Or How Success Ended a Promising Streak

In 1961 a London newspaper polled readers to discover which actor the public wanted to see cast as James Bond in a planned series of films based on the Ian Fleming thrillers.  

Notable among the also-rams was Roger Moore, who had played Ivanhoe a few years earlier in a Saturday morning program aimed at a younger audience, and was just ending a brief run as Beau Maverick in a Western series imported from the US.  Surprisingly, it was a relative newcomer named Sean Connery who topped the list of hopeful actors.  The poll happened to be taken just as Connery was coming off a banner year.

Few of those who cast ballots would have known about his leading role in Macbeth for Canadian television that year, although he had won the part based on something that had kept millions of Brits tuning in week after week, one year earlier.

In 1960 the BBC embarked on an ambitious staging of the Bard’s history plays, to be telecast live, mostly in hour-long chunks, once each week over the course of 15 weeks.  According to Julian Glover, who played Westmorland and assorted minor roles in An Age of Kings, actors were promised: 

 Glover’s only regret was not getting the one role he coveted most, Harry Percy, “Hotspur of the north,” the part that went to Sean Connery, who played Hotspur and only Hotspur across four episodes.

Although Connery adds a jolt of adrenaline to the production whenever he turns up, by episode three his Hotspur transforms into a full-tilt Medieval rock star, prowling the halls of his castle like a caged panther and bouncing into bed to tease his wife as his blouse falls open to tempt her with his manly chest.  

In a 1945 production Laurence Oliver may have started the tradition of giving Hotspur a nervous stammer on the letter “w.”  While Connery honors this tradition, words seem to be spinning off Hotspur’s tongue at such a fantastic clip that when he brings his lips together to form a “w,” syllables seem to jamb up in his mouth for an instant before tumbling out.

It is such a showy part that I wondered if there might be an outtake from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in which, before firing a bullet into the abdomen of Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. (Connery), the villainous Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) halts for a moment to growl, “This is for Hotspur.”

In addition to snagging him the lead in Macbeth, Connery’s  flamboyant turn as Hotspur a year earlier may have led BBC director Rudolph Cartier to cast him as Alexander the Great in Terence Rattigan’s Adventure Story, and shortly afterward as the passionate Count Vronsky, romancing Claire Bloom in Anna Karenina.

Busy as he was on television, Connery also found time to create a stir on the big screen in the UK that year in The Frightened City as a playboy-gangster in London’s underworld, who undergoes a last-minute change of heart.  However, it was in a service comedy with  Alfie Bass called On the Fiddle that he caught the eye of the film’s editor, Peter Hunt.  Knowing that producers Broccoli and Saltzman were searching for the perfect actor to play James Bond, Hunt thought he might have found their man.  Albert R. Broccoli’s wife Dana agreed with the choice after her husband asked her to watch a print of Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People. 

However, while quickly making a name for himself with British audiences, Connery remained almost a complete unknown in America.  The Frightened City had not caught on with US filmgoers.  Only a handful of adults were likely to recall him as the charming young groundskeeper in a Disney flop or as the snarling, virile thug in Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure.

Any vestige of his anonymity was about to disappear towards the end of 1961 when Sean Connery was officially announced as the big screen’s first James Bond.  

Dr. No premiered October 5, 1962 at the London Pavilion with its producers, director, star and author Ian Fleming in attendance.  The first Bond title out of the gate would end its run in 1963 as the fifth highest-grossing film in the UK that year.  Making its debut exactly one year and five days later, From Russia With Love would soar to the top of the UK box office chart.  

In the wake of an advertising blitz which included a barnstorming tour by its star, Dr No finally reached American shores in May 1963, where it was a moderate success.  The film would double its take in re-release in 1965 when paired with the more recent From Russia With Love, a film which, during its solo tour of the US in 1964, had taken in more than twice as much as its predecessor. 

American moviegoers arriving late to the parade in 1965 had the chance to catch up with the Bond saga from the very beginning, while waiting for Goldfinger to make its way to a local cinema.  Released in America during Christmas week of 1964, the addictively popular third Bond film played to packed houses, often for weeks at a time, as prints percolated slowly through the country.  Meanwhile, Thunderball was already chugging along the production pipeline, en route to its big splash in late December 1965.  

Heralded by a one-hour television special, The Incredible World of James Bond, airing on NBC one month ahead of the premiere, Thunderball would be the first Bond film to open simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic in a tidal wave of Bondmania.

For two years in a row, film distributors named Sean Connery the top box office draw in the world.  The actor clearly had a tiger by the tail.  Now he had to consider just how one went about letting go of it.