Friday, April 28, 2006

Yes, more Bond blogging


Back to our favorite topic, and proving once again that the Internet is a bottomless fount of useless information.

From Flickchick, a TV Guide blog, on the Bonds that might have been (Apologies for the length, but it's too good to cut. She's an even bigger Bond geek than I am.):

Sean Connery is the classic example of an actor whose face is indelibly connected with a fictional character, just as Basil Rathbone is the face of Sherlock Holmes. Rathbone, to be sure, looks rather like Sidney Paget's illustrations for Strand magazine, in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared, but Doyle himself apparently complained that when he saw the great detective in his mind's eye, he didn't see the handsome fellow Paget drew. And frankly, Sean Connery looks less like the 007 Ian Fleming described in his books than does Pierce Brosnan, starting with the "longish nose" and the "carelessly brushed," side-parted hair falling over Bond's eyebrow — Connery's hair was already thinning in Dr. No (1962), when he was all of 31 years old. But the fact is, these things are details. What matters is that Connery embodied the essence of Bond-ness, just as Rathbone was Holmesian to the nth degree, and illustrators go back to their features when they're looking to depict these familiar and hugely popular characters.

Now, to the men who might have been James Bond, had the planets aligned themselves differently and the gods been in a more playful mood. Let's start with Roger Moore: Although there's a good deal of controversy about when Moore's name was first bruited about in Bond circles, longtime producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli claimed in his autobiography that Moore was Fleming's own first choice for the role — this despite the fact that Moore was a pretty boy of the first order. But Fleming also said he envisioned the suave David Niven in the role, and Moore was definitely a younger variation on the refined, elegant Niven persona; Fleming is also said to have liked James Mason, Cary Grant and Edward Underdown, a little-known stage-trained actor who'd been making movies since the 1930s. All these actors make sense when you remember that Fleming was a rakish, well-born, athletic, witty connoisseur of the good life from a wealthy family; he'd even worked in intelligence during World War II. Bond was therefore his own boyish fantasy version of himself. It also goes a long way to explaining why Fleming was so unimpressed by Connery, whom he called "unrefined," which I take to mean common as dirt. There was talk about Moore taking over in 1967 when Connery announced that he'd had enough of the role and Moore had been playing sleuthing playboy Simon Templar in The Saint for the better part of seven years. Interestingly, the 23-year-old Timothy Dalton's name apparently came up at the same time, even though he was a raw newcomer with no feature-film credits; he apparently turned down the part. One-timer George Lazenby was cast in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and Connery came back for Diamonds Are Forever (1971), so Moore didn't get to step in until Live and Let Die (1973).

I vividly remember the Brosnan flap: I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for successful actors, but I felt bad for him. Once again, Dalton was apparently offered the role of Bond but couldn't take it because he was committed to Brenda Starr (1989) (ouch!). Brosnan as a con man who assumes the role of a suave detective-agency head on TV's Remington Steele put him in the running, especially since the series had just been canceled and he was at liberty. But the wave of publicity that followed his invitation to play Bond persuaded NBC executives to revive Steele; Brosnan's contract required him to stay and Dalton's schedule was freed up, so Dalton became Bond for The Living Daylights (1987) and License to Kill (1989). The somewhat disappointing U.S. box office of those, combined with internal issues pertaining to ownership of the Bond franchise rights, resulted in a six-year Bond-movie drought. Dalton resigned from the series, and Brosnan, by then free of the Remington Steele yoke, was able to step in for Goldeneye (1995). Although Brosnan was a great Bond, the way things played out was, to my mind, doubly unfortunate. First, I think Dalton was underrated and that if he'd had the chance to make another film, he might have settled into the role in the eyes of fans. Second, if Brosnan had been able to start making Bond films a decade earlier, he wouldn't have aged out of the series so quickly: The difference between beginning to play an action-oriented role when you're in your early forties and when you're in your early fifties is significant.

Beyond those two, who did eventually become Bond after hurdling some significant obstacles, there are all kinds of tantalizing might-have-beens in this saga. Terence Young, who directed Dr. No, liked RADA-trained actor Richard Johnson before Connery became the front-runner; Johnson went on to play U.K. pulp-novel detective Bulldog Drummand in the thrillers Deadlier Than the Male (1966) and Some Girls Do (1969), both widely perceived as Bond knockoffs. Patrick McGoohan, star of the cult U.K. TV series Danger Man (broadcast in the U.S. as Secret Agent), was offered the role of James Bond after Danger Man was canceled at the end of its 1961 season (it was subsequently revived); he passed. There are innumerable stories as to why, including that he found the character reprehensible — John Drake, his Danger Man/Secret Agent character wasn't a womanizer and used violence only as a last resort. In a 1995 interview with the Bond site Her Majesty's Secret Service, McGoohan said it was nothing more than that he wasn't wild for the script and that someone he didn't want to work with had already been hired. One of the most unlikely sounding early possibilities was comedian Sid James, best known for the bawdy, lowbrow Carry On... films. I always assumed it was just a rumor that he'd screen-tested for Bond, but the test turned up on the DVD box set of the U.K. comedy series Bless This House (1971-1976). So there you go.

Irish-born, New Zealand-raised Sam Neill tested during the Brosnan/Dalton mess; he later got his opportunity to shine in the espionage realm with the starring role in the series Reilly: The Ace of Spies (1983). Both English actor Julian Glover and rugged American actor John Gavin — Janet Leigh's boyfriend in Psycho (1960) — went out for the role after Lazenby; Gavin apparently signed a contract with EON in 1970, but Connery came back for his last hurrah. Ten years later, Glover got a consolation prize in the form of playing For Your Eyes Only (1981) bad guy Ari Kristatos, and shortly after, Cubby Broccoli apparently handed James Brolin (now Mr. Barbra Streisand) a contract to play Bond while Moore was in negotiations to return for Octopussy (1983). Brolin did a screen test opposite Maud Adams while Moore was in negotiations, but Moore re-upped and that was the end of that. Yet another of my favorite "wow, that would have been something different" involves the late David Warbeck, a New Zealand-born, RADA-trained actor who made a bunch of Euro-exploitation movies in the '70s. In the book David Warbeck: The Man and His Movies, Warbeck, who died in 1997, swore he was under contract to EON throughout that entire period as a sort of understudy who could be thrown in to a new Bond film at a moment's notice if Moore walked. An unlikely candidate to outside eyes but, frankly, no more unlikely than Lazenby.


The post has tons of hyperlinks, so click though if you want more. One small non-Bond cavil. Basil who? C'mon. Jeremy Brett was the greatest Sherlock Holmes by a mile. This isn't even debatable. (Well, obviously, it is, just not with me.)

Thanks to Thighs Wide Shut for the link.

Posted by jwb at 7:45 AM   

7 Comments:

Blogger Bram said:

Ah, another chance to expound upon my Bond Hypothesis:

Sean Connery was the Bond for the '60s — suave, competent, wry, a ladies' man, a smooth Cold Warrior.

Roger Moore was the Bond for the '70s — got the job done, a bit of a clown, a swingin' ladies' man, enamored of the gadgets, a bit embarrassing, but recalled fondly.

Pierce Brosnan was the Bond for the '80s — clever but still serious about his business, the perfect representative of how "our side" wanted to be during the waning days of the Cold War.

Timothy Dalton was the Bond for the '90s — gritty, burnt, a bid dead inside, a man without direction in an increasingly complex world who's seen too much but only knows how to do one thing.
at 4:46 PM     

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Not to be overly critical, Bram, but wasn't Dalton the 80s Bond, and Brosnan the 90s version? If so, that would require some adjustment in your descriptions. Or do you mean to say that these two versions of Bond were presented to us achronistically?
at 12:58 PM     

Blogger Bram said:

Yep -- they were the right guys at the wrong time. Folks wanted Remington Steele, and they got Dalton...
at 10:03 PM     

Blogger jwb said:

Thanks, Bram. How does Lazenby fit in your scheme? He's a bit of an outlier.

The Remington Steele contract fight was unfortunate, delaying Brosnan becoming Bond by a decade, by which time he was maybe a little old for the part. But that's water under the bridge at this point. This is a semi-horrifying thought, but if Daniel Craig doesn't work out, maybe they'll bring Brosnan back a la Connery in "Diamonds Are Forever." At least Brosnan won't have to wear a toupe.
at 10:14 AM     

Blogger Bram said:

I'm sorry, but Lazenby just doesn't register. That was such an odd story, seemed out of place in the whole Bond canon, and I don't think it really gave him a chance to make the character his own.

You, however, need to get your hands on Sandbaggers for a real gritty look at Cold War British intelligence. And then check out Queen and Country, which brings it to the modern era. Amazing, dark stuff, a great counterpoint to Bond.
at 7:16 PM     

Blogger jwb said:

Bram: Thanks for the suggestions. Sandbaggers seems to be available on Netflix--all three series, 3 disks each--and I've added them to my q. I've never been much interested in the whole "graphic novel" thing, unlike you and Raphy, but perhaps I'll check out Queen and Country too.
at 3:18 PM     

Blogger Bram said:

Well, Greg Rucka, Q&C's author, was a "real" writer before he got into comics and I think this would be up your alley. They've got a lot of flack for the comic because the artwork tends to the "cartoony," but, in some ways, overly caricatured people help the story.

I'll be watching the blog for the Sandbaggers post. It drags a bit in the middle there, but the last episode is extraordinary. In one of the Q&C books, the author of the introduction describes the series as "good men in ugly suits dying badly in Prague."
at 6:00 PM     

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