The iconic James Bond has died, at age 90.
The first movie I ever saw featuring Sean Connery was Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I was five years old, and my parents took me to see it in a drive-in. The banshee terrified me.
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Ahhh .....
Dusty in here, dang it.
Sad news. Sean was always one of my favorites. He was one of those actors that I could watch read the telephone book. Darby O'Gill was my introduction to him. Paco, I'm with you on the banshee; it scared me too. God rest Sean Connery!
I saw him first in Dr No. Like his co-star in The Man Who Would Be King, Michael Caine, he could put in an enjoyable performance even in a crummy movie (even Zardoz).
Kevin Costner liked to tell the story of when he was making The Untouchables, a couple of really pretty girls tried hard to get his attention, and when he got a chance to go over to them, they wanted him to get Sean Connery's autograph for them. "Now that is a movie star!" he said laughing.
I first saw Sean Connery many years ago in a black and white British film (on TV, where else) called On The Fiddle. He was really young, and he played a soldier who happened to be a Gypsy helping another soldier pull black market scams (it was a comedy). I don't remember much about the movie at all, but I remember him, and was a fan from then on. He set the standard for James Bond, and none of the other actors who played James Bond could meet it.
Roger Moore once said that Connery was the best James Bond.
In one of the memorial pieces I read today, it was claimed the Bond franchise producers wanted to have Sean Connery do a cameo in one of the recent Daniel Craig 007 movies, and Connery wasn't actually opposed to it. Obviously nothing came of it, which is a shame.
I read a great Christopher Lee story one time. He was in a scene which required him to sneak up behind somebody and cut the other guy's throat, and the other actor did a kind of scream or something, and Lee told him, that's not the sound somebody makes when he gets his throat cut. The actor asked him how did he know, and Lee said "just take my word for it".
So many terrific films with Sean Connery! I believe the first movie that I took Mrs. Paco to see when we started dating was Robin and Marian. The Man who Would Be King was a marvelous vehicle for both Connery and Michael Caine. And I loved The Wind and the Lion: fine performances by everyone, including Brian Keith as Teddy Roosevelt, and the Marines attacking the palace of the Bashaw - thrilling!
Speaking of the late 2nd-most-popular James Bond, as a youngster, I was a fan of Moore's British TV show The Saint before he did James Bond. The show was a "tongue-in-cheek" comedic take on the super-spy genre, so I wasn't surprised, or disappointed, when he brought that style to the 007 movies.
One thing I didn't know until after he made the LOTR movies was that Bond villain Scaramanga, Christopher Lee, was an actual "secret agent man" in the Special Operations Executive at the end of WWII, and (may or may not have) done "007" stuff against the Nazis.
[corrected comment - is there any way to allow comment editing with Blogger?]
Unfortunately, I know of no way to edit comments in Blogger.
'On The Fiddle' gets played here on free TV every year, it's very entertaining. But he's not suave or debonair at all and you can see how they had to change him to play Bond.
Umm, I think the ONLY Connery movie I've ever seen at the cinema was, ahem, Zardoz, back in the 1970s. Otherwise I've seen most of his films on TV.
Oh yes he was great, I have all the Bond films and watch them regularly. And, apart from Zardoz (?) I like all Connery's films.
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