Bond on his ladies
How does one describe a ‘Bond girl’? Bond girls are considered to be ‘ubiquitous symbols of glamour and sophistication’, according to Robert A Caplen in his book Shaken And Stirred: The Feminism Of James Bond. Bond girls are certainly bewitching, beguiling and memorable but they are not always necessarily just the victims of Bond’s charm: many villainesses, allies and co-workers are given the moniker too, as is my wife Kristina – my favourite Bond girl of all.
In Fleming’s books, Bond girls always seemed to be in their mid-twenties, a decade or so younger than Jim, though in Goldfinger, Fleming wrote that Bond suspected Pussy Galore was in her early thirties. An older woman? Perish that thought!
Needless to say, all Bond girls are very beautiful, with their eyes and mouths widely spaced: or so wrote Ian Fleming. Their eyes, by the way, are usually blue. Yes, they all usually have exotic-sounding names too: Suki, Vesper, Honey, Tatiana, Solitaire, Mayday, Kara, Lupe, Paris and Elektra. Suggestive, sexy and very, very Bondian.
Fleming indicated that most of the Bond girls were sexually experienced by the time they met 007, which is probably just as well. Jim, meanwhile, lost his virginity on his first visit to Paris when he was sweet sixteen.
Though a darker backcloth to the characters is largely absent from the films, many Bond girls do face some abuse on screen – Domino (Claudine Auger) at the hands of Largo’s cigarette and ice in Thunderball, for example.
But Jimmy’s charms win through… even in the case of lesbian Pussy Galore, when, in bed, Bond says, ‘They told me you only liked women,’ and she tellingly replies it was because ‘I never met a man before.’
You have to laugh. To think Bond could turn a gay woman is quite comical. But then again, Judi Dench’s M did describe Jim as being ‘a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War…’ in GoldenEye, so he’d probably like to think he could.
Bond rarely limits himself to just one conquest per film. The pattern established by Cubby and Harry – and still honoured to this day – usually sees anyone sleeping with Bond in the first reel bumped off before the end of the second. So beware all actresses.
Roald Dahl summed it up best when he spoke about being contracted to write the screenplay for You Only Live Twice (1967): ‘You put in three girls,’ the producers said, ‘girl number one is pro-Bond. She stays around roughly for the first reel of the picture, then she is bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond’s arms.
‘Girl number two is anti-Bond and usually captures him, and he has to save himself by knocking her out with his sexual charm and power. She gets killed in an original (usually grisly) fashion mid-way through the film. The third girl will manage to survive to the end of the film.’
To date, only two Bond girls have actually turned the formula around and captured Bond’s heart – though neither lived very long. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) married Bond, though she was shot dead soon after the ceremony by Irma Bunt. The second to wed was Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in Casino Royale. Bond professes his love for her and resigns from MI6 in order that they can have a normal life together. Later, he learns she was actually a double agent – and she dies by drowning in a lift in a building under renovation.
Normally when you have a scene involving kissing a lady (or I guess a man if you fancy it), you never actually go in for the kiss during rehearsal as it tends to smudge make-up and ruffle hair. You just go through the motions, move in close, say ‘and they kiss’ and get on with the rest of the scene. In The Spy Who Loved Me, I rehearsed one such scene with an Italian actress, and it all seemed to go rather well. Lewis Gilbert leaned over and said, ‘Can we have a sample of the kiss, dear?’
Suddenly from across the stage floor, this long snake-like tongue shot at me at the speed of light, and worked its way around my teeth like dental floss. I was quite taken aback.
Far from being a romantic moment of intimacy shared by two people, a film love scene is often witnessed by fifty or sixty crew members. Indeed, if there’s mention on the call sheet of a love scene, it always amazes me how the crew size swells.
It’s not uncommon to incur the wrath of your leading ladies. On one occasion, Lewis Gilbert offered me a little direction: ‘Roger, when you come in and she sees you…’
‘She! She?’ exclaimed the intelligent, tough, independent beauty. ‘I have a name and it is ******!’ and she spelled it out in a very loud voice.
‘I wasn’t talking to you, dear, I was talking to him,’ Lewis replied rather nonchalantly.
On another occasion, when giving direction to the same lady, Lewis suggested, ‘You come in here, and follow him over there.’
‘Why do I always have to follow him?’ she asked.
‘Because, dear, he is f***ing James Bond!’ Lewis helpfully replied.
I recall all too well another sequence when cigarette smoke (or actually a stun gas) had to be blown into my face. For smoke, talcum powder was substituted, and instead of blowing it slightly to the side of my face the lady in question blew it straight into my eye – not just in one take, but in four. It wasn’t one of my favourite days.
The character of Goodnight appears in Ian Fleming’s books On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice as Bond’s secretary, before becoming a fully-fledged Bond girl in The Man With The Golden Gun. Britt Ekland was a great fan of the books and lobbied the producers to cast her in the role. Then, as is often the way in this business, she read an article saying Swedish actress Maud Adams had been confirmed as the next Bond girl. Her heart sank. Of course, she then received a call to say she had got the part after all, Maud was playing the villain’s girlfriend, Andrea Anders.
On James Bond Island the crew rigged up explosions for the finale of the movie, when Scaramanga’s HQ goes up in smoke. Everything was carefully timed for us to run from A to B as the explosions went off. Rather worryingly, the cameras were set up offshore on boats.
Guy Hamilton called ‘Action!’ and I ran. But Britt hesitated for a moment. I was faced with a split second decision: carry on running, or be the gallant hero and go back for her. I turned around, grabbed and pulled her forward, towards me. I then felt all the tiny hairs on her back singe after the first explosion. I’m such a hero.
In my final outing, I was joined by Mary Stavin, Fiona Fullerton, Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones.
A day in a hot tub with Fiona could never be considered ‘work’ really, could it? And floating away on board a submarine with Mary Stavin must be many men’s dream.
Post-me, in the mid-1980s, HIV/ Aids was becoming a major issue in the world and Bond writers felt that Timothy Dalton’s new 007 should not be as promiscuous as my 007. He therefore became a one-woman Bond with Maryam d’Abo’s Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights but stepped up a gear in Licence To Kill with two romantic interests, Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto.
When Pierce came along, the team took the decision to introduce a few more well-known actresses to the franchise, such as Teri Hatcher, Michelle Yeoh, Denise Richards and Halle Berry – who won her Oscar mid-production on Die Another Day for the movie Monster’s Ball.
In a nod to Dr No, Halle emerged from the ocean in a sexy bikini in the film’s only main location; the majority of filming was studio-bound. She proved such a popular character that producers felt a Jinx spin-off movie would be a sure-fire hit. Neil Purvis and Robert Wade were engaged to write a script; Stephen Frears was reportedly keen to direct and all looked set… until MGM got nervous about the budget, and felt they’d rather have another Bond film than risk launching a new franchise.
MGM cited ‘creative differences’.
My beloved Moneypenny
The lovely Lois Maxwell was a Canadian actress whom I first met way back during my time at RADA. We often appeared in the same student plays.
In 1962, Lois contacted her old friend, director Terence Young, and asked if there might be a part for her in his next film, as her husband had recently suffered a heart attack and they desperately needed the income. Terence said there were two possible parts: Sylvia Trench, Bond’s love interest; or Miss Moneypenny. Lois read the script and didn’t much care for the Sylvia Trench role, as it featured a scantily dressed scene with 007, so she opted for Moneypenny and received £200 for two days’ work. Alongside her role in the Bond movies, Lois appeared with me in an episode of The Saint and The Persuaders! before we resumed our on-stage association when I took on the role of Jimmy Bond.
It’s interesting to note that despite her worldwide fame, Lois’s total screen time as Moneypenny in her fourteen films was less than twenty minutes, and she spoke fewer than 200 words. That’s the power of Bond for you.
It was a huge shock to hear of Lois’s death in 2007. She was always fun, wonderful company to be in and was perfect casting. Towards the end of my tenure as Jimbo, Lois said to Cubby that she would like to see Moneypenny become the new M. Cubby smiled and said, ‘I don’t think we can have a female head of the Secret Service.’
It was a pity that after I moved out of Bond they didn’t take her on in the Timothy Dalton films, but I guess a younger Bond flirting with an older Moneypenny wasn’t to be. Other Miss Moneypennys include Caroline Bliss, Samantha Bond and – in the unofficial Never Say Never Again – Pamela Salem. Call me old-fashioned, but there’ll only ever be one Miss Moneypenny for me.
The return of Dame Judi
Much loved as the steely M, Dame Judi Dench will return to the silver screen later this month in Skyfall. Playing on the constant wariness Bond and M have around each other, her past comes back to haunt her, threatening MI6 and giving Bond reason to question his loyalty to her. In a very unlike-her turn of events, she has lost a disc containing information of every agent within every terrorist organisation and an evil Javier Bardem, who plays the latest Bond villain Raoul Silva, is using the information as leverage.
Rumours are spreading fast, including one that this will be Dame Judi’s last Bond film. Many are saying she won’t survive the film and that Ralph Fiennes, who plays Gareth Mallory, will take over as M. It may be that she’s simply resigning but with the increasingly dark content, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if she did meet a sticky end. Either way, she’s certainly our favourite Bond lady.
Dame Judi was brought in as M for GoldenEye in 1995 and has since become the best-loved version of the character. With her permanent poker face, an occasional wry smile and some brilliant put downs (‘Because if I want sarcasm, Mr Tanner, I’ll talk to my children, thank you very much’), she is the constant in Bond’s life. Always there at the beginning and end of his mission, and on hand to help where necessary, she is the epitome of the ‘stiff upper lip’ and has proven to be unflappable in the most stressful situations, even when captured in The World Is Not Enough. Her quick wit, nononsense attitude and ultimate faith in Bond (the opening scene in Tomorrow Never Dies, for example) has cemented her as the most memorable M of all. But whatever happens to her character, she will always be the Bond girl to end all Bond girls, possibly quite literally.
Alice Sutherland-Hawes
Skyfall is on general release from 26 October
In Fleming’s books, Bond girls always seemed to be in their mid-twenties, a decade or so younger than Jim, though in Goldfinger, Fleming wrote that Bond suspected Pussy Galore was in her early thirties. An older woman? Perish that thought!
Needless to say, all Bond girls are very beautiful, with their eyes and mouths widely spaced: or so wrote Ian Fleming. Their eyes, by the way, are usually blue. Yes, they all usually have exotic-sounding names too: Suki, Vesper, Honey, Tatiana, Solitaire, Mayday, Kara, Lupe, Paris and Elektra. Suggestive, sexy and very, very Bondian.
Fleming indicated that most of the Bond girls were sexually experienced by the time they met 007, which is probably just as well. Jim, meanwhile, lost his virginity on his first visit to Paris when he was sweet sixteen.
Though a darker backcloth to the characters is largely absent from the films, many Bond girls do face some abuse on screen – Domino (Claudine Auger) at the hands of Largo’s cigarette and ice in Thunderball, for example.
But Jimmy’s charms win through… even in the case of lesbian Pussy Galore, when, in bed, Bond says, ‘They told me you only liked women,’ and she tellingly replies it was because ‘I never met a man before.’
You have to laugh. To think Bond could turn a gay woman is quite comical. But then again, Judi Dench’s M did describe Jim as being ‘a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War…’ in GoldenEye, so he’d probably like to think he could.
Bond rarely limits himself to just one conquest per film. The pattern established by Cubby and Harry – and still honoured to this day – usually sees anyone sleeping with Bond in the first reel bumped off before the end of the second. So beware all actresses.
Roald Dahl summed it up best when he spoke about being contracted to write the screenplay for You Only Live Twice (1967): ‘You put in three girls,’ the producers said, ‘girl number one is pro-Bond. She stays around roughly for the first reel of the picture, then she is bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond’s arms.
‘Girl number two is anti-Bond and usually captures him, and he has to save himself by knocking her out with his sexual charm and power. She gets killed in an original (usually grisly) fashion mid-way through the film. The third girl will manage to survive to the end of the film.’
To date, only two Bond girls have actually turned the formula around and captured Bond’s heart – though neither lived very long. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) married Bond, though she was shot dead soon after the ceremony by Irma Bunt. The second to wed was Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in Casino Royale. Bond professes his love for her and resigns from MI6 in order that they can have a normal life together. Later, he learns she was actually a double agent – and she dies by drowning in a lift in a building under renovation.
Normally when you have a scene involving kissing a lady (or I guess a man if you fancy it), you never actually go in for the kiss during rehearsal as it tends to smudge make-up and ruffle hair. You just go through the motions, move in close, say ‘and they kiss’ and get on with the rest of the scene. In The Spy Who Loved Me, I rehearsed one such scene with an Italian actress, and it all seemed to go rather well. Lewis Gilbert leaned over and said, ‘Can we have a sample of the kiss, dear?’
Suddenly from across the stage floor, this long snake-like tongue shot at me at the speed of light, and worked its way around my teeth like dental floss. I was quite taken aback.
Far from being a romantic moment of intimacy shared by two people, a film love scene is often witnessed by fifty or sixty crew members. Indeed, if there’s mention on the call sheet of a love scene, it always amazes me how the crew size swells.
It’s not uncommon to incur the wrath of your leading ladies. On one occasion, Lewis Gilbert offered me a little direction: ‘Roger, when you come in and she sees you…’
‘She! She?’ exclaimed the intelligent, tough, independent beauty. ‘I have a name and it is ******!’ and she spelled it out in a very loud voice.
‘I wasn’t talking to you, dear, I was talking to him,’ Lewis replied rather nonchalantly.
On another occasion, when giving direction to the same lady, Lewis suggested, ‘You come in here, and follow him over there.’
‘Why do I always have to follow him?’ she asked.
‘Because, dear, he is f***ing James Bond!’ Lewis helpfully replied.
I recall all too well another sequence when cigarette smoke (or actually a stun gas) had to be blown into my face. For smoke, talcum powder was substituted, and instead of blowing it slightly to the side of my face the lady in question blew it straight into my eye – not just in one take, but in four. It wasn’t one of my favourite days.
The character of Goodnight appears in Ian Fleming’s books On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice as Bond’s secretary, before becoming a fully-fledged Bond girl in The Man With The Golden Gun. Britt Ekland was a great fan of the books and lobbied the producers to cast her in the role. Then, as is often the way in this business, she read an article saying Swedish actress Maud Adams had been confirmed as the next Bond girl. Her heart sank. Of course, she then received a call to say she had got the part after all, Maud was playing the villain’s girlfriend, Andrea Anders.
On James Bond Island the crew rigged up explosions for the finale of the movie, when Scaramanga’s HQ goes up in smoke. Everything was carefully timed for us to run from A to B as the explosions went off. Rather worryingly, the cameras were set up offshore on boats.
Guy Hamilton called ‘Action!’ and I ran. But Britt hesitated for a moment. I was faced with a split second decision: carry on running, or be the gallant hero and go back for her. I turned around, grabbed and pulled her forward, towards me. I then felt all the tiny hairs on her back singe after the first explosion. I’m such a hero.
In my final outing, I was joined by Mary Stavin, Fiona Fullerton, Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones.
A day in a hot tub with Fiona could never be considered ‘work’ really, could it? And floating away on board a submarine with Mary Stavin must be many men’s dream.
Post-me, in the mid-1980s, HIV/ Aids was becoming a major issue in the world and Bond writers felt that Timothy Dalton’s new 007 should not be as promiscuous as my 007. He therefore became a one-woman Bond with Maryam d’Abo’s Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights but stepped up a gear in Licence To Kill with two romantic interests, Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto.
When Pierce came along, the team took the decision to introduce a few more well-known actresses to the franchise, such as Teri Hatcher, Michelle Yeoh, Denise Richards and Halle Berry – who won her Oscar mid-production on Die Another Day for the movie Monster’s Ball.
In a nod to Dr No, Halle emerged from the ocean in a sexy bikini in the film’s only main location; the majority of filming was studio-bound. She proved such a popular character that producers felt a Jinx spin-off movie would be a sure-fire hit. Neil Purvis and Robert Wade were engaged to write a script; Stephen Frears was reportedly keen to direct and all looked set… until MGM got nervous about the budget, and felt they’d rather have another Bond film than risk launching a new franchise.
MGM cited ‘creative differences’.
Bond On Bond: The Ultimate Book On 50 Years Of Bond Movies by Roger Moore (Michael O’Mara Books, £25).
My beloved Moneypenny
The lovely Lois Maxwell was a Canadian actress whom I first met way back during my time at RADA. We often appeared in the same student plays.In 1962, Lois contacted her old friend, director Terence Young, and asked if there might be a part for her in his next film, as her husband had recently suffered a heart attack and they desperately needed the income. Terence said there were two possible parts: Sylvia Trench, Bond’s love interest; or Miss Moneypenny. Lois read the script and didn’t much care for the Sylvia Trench role, as it featured a scantily dressed scene with 007, so she opted for Moneypenny and received £200 for two days’ work. Alongside her role in the Bond movies, Lois appeared with me in an episode of The Saint and The Persuaders! before we resumed our on-stage association when I took on the role of Jimmy Bond.
It’s interesting to note that despite her worldwide fame, Lois’s total screen time as Moneypenny in her fourteen films was less than twenty minutes, and she spoke fewer than 200 words. That’s the power of Bond for you.
It was a huge shock to hear of Lois’s death in 2007. She was always fun, wonderful company to be in and was perfect casting. Towards the end of my tenure as Jimbo, Lois said to Cubby that she would like to see Moneypenny become the new M. Cubby smiled and said, ‘I don’t think we can have a female head of the Secret Service.’
It was a pity that after I moved out of Bond they didn’t take her on in the Timothy Dalton films, but I guess a younger Bond flirting with an older Moneypenny wasn’t to be. Other Miss Moneypennys include Caroline Bliss, Samantha Bond and – in the unofficial Never Say Never Again – Pamela Salem. Call me old-fashioned, but there’ll only ever be one Miss Moneypenny for me.
The return of Dame Judi
Much loved as the steely M, Dame Judi Dench will return to the silver screen later this month in Skyfall. Playing on the constant wariness Bond and M have around each other, her past comes back to haunt her, threatening MI6 and giving Bond reason to question his loyalty to her. In a very unlike-her turn of events, she has lost a disc containing information of every agent within every terrorist organisation and an evil Javier Bardem, who plays the latest Bond villain Raoul Silva, is using the information as leverage.
Rumours are spreading fast, including one that this will be Dame Judi’s last Bond film. Many are saying she won’t survive the film and that Ralph Fiennes, who plays Gareth Mallory, will take over as M. It may be that she’s simply resigning but with the increasingly dark content, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if she did meet a sticky end. Either way, she’s certainly our favourite Bond lady.
Dame Judi was brought in as M for GoldenEye in 1995 and has since become the best-loved version of the character. With her permanent poker face, an occasional wry smile and some brilliant put downs (‘Because if I want sarcasm, Mr Tanner, I’ll talk to my children, thank you very much’), she is the constant in Bond’s life. Always there at the beginning and end of his mission, and on hand to help where necessary, she is the epitome of the ‘stiff upper lip’ and has proven to be unflappable in the most stressful situations, even when captured in The World Is Not Enough. Her quick wit, nononsense attitude and ultimate faith in Bond (the opening scene in Tomorrow Never Dies, for example) has cemented her as the most memorable M of all. But whatever happens to her character, she will always be the Bond girl to end all Bond girls, possibly quite literally.
Alice Sutherland-Hawes
Skyfall is on general release from 26 October