There will be few times I divert from the format of this blog/history-letter to comment on current events, and the news this morning is one of them. As if the year 2020 hadn’t already proven to be a pale horse emerging from a murky savannah, we were dealt another blow today. I cannot overstate the joy, satisfaction, and sense of thrill the work and career Sir Sean Connery has brought me over the years. I could spend hours dissecting every frame of every Bond film he was in (I just might), and remain excited the next time From Russia with Love or Goldfinger comes on television.
While I grew up two generations after Connery’s main run as James Bond, his tenure left an enduring legacy within my house. I was introduced to the Bond films through my father; indeed, the first one I recall watching was 1962’s Dr. No, the flashy title sequence with the over-the-top 007 theme blaring through the speakers. And I soon became a devoted believer in all things James Bond. Other actors have done the role justice, particularly Daniel Craig, but it will forever be Connery’s portrayal that is the benchmark for the fictional character. Even creator Ian Fleming, at first apprehensive of the casting choice, soon became so impressed by the actor that the author made Bond part-Scottish in his next novel.
There are plenty of other notable roles worth mentioning that Connery did, but I’ll largely refrain and focus on the role that made him internationally famous, to the point where foreign photographers were following him into the bathroom (which is why he quit the role in 1967, only to return in 1971 vowing ‘never again,’ which of course wouldn’t be true as his final return to the role was in 1983’s Never Say Never Again). For decades, the actor had a love/hate relationship with the role. During the 1960s, Connery occasionally offended magazine reporters when he’d show up for interviews dressed in slacks and showing his natural thinning hairline; expecting to see a polished and toupee-wearing actor who looked like the fictional Bond everyone knew on screen, the cold reactions he received by the press only infuriated him more. This was at the height of Beatle-mania, and celebrity was exploding in pop culture. Fearing he would be typecast, he deliberately took on roles that were light years away from the British spy. While, like many actors, he had his fair share of dud roles, he’s also widely recognized for his many turns as co-lead fatherly figures or secondary characters that stole every scene in which he appeared. He won his only Oscar, the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in 1987’s The Untouchables. Giving his career new wind, he would follow with memorable performances as Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. in 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the renegade Soviet submarine captain Marco Ramius in 1990’s The Hunt for Red October, and as the elder action hero in 1996’s The Rock. But it would be James Bond that followed him wherever he went. And it seemed once he had established his legacy, the specter (no pun intended) of the character no longer haunted him. In later years, he looked back with fondness on it all.
For me, Connery brought a danger and seductiveness to the role of James Bond. As he was the first on-screen actor to portray the part (Barry Nelson played the role in a 1954 television adaption of Casino Royale), he unknowingly established the bedrock of what the character would forever be. He could be cruel and murder when threatened (he did have a literal license to kill), but Bond was also morally grounded and usually did the right thing. His adventures became the outlet by which millions of humans worldwide found adventure.
At the height of the Cold War, it were the stories of spy adventures that helped push Western culture in a direction that felt capable of countering the Soviet Union’s menacing presence. No character would become synonymous with ‘out-witting the bad guys’ like James Bond, and as tensions between the two major world superpowers escalated in the 1960s, particularly with the Space Race, Bond became a symbol of escapism: daftly providing the fantasy of winning when that was not a forgone conclusion. It would be Connery’s on-screen physical appearance, arresting charm, cat-like movements, and manly-bravado, packaged with colorful villains, gorgeous women, beautiful set locations and slinky-to-bombastic music scores at the hands of composer John Barry that reassured audiences James Bond would prevail. Women wanted him while men wanted to be him. He was a true Western hero, albeit fictional. But fictional heroes have always played a role in carrying us over the finish line when life’s realities drag us to seeming-oblivion. It’s our ability to imagine ourselves as these characters that helps us carry on.
I could continue rambling (and perhaps will at a later time), but for now, I will finish with simply RIP Sir Sean Connery. You gave us the world through the eyes of a martini-loving womanizer, who just happened to save the world from nuclear destruction from time to time. And we are all so grateful that time will remember your work and its presence in all of us for centuries to come.
My favorite Sean Connery-Bond scene, summing up his take on the character in a few short seconds:
And of course:
Farewell, 007.
Beautiful post