James Bond: The Secret History

by Sean Egan

  For the very first time, we see 007’s office. Bond pulls from a desk drawer Honey Ryder’s knife, Red Grant’s garrotting watch and the ‘re-breather’ used in Thunderball’s underwater sequences. As he does, music from the relevant films plays on the soundtrack. Similar reflectiveness informs the opening credits, in which we see heroes and villains from all of the five previous official Bond movies. Later, a midget cleaner will be heard whistling the title theme of Goldfinger. All this anxious self-referentialism is as desperate as the tagline of one of the film’s posters, which insisted, ‘This man is James Bond!’

  Lazenby is a slightly stilted actor. However, the fault may be Hunt’s: Lazenby has claimed that, apart from the final scene, he was only ever allowed one take. Hunt certainly creates his own problems. While it may be strange that he disdains for a luxuriant feel the fast cutting that, as an editor, he had helped pioneer in Bond films, it’s not particularly an issue. What is, though, is his self-conscious and melodramatic employment of echoes, slow motion, jumped frames and incongruous reaction shots.

  On the plus side, it is Hunt whom we have to thank for an insistence that the film return the character to his human roots: we see Bond surviving on his wits, not machinery, and reduced at times to a sweaty, exhausted state a world removed from his smugness of recent pictures.

  No sooner have we been allowed to see Blofeld’s face, than it is changed: Telly Savalas takes over the role from Donald Pleasance, who was thought not physically up to this script’s tussles. Although the actors share a bald pate, the scar and the English accent are gone. Such are the exigencies of casting, of course, but, as Bond and Blofeld had met in the previous film, it is ludicrous that Bond’s Clark Kent-like Hilary Bray disguise initially fools Blofeld.

  Ruby Bartlett makes a refreshing change from Bond’s usual cosmopolitan paramours. A pretty but gormless provincial, she is played delightfully by Angela Scoular. By the end, though, Bond has eyes only for Tracy. Few would blame him. Diana Rigg is transcendentally beautiful. Those assuming that the one-time Emma Peel had hopped on the same conveyer belt from The Avengers that brought Honor Blackman to the series were, according to Rigg, wide of the mark: she later asserted that her heavyweight thespian grounding had been considered necessary to cover up potential inadequacies in newcomer Lazenby.

  The development of Tracy’s romance with 007 is depicted in a very un-Bondian sentimental montage against a backdrop of a ballad Barry composed with lyricist Hal David, ‘All the Time in the World’. It was a fitting finale to the career of the legendary Louis Armstrong, who sings it exquisitely. Curiously, it was not a hit in 1969, but did make the UK top three in 1994 on the back of its use in a commercial.

  Coming hot on the heels of scenes of Bond and Tracy getting married, the sight of Mrs Bond with a bullet in her forehead is genuinely shocking. Lazenby’s horrified double-take at the sight of it is one example of his acting that is unequivocally good.

  On Her Majesty’s Secret Service premiered on 18 December 1969. The picture was considered by United Artists to be a flop, not least because the Stateside takings of $22.8 million were down by half on You Only Live Twice. Although the running time of 140 minutes – the longest Bond so far – reduced the number of showings cinemas could fit into a day, the rumour grew that OHMSS was a failure because of Lazenby and that this was the reason he did not return in the role. Interestingly, Broccoli himself never claimed this. In an interview he gave Stan McMann in 1971, Broccoli said, ‘… he’s impossible … We would have used him again if we felt that he was able to cope with this big success that he had.’ Broccoli was continuing to take this line in his autobiography, where he said Lazenby ‘ruled himself out of the reckoning by behaving like the superstar he wasn’t’.

  There doesn’t seem any question that Lazenby was a bumptious presence on the OHMSS set. Camera operator Alec Mills recalled how on one occasion the actor went horse-riding, keeping an entire crew waiting while simultaneously jeopardising production by risking injury. The 14 January 1970 edition of British newspaper the Daily Sketch carried an open letter to Lazenby from Rigg in which she alleged that during the shoot Lazenby’s dresser threatened to hand in his notice, three chauffeurs left him within the space of a week, a member of the unit had to be restrained in the action of striking him after a crude outburst against one of the film’s actresses and he had reduced Rigg herself to tears by threatening her with violence because of driving he considered inept. One thing Rigg didn’t mention is the rumour that, when the last scene of the movie had been completed, she took the satisfaction of spitting in Lazenby’s face.

  However, when it comes to why Lazenby never appeared again as 007, the actor has always claimed that he was not sacked but walked away. For instance, in a 2010 interview with popcultureaddict.com, he said, ‘I wanted to do the next one because they offered me a million dollars under the table which is probably ten million today, and I was offered any movie between the Bond movie that I wanted to do. So I looked at my manager and said “What’s wrong with that deal?” and he said “No. You’ll die doing Bond because it’s over. It’s finished.”’ Lazenby cites the ethos of the time for the conviction that Bond was passé. A film that outgrossed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969 – and indeed all others – was Easy Rider. The biker road pic was the first mainstream counterculture movie and one that constituted a screw-you to the sorts of values that held sway in the milieux traversed by 007. ‘Love and peace was in,’ Lazenby said. ‘Guys running around with suits and guns couldn’t get laid. Honest to God. They thought you were a waiter or a cop or something.’

  David V. Picker, though, seems to think it was out of the question that Lazenby could have been a long-term Bond. Told that 007 fans have voted OHMSS the best-ever Bond movie, he says, ‘I couldn’t care less whether they think it was the best or not. My interest was making commercial movies.’ Of the film’s grosses, he says, ‘It was awful. They were very, very disappointing. It wasn’t like nobody went, but when you’re getting a series of movies that each one’s getting bigger and bigger and suddenly you change one of the key elements, if not the key element, and the picture goes way the hell back, it’s a disaster. If you don’t solve the problem, it’s over. You’re not going to make a second picture with George Lazenby, that’s for sure.’ As to Lazenby’s claim that he was offered a seven-year contract, Picker shrugs, ‘Well he was certainly offered options. But you’re not obligated to exercise that option.’

  Although he subsequently appeared sporadically in movies and television shows before doing well in real estate, Lazenby’s name became a byword for short tenures and missed opportunities – e.g. Pope Benedict XVI is The George Lazenby of Popes; Paul McGann is The George Lazenby of Doctor Whos.

  There are arguments to be made that OHMSS should have brought the Bond series to a close. One such argument was a temporary one. As the seventies dawned, some were dismissing Bond precepts as sooo sixties, an embarrassing reminder of the days when sex and violence were considered shocking.

  The other argument was one that survived the novelty of twentieth-century years having a ‘7’ as their third numeral. The Bond formula, it ran, was now overfamiliar, with no potential for profound development or refinement. Moreover, 007’s values weren’t being questioned only by the demographic of Easy Rider. The values of what was then called the Women’s Liberation Movement dared to declare that Bond’s ethics – which, unlike in the books, included gratuitously slapping around women – were not funny and not clever. It’s certainly interesting how sleazy Lazenby now looks in an OHMSS scene where he is openly leering at a Playboy centrefold as he walks down a corridor.

  While there have been good Bond films since, none of them have ever really done anything not seen in the series’ first decade. Reconstructed them possibly, streamlined them maybe, reined them in perhaps, but a James Bond movie is a James Bond movie. The closest the series could come to transmutation was, in fact, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the first film in which 00
7 says ‘I love you,’ excepting the phrase’s deployment as code in You Only Live Twice. The human, vulnerable Bond seen in this film could – for his detractors – have ended a faltering franchise on a high and redemptive note.

  In 1971, George Lazenby asked Broccoli and Saltzman for another chance as Bond. The producers rebuffed him. However, the return of Sean Connery for the next Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever, was just as humiliating for Broccoli and Saltzman as that knockback must have been for Lazenby. Moreover, the process involved in Connery’s return was the start of the loss of Eon’s autonomy, with it leading to United Artists taking a closer interest in Bond-movie production.

  United Artists rejected John Gavin, Eon’s choice as the new Bond, and insisted on the return of the only man whom it seemed the public would accept as 007. They did this by finally meeting Connery’s pay demands. Broccoli always maintained that Connery’s financial beefs were properly with United Artists, not Eon. Yet UA’s David V. Picker tells a different story. Astounded to be told by Broccoli and Saltzman that they couldn’t make an overture because they were on non-speaking terms with the actor, Picker flew to London for a meeting with Connery’s agent Richard Hatton. The latter, Picker says, stated how much he appreciated UA getting involved and that, had Broccoli and Saltzman dealt with his client appropriately before, none of the problems between the parties would have taken place: while repeatedly renegotiating their own deals with UA, Broccoli and Saltzman had been dismissive of Connery’s entreaties for a commensurate financial recognition of his role in the franchise’s success.

  ‘We weren’t even aware of these problems,’ says Picker. ‘Unless the pictures went way, way over budget, we never got involved until they delivered us the movies and we distributed them. Richard was a gentleman. He was dealing with the producers. And it was only when finally he got so frustrated, as did Sean, that they came to me. I was able to save the franchise to do one more movie by offering him a deal to do pictures where he wasn’t Bond so he could protect his own image in film. Harry and Cubby just did not handle it well.’

  The deal that Picker agreed secured Connery an advance of $1.25 million (all of which he donated to a Scottish educational trust), 10 per cent of the grosses and funding for two non-Bond film ventures. These terms secured Connery a place in The Guinness Book of Records as the world’s highest-paid actor. Connery also insisted on the right not to have to talk directly to Broccoli and Saltzman during the making of the movie, although Picker says, ‘That was never written down. It was just an understanding. I have no idea whether they talked or not.’

  Connery’s victory, however, was somewhat pyrrhic. In the four years since his last outing, he had acquired grey hair, lines in his face and a double-chin in profile. His habitual Bond toupee now had to cover a much wider area and was, for the first time, unconvincing. His voice was also starting to acquire that slurred quality that would be much imitated by comedians. Whatever credibility there was to the idea of him either as a man of action or a Lothario was a remnant of the audience’s lingering affection for the physical figure he had once represented.

  Diamonds Are Forever premiered in the US on 17 December 1971. As with that of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, its pre-title sequence teases us a little, not at first showing us the face of the ‘new’ Bond actor. It contains one of the most famous of the series’ lines, when Bond says, ‘There is something I’d like you to get off your chest’ as he pulls up a woman’s bikini top and strangles her with it until she yields up the whereabouts of Blofeld.

  With Charles Gray, we have yet another manifestation of Bond’s nemesis. He is a pleasing combination of sophistication (a cigarette holder) and menace (clipped, steely tones and a liquid stare). His appearance in the pre-title sequence seems to contain the film’s one reference to Bond’s grief over the murder of his wife in the previous film: ‘Welcome to hell, Blofeld,’ the agent crows as he buries the SPECTRE man in a sulphur bath.

  Guy Hamilton returns to the director’s chair. Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz share screenwriting credit. As in the novel, Bond is investigating the smuggling of diamonds, although an additional element is provided by the kidnapping of reclusive tycoon Willard Whyte (clearly modelled on Howard Hughes). In an example of the sort of novelty casting that would become common in the Bond film series, Whyte is played by Jimmy Dean, a country recording artist best known for his 1961 hit ‘Big Bad John’. More murder and mayhem are attached to the diamond pipeline courtesy of Mr Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr Kidd (Putter Smith) systematically eliminating elements of it.

  These are certainly strong screen presences: Wint is effeminate but sinister; Kidd is hairy, buck-toothed and lugubrious. However, although the frankness about their sexuality was progressive at the time because risqué, it now comes across as reactionary. Their hand-holding in their first scene had the clearly intended effect of causing cinema audiences to whistle and whoop derisively.

  The film is pacey and there are adroit segues between scenes, but before long we realise we are being wrenched back to pre-OHMSS Bond. A glib tone and nonsensical switchbacks mean we once again never worry for Bond’s safety. The supposedly secret agent actually exploits his fame by slipping his Playboy Club membership card into a deceased villain’s pocket, leading Tiffany Case to exclaim, ‘My God, you just killed James Bond!’ Blofeld turns out to be alive: Bond had killed a plastic-surgery-enhanced double, who himself has an exact double. Blofeld constitutes the end of the diamond trail, utilising the gems to concentrate laser beams from space to destroy submarines and missiles. All of this in a society that had only just developed the pocket calculator.

  The producers and studio clearly felt that this stuff was what the public felt they had been deprived of last time out, but no one is going to be moved the way many were at the climax of the Lazenby film.

  One thing the film does do well is mock the trashiness and cheesiness that then predominated in American culture. The gaudiness of Las Vegas, the insularity of many US citizens, the predominance of violence and the mirthlessness of comedy performers are all aspects of the States put under a merciless spotlight. That said, the film buys into the same culture’s dramatic benefits with its scenes involving squealing tyres and whooping police sirens. One of the car chases contains an iconic Bond moment wherein 007 manipulates a vehicle through a narrow gap by driving on one side’s wheels only; who knew you could do that by simply barking ‘Lean over’ at your companion?

  Despite the fact that the coda is rather grisly – Kidd is immolated – the Bond series was beginning to lose its aura of sadism. Sam Peckinpah’s blood-drenched Westerns and the cruelty-and-rape-punctuated likes of Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry (all 1971) were making even the worst Bond violence seem tame. This process was partly assisted by the increasingly light tone during the tenure of the next James Bond actor, but critics and cinemagoers in any case gradually became aware that it was never that prevalent. Across the history of the Bond series, sadistic violence or exultation in death – the killing of Dent in Dr. No, the torching of Kidd, the pressure-chamber scene in Licence to Kill, the eye-gouging in Spectre – can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

  Diamonds Are Forever has a title song deserving of a better movie: Shirley Bassey gives her usual ultra-committed performance in a slinky creation (lyric by Don Black) that is one of the best known Bond songs.

  During the summer of 1972, American cinemas played host to no less than a James Bond triple-bill: Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. United Artists and Eon Productions would seem to have been milking the last drops of revenue from Bond films while they remained a cinema-only phenomenon. The momentous first television screening of a James Bond motion picture occurred on 17 September 1972 as part of ABC’s Sunday Night Movie strand.

  ABC had agreed to pay $2.5 million each for the right to broadcast the seven Eon Bond films. Some have noted that the timing of the decision to sell TV rights occurred towards the end of the biggest upheaval in the f
ranchise’s history: the departure of Connery, the relative box-office failure of Lazenby and the sticking-plaster solution of the ageing Connery’s temporary return. The series had, it could be argued, been losing its shine for the best part of half a decade. Roger Moore was due to start shooting his first Bond film the following month. Should the new 007 actor not prove a hit with the public, there were all sorts of dire consequences foreseeable. One was that the franchise might come to an end; another was that Bond TV rights would cease to command a theoretical premium price.

  Those cineastes who felt television a vulgar medium were provided grist to their mill when ABC elected to make their inaugural Bond broadcast not the logical Dr. No but Goldfinger. Similar ammunition was provided by the cuts made to the third 007 flick. It being an era prior to the liberalisation of television content, the transfer from large to small screen meant a fundamental toning-down of sex and violence. In this case, this included the excision of the key moment when Oddjob is electrocuted. Moreover, the audience were denied an integral part of the 007 movie experience via the arbitrary omission of the gun-barrel sequence.

  It would be another two years before Bond was seen on TV again, when ABC screened a bowdlerised From Russia with Love. From here on, though, Bond films would become a fairly regular ingredient of US TV, if in random sequence and with formatting that often outraged purists (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was screened across two evenings with scenes rejigged and narration added).

  James Bond didn’t reach the television screens of his home country until 1975. Says Picker, ‘Well, British television doesn’t like to pay a lot of money for movies.’ ITV broadcast Dr. No on 28 October, repeated it a few months later and squeezed in three further films (in consecutive sequence) before the release of The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, at which point they were contractually obliged to pause: they were not allowed to broadcast Bond when he was in the cinemas. Britain being more permissive than America, Bond films were subjected to less censorship by ITV. Moreover, unlike ABC, who tended to show Bond late in the evening, ITV saw Bond as family entertainment. This strategy was vindicated when the British television premiere of Live and Let Die on 20 January 1980 at 7.45 p.m. attracted an audience of 23.5 million, which makes it the most-watched film in British broadcasting history.