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On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: This Never Happened to the Other Fellow
This post will eventually contain a key plot spoiler, some distance down the page from here, so if you want to see this 1969 film with virgin eyes, stop reading. But do come back after you’ve seen it. The second “spoiler” is no spoiler at all, no surprise to anyone: Sean Connery is not James Bond in it, and the Bond of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, George Lazenby, is most famous for never having played the role again. That set of facts and how they came about is the main subject of this post, although we will also cover the merits and flaws of the film itself, which some Bond snobs consider one of the best, if not the best, of the entire series. But I can’t tell you why yet, not here at the top of the post, because it will involve the spoiler. You have been warned.
By the time Thunderball (1965) wrapped, Sean Connery was tired of being Bond. Actually, that’s English-style polite understatement that the blunt, Scottish-born Connery would have impatiently penciled out in favor of “thoroughly sick of it”. He felt his character was becoming overshadowed by ingenious gadgets, Ken Adam’s enormous sets, one-liner quips and a growing fantasy element. Connery started the series in 1962 as a relatively unknown actor, quickly became a leading international star, and made an astonishing amount of money. Being a practical Scot, adding to that pile was the only reason he reluctantly stayed aboard for You Only Live Twice (1967). Then he was gone, he swore, for good. So EON Productions, producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, conducted an ostentatiously well publicized search for the next Bond. Each new actor in the role of James Bond is a multi, multi-million-dollar box office gamble, and from that standpoint this very first replacement would be by far the most ill-fated.
Established movie stars such as Richard Burton were considered, but Saltzman and Broccoli wanted to repeat what they’d done with Sean Connery, create their own star, who would presumably cost less and be easier to control. Australian actor George Lazenby, who’d so far mostly done commercials for British television, seemed to fill the bill. Less slender, more muscular than Connery, he radiated confidence. Even his TV commercials worked in his favor, as they were mostly for luxury products that showed how at home he looked with beautiful women, expensive tailoring, exotic cars, and champagne. True, he had a case of “loving-cup” ears, but that hadn’t stopped Clark Gable, among others. In screen tests, he handled himself well in fight scenes. He was hired.
British film writer (and lifelong conservative) Alexander Walker was one of the few who’d treat Lazenby’s career arc with some sympathy. Walker points out one critical difference between the way men became stars in Britain and classic-era Hollywood. At that time, most UK actors went to acting school, often RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and learned their profession on stage. By contrast, most American stars didn’t; they were truck drivers (James Stewart), worker in a tire factory (Clark Gable), cowhands (Gary Cooper), bodyguards (George Raft), WWI sailor (Humphrey Bogart) or what have you, and got hired primarily for their looks. Sometimes that minimal preparation for the sound stage was a handicap, but frequently it gave our guys a rough, untutored masculine edge. Sean Connery, though he briefly trod the Shakespearean boards, came up the American style. He’d been a boxer in the Royal Navy, and despite his ability to project refinement, he never lost the brusque suggestion of real, not just on-screen toughness, even in extremes a touch of cruelty. That’s a fair part of what made him so good as Bond, a quality that present-day Daniel Craig has, and as it turned out, George Lazenby lacked. But that wasn’t evident when production began on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
To accompany the new Bond, the writer and producers tried out a back-to-basics style; far fewer flashy gadgets and tricks, less over-the-top sets, and returning to sticking (mostly) with the original Ian Fleming story, all things they hadn’t done since From Russia With Love (not so coincidentally, another film much beloved by Bond purists). OHMSS would be notable for spectacular winter photography and skiing stunts, all of course real and dangerous in that pre-CGI age. Downhill Racer, another skiing picture, this one with Robert Redford right before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made him a superstar, filmed in the same location during that season, and the crew of Downhill Racer would enviously tell stories to pals at Paramount Pictures about how elaborate the special camera platforms, cradles and mounts were on the higher budget Bond picture. This time, the flashy gadgets were behind the camera.
There were other differences. Telly Savalas was every bit as bald as Donald Pleasance, the original Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the best of the bunch, IMHO), but he comes across less like Pleasance’s evil global mastermind and more in the manner of a conventional mob boss, except for one thing: while the main weakness of other Bond villains was an unfortunate desire to take over the world, the Blofeld of OHMSS has a most surprising weakness—social status insecurity. It leads him to try to establish an aristocratic family tree, giving British Secret Service a chance to plant Bond in Blofeld’s inner circle as Sir Hilary Bray, expert in heraldry, arbiter of ancestry. James Bond is a secret agent, but not generally an actual spy, as he is here, working within the enemy camp under a concealed identity.
When housed in a spectacular mountainside hideaway with a bevy of naïve beautiful young women, Bond has to pretend to be a stereotype sniffy, diffident English gentleman, asexual if not outright hinted to be homosexual (a point made in the novel.) Of course, this being James Bond, he strategically beds one and then another of the women and begins to unravel Blofeld’s plot: using the women to unwittingly spread germ warfare. The “Sir Hilary Bray” cover story falls apart, and Bond makes his last-minute escape in one of the best action sequences of the first decade of the series.
That’s the outline of the main plot, but the subplot is what makes OHMSS special to fans—the character of The Girl. (Don’t faint at the term, Ricochet stalwarts—it’s 1969, remember.) She’s Tracy Draco, played by Diana Rigg, the tempestuous, troubled daughter of a mafia superboss. In the pre-credits scene, Bond—who we first see only in glimpses—rescues her from a seaside attack, with a longer fight scene than usual, but she drives away without a word of thanks. “This never happened to the other fellow”, he grumbles. By coincidence, she’s staying at the same posh hotel, and Bond begins to pursue her. At least as gorgeous as any of her (many) predecessors, she doesn’t tumble into bed, and it becomes clear that Rigg’s Tracy Draco is something new for the series, the closest thing to James Bond’s equal we’ve ever seen. Her scary dad actually encourages Bond to pursue his spirited daughter, and with the mob’s army at his disposal Draco becomes a key factor in the fight against Blofeld.
Diana Rigg was an excellent choice, not only because of her talent and looks, but because unlike Lazenby, she was already a known quantity to worldwide TV audiences, well liked as Mrs. Peel in The Avengers. (Honor Blackman, Goldfinger’s Pussy Galore, was her predecessor in the role, but the early years of that UK series never made it overseas.) We can’t credit women’s lib for Rigg’s strong role; it’s pretty much as Fleming wrote it in 1963. Blofeld captures her, giving Bond the motivation to ignore official Britain’s reluctance to violate Swiss borders, and do a rescue raid on the mountain stronghold with the assistance of Draco’s–the mafia’s–best killers.
They escape. Bond realizes that this is the woman he’s always wanted, after what’s been, after all, a pretty thorough search. They get married. On the drive to the honeymoon, Blofeld and his gunwoman ambush them and kill her, with one shot through the windshield. As the film ends, he’s holding her in his arms, silently crying. It’s largely this stunning ending, straight out of the book, that has earned the film cult status. There’d be no Bond movie finale with this emotional power until Skyfall, 43 years later.
Lazenby fans, and he acquired a few, claim that Sean Connery could never have pulled this off. I don’t know about that. Connery’s a fine actor. It should be conceded, though, that Lazenby, the smiling Bond, managed to make the saddest ending in the series believable.
But the bottom line can’t be denied. Call it the downbeat ending, call it lack of Connery, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service earned less than half of what You Only Live Twice did, alarming United Artists with what seemed to be a franchise-killing loss. Panic ensued. But they didn’t have to get rid of Lazenby; incredibly, he’d already quit, relieving UA of paying off his contract options for sequel films. Unlike Sean Connery, who in his early films was (sensibly) grateful for the chance to become rich and famous, George Lazenby was inexplicably spoiled, arrogant on the set, and difficult to work with. He apparently thought he could do better. He thought wrong. Like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who quit Mission: Impossible, like Chevy Chase, who’d quit Saturday Night Live just as the party was getting started, Lazenby walked away for “greater opportunities” that proved imaginary.
That’s the OHMSS story, but for United Artists it couldn’t end there. UA studio chief David Picker managed to get Sean Connery back for one more film. He did it the old-fashioned way, by offering a deal that was unprecedented at the time, lucrative beyond even the greediest king’s ransom, including $2 million up front (roughly $20 million today), 10% of the actual, un-steal-able gross, and the right to produce two independent films of Connery’s choice, a come-on to his artistic vanity that sealed the bargain.
So he made Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the weakest of Connery’s Bonds, which gave the box office a shot of adrenaline. When it was over, Connery walked away again, as he said he would, with a public vow of “Never again” that would provide the rueful title of his final Bond film. Fans who associate Roger Moore with the sillier, more lightweight Seventies Bonds (or blame him for them) should give Diamonds a critical eye; Connery cheerfully phones it in, with all the sets, gadgets, and jokes he previously disdained.
This time EON Productions didn’t go for an unknown actor, but for Roger Moore. Like Diana Rigg, he was already known worldwide for a British TV show, in his case The Saint, where he played a vaguely Bondish leading man. No, Moore wasn’t Connery, but at least he wasn’t Lazenby. Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli had learned their lesson, and didn’t clutter Moore’s entrance with OHMSS’s too-elaborate attempts to link the new Bond to the earlier films. He just stepped into the part, Live and Let Die was a big success, and that was that.
Much later, in the pre-credit scenes of For Your Eyes Only (1981), the film would begin with Moore in a cemetery, solemnly placing flowers at a tombstone: Teresa Bond, 1943-1969, Beloved Wife of James Bond. We Have All the Time in the World. It was a rare acknowledgment of a unique moment.
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I think it’s just that the production values improved. Brosnan seemed too much of a lightweight. It did not help that Famke Janssen is an impressive physical specimen.
My main take from Goldeneye is that Sean Bean should have been Bond. Had he been Bond, he still could be Bond.
I remember loading up in the family truckster to see Darby O’Gill at the drive in.
Miller High Life, the champagne of bottled beers.
I beg to differ!
(One of the advantages of having every movie on my HD array)
Worst?
Worst? Pistols at dawn, sirrah. The disco version is lamentable, of course, but c’mon.
Aside from the trope that Bean dies in every movie he’s in.
I heard they did all their own stunts.
A lament … a requiem … a dirge … a threnody! Yes, verily a threnody!
I do hope the funeral ends before the movie begins. The song has no hook.
Specifically popcorn Summers.
The background of Moonraker‘s end credits is simple–the shuttle zooms into a dawning horizon–but the disco-era music works pretty well over them. Worst Bond theme of the Connery/Lazenby/Moore era? I’d nominate The Man With the Golden Gun. I’ve mentioned Peter Nordgren’s 007 blog, where he (obviously unaware of To Sir With Love) calls Lulu “an obscure Scottish singer”.
Quick, sing the hook in “From Russia With Love”!
Matter of taste, I suppose, but I like the Barry themes that have a hint of mysterious sad yearning – I love “You Only Live Twice,” even though Nancy Sinatra gives a so-so performance cobbled together from scores of takes. The arrangement on that one is pure Barry, making the most of his limitations.
I nominate Thunderball. “And he strikes… like Thunderball.” What does that even mean???
At least the performance is characterized by nuance and restraint, though.
In the late Eighties through the Nineties, Turner made the Bond pictures a regular Christmas season ritual, at a time when they hadn’t yet been shown endlessly. It became part of the holiday season, a bit of escapism for Dad while the kids were on Christmas break. They are currently being shown “24/007” on Pluto.tv, Paramount’s free substitute for cable.
Pluto even includes miscellany like the American version of Casino Royale made in 1954 by CBS. (Though to my knowledge they don’t have the rights to the eccentric 1967 Casino Royale, which wasn’t produced by EON.) This was the legally messy situation facing Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli in 1961 as they decided how to start the Bond series we’ve come to know; they had a deal to produce the Bond books if they met certain criteria, but Fleming had already sold Casino Royale, and the rights to Thunderball were being fought over in the UK courts. So they had a so-called monopoly, knowing that two other companies had the immediate right to compete with them, making movies with the same James Bond character and many of the side characters from the novels. In the end, Casino Royale appeared as a bizarre comedy/satire that fit right into a market then saturated with Bond ripoffs and imitations, but Thunderball was a real threat to EON that was effectively met with a negotiated truce.
Major Boothroyd, the head of Q Branch, is a very minor character in the books and wasn’t intended, originally, to be much more in the films. Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q, had worked with Sean Connery in British TV , but of course Connery was a big star now, and the lead character, so at first he underacted in a slightly deferential manner. Llewelyn was, after all, only a “day player”, brought in for a day or two for his minor role. But the director took him aside and instructed him to drop the modest deference. “Remember, you don’t like him. He ruins all your precious inventions”. It was on the set that the character of Q became the irritable, eye-rolling, semi-comic figure we came to know. “Pay attention, 007” became his stock line, and it went over so well they brought him back for two more days shooting on Goldfinger to demonstrate the gadgets in the Aston-Martin, giving the series another classic exchange of dialog:
(Bond:) You’re joking!
(Q, archly:) I never joke about my work, double oh-seven.
You didn’t ask for the hook to “Goldfinger.” It’s the three note trumpet refrain. Probably using an aluminum straight mute; maybe a wa-wa.
FYI: I have the Emma Peel Megaset DVD collection . . .
Traveling now so only a quick note to this great conversation. If you have not already done so, listen to Mark Steyn’s audio on John Barry. Made me go back and watch a lot of the 007’s over again just for the music.
BTW, one of the special features discussed how they came up with Diana Rigg’s screen name, “Emma Peel”. Anyone care to guess?
I was rather hoping it had something to do with clothing removal.
without Googling, I’d say “Man Appeal” – plus a reference to the early London police-chief, or whatever his role was. Now googling . . . well, aren’t I clever clogs, as they say over there.
Robert Peel, from which they got both “peelers” and “bobbies.”
Those were the days and now I think they may be over, from the reviews I’ve read about what the Broccoli daughter has done to Bond in the upcoming movie, to be released in April. It has every sniveling politically correct theme you can imagine, like a dog going to the vet to get neutered. I hope it isn’t true, but I read that she brought in some feminist to the set make sure no group would be offended……..
I am new to reading Daniel Silva and so far have 4 books done. Amazing writer! I realized they need to be read in order so I am having to back up. I think United Artists bought the movie rights, with conditions. Gabriel Allon (who could play him?) would make a great series to replace Bond if it turns out to have caved to the PC crowd.
Don’t be too quick to believe rumors. Remember a few years ago, when Disney was supposedly filling the live action Beauty and the Beast with raw homosexual homosexuality, probably with graphic homosex, at the orders of their lavender-clad PC masters? It turned out to be nothing. A lot of these false alarms are prompted by hysterical fundraising, usually for organizations that can do zilch, nada, nothing about popular culture to begin with. Barbara Broccoli has been running the franchise for decades without turning it Woke. Unless somebody was concerned about women in bikinis being felt up by the film crew, it would make no sense to have a feminist on the set. Plus, stuff like that is not decided on the set but in the script, which no one knows anything about yet.
Could they be trying to position Bond as “less sexist”? They’ve been claiming that for 46 years, since Moore became Bond. It hasn’t hurt the franchise yet. Barbara B, like other heiresses, likes to keep the money rolling in, so keeping Bond mainstream is in her interest.
My question is: what’s going to happen when Craig steps down (supposedly after this next film), will they be pressured into casting a diversity Bond? Will they follow the lead of Dr. Who and pick a female
JamesJamie Bond?Barbara Broccoli has stated repeatedly that Bond is a male character by definition. The only moves they ever made towards a female Bond was serious consideration of turning Halle Berry’s Jinx Johnson into a second franchise, which never happened. If they ever someday go with a non-white Bond, it would be out of calculation, not pressure–Hollywood does stuff like that because they believe in it, seldom because activists forced them. And calculation goes against it. Russia, China, Japan, Korea and other Asian markets would bridle; only to American activists does “person of color” denote any kind of unity. Could I see, say a British Dwayne Johnson getting the part, if he existed? Maybe, but at the moment he doesn’t exist. The earliest temptation that EON resisted was making Bond an American, and they’ve been consistent about keeping him British.
I’d love to know why not. That seemed like a no-brainer.
Idris Elba?
No, because the foreign markets wouldn’t accept a black Bond. That’s why I suggested a Dwayne Johnson “type”; someone who was half white British and half from India might conceivably work.
Ben Kingsley, then? 😜