond in the first movie I saw in theatre, “A View to a Kill.” He was at least a decade too old for the part by then, and the Bond girl in that movie, Tanya Roberts, was frankly quite awful. But it did have Grace Jones and, even better, Christopher Walken, as one of the best Bond villains of all time. It also had a killer theme song (though overall I prefer the classier theme songs from the Connery era).

While Moore defined James Bond for me, it was Carey Lowell, from “License to Kill,” four years later, who set the standard for Bond girls for me. I was 13 at the time, so I need say nothing else.

Moore’s Bond slapped around and bullied a girl in The Man with the Golden Gun. I seem to recall it was the one bond girl who returned for an encore too. Connery’s Bond earlier did similar things, including swinging one girl into the line of fire of an assassin. A bit caddish, one might call it. Later films dialed this element down to about zero.

Fleming was a “race realist” in the sense that any normal person back then was. As Sailer would say, back then people were allowed to “notice” things. Spying is all about “noticing” things.

In Fleming’s case it’s distorted a bit by his understandable irritation over Americans taking over — he’s really quite snobbish and dismissive of them. As for dialect, far worse than his ebonics is his rendering of American gangsters; he likely never met one, and they all use outdated slang for 30s Warner Bros pictures.

M and Bond discuss Mr Big (note British lack of period — or full stop — after Mr) and it’s really quite meritocratic. “The blacks are making the name in all fields now, why not crime and espionage?” [Paraphrased]. Give Mr Big some Moscow training to get up to speed and why not be a super-villain? I suppose this would be consider condescending today: AA for black villains! How dare you impose your White standards?

What the woke really have a problem with is Quarrel, who’s in two books (LLD and Dr No) but only one film, because they killed him off. It’s not the dialect but the relationship: real lord and gameskeeper stuff. Kingsley Amis says this in The James Bond Dossier:

“I will merely point out the other side  of this part of the Byronic picture, the friendliness Bond feels  for those possessed of instinctive dignity who treat him as an  equal: Darko Kerim in From Russia, with Love, Vavra (the  gipsy in the same book), Quarrel in Live and Let Die and Dr  No. With Quarrel, Bond’s relationship is ‘that of a Scots laird  with his head stalker; authority was unspoken and there  was no room for servility.’ This is —isn’t it? — exactly how  natural aristocrats are supposed to feel and behave. Perhaps  they do, if they exist. Certainly Bond’s Scottishness makes  such an attitude in him a couple of degrees more believable.”

***** SPOILERS ******

Hugo Drax in the Moonraker novel is a fanatical German villain whose sexual inadequacies (thumb sucking) are emphasized.

My mother, though not black, was from Nassau, and I would agree with that.

“Craig is the worst”

Daniel Craig is a talented actor but his 007 has been given superpowers in the era of the comic book movies. Casino Royale (2006), directed by Martin Campbell, is one of the best films of the franchise. The subsequent Craig films, while gloriously made, have become less intriguing. It’ll be interesting to see if EON Productions bends the knee to the Western anti-racism cult and casts Idris Elba or another UK black as James Bond. Elba is another quality UK actor but he’s black. I’ll stop watching the movies if Bond turns black because I’m prejudiced.

Why say you that? I would think the other way round: the 60s was the younger Moore who could reasonably play the Bond-like Saint but was too old by the time he replaced Connery. By his last film he insisted on the script giving him a more grandfatherly, avuncular role with women, as there was such an age difference as to be rather creepy.

for the record, i mostly agree with the consensus.

Connery – the best actor, but not the best Bond. he’s plainly Scottish, and isn’t Bond supposed to be English? my dad is old, and this is who he prefers.
Moore – for decades, he was James Bond to me. but looking back, the movies were not that good. also Moore is kind of weak and unathletic, and old, and doesn’t look like he could handle himself in an altercation, which hurts the movies even more looking back on them.
Dalton – never worked for me, seemed to the reaction everybody else had.
Brosnan – now we’re talking. had the looks and the personality. my mom’s favorite Bond, because he was the most handsome and suave. she rewatches the best couple Brosnan movies over and over.
Craig – James Blonde. like others said, not a gentleman. that makes the movies more interesting as a change of pace since he’s crude and ruthless when he as to be. some of the best Bond movies were made here. the most polarizing Bond. appears they have written him in the movies now as distantly Scottish.

James Bond isn’t interesting anymore, as other said. it’s the same plot every time. Bond saves the world from the supervillian and gets the girl. he is definitely a Cold War relic, and the characters have even discussed this on screen. it’s time for him to be done. at this point we’re into fan fiction territory with vibrant Bond, the same territory Star Wars has entered.

Fun fact: the first portrait of “James Bond” appears on an British paperback of Casino Royale. The artist based it on Richard Conte, a Hollywood tough guy well known back then (Ocean’s Eleven) but today largely remembered as Don Barzini in The Godfather. Despite this, and despite the description of Bond in the book, he’s given a sort of reddish head of hair, “because Scottish”?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2013/apr/12/sixty-years-james-bond-casino-royale#img-3

I lost track; at the end of the day, as the Brits say, did any of those toffee-nosed gits in the “secret service” turn out NOT be be a Soviet mole?

Sort of like everyone in the KKK or American Nazi Party is a Fed. The Soviets invented the idea of “controlled opposition.” (That’s why Smiley’s version of MI6 was a “Circus” led by “Control”)

I have not read the books, but I agree. Craig represents the cvombination of intelligence, drive, with and brute force with a bit of antisocial behavior added to make the character plausible. Even if Ian Fleming envisioned a more genteel character, Craig is most credible. Sean Connery is a close second.

As you say, the early books were largely concentrated on the Soviet menace. That was part of the argument I was making.

In the Bond film series, SMERSH is usually replaced with SPECTRE – a global terrorist organisation.

Only in From Russia with Love is Smersh permitted to remain ( correct me if I’m wrong ). But to anyone with a passing knowledge of the books, SPECTRE =SMERSH was obvious. Bond lost his context after the end of the Cold War, and should have been retired. I’ve never been able to watch a Bond film after Dalton’s last effort. When you’re rehashing earlier films in the series, it’s time to stop.
But like everything in showbiz, if the punters continue to pay the money, continue.

Connery was the best bond …….but……..that park our chase scene in the opening of casino royale …….

Connery was a good enough actor that he could pull off being upper class. But as you say I preferred Moore because he played it for laughs and the scripts got so ridiculous that worked better for me

“But then there are the 5 other Moore movies.”

My brother refers to Roger Moore as the “Bath Bond” because in his first outing as oo7, Live And Let Die (1973), Moore arrives in enemy territory, checks into his hotel while under visual surveillance, then immediately jumps into a bubbly tub and begins a luxurious shave. That film and The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) are the best Bath Bonds. Golden Gun is actually quite surreal; the weirdest film of the series. Moore is not a great actor; but he’s quite charming and kills it with the beautiful ladies. I grew up in the 70s watching The Saint reruns, so I was predisposed to liking Moore.

I read several of Theroux’s travel books. The most important for me was The Happy Isles of Oceania, although I had determined to get to Tahiti well before that–since I saw the movie of South Pacific at age 7–and did go there twice. Plus, my father brought back from the Pacific War a 1941 The Pacific Islands Year Book (which I still have) that was totally intoxicating, and was much more important than Theroux’s book (where he did not cover French Polynesia as well as he did the Solomons and even New Zealand.) He was all over the Pacific–New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Rabaul, Fiji, and was annoyed I wanted to go to islands which had only one war incident, and that during WWI, from German warships. There were cannon still up high in Bora Bora from WWII, never used as I recall, which I saw on the 4WD tour–I never take tours but this was the only way and I got my share of Israeli honeymooners. The one in Tahiti was much better, driven by a Marquesan.

Also liked The Kingdom by the Sea about Britain (including N. Ireland), and to some degree Riding the Iron Rooster, his train ride through China.

He tends to go from this Romanticism to his New England Scold thing sometimes, so that the travel books sometimes sound a bit fictional. I like a couple of his novels better–esp. Picture Palace and The Family Arsenal, both better than The Mosquito Coast, which seems so mechanical. But he was very athletic, kayaked a lot in the Pacific one, knew how to travel.

Connery was Scots-Irish, and his Bond was perfection. What Connery brought to the character is sexiness, wit, and impeccable timing–and he was able to make Fleming’s Bond, a killer asshole, likable. And Daniel Craig’s Bond is also tremendous

Elba is an excellent actor but there’s no way someone that black is upper-class. If they wanted to go woke they should make Bond the issue of a scandalous elopement between an upper class girl and an Obama Sr type. Bond is an outsider in the books – familiar with the establishment but not of it. Making him mixed race could play off that.

I don’t see Elba as mixed race though

There has to be a really interesting file locked up somewhere in Whitehall on the subject of that Rudolph Hess flight. What exactly was the reason they kept him shut up in Spandau for so long?

Have you read Patrick Leigh Fermor?

That looks like it could be the dialogue of a Dutchman talking.

What the woke really have a problem with is Quarrel, who’s in two books (LLD and Dr No) but only one film, because they killed him off

Yes and no. Quarrel dies in both the Dr No book and movie, but chronologically Live and Let Die happened before Dr No in the book canon. When Live and Let Die was adapted to the screen long after Dr No they got around this by making him Quarrel Jr, who took Quarrel’s role from the book.

Good comment — you must be a Plastic Paddy. j/k

Seriously are there a bigger group of dopes than Canadians? British officers shot 25 of them in WW1 for “cowardice” and the Canucks came back begging for more. Let’s make it 50 this time! They got their asses handed to them at Dieppe and of course Brits were in charge. But that don’t mean nothin eh! Brits are the good guys!

Daniel Craig is the best James Bond. That’s a fact, not an opinion.

I agree – those were the best – the movies in which Bond was portrayed primarily as a thug. Because that’s what he was supposed to be. I think Dalton is highly underrated.

Patrick McGoohan was offered the part of James Bond, but he turned it down. Likely he found the character’s licentiousness and amorality to be distasteful. Just as well, as he went on to make The Prisoner which was far superior.

Still in all, Bond movies are silly. They were all style over substance. They were the motion picture counterpart of Playboy, selling a dream of rakish bachelor life. They might have been among the first movies to be built around product placement.

If you’ve never seen them, check out The Ipcress File and the other Harry Palmer movies. Palmer (played by Michael Caine) is the anti-Bond – a cog in a bureacratic machine who actually seems mortal.

Remember that Hollywood special effects and set design have changed dramatically over the course of the Bond franchise.

In the early Bond films, special effects and set design were still too cheesy and unrealistic that one couldn’t take the Bond role and movie too seriously and play it completely straight. Whoever was playing Bond did have to ham it up a bit and have some panache. In this respect, Connery was great in the role, whereas Roger Moore and the others were mostly forgettable.

With Pierce Brosnan in the 90s, you finally have high quality special effects and sets that can realistically depict fantastical settings and action sequences. But also as a result, these later Bond films are mainly about extreme action sequences, stunts, explosions, etc. The Bond character is sort of in the background and the films are mainly a vehicle for special effects and action. With the greater realism, the Bond character is played completely straight, but he’s also forgettable and in the background. Brosnan very much looks the part of Bond, but he’s a stiff and wooden and not very charismatic, which doesn’t really matter though since the effects and action now take center stage.

Craig’s Bond continue the realism but in a gritter fashion. Also Craig looks like he should be Bond’s chauffeur or bodyguard, rather than Bond himself.

Craig is a good enough actor, but he has neither looks, nor charm. Casino Royale is one of the better Bond books and they stuck reasonably close to it for the newer movie, so it worked out fairly well. But the other Craig films have been considerably less interesting.

On the subject of Bond movies, one must mention the theme songs that were rejected:

Like this one, for Thunderball, sung by Shirley Bassey:

And this one, also for Thunderball, sung by Johnny Cash.

yes, Johnny Cash:

But what is all this intense scrutiny in service of? What, then, is the importance of James Bond? I think Joel Hodgson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame actually put it best:

“Bond movies really represented the adult world, you know; drinking cocktails and being a secret agent and having your skills highly valued and having beautiful women being interested in you, were all things you felt were something I have to look forward to, this is what’s waiting for me at the end of my childhood.”

In other words, Peak White Civilization. Alas, by the time Hodgson reached “the end of my childhood” he could only become the host of a “cowtown puppet show,” called Mystery Science Theater. So there’s that.

See my review of Jef Costello’s The Importance of James Bond: https://counter-currents.com/2017/05/looking-for-pop/

Having just read this thread and considering the one yesterday, it’s mostly in memory I value Bond. I read only Thunderball, and saw only Goldfinger and Thunderball, which I quite enjoyed. But I was never that much of a fan. I thought Connery was perfect for the role, but didn’t follow his career through the years, although there are some now I definitely need to catch up on–absurd I haven’t seen The Man Who Would Be King and The Untouchables, although nothing else has quite caught me.

I was trying to think of English actors who could have done Bond. Lawrence Harvey was probably a better actor, and equally suave and debonair–and I wouldn’t have known he was Jewish till I read it. Although not perhaps ‘humorous’ and slightly exhibitionistic as Connery was. Some said Roger Moore was more ‘upper-class’ but that’s upper-class-seeming, because he was a policeman’s son. I didn’t see any of his Bond films, although I always liked him in The Saint. Lookswise, Mark Eden was right, but maybe he wasn’t enough of a heavyweight–he looked very strapping in his brief appearance as Kim Stanley’s husband in Seance on a Wet Afternoon.

The only one that really comes to mind that would have been effective is French–don’t they have Meryl-Streep-accent-actors too?–Jean-Louis Trintignant. This is due to his performance in the superb The Outside Man of 1972 with Ann-Margret, Roy Scheider, and Angie Dickinson. This was a great noir, and I don’t know anybody else who’s seen it. He had the nonchalant attitude and the looks to do Bond, but I don’t think he would have necessarily wanted to– and I haven’t seen that lightness in him, though, that Bond needs to have some of.

Lazenby had decent physical presence, but was a horribly wooden actor. The film somehow survives him anyway. If you get all the other elements right, I guess you don’t really need a good actor as your lead in one of these films.

Actually, the ideal James Bond was Cary Grant.

Fleming wrote Bond with Grant as a model looks-wise and polite-behavior-wise, and wanted Grant to play him in Dr. No. The producers supposedly offered the role to Grant, but Grant thought he was “too old” for the role—which was a typical Grant thing to do.

Grant turned down numerous offers to play as a love interest for Audrey Hepburn because he thought it was ridiculous that such a young girl would like an old man like him. Various movie roles that would’ve put them together were filled with other older male stars (Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon), and most everyone agrees Grant would’ve knocked those roles out of the park.

Most everyone would’ve easily accepted a teen/early 20s girl like Hepburn having romantic feelings for Cary Grant because he was, after all, Cary Grant—everyone, that is, but Grant himself.

Grant finally relented to paired with Hepburn in Charade, when she was a bit older. But Grant only relented if the story had her pursuing him romantically, and not the other way around—because he thought that would’ve been creepy.

Of course, Charade became a hit and a classic. Too bad Grant didn’t relent earlier, Audrey Hepburn-Grant could’ve become one of the greatest screen couples of all time.

Yes, I read them all too, in the sixties. From the public library.

This is one role where the initial actor chosen for the part wasn’t necessarily the exact model the author described. Based on his older brother as has been noted. He also had another brother who did the exotic travelling.

But once the first film and later ones were huge hits, Connery made Bond into himself. There are some actors and actresses (quaint but now obsolete word, for some reason by deranged misplaced feminism) who are initially cast and they become the part, regardless of prior depictions or descriptions.

Authors rarely have any say at all about casting. When they do results vary widely, not usually good.

Connery was a man’s man, whereas the later Bonds were more conventionally very handsome women’s men. Not effeminate, but not as seemingly lethal in action. Of course he aged out of that part. Like very beautiful women, an extremely handsome man would be a poor secret agent or operative. Too noticeable. Connery could pass for many types of people (workers, bureaucrat, military, criminal, etc.) whereas Moore and Dalton would not.

Very handsome men rarely engage in normal or risky occupations. Other than marry already rich wives.

If David Niven was going to do Bond, Fleming may not have seen Bond as particularly an ultimate ladies’ man–sophisticated upper-class but not so much masculine charisma–nowhere near Connery or Moore in that way. In fact, although I could see him as a fine actor, I didn’t think he was that much of a STAR–but his Oscar-winner, Separate Tables, was pretty fantastic, and had an amazing cast. I haven’t seen Casino Royale.

I think they basically peak with the first two, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, and go downhill from there.

I agree. They became silly formula movies with great stunts, improbable villains, and beautiful women.

The great Robert Shaw in the From Russia with Love train fight scene:

“Lots of posh Scots are sent to English schools, giving them accents indistinguishable from those of their English-born classmates”

A recent example is the spook, Remainer and former Conservative MP Rory Stewart, who fought Brexit and failed, failed to become Tory leader, and headed off to Harvard. He became a Tory candidate despite never having voted for them in his life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart

Harking back to Roger Moore and The Saint, I hadn’t realised Saint creator Leslie Charteris was in fact Leslie Yin, born to a Chinese father and British mother.

Charteris relocated to the United States in 1932, where he continued to publish short stories and also became a writer for Paramount Pictures, working on the George Raft film, Midnight Club.

However, Charteris was excluded from permanent residency in the United States because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law which prohibited immigration for persons of “50% or greater” Oriental blood. As a result, Charteris was forced to continually renew his six-month temporary visitor’s visa. Eventually, an act of Congress personally granted his daughter and him the right of permanent residence in the United States, with eligibility for naturalization, which he later completed.

His brother was quite a character too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Henry_Bowyer-Yin

Very handsome men rarely engage in normal or risky occupations

Excellent observation.

James Bond Sucks. It’s boring and lame and was forced on us for some godawful MIC reason that is beyond your, or my, understanding.

In Craig’s defense, all of his movies have been prequels; that is, they are set up to show how Bond becomes Bond. How could a ruthless spy/assassin become a charming, debonair gentlemen with an iron fist in a silk glove, who keeps his emotions in check and always has an ironic witty line at hand?

We see it. In Casino Royale, we see him make his first two kills at the beginning, and then make aggressive mistakes of a young angry man: killing the African bombmaker, nearly destroying an airport in Miami, banging only married women to avoid falling in love, and then blowing himself up in a casino in Montenegro. And then falling in love—only to be betrayed by his love.

The next three movies see him dealing with the aftermath of that: a bitterness towards Vesper, a drinking problem, a revenge mission. But slowly he learns about a sophisticated, hidden world not even his bosses know about: SPECTRE, Quantum, Blofeld. Along the way he learns that MI6 has lots of dark secrets (the spy left behind played by Javier Bardem) and sees his own family estate in Scotland blown to bits.

He thinks he’s lost at life, but he finds a female companion he loves, and learns how to avoid the quick kill to get information and what he needs, and learns how to have ironic detachment from even his bosses, who are not always trustworthy.

In the last film, we see Bond going into the traditional superior’s office with the double door. It’s a signal that Bond has become the Bond we know.

I own the first 4 Bond movies:
Dr. No
From Russia with Love (Connery’s persoanal fave)
Goldfinger
Thunderball.

The first three a joyous trips back in time. I wish the world was as classy as it was back then.

Fleming had doubts about Connery initially, but Cubby Broccoli and his wife both had made the decision….Connery would be perfect for the role. After seeing Dr. No, Ian Fleming was elated. The pros (Broccoli and director Guy Hamilton) had picked and directed the right man. They were great entertainments. I wish today’s youth would give them a watch to see what real class and style are.

“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No Mr. Bond I expect you to die”.

Same with Dr No, the half Chinese half European villain whose henchmen are mostly Chinese Negroes.

https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/02/1958-bond-fleming-girl-sex

Then the enemy arrives – huge, inhuman Negro-Chinese half-castes, known as Chingroes, under the diabolical direction of Dr No.

But Ian Fleming wrote an obituary of Bond – in OHMSS – giving a Scottish father, so the Celtic roots are there.
NB I also see Bond as the quintessential hero of the days when Brits sallied forth from their small Island using grit, dexterity and wits to outmaneuver more numerous competitors. See for example Buchan’s 1916 thriller Greenmantle. Bond, like earlier Imperial heroes, was often in dire straits but to keep moving forwards was an article of faith.

NB If one wants to know how good a Bond Connery was ask yourself why his successors have been comparable failures? (Craig’s Casino Royale smacked of the Connery era, but it proved a one-off.)

James Bond 007 :: MI6 – The Home Of James Bond
The Times
Commander James Bond, C.M.G., R.N.V.R.

M. writes:–

As your readers will have learned from earlier issues, a senior officer of the Ministry of Defence, Commander James Bond, C.M.G., R.N.V.R., is missing, believed killed, while on an official mission to Japan. It grieves me to have to report that hopes of his survival must now be abandoned. It therefore falls to my lot, as the Head of the Department he served so well, to give some account of this officer and of his outstanding services to his country.

James Bond was born of a Scottish father, Andrew Bond of Glencoe, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud. His father being a foreign representative of the Vickers armaments firm, his early education, from which he inherited a first-class command of French and German, was entirely abroad. When he was eleven years of age, both his parents were killed in a climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges above Chamonix, and the youth came under the guardianship of an aunt, since deceased, Miss Charmian Bond, and went to live with her at the quaintly-named hamlet of Pett Bottom near Canterbury in Kent. There, in a small cottage hard by the attractive Duck Inn, his aunt, who must have been a most erudite and accomplished lady, completed his education for an English public school, and, at the age of twelve or thereabouts, he passed satisfactorily into Eton, for which College he had been entered at his birth by his father. It must be admitted that his career at Eton was brief and undistinguished and, after only two halves, as a result, it pains me to record, of some alleged trouble with one of the boys’ maids, his aunt was requested to remove him. She managed to obtain his transfer to Fettes, his father’s old school. Here the atmosphere was somewhat Calvinistic, and both academic and athletic standards were rigourous. Nevertheless, though inclined to be solitary by nature, he established some firm friendships among the traditionally famous athletic circles at the school. By the time he left, at the early age of seventeen, he had twice fought for the school as a light-weight and had, in addition, founded the first serious judo class at a British public school. By now it was 1941 and, by claiming an age of nineteen and with the help of an old Vickers colleague of his father, he entered a branch of what was subsequently to become the Ministry of Defence. To serve the confidential nature of his duties, he was accorded the rank of lieutenant in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R., and it is a measure of the satisfaction his services gave to his superiors that he ended the war with the rank of Commander. It was about this time that the writer became associated with certain aspects of the Ministry’s work, and it was with much gratification that I accepted Commander Bond’s post-war application to continue working for the Ministry in which, at the time of his lamented disappearance, he had risen to the rank of Principal Officer in the Civil Service.

The nature of Commander Bond’s duties with the Ministry, which were, incidentally, recognized by the appointment of C.M.G. in 1954, must remain confidential, nay secret, but his colleagues at the Ministry will allow that he performed them with outstanding bravery and distinction, although occasionally, through an impetuous strain in his nature, with a streak of the foolhardy that brought him in conflict with higher authority. But he possessed what almost amounted to “The Nelson Touch” in moments of the highest emergency, and he somehow contrived to escape more or less unscathed from the many adventurous paths down which his duties led him. The inevitable publicity, particularly in the foreign press, accorded some of these adventures, made him, much against his will, something of a public figure, with the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the Ministry, that action has not yet — I emphasize the qualification — been taken against the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of a outstanding public servant.

It only remains to conclude this brief in memoriam by assuring his friends that Commander Bond’s last mission was one of supreme importance to the State. Although it now appears that, alas, he will not return from it, I have the authority of the highest quarters in the land to confirm that the mission proved to be one hundred per cent successful. It is no exaggeration to pronounce unequivocally that, through the recent valorous efforts of this one man, the Safety of the Realm has received mighty reassurance.

James Bond was briefly married in 1962, to Teresa, only daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, of Marseilles. The marriage ended in tragic circumstances that were reported in the press at the time. There was no issue of the marriage and James Bond leaves, so far as I am aware, no relative living.

M.G. writes:
I was happy and proud to serve Commander Bond in a close capacity during the past three years at the Ministry of Defence. If our fears for him are justified, may I suggest these simple words for his epitaph? Many of the junior staff here feel they represent his philosophy:

“I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Oh… my… god!!

I think we can all agree that Sean Connery was a great actor and a dynamic human being.

The LEAST all Americans who love cinema can do is to fight to make his dying wish a reality!

Sean Connery’s last words were “Re-elect @realDonaldTrump.”

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) October 31, 2020

That was pretty much the official Soviet view of the war – that the ‘war’ between Germany and the western powers was in fact an elaborate ruse, at least to begin with, and that in reality all the capitalist powers were united behind Germany’s attempt to destroy the USSR.

George, as Bond wore a kilt in OHMSS.

I recall when Timothy Dalton was cast as James Bond, one of the producers said something like: “We must never forget Bond is a killer. Dalton looks like he could pull the trigger.”

As Sean Connery looked when he shot Professor Dent in Doctor No.

Well the collar did match the cuffs (I assume).

In 1965, English novelist Kingsley Amis published The James Bond Dossier, a critical analysis of the James bond novels.

Amis said little about the Bond movies. He wrote that “Sean Connery is all wrong as James Bond.” Amis felt Connery wasn’t convincing as an English gentleman.

” an extremely handsome man would be a poor secret agent or operative. Too noticeable.”

Arguably Bond’s biggest problem as a “secret agent” (never a spy!) is that everyone from bellboys to master criminals seems to know him. “Ah, welcome Mr. Bond!” He even hands out his business card (like Patrick Bateman and pals).

Mr Fleming has no literary skill…

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car is alright to read aloud. But it has the most extreme punctuation imaginable, enough to embarrass a high school amateur, and Mimsie Pott is the worst female character I’ve ever come across in fiction or film. All she does is cry. I can see why she was replaced by Truly Scrumptious in the movie. (Sally Ann Howes, like co-star Dick Van Dyke, is still with us, at 90.)

The Potts’ daughter Jemima has some spirit, though.

In the Casino Royale novel, Bond’s first kill is when he shoots a Japanese cypher expert through the window of s skyscraper in NYC during the war from the building opposite.

Is it just me btw, or does Daniel Craig’s Bond resemble Vladimir Putin?

Yes he does. I’m not sure why they selected him, but it seems to be working, as the movies continue to be popular. As for me, I like David Niven.

This is what I’ve always found strange. Bond was fighting some super villains who never existed in reality. He should have been an operative cold-warrior.

Instead, he basically opted out of politics. What was the purpose of such a character, anyway?

I don’t remember a lot of the older bond films I have little interest in rewatching them. I remember them as being very cheesy and on the level of a made for TV movie. I liked Casino Royale and Skyfall of the Craig series but that’s all.

I haven’t seen any mentions of Connery as Indian Jones father in The Last Crusade which was a good part for him I thought. I remember his scenes being pretty funny and I thought he worked well with Harrison Ford.

Wasn’t Moore’s Bond very much a re-run of Moore’s Simon Templar – “The Saint”? Always a touch of humour about the performance.

Not only that, he played Seymour Goldfarb, Jr., in The Cannonball Run at the same time For Your Eyes Only came out. I’m surprised the executives at EON would let him play a role so similar at the same time.

I was trying to think of English actors who could have done Bond. Lawrence Harvey was probably a better actor, and equally suave and debonair–and I wouldn’t have known he was Jewish till I read it.

Not just Jewish but a native Lithuanian speaker. As a small child his family moved to South Africa, where the accent is quite different than in Britain, yet as an adult he sounded fully British. Not to mention playing a completely convincing American in The Manchurian Candidate.
Had he been the original Bond he wouldn’t have stayed in the series any longer than Connery did, however, as he died young. It’s also rather a pity that his daughter was a hopeless drug addict.

Anyway, Connery’s Bond- I don’t know about Fleming’s concept of that character- was a killer. It is, I think, much more important distinction than class or other markers.

Moore was definitely not a killer, and this difference remains crucial.

In Golden Gun, Moore’s Bond is saved from a gang of irate martial artists (who were successfully beating him) in Thailand by a pair of kick-ass teenage girls which is fairly embarrassing.

I trust most of us would agree that Timothy Dalton was an outright disaster.

Nah, I think that they have all brought d something to the role.

Connery: rogue,
Moore: gentleman,
Brosnan: playboy,
Dalton: killer,
Craig: ptsd.

But then there was David Niven in the original (spoof) Casino Royale. Put the ‘quint’ in ‘essential’, I think.

A few of the Bond themes are okay as pop songs, but none come close to Bacharach’s. And he threw in “The Look of Love” as a bonus.

No piece of music encapsulates the 1960s for me like that one. Perhaps because they played it so much on The Dating Game? So SoCal.

Just posted yesterday, the Bond themes in succession below illustrate well the decline of popular music over the decades. Adele sounds like more of a man than Sam Smith. Sheryl Crow (!) is in there too. She and Burt are both natives of Missouri, but from about as far apart as you can get.

McGoohan also was born to Irish parents living in Queens, NY. Doubt the Bond series could have plausibly cast an Irish-American. Was a regular in many American tv series in the 1970s like “Colombo”. One of the few American actors who has credibly play Irish and English roles, as he memorably did in “Braveheart” as Edward Longshanks.

Only in From Russia with Love is Smersh permitted to remain ( correct me if I’m wrong ).

No. In the film version, Rosa Klebb and Donovan Grant were SPECTRE operatives. SPECTRE was playing the Brits and the Soviets against one another.

But to anyone with a passing knowledge of the books, SPECTRE =SMERSH was obvious.

SPECTRE had nothing to do with SMERSH. SMERSH was a Soviet communist organization, while SPECTRE was an apolitical criminal gang that was interested in profit:

The late Sean Connery was a great movie star, but was he ideally cast as James Bond?

One only has to read a page or two of Gregory McDonald’s Fletch novels to see that Chevy Chase was perfect casting.

Connery was a man’s man, whereas the later Bonds were more conventionally very handsome women’s men

Actually, Connery was a very handsome man when he was younger, but in a strong, masculine way. My aunt can attest to that – she dated him several times ( in the 1950s ). So he was excellent in portraying the hard side to Bond, the man licensed to kill.
You are right: Connery was a man’s man. After Bond, he didn’t bother about a toupee, as can be seen in The Man Who Would Be King ( 1975 ). I understand that some roles may require wearing a hairpiece, but Connery didn’t bother, publicly or privately. Real men don’t wear toupees.
So many aging male actors persist in wearing rugs. They’re nearly all products of Drama Schools or Universities, with all the baggage that goes with it. Connery had worked in a number of hard, tough jobs before becoming an actor. ( He even worked as my aunt’s milkman – which is how she met him ).Needless to say, he didn’t bother about cosmetic surgery.

Connery could pass for many types of people (workers, bureaucrat, military, criminal, etc.)

He didn’t wear a rug and allowed himself to age naturally. So he could play a wide range of roles.
50 years from now – all being well – Connery’s films will continued to be watched. Whereas nobody will watch Tom Cruise films.

This is what I’ve always found strange. Bond was fighting some super villains who never existed in reality. He should have been an operative cold-warrior.

He was in the books, but not in the films. Of the first five books (CASINO ROYALE, LIVE AND LET DIE, MOONRAKER, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, and FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE) only one (DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER) did not feature villains who were linked to the USSR.

Instead, he basically opted out of politics. What was the purpose of such a character, anyway?

To make money. Hardline anti-Communism would have turned-off Leftist filmgoers.

The quote was from the Wikipedia entry SMERSH ( James Bond )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMERSH_(James_Bond)

It seems very well referenced, so maybe you should take your complaint up with them, not me.
From the same source:
In the film series, Bond’s archenemy became SPECTRE, which first appeared in Fleming’s novel Thunderball (1961). SPECTRE is introduced in the first film, Dr. No (1962), in which Julius No explains to Bond that it is the acronym for the SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, the four great cornerstones of power. Film versions of novels where SMERSH appears substituted either SPECTRE or independent villains.

Although twice referred to, SMERSH never appears in the official film series; first, in From Russia with Love (1963), Bond initially thinks he is fighting SMERSH, only to learn that the villains are from SPECTRE, including Rosa Klebb, the former head of operations for SMERSH who has secretly defected to SPECTRE. Bond’s love interest Tatiana Romanova says she knows Klebb as SMERSH’s head of operations, and obeys her orders, presuming them from SMERSH. Second, The Living Daylights (1987) features a faked SMERSH re-activation. Throughout, it is referred to with its full name, Smiert Spionam (alternative spelling of Smert’ Shpionam), rather than the better-known acronym; General Pushkin, then head of KGB, says it has been inoperative for 20 years. SMERSH is also an element in the 1967 spoofed film adaptation of Casino Royale that centres upon Le Chiffre’s attempted recovery of SMERSH monies via baccarat at the Royale casino.

So SMERSH is actually referenced in From Russia with Love
I hope that has been of help.
.

I think that Lazenby did a good job, but, acting aside, OHMSS is probably the truest and best adaptation of any of Fleming’s Bond books/stories to be made into a film.

The ” real ” bond ?

Pal of Flemings seemingly.

This is in the Isle of Lewis, Trump’s maternal homeland up near the arctic circle.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185458/Aristocrat-bed-hopping-ways-inspired-James-Bond-author-donates-250-acre-Scottish-island-National-Trust.html

Arguably Bond’s biggest problem as a “secret agent” (never a spy!) is that everyone from bellboys to master criminals seems to know him. “Ah, welcome Mr. Bond!” He even hands out his business card (like Patrick Bateman and pals).

Yes, good point.

I think he nearly always went about in exotic places under some cover name/story. So not every bell boy knew his actual name or occupation. But it was rather thin, especially later on.

All of the Big villains seemed to know him or his reputation. His role was more of a special operations “operator” as they are now deemed. He would travel under false passports but his real mission was to kill people or steal things, or both. Sometimes to discover plot details and disrupt them.

We are led to believe all of the Big Guys know who all of the British operators ( 00 types) really are on sight. Low level criminals, hirelings or random other bad guys might not know who he was, until too late. Other than the Russians, a lot of governments seemed to be unaware of who he was when he was on their 3rd World turf. Sometimes local police assets. Though I was under the impression these were often longstanding British MI-5 local contacts. This was sometimes made clear. I suspect even in reality the most useful local assets are the heads of the local police.

There has to be a really interesting file locked up somewhere in Whitehall on the subject of that Rudolph Hess flight. What exactly was the reason they kept him shut up in Spandau for so long?

Something to do with the “Royal family” no doubt. At least certain members.

No one here will be alive long enough to know what’s in that file. Give it another 100 years or until the end of the British monarchy, whichever comes first.

The degree to which Cold War-era spy films and TV series avoided confronting the Red Menace is pretty amazing. As previously noted, the Bond films steered clear of the Commies, favoring, instead, SPECTRE (Barring only GOLDFINGER, the baddie in every Connery Bond flick), evil eugenicists (the baddies in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER), Third-World drug kingpins (the Blaxploitation-influenced LIVE AND LET DIE), and narcissistic assassins (Christopher Lee in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN). It wasn’t until 1981 that Bond, in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, actually went up against the Soviets.

THE MAN FROM UNCLE carried it a step further, as they had the East and the West teaming-up against THRUSH.

THE AVENGERS had some Cold War stuff early on, but the Emma Peel era mostly focused on fantastical threats.

The literary Mike Hammer was a staunch Cold Warrior. For example, in 1951’s One Lonely Night, Hammer boasts that “I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw and here I am calmer than I’ve ever been and happy too. They were Commies, Lee. They were red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago.” But did the film-and-television version act in a similar fashion? Not that I know of.

It’ll be interesting to see if EON Productions bends the knee to the Western anti-racism cult and casts Idris Elba or another UK black as James Bond. Elba is another quality UK actor but he’s black. I’ll stop watching the movies if Bond turns black because I’m prejudiced.

I’ll stop watching Bond movies if they make him black because I’m tired of this shit; and because James Bond is supposed to be white; and because I’m tired of this shit; and because invent your own damned superheroes; and because I’m tired of this shit.

Idris Elba is a decent actor, but he’s damn near 50. He’s only four years younger than Daniel Craig, who is already aging out of the role. Roger Moore was 58 for his last Bond film and he was already several years too old for the part. And Moore aged much better than Elba has.

And to be quite blunt, I think whites are better at acting than blacks. Oh pardon me, is that racist? It’s ok to say blacks are better dancers or better athletes, but not to say that whites are better actors? Well ok then. There are good actors and there are amazing actors. I’ve seen a fair number of good black actors, but anytime I’ve left the theater saying “Holy shit, that guy (or girl) was amazing!” it has always been for a white actor or actress. Always.

For the studios part I think they’ll keep Bond white because, as much as I’m not a fan of Daniel Craig, the latest Bond films are raking in money. The last several installments have raked in about a billion each. Do you know how much the first Disney Star Wars film, “The Farce Awakens,” grossed? $2,068 million. And how much the last one, “The Rise of Skywalker,” grossed? $1,074 million – or barely half the first one. Between that, “The Last Jedi,” and their other two Star Wars films, Wokeness probably cost Disney about $2 billion. And it’s not necessarily the case that box offices decline for sequels, especially not trillogies. The box office for “The Lord of the Rings” climbed with every installment. The box office for “The Hobbit” trilogy, which wasn’t nearly as good, fell a bit, but not by much. But a near-50% drop? Insane. In the era of COVID, even Disney can’t afford to pass up $2 billion, let alone whatever studio it is that owns the Bond franchise.

So sure, cast a black James Bond – and watch your profits tank.

So SMERSH is actually referenced in From Russia with Love
I hope that has been of help.

They’re referenced, but SMERSH is not the enemy. The baddies in the film version of FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE are SPECTRE.As Bond notes, “it wasn’t a Russian show at all”:

SPECTRE is simply playing the Brits and the Sovs against one another:

Lots of posh Scots are sent to English schools, giving them accents indistinguishable from those of their English-born classmates

Indeed, Some of the even try to pass as White.

I was wholly unaware that Shirley Bassey was both able and willing to immitate the vocal stylings of Dionne Warwick. Bassey’s thundering “Goldfinger” remains the quintessential ‘007’ theme song.

News From Tartary inspired me to study Turkish and Russian

Yes, that Peter Fleming book deserves a wide audience. I read it this last winter and as I told a friend, after reading that you’ll never complain about hardships on your own little vacation trip.

Very revealing about places still in the news. Unfortunately my paperback didn’t have the map which you should have. Names have changed but you can still figure out he took the only route available. I highly recommend it.

And the Swiss woman he was with! Why haven’t feminists taken up her as a heroine? Online reviews of her book also chronicling their journey aren’t very kind. English wasn’t her first language and her insights evidently not very interesting. Still how many modern women could do that?

When you read about what these early travelers did (early 20th century) you have to admire those who traveled to tough places. A lot of “eccentric” Brits out in the very dangerous boondocks. I have thought that the “Tartary” book would be a great semester long basis for a university course on far western Chinese geography and culture. Refreshing to read such clear, concise and candid observations about very different places and people.

If nothing else it will take your mind off current political/pandemic nonsense. Thanks for your reference here!

The Russians wanted Hess kept in Spandau. They believed Hess’ flight was part of a plot to ally Britain with the Germans against the Soviet Union.

My own take is that James Bond was a series of several movies starring Sean Connery. And that’s it. The other movies were just goofy or brutal,in the case of Craig,adventure movies starring different guys playing a guy named James Bond. He could’ve been named Horace Finkelstein,for all I cared.
Bond was of a particular actor and a particular time,that being the 60s,before,as Bob Hope said,the “serious stuff” started.

Its fitting that JFK loved the books. He gave Bond a 60s New Fronteah imprimatur.

Bond,by Connery,was part of the British Invasion,sort of a shot across the bow. Our innate Anglophilia was arousd by Bond, soon after bowled over by the Beatles. I recall one passing remark,where Connery jokes about the Fab Four; delightful!

It was also about Technicolor,and beautiful women in bikinis and the Caribbean seen through the eyes of a young boy who had heretofore only seen movies with Jerry Lewis and Buddy Hackett, etc.

When Connery,older,came back to do a Bond,it just wasn’t worth the effort.
The real question, could anyone else have played Zardoz?

“But he wasn’t super charismatic on screen. Niven wished to be Cary Grant onscreen, and Cary Grant, an insecure man, wished to be Niven offscreen.”

They starred together in The Bishop’s Wife, a Christmasy film still well worth seeing. The odd thing is that Niven plays the Bishop, Grant the angel who helps rekindle the Bishop’s marriage, but originally the roles were reversed. Can’t recall at what point they realized they had made a terrible mistake. If you see or remember the film, it’s hard to imagine with the original casting.

From Niven to Connery as exemplar of “masculine charisma” … the producers needed to teach Connery how to play someone who wasn’t a thug …. by that standard, Red Grant had more “masculine charisma” than Bond and so Robert Shaw should have replaced Connery… no wonder we’ve now wound up with Negroes as the masculine ideal.

“fought Brexit and failed, failed to become Tory leader, and headed off to Harvard. ‘

Seems an all too appropriate career path.

“I hadn’t realised Saint creator Leslie Charteris was in fact Leslie Yin, born to a Chinese father and British mother.”

Neither I, despite having started to read the series from time to time since last year. No one every mentions this relevant fact. Doesn’t that make his books vibrantly diverse, and wouldn’t publishers point that out?

As Sean Connery looked when he shot Professor Dent in Doctor No.

I saw Dr. No when it came out and that scene, like the train fight in From Russia With Love, has stuck with me for years because of how casually SC shot Dent. Connery was perfect in the first two movies.

One of the few American actors who has credibly play Irish and English roles, as he memorably did in “Braveheart” as Edward Longshanks.

And Scottish. He played James Stewart, Earl of Moray in Mary Queen of Scots, and quite well too.

Even more embarrassing is how the scene is shot .. it appears that the guy with the car who “rescues”him at the end of the scene roars away leaving him accidentally behind., shrugging his shoulders. I think that was a goof that they incorporated into the filming.

The Cold War was not waged very hard in popular entertainment.

In North by Northwest and Mission Impossible they just referred to “The Other Side” or “The East”.

That would be an interesting exercise – to actually name all the espionage movies that dealt with, or at least referred to, the actual sides in the Cold War. It probably wouldn’t be a lot.

One only has to read a page or two of Gregory McDonald’s Fletch novels to see that Chevy Chase was perfect casting.

The first few Fletch novels were amusing, then they became annoying. So they were perfect for the post-SNL Chevy Chase.

Cool, that either means I’m right or I’m a useful idiot

There’s no way today’s Bond could talk to a black man like Connery talked to the Quarrel character in Dr. No. He ridicules him for his superstition, and orders him to fetch his slippers. Quarrel complies cheerfully to commands of “Boss.”

Best Bond films probably were Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, the Daniel Craig Casino Royale, and Dr. No. Certainly the first three I list had the best music. Listen to the Goldfinger soundtrack album; it’s excellent.

I liked the first of the Daniel Craig movies, Casino Royale. All the movies since Goldeneye have labored under a huge handicap – Judi Dench. Does anybody like her? Half the movies involve Bond rescuing M, and an equal number turn on some kind of revenge plot. Revenge is such a lazy and juvenile plot device.

The Cold War was not waged very hard in popular entertainment.

When I was a kid, the only Cold War movie I remember seeing was a comedy, The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! In it, New England townsfolk end up befriending the crew of a Soviet submarine that comes ashore, and save it from US Navy jets. The movie was made in 1966, at the height of the Cold War.

PS: Listening to the video clip today, Alan Arkin’s “Russian” accent sounds distinctly Israeli.

The books are extremely silly but entertaining,

The Spy Who Loved Me is probably the silliest. Fleming’s attempt at telling an entire Bond story by having a female character voice her inner life and romantic experience of meeting James Bond was misconceived, and, as is to be expected, truly bad.

The story I have read is that Bond, the way we know him now, was a factor of Sean Connery immitating Dr. No Director Terrence Young.

If you read the Bond novels, Bond seems to be more of a bored civil servant than what we think of him today, and the Flemings were more tweedy, bow-tie intellectual types than Young who was a macho type and a well-known cad.

Fleming originally wanted Cary Grant for the role.

The Folio Society versions of the Fleming novels are extraordinary, you should check them out.

Harvey of course had his own spy role in A Dandy in Aspic; I’d say both book and movie (the UK book differs from the US version, which is based on Derek Marlowe’s screenplay adaptation) are the best of the spy genre.

Fun fact: director Anthony Mann died during production and Harvey picked up and finished the film himself. Now that’s a Bond level of improvisation and expertise!

https://counter-currents.com/2016/12/passing-the-buck-spy-dandy-ubermensch/

“THE AVENGERS had some Cold War stuff early on, but the Emma Peel era mostly focused on fantastical threats.”

The New Avengers brought back the Soviet element, partly due to Patrick Magee’s age, and I suppose to capitalize on perestroika, the Smiley TV series, etc. Steed would recall some bit of Cold War tradecraft when needed. “How did you know they wouldn’t take a head shot?” “Soviets always aim for the body… if you miss, you maim.” Brrrr. Magee of course was in AVTAK, while Joanna Lumley was in OHMSS.

Spillane: he hated Kiss Me Deadly (a great film, actually, but the shitlib writer/directors downplayed the Soviet angle; also, they were trying to “expose” the sadism of Spillane and make people hate the Hammer character, which backfired — the Catholic League condemned the film …. for sadism!). In response, he made his own version of The Girl Hunters. Filmed in England (which location work in NYC) it stars Shirley Easton, right before Goldfinger. Spillane himself plays Hammer, which work better than, say, Ayn Rand as Dominique Falcone. Love seeing him swanning around NYC in a white trenchcoat (“Only a cop would wear a white trenchcoat. Probably trying to pass as a fag” — Burroughs, Naked Lunch)

https://counter-currents.com/2014/02/mike-hammer-occult-dick-kiss-me-deadly-as-lovecraftian-tale/

I saw a comment about Robert Mitchum vs. Bernie Reynolds, I read about the Mitchum fight vs. the heavyweight boxer a few years back. Hmm? I don’t know? Reynolds did fight some big names and with a lot of these Hollywood guys, a lot of this shit is pure, well, shit. The way Hollywood operates, I wouldn’t be surprised that IF this event did happen as reported that Reynolds didn’t take a dive after a handsome payoff to boost Mitchum’s image as a Hollywood bad boy. A heavyweight fighter of any note, is not going to lose a fight to any Hollywood actor, I can assure you that. Of course, anyone can be knocked out, but this story sounds like a Hollywood fairy tale. My gawd, I remember watching those YouTube videos of Mickey Rourke boxing. Here, Hollywood was portraying this guy as someone who was talented at boxing but gave it up to act, and lawd, that guy can’t fight for shit. Pathetic is too kind a word. Great actor, but no fighter even in his wildest fantasies.

Two legit tough guys in the movie biz I think were William Smith, ( the dude with the huge arms who played Falconetti on Rich Man, Poor Man, not Will Smith the black guy, ) Smith was also a pretty brainy guy, could speak fluent Russian as well. Rod Taylor was another. Smith and Taylor had a memorable fight scene in the movie, “Darker Than Amber.” Both these guys would plaster some guy like Mitchum, and my bet is that Reynolds was either extremely drunk, took a dive, or was looking for some publicity or lawsuit, who knows?

Serving Dom Perignon at the wrong temperature “is like listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.”

At that point — Goldfinger — they thought the Beatles would be just a passing fad. Eventually, they and their “youth culture” surpassed Bond; that line marks the point where Bond “cool” became “square” (or he lost his mojo, if you will). Kids used to want to become adults (see Joel Hodgson’s remark about Bond above) like Bond or Sinatra; then, overnight, they became “squares”.

Mad Men had a similar scene, where Don’s newer, younger wife gives him a copy of Rubber Soul before leaving for the West Coast, asking him to play the last track. When she’s gone, he puts it on — Tomorrow Never Knows — and after minute or two he switches it off. Copyright worries? No, it just shows that hip Don is now a square.

I think that season ends with Don in a bar, as the jukebox plays “You Only Live Twice” (Sinatra, hip Nancy, that is), which is the story of Don’s life or lives.

It would have been fun if Weiner had continues Mad Men as a series like Bond, with a new, younger actor playing “Don Draper” at the same age in new decades.

Why, it’s almost as if the folks in Hollywood wanted to downplay or even trivialize it.

Or is it a Commie habit, to leave the enemy vague, since they keep changing: Hitler-Stalin pact, Eastasia vs Oceania, etc.

Does anyone know how Soviet films handled it?

Number of Bond films produced since the attacks of September 11, 2001: 6

Number of Bond films in which the villain or villains is/are islamic terrorists: 0

Our elites are vile.

Spillane himself plays Hammer, which work better than, say, Ayn Rand as Dominique Falcone.

Isn’t it Francon? I’ve never read the book, but I did see the King Vidor film adaptation. It’s pretty good.

As I recall, for a cinematic version of Dagny Taggert, Rand had various va-va-voom types in mind : Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch.

(I once worked with such a Scot, himself an Old Etonian)

And from a noble family, no less.

How’s your history coming along? 😉

We see it. In Casino Royale, we see him make his first two kills at the beginning, and then make aggressive mistakes of a young angry man: killing the African bombmaker, nearly destroying an airport in Miami, banging only married women to avoid falling in love, and then blowing himself up in a casino in Montenegro. And then falling in love—only to be betrayed by his love.

Yeah, but he’s 40 and looks 45.

Thanks Prosa. I’m an admirer of the literary Bond, but this information is new to me.

Watch out for Cybernauts!

….Which are not to be confused with Fembots…..

Fleming describes 007 in the books as resembling composer-pianist Hoagy Carmichael. You know the guy wrote that little ditty called “STARDUST”?

Spillane: he hated Kiss Me Deadly (a great film, actually, but the shitlib writer/directors downplayed the Soviet angle; also, they were trying to “expose” the sadism of Spillane and make people hate the Hammer character, which backfired — the Catholic League condemned the film …. for sadism!)

Kiss Me Deadly was indeed a good movie. Ralph Meeker must be about the most underrated actor ever. He was great, not only in that movie, but in Paths of Glory, The Anderson Tapes, and The Night Stalker. The rest of the cast was spot-on too. A great piece of film-noir, whatever Spillane thought of it.

Whatever. None of that makes any sense, at least not to me. So anyway they did teach Connery not to be such a ‘thug’, never knew that till these threads. I just discover today that I really care little about Ian Fleming’s books and that it was just the movies I saw, and only Connery’s, that have left a lasting impression–and it’s only when taken as a whole–all his Bond work–that they actually do mean much to me: I don’t think of any of the Bond movies as extraordinary the way I do hundreds of other films, but his essaying of Bond is pretty damned *bright*. I’m sure that if Jeremy Irons had been old enough, he could have done it. You’d probably call Robert Mitchum a ‘thug’ too. I think he was one of the most interesting and even mysterious American actors, and did Philip Marlowe in Farewell My Lovely with Charlotte Rampling better than Bogart, who was much more of a swell than Bridgeport’s Mitchum. Mitchum better than Dick Powell in the same story, but called Murder My Sweet, with the great devil-woman Claire Trevor. I looked for a good Philip Marlowe a long time after reading all the Chandler novels, and discovered this Mitchum treasure by accident; it’s a beautiful film.

so Robert Shaw should have replaced Connery… no wonder we’ve now wound up with Negroes as the masculine ideal.

Wouldn’t you say that’s a bit a of a stretch–going from Niven to Connery’s ‘thug’ and Shaw ‘should have done Bond’ to ‘our Negro masculine ideal’?

Anyway, to some degree, it even makes sense that Negroes are to some degree one of the obviously important ‘masculine ideals’: It’s SPORTS, with Michael Jordan, Reggie Jackson, Tiger Woods, Wilt Chamberlain, dozens more–including the women!…more than movies. You seem to be saying that Connery led us to the point of some ‘generalized Negro masculine ideal’, but surely you can’t have meant that…

Another British Smoothie, Michael York, is probably a bit too ‘tender’ for Bond, although his acting ability was always fairly unlimited; but maybe a bit too refined (Bond is not subtle.) Steve has been talking about Cary Grant/David Niven. Grant would never have been able to get Bond right and make of him an icon, which Connery has done–even for people like me who don’t really think Ian Fleming’s books are exactly great literature. In fact, this fictional hero over many novels is probably everywhere, but nothing else comes to mind right now but Marlowe to match Bond–and yet Chandler was really an artist with those Romantic noirs, they’re among the most unique American creations. One of the great writers of LA. So maybe some people find Fleming an artist. Is interesting that Los Angeles has always been by far the most noirish city–much more than NYC, although there were a few. Nothing as good as Double Indemnity. But there’s Fante with Ask the Dust, and Didion’s essays in The White Album have a lot of that L.A. noir atmosphere (while living in that Franklin Ave. house) that some of us have gone in search of (her novels less so.) Film Forum here did a month of ‘London noir’, and man, did it ever not work after you’ve read a lot of L.A. writers. I guess Ellroy was the last one doing it seriously and on a big scale (and, though they’re very good, they’re sometimes overblown and all the movies made from the books were terrible, including L.A. Confidential, raved over by people who haven’t read the book to see just what butchery they did to it), and I think David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive may have been the last truly noir film, and that was some film. But Mulholland Falls with Nick Nolte was also a fine neo-noir film about 5 years earlier. Five years after Mulholland Drive was De Palma’s film of The Black Dahlia, which I found atrocious. But it was a testament to how irrelevant noir was by then. I saw a noir play off-Broadway around 2004, and that was nowhere. I could still feel the atmosphere as late as 2001 when I started going to L.A. a lot–the Hollywood area was still very sinister along Western-, but I thought it had vanished just a few years later.

I did!

I don’t doubt it, but why did we agree to keep him locked up like that? It just seems far out of proportion to anything he actually did.

She didn’t. That has to be Dionne Warwick that he’s mistaken for Bassey. Bassey is a great singer, and I agree about Goldfinger, but here:

Tom Jones, ‘Thunderball’ (1965)
Jones wasn’t their first choice: Shirley Bassey, Dionne Warwick and Johnny Cash also submitted songs for Thunderball, but at the last possible minute they opted for the Welsh singer.

No way if both Warwick and Bassey submitted songs that Bassey would imitate Dionne, and she couldn’t have possibly done that anyway. Nobody could.

That is Dionne Warwick singing that version of the rejected title theme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderball_(soundtrack)#Title_theme_change

The original main title theme to Thunderball was titled “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang”, which was written by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse. The title was taken from an Italian journalist who in 1962 dubbed agent 007 as “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang”. Barry had thought he could not write a song about a vague “Thunderball” term or the film’s story, so his song was a description of the character James Bond.[2]

The song was originally recorded by Shirley Bassey. When there were concerns with the length of the track compared to the needed titles, it was later rerecorded by Dionne Warwick as Bassey was not available and featured a longer instrumental opening designed so the lyrics would not be heard until after the title “Thunderball” appeared in Maurice Binder’s title design.[3] Neither version was released until the 1990s. The song was removed from the title credits after United Artists requested that the theme song contain the film’s title in its lyrics.[4] When it was planned to use the Warwick version in the end titles Shirley Bassey sued the producers[5][6] with the result being that neither version was heard in the film and different instrumental versions of the theme appeared on the High Fidelity (Bassey’s) and Stereo (Warwick’s) soundtrack LPs.[7]

“George, as Bond wore a kilt in OHMSS.”

He did.

But if someone asked me to leave my life as an athlete to wear a Kilt in a James bond opposite Dianna Rigg . . . my only response would be

“Get some Haggis and bring the bag pipes.

For Queen and country”

—

Fair thee well my fine lady lass Dianna Rigg.

Here’s the Shirley Bassey version of the rejected title theme:

Thunderball – alternate title seq. – Shirley Bassey – HD STEREO

Yes, you could say Doctor No and From Russia With Love were the best there would ever be. The scene in FRWL were Grant (Robert Shaw) holds a gun on Bond makes you imagine Bond is in real danger more than any other scene in the entire series.

From Russia With Love had an air of Cold War tension fitting the time.

Steve Sailer:

“Was Sean Connery the ideal James Bond?

It depends. Flemming’s own personal casting for the role was David Niven. When they pointed out to him that he was American and therefore couldn’t protray an upper-class English spy, Flemming replied:

“I don’t care. I just want the best man for the job.”

Flemming believed that Niven had the aristocratic manners and elegant nody type to play Bond. He was found Connery too brutish and coarse for the role. Bond is not supposed to be a thick-necked mesomorphic brute, like a gladiator, a truck driver or NFL lineman. This type of men has historically been associated with the low classes. Bond is supposed to be an aristocrat who serves his country in a dangerous job, but he is not a Rambo type character.

If you read the novels, Flemming describes Bond as thin, handsome and intelligent. His face and jaw are chiseled, but he is not an overly macho brute. He is also not an extravert in terms of personality. He is cold, calculating and naturally suspicious. As in fact, you would want a spy to be. An ultra-extravert like Chris Rock or Rodney Dangerfield would be captured and torrured to death very quickly.

Flemming didn’t like Connery at first because of his manners, his big, bulky body and his excessive “in-your-face” type of masculinity, which is not very aristocratic. Aristocrats are supposed to be capable of being self-effecing and humble in attitude(“noblesse oblige”)

But Connery wasn’t all wrong for the part. He certainly had the handsomeness. His body, although big and quite muscular, wasn’t exactly that of an extreme mesomorph. It was still long and lanky, and extremely shapely and well-proportioned. Also, Connery was 6’2l, only 1″ taller than Bond, who was supposed to be 6’1(the perfect male height). 6’1 and 6’2 is considered the perfect height for a human male, just like 5’7 is considered to be the perfct height for a human female. Shorter than this, and the man loses some of his charisma as height is considered a masculine trait. This is not to say that shorter man can’t have charisma. Napoleon was 5’2 and had charisma to spare. But it does take a toll. And taller than this, and the man starts to look funny and disproportional. Men taller than 6’2 need to have unusually large and thick bone structures to still look good, like Liam Neeson. A man who is 6’7 or 6’8 will look like a bean pole even if his shoulders are wide and he is over 225 lbs in muscle.

Besides his looks, height and perfect body that had a mesomorph muscular structure but with a more gracile ectomorphic bone structure, Connery also had the personality of Bond. Connery was an introvert with tremendous self-confidence and a manly air about himself. Like Bond, Connery had a natural dramatic, theatrical flair and was very stylish and cool in his dress, body language, manner of speech and general attitude.

Here is the kicker: Flemming eventuall liked Connery so much as Bond that he re-wrote Bond’s character to have a Scottish father. How much is that for an endorsement? When the creator of a character likes you so much as that character that he re-writers the character to be more like you. If that doesn’t sell you on Connery being Bond, then nothing will.

In conclusion, Connery wasn’t the perfect Bond because no one can be exactly like a fictional character. But he was as close as it got. So yes, he was the best Bond. All other actors that played Bond were more dissimilar to the character than Connery.

Connery may not have been the ideal Bond, but he was the best so far. He was able to believably portray athleticism, humor, intelligence and ruthlessness. Roger Moore was less believable in his athleticism and ruthlessness (which always seemed too jokey). As for an actor who could combine those four qualities plus convincingly play an upper crust Englishman? Maybe George Sanders? (although probably not quite as athletic as Connery).

Syon, Umberto Eco pegs Spillane’s Hammer books as an inspiration for Fleming’s Bond (at least his early novels). It seemed a very unlikely comparison to me, until I finally read the Hammer books, at which point it became obvious. Eco notes that Hammer in “I, the Jury” is haunted by his WW2 killing of a Japanese in cold blood, and Fleming acknowledges his debt to Spillane by having Bond recollect his wartime assassination of a Japanese while on assignment in New York in “Casino Royale.” But there are more important similarities between the two books, including betrayal by the hero’s love interest, and memorable final lines expressing the hero’s hardened heart (Hammer: “It was easy’” answering the question of how he could kill a woman he loved; Bond: “The bitch is dead,” reporting the suicide of his beloved) .

I think that as a novelist, Fleming said everything he had to say about James Bond *as a character* in “Casino Royale,” which can stand on its own as a novel of the Cold War. The rest of the Bond series is merely Fleming recapitulating the character arc he had already devised for Bond in his first outing, but extended over a dozen genre books.

its release has been pushed back again to Spring 2021

I would say that is more to the pandemic than anything else. Comedies such as Borat 2 and Coming 2 America have been sold off to Amazon, but for an action movie you want the big screen.

I am an outlier here, because, I actually love Timothy Dalton’s portrayal of Bond. He is the best, and most noted actor of all. Craig is my close second.

The real question, could anyone else have played Zardoz?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz#Casting

In April 1973 Boorman announced the film would star Burt Reynolds and Charlotte Rampling.[10] Reynolds had just worked with Boorman on 1972’s Deliverance. However, Reynolds had to pull out due to illness and was replaced by Connery.[11] “Connery had just stopped doing the Bond films and he wasn’t getting any jobs, so he came along and did it,” said Boorman.[9] Connery’s casting was announced in May 1973 the week before filming was to begin.[12]

A Look at the Background of Zardoz

See the review at: https://sfdebris.com/videos/films/zardoz.php

the Bond girl in [A View to a Kill], Tanya Roberts, was frankly quite awful.

She was one of the replacement Charlie’s Angels, replacing Shelly Hack, who replaced Kate Jackson. She was also awful in That 70s Show.

It also had a killer theme song (though overall I prefer the classier theme songs from the Connery era)

Well you can’t beat Goldfinger, but it’s cliche to call that the best one.

If Connery didn’t match the source material, too bad for the source material.

“The song was removed from the title credits after United Artists requested that the theme song contain the film’s title in its lyrics.”

All I’m asking for, is a THEME, with the frickin’ TITLE in the frickin’ LYRICS!

I’ve never been able to find out what “Thunderball” is supposed to mean. Yeah, I know, ha ha ha but all that’s all post-film memes. In film, M says “Operation… Thunderball” and then looks around like he’s waiting for someone who dares to laugh.

FRWL is arguably the only “real” or “normal” film in the series; it might fit in with Ipcress File or Smiley’s People.

Despite the producers changing the title song from “Mr. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang” to “Thunderball”, you can still here the KKBB motif in a lot of the music cues (which is good, because it’s a good song). I like the “Thunderball” song as well. KKBB is about James Bond, Thunderball is about Largo, and – as you point out – the song that Johnny Cash submitted was about the plot of the movie.

By the way, for all you fans of Shirley Bassey songs for 1960s spy movies, there was also this one, “The Liquidator”, music by another great – Lalo Schifrin (composer of the Mission Impossible theme):

Reynolds and Connery did eventually appear together, sort of :

The ONLY BOND.

And only Zed.

While Hitler was a blood hungry human monster who had to be dealt with i always found it interesting that the “Allies” declared war on Germany for “invading Poland” but would not do the same for the Soviet Union…..which also…..invaded Poland a week or so later….

You are right….the elites and aristocrats in both England and France simply put hated Germany and Germans.

That moron Hitler probably could have conquered Europe had he maintained his peace with Stalin….