by Mark Edlitz
GEORGE LAZENBY IS JAMES BOND
James Bond aficionados often cite George Lazenby’s solo outing as the secret agent in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as one of the best films in the long-running series. In his seminal book, The James Bond Bedside Companion, Raymond Benson, Bond scholar turned nine-time Bond novelist,80 wrote that the film is an “artistic triumph” and that Lazenby’s “performance is the most honest and sincere of any of the actors who have played Bond.”81 Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director, argued that “Lazenby has a vulnerability that Connery never had.”82
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service [OHMSS] is the film in which Bond, an inveterate womanizer, defies audience expectations by falling in love with and marrying Tracy di Vicenzo, the daughter of the head of a crime cartel. Because Bond must remain a perpetual bachelor, their relationship is doomed. In the end, Bond sees his new bride gunned down by an old enemy. In his book The Man with the Golden Touch, Sinclair McKay observes that the “emotional stakes are raised very much higher than they are in any other Bond movie save 2006’s Casino Royale.”83
OHMSS concludes with a deeply shaken and stirred Bond cradling his wife’s lifeless body, holding back tears, and trying to convince himself that “It’s all right. It’s quite all right, really. She’s having a rest. We’ll be going on soon. There’s no hurry, you see. We have all the time in the world.”
Lazenby effectively strips down Bond’s macho exterior, revealing a caring, sensitive soul inside, and he reminds viewers that 007 is not only a ruthless spy. McKay argues, “What everyone tends to forget now is that the literary Bond was not some form of callous automaton; very far from it. In the opening chapter of OHMSS, Bond even has a flashback to childhood seaside holidays. This is the Bond that we see in the nascent form in George Lazenby—a man who can outfight anyone, but whose heart is bigger and more open than anyone might think.”84 Lazenby’s understated performance is all the more remarkable when you consider that prior to being cast as Bond, Lazenby was a model who had no formal training or acting experience.
Besides anchoring one of the best Bond films and despite the film’s disappointing box office performance, Lazenby contributed something far more important to the Bond franchise in particular and by extension to franchise films generally: Lazenby’s performance proved that an actor could take over a lead role that has become closely associated with another actor. Even though many enthusiasts of the Bond movies enjoyed identifying Connery with Bond, Lazenby’s performance demonstrated that if a character is complex enough, the part doesn’t belong to any individual actor.
In other words, despite Connery’s blistering screen presence, the star of the 007 films was really Bond, not Connery. The character is bigger than any individual performer. As Albert Broccoli explained in his autobiography, “There was some brief media hysteria predicting that Connery’s abdication would force the 007 empire into oblivion. It didn’t happen, because of one fundamental truth: James Bond 007 is the real star. It is always one notch bigger than the actor who plays him. It is like a space station—it stays in orbit whichever hero is up there at any given time.”85
Lazenby’s performance paved the way not only for Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, it also provided the precedent for Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck to follow Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight and for Dean Cain, Brandon Routh, and Henry Cavill to succeed Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel.
To celebrate the release of Roger Moore’s autobiography, My Word Is My Bond (2008), The New York Times organized an event at which the paper’s film critic A. O. Scott interviewed the seven-time Bond. During the interview, Moore stopped the proceedings and informed the audience that fellow Bond actor George Lazenby was seated among us. Lazenby stood up, and the packed crowd greeted him with warm applause. We were all delighted by the rare opportunity to be in the presence of two different Bonds. The following day, Lazenby agreed to do this interview with me.
What do you think motivates James Bond?
Bond is the personification of male desire. His drive to be the best. To be the winner. To accomplish whatever he sets out to do. He represents the male ego.
What is your view of his character?
James Bond is a villain and a murderous one. He deals with villains and he has to outsmart them. He has the villain’s essence in his makeup. He’d be a pretty good villain himself. He knows how to out-connive, out-spy, out-charm, out-kill. The guy basically gets away with murder.
Did you take anything from Ian Fleming’s novels to inform your performance?
I did—the end scene, in particular. When I read the novel originally, it made me cry. I had the book on my lap and I read it right before I did the scene. I wasn’t an actor before the film started but [during the making of OHMSS] I had nine months of on-camera training. [Laughs.] By the time we shot that scene, I was really starting to get into it.
George Lazenby established that the character of Bond is more significant than any individual actor.
ILLUSTRATION BY PAT CARBAJAL
But whatever insecurities you had as an actor didn’t appear in the film. Your Bond is, above all, confident.
I did the best I could. I felt that I had to copy Sean Connery in a sense. Connery could just be himself and let his personality emerge. Because I was following in his footsteps, I felt that I had to copy Connery’s energy. I was at a bit of a disadvantage because it’s much stronger when you’re being yourself. Whoever first plays the character has the advantage of establishing the energy of the character.
Can you think of a specific example of that?
Normally, I swagger when I walk. I’m not as precise in my speech. Of course, I’m Australian and I don’t normally speak with an English accent. But to evoke Connery, I had to change my walk, my speech, and my attitude. I’m certainly not always this charming.
Your performance doesn’t come across as a Connery clone. Did you remember a time when you said, “I’m going to break away from Connery’s interpretation and be my own Bond”?
Yes, when I cried at the end. The director said, “James Bond doesn’t cry.” I had full-on tears on the first take. During the second take, I didn’t cry but I kept the emotion.
I don’t think Connery’s Bond would have cried in that circumstance.
No, he wouldn’t.
What made that scene especially effective is how Bond, for the first time in the series, opens up.
Ian Fleming did it for me. He gave me that emotion out of the book.
What do you like about Bond?
It depends on the situation. If I’m in a casino, I love to win. If I’m in a fight, I love to win. If I don’t like somebody, I’d love to shoot him. [Laughing.] You know what I mean? He can do all these things that I can’t. Then I have the other side of myself, which is the peaceful side, and I don’t like anything about Bond. I just want to be quiet. Look into my own feelings and thoughts. Bond is not into that. Bond isn’t into mediation, for example. I am.
Bond is not an introspective character.
No, he’s not. Bond’s just a charmer and he’s efficient at what he does. He gets away with a lot of bad behavior because he’s the best at what he does. You wouldn’t fire him no matter what trouble he gets himself into. In that way, he’s like a used car salesman, which I was.
George Lazenby’s emotionally vulnerable Bond.
ILLUSTRATION BY PAT CARBAJAL
What do you think motivates your Bond more, his job or his self-gratification?
I think for Bond, they go together. You can’t make him do something that he doesn’t want to do. He enjoys what he does. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel so confident.
Where do your personalities most closely intersect?
That goes back to the male ego. That’s what’s attractive. He lives the life most of us would love to live.
Did you ever allow yourself to feel the power of playing Bond?
That comes naturally. E
veryone started to call me “sir,” whereas before I was Bond they called me “asshole.” [Laughs.] It changes your persona. It’s a big image to uphold, and I didn’t handle it very well.
What is the biggest perk and downside of having been Bond?
To me, the downside was being recognized when you don’t want to be. The biggest perk was getting tables in restaurants. When you go into restaurants, they change tables around for you and you get the table you want. It’s a different life altogether. But when I stopped playing Bond that changed a bit. I remember when it was announced that I was not going to be playing Bond anymore they took my photo down from a nightclub I used to go to. There was a restaurant that I used to go to and in the restaurant, there was a sign that read “George Lazenby is a premium Bond,” but then that was taken out, too. I thought, “Oh, being James Bond does mean something.”
How did women respond to your Bond persona? Did they respond to you as James Bond?
Yes. After playing the part, I met a different class of women. Many of them were—what should I say?—“society climbers.” Prior to doing the part, I spent more time with the average girl on the street. I found the average girl on the street to be much funnier, more real, sexier, and I missed them. That’s why you’d see me going out with a girl on the street rather than an actress I was working with. I still find that.
How has playing this part affected you personally?
I lost myself. At first, it took me away from the self that I thought I knew—but didn’t. It made me into a new self, which I didn’t know either. I was just playing another character in life. Now I’m beginning to understand life and I’m studying my own personality. I know that I am not who I think I am.
Who have you become?
I think I am a very fortunate human being who is a lot happier than I used to be. Now I’m happier knowing that there is something greater than me inside me.
One last question. Who would win in a fight, your Bond or Sean Connery’s?
Sean’s too old to fight me today. [Smiles.] If we were both eighteen years old, you’d have to toss a coin.
MICHAEL JAYSTON IS JAMES BOND
The first radio adaptation of a James Bond novel was the 1958 production of Moon-raker with Bob Holness as 007. It would take another thirty-two years before the spy would return to the airwaves in the BBC production of You Only Live Twice (1990) with Michael Jayston as Bond and Ronald Herdman as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
Though action sequences are the staple of the cinematic Bond, they don’t always translate to the aural experience of radio. Instead, the different medium allowed writer Michael Bakewell to dramatize passages from Fleming’s novel that are unlikely to appear in film. In one such scene, Bond plays the children’s game rock, paper, scissors against the head of the Japanese secret service, Tiger Tanaka. As the two men face off, listeners are privy to Bond’s inner monologue as he contemplates the best strategy for playing his opponent while ensuring that neither man “loses face”: “If I beat him, he will lose face in front of all these women. If I lose, I shall lose face in front of him. So do I play to win or lose? But it’s as difficult to play to lose as to play to win. And does it really matter?”86 The short but compelling soliloquy provides a rare and unfiltered glimpse into Bond’s thought process.
Jayston played a Bond who, because he is still in mourning for his murdered wife, has found that “all the zip has gone out of life.”87 Yet while on a mission in Japan, Bond “looks death in the face,” exacts revenge on Blofeld, and emerges from his crucible reborn and reinvigorated.88
But his new sense of purpose is short-lived. In the process of destroying Blofeld’s compound, an explosion knocks Bond unconscious. When he comes to, he doesn’t remember his former life. The radio drama, like the like 1964 novel, ends with a cliffhanger, as Bond decides to go to Russia in an attempt to “awaken memories of his life.”89
Jayston is also known to Doctor Who fans for his multiple appearances as the villainous Valeyard.
Did you have to audition to play James Bond?
Oh, no. It was just an offer that came through with my agent. They asked if I wanted to do Bond on the radio and I accepted it straightaway.
What was your reaction to being offered the part of Bond on radio?
At the time, I thought that James Bond on radio was a bit silly. Bond is not about cerebral activity. He’s about action. And, of course, the girls. At the time, I thought it was rather odd that they’d do it on radio. Mind you, I didn’t treat it as something that was silly; I did it to the best of my ability. We had a fine cast. Clive Merrison played Tanaka. We also had Burt Kwouk. [Kwouk played superintendent Ando and appeared in the films Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and the 1966 version of Casino Royale.]
Did you reread the book to prepare for the part?
No, not at all. You play it out of your own personality. If you think of all the Bonds, Roger Moore played it based on his personality, and Sean Connery played it based on his. In the end, they were totally different performances. Daniel Craig is very good indeed. They’re all totally different. It’s like playing Hamlet. [Roger Moore also made the Hamlet analogy.]
As you say, there are many different ways to play Bond. How would you characterize your performance?
I hope he was a bit gritty. But you never know if you can’t see it. I tried to play it as slightly relaxed in some ways, because he knows he’s in charge most of the time, although he does get into situations where he isn’t in charge. But I didn’t base it on any of the Bonds. I just based it on how I thought Bond would go over on radio.
In what ways are you like Bond?
Not much at all. How could you know Bond? Bond is nothing like the real people in the secret service. I’ve met John le Carré because I do all of his books on audio. John le Carré was in the secret service, and he said it wasn’t like that at all. He said the people who were spies never stood out in the crowd at all. Whereas Bond goes into the roulette tables and you’d notice him because he’s tall and he’s personable. He stands out in the crowd. Whereas le Carré says you’d never look at George Smiley twice if you saw him in the restaurant or a pub. He looks like an avuncular gentleman who’s there and not like someone who’s there grabbing all the information.
How did you change your voice to play Bond?
I made it ordinary pronunciation English because, in the original novels, he was highly educated, and he would’ve had a posh voice. It was a more posh voice than Sean Connery’s or Pierce Brosnan’s. I generally tended not to shout.
Did you play the cinematic or literary Bond?
I just played the literary Bond, as it was written. The script was very good. We didn’t change much of it at all. If you accept the fact that it’s a radio production of Bond it holds up. But to me, it’s not a radio drama.
What were the challenges of playing Bond using only your voice?
If the voice fits, if it’s right, then all the people who are listening to it use their own imaginations to understand and visualize the character. If the voice fits, you can say, “I’m Alexander the Great” or “I’m Othello.” Whereas on-screen, you’ve got to accept the fact that he looks in a particular way.
Michael Jayston in Carol Reeds’s The Public Eye (1972). Jayston was thirty-seven years old when the film was released, the same age as James Bond in Ian Fleming’s third novel, Moonraker.
UNIVERSAL PICTURES/PHOTOFEST
Can you talk about the internal life of the character?
Well, there really wasn’t any internal life. You just accepted the fact that you were playing this character called James Bond, and you played it scene by scene. You can’t do too much internal stuff on radio because it doesn’t register. On radio Bond is not cerebral at all. He doesn’t think to himself much.
When the radio play ends, Bond has amnesia. Was the plan to continue the story in another production?
Yes. I was supposed to be doing another two, but then they dropped it. Mind you, I didn’t have a
contract to do more than one, but I think they realized that Bond wasn’t really a vehicle for radio.
But now they’ve recently reinvigorated it. [Toby Stephens, who was cast as a villain in Die Another Day, played Bond on radio in Dr. No, (2008), Goldfinger (2010), From Russia with Love (2012), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (2014), Diamonds Are Forever (2015), Thunderball (2016), Moonraker (2018), and Live and Let Die (2019).] But until they revived it on radio, I was the only one who had played Bond on the radio for [nearly twenty] years. I don’t mean to deprecate it, but I still don’t think Bond is the proper vehicle for radio. Do you think it’s the proper vehicle for radio?
I enjoyed listening to it. I also think it’s a fascinating exercise and an interesting way to try to reinterpret something that’s familiar to us. What were the recording logistics like?
We did it in sequence, which is much better. But [Sayo Inaba] who played [Kissy Suzuki] was very polite and she used to put her hands together and bow when we were saying our lines. I told her, “You don’t need to do that.” But she continued to bow even when we were doing our lines to her. It was strange. But she was very good.
How long did it take to record the entire production?
I think it took two days altogether. Generally, we did a scene twice or sometimes three times, especially when you’ve got sound effects. We did a few scenes where we didn’t have to retake them.
The sound effects were done live, in studio, while you’re giving your lines?
Usually they were, although they’d say, “Can you pause for four seconds, because we’re going to get the sounds of the sea” or something. But generally, we had the sound effects then.
Has playing Bond meant anything to you personally, has it affected your life?