Actor Became The 007 Character And Made The Series Popular, Especially This Underwater Classic
James Bond, Sean Connery, Bond Girls
By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Entertainment Editor
He was the class act most of us have tried (but failed) to emulate and the ladies man all us men dreamed to be but could, of course, never quite achieve.
Sean Connery not only played James Bond, he WAS James Bond. Despite Connery himself saying, “I’m not Bond,” when one is so perfectly suited to play a character he (or she) actually becomes that character.
That was Connery as Secret Agent 007, a role he was better at than any of those who followed him. (Frankly, I’ve lost count and not sure I even know all the names of the other Bonds. Do YOU, by the way?)
Connery was also outstanding in the Indiana Jones movies and The Hunt For Red October, and was also in the World War II The Longest Day (along with the actor who would eventually play Goldfinger, Gert Frobe) but he will also be known to me for his role as Bond.
The Bond that Connery played was sly, sophisticated, tough, cold-hearted at times when confronting a villain, quick-witted and had ladies – not all of them the main female character who became known as “Bond girls” – seemingly falling out of the sky into his lap.
Connery played all this with a such cool demeanor that is Bond seemed to think that it was all supposed to happen that way. No other Bond ever came close to combining all those elements (Timothy Dalton was the worst Bond, by the way, because he was far too serious).
Surprisingly, I warmed pretty quickly to Connery’s replacement, Roger Moore. That happened in one of the first scenes of his first movie, Live & Let Die, when he stashed a missing Italian agent in his closest when M and Moneypenny made a surprise visit to his apartment. He then used the magnetic part of his watch to unzip her dress.
I went on to love Live & Let Die and my favorite Moore flick was The Spy Who Loved Me. Okay, that’s based in large part to Barbara Bach, especially the scenes in which she wore a low-cut black dress with a huge slit up one leg.
That being said, I’m a huge fan of the early Connery movies: Dr. No, Goldfinger and from Russia With Love.
Yet my favorite is Thunderball. Perhaps it is because, as M said to Bond when the latter requested being sent to the Bahamas, “of your enthusiasm for water sports.”
It also had one of the best plots – highjacking a jet with nuclear bombs and landing it perfectly in the ocean for ransom money – and a bevy of babes. It started out with the smokin’ nurse at the clinic (Molly), moved onto the beautiful agent assigned to him upon his arrival in the Bahamas (Paula) and continued with the super sexy villain woman (Fiona) and finished up with the gorgeous Domino.
“My what sharp little eyes you have,” Domino said to Bond after he noticed her name on an ankle bracelet.
“Wait until you get to my teeth!,” Connery muttered as Domino walked out of the scene.
Of course, the dripping gorgeous and sexy Ursula Andress was the Bond girl in Dr. No and who could forget the name Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.
“I must be dreaming,” Connery said when hearing her name and seeing her for the first time.
That was classic Bond and it was delivered by THE classic Bond, Sean Connery
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