![]() ![]() ![]() And so he was, and thereafter in a string of unstoppable box-office successes. So confident were the producers that Dr No would be a hit that the final credit read “James Bond will be back in From Russia With Love”. The ingredients were exotic Technicolored locations, beautiful (mostly treacherous) women, an evil genius who wants to control the world and spectacular stunts. He took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat.”ĭr No was a big hit and, although the following films became increasingly packed with technical wizardry, it immediately established the successful recipe of sex, violence and campy humour that remained virtually unchanged for decades to come. According to Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny): “Terence took Sean under his wing. His portrayal of Bond owed much to the tutelage of Young. In fact, Fleming changed his mind after a girlfriend told him Connery had the requisite sexual magnetism. Connery’s Bond was a rougher diamond, but blessed with a wry sense of humour that diffused the violence, inviting the audience in on the joke.Ĭonnery fleshed out Fleming’s “cardboard booby” (the author’s own description). Fleming saw David Niven as Bond, a gentleman spy, equally at ease in five-star restaurants and torture chambers, knowing instinctively which fork and which weapon to use. The author initially doubted the casting of Connery, remarking, “I’m looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stuntman,” adding that the muscular 6ft 2in Scot was “unrefined”. Sean Connery in Dr No, 1962, the first film featuring Ian Fleming’s secret agent, with Eunice Gayson playing Sylvia Trench. Put a bit of veneer over that tough Scottish hide and you’ve got Fleming’s Bond.” Broccoli later said: “I wanted a ballsy guy. Connery was also a virile Hotspur in the BBC TV’s Shakespeare cycle An Age of Kings (1960), so he did not exactly come from nowhere when, from a number of contenders, he was chosen by the producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R (Cubby) Broccoli to become Fleming’s licensed-to-kill hero. He was then selected by Walt Disney himself to play the male half of the romantic interest in a coy piece of Irishness about leprechauns, Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959). Stage experience in the sailor chorus in the West End production of South Pacific in 1953 and work in rep led him to films (though not before Matt Busby saw him playing in a football match while South Pacific was in Manchester and offered Connery a contract with Manchester United, which he turned down).Īmong his dozen or so pre-Bond films were Hell Drivers (1957), a violent melodrama about lorry drivers Action of the Tiger (1957), a routine adventure yarn and Another Time, Another Place (1958), a weepy about a doomed second world war love affair that starred Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, Glynis Johns – and Connery. ![]() Working on a building site, he spent much of his spare time body-building in gyms, which led to an ad-agency job modelling swimwear. There followed various manual jobs: lifeguard, bricklayer and even coffin polisher, as well as a nude model for Edinburgh art students. His father was a Roman Catholic of Irish descent with roots in County Wexford, while his mother was a Protestant, with Gaelic-speaking forebears.Īfter leaving Darroch secondary school, at the age of 16 Connery enlisted in the Royal Navy. Perhaps Connery’s working-class background helped keep his feet on the ground.īorn in the Fountainbridge district of Edinburgh, where he was known as Tommy, he was the son of Joseph Connery, a lorry driver and factory worker, and Effie (nee McLean), a cleaner. “He doesn’t give a damn for the ancillary assets of being a star,” said Terence Young, who directed Connery in three James Bond movies, including Dr No (1962), the first 007 feature. Whether or not Connery could do different accents – he occasionally ventured an Irish-American one – he seemed to use his oft-imitated voice as a badge of honour, like the tattoo on his forearm that read Scotland Forever. He was sometimes criticised and even ridiculed for never changing his deep, abrasive, slightly sibilant Scottish burr no matter if he were playing an Irishman, an Arab or a Russian. “His vitality may make him the most richly masculine of all English–speaking actors that rumbling Scotsman’s voice of his transforms English – muffles the clipped edges,” wrote the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael. There is about most of his performances a down-to-earth quality. ![]()
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