Obituary: Sir Sean Connery
BBC, 31 Oct 2020
For many, Sean Connery was the definitive James Bond. Suave and cold-hearted, his 007 was every inch the Cold War dinosaur of the books.
He strode across screen, licensed to kill. He moved like a panther, hungry and in search of prey. There was no contest. His great rival, Roger Moore, by contrast, simply cocked an eyebrow, smiled and did a quip.
But whereas Ian Fleming's hero went to Eton, Connery's own background was noticeably short of fast cars, beautiful women and vodka Martinis - either shaken or stirred.
Humble origins
Thomas Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August 1930, the son of a Catholic factory worker and a Protestant domestic cleaner.
His father's family had emigrated from Ireland in the 19th Century; his mother traced her line back to Gaelic speakers from the Isle of Skye.
The area had been in decline for years. Young Tommy Connery was brought up in one room of a tenement with a shared toilet and no hot water.
He left school at 13 with no qualifications and delivered milk, polished coffins and laid bricks, before joining the Royal Navy. Three years later, he was invalided out of the service with stomach ulcers. His arms by now had tattoos which proclaimed his passions: "Scotland forever" and "Mum & Dad".
In Edinburgh, he gained a reputation as "hard man" when six gang members tried to steal from his coat. When he stopped them, he was followed. Connery launched a one-man assault which the future Bond won hands down.
He scraped a living any way he could. He drove trucks, worked as a lifeguard and posed as a model at the Edinburgh College of Art. He spent his spare time bodybuilding.
Too beautiful for words
The artist Richard Demarco, who as a student often painted Connery, described him as "too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".
A keen footballer, Connery was good enough to attract the attention of Matt Busby, who offered him a £25-a-week contract at Manchester United.
But, bitten by the acting bug when odd-jobbing at a local theatre, he decided a footballer's career was potentially too short and opted to pursue his luck on the stage. It was, he later said, "one of my more intelligent moves".
In 1953, he was in London competing in the Mr Universe competition. He heard that there were parts going in the chorus of a production of the musical South Pacific. By the following year, he was playing the role of Lieutenant Buzz Adams, made famous on Broadway by Larry Hagman.
American actor Robert Henderson encouraged Connery to educate himself. Henderson lent him works by Ibsen, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, and persuaded Connery to take elocution lessons.
Connery made the first of many appearances as a film extra in the 1954 movie Lilacs in the Spring. There were minor roles on television too, including a gangster in an episode of the BBC police drama Dixon of Dock Green.
The ladies will like him....
In 1957, he got his first leading role in Blood Money, a BBC reworking of Requiem for a Heavyweight, in which he portrayed a boxer whose career is in decline.
It had been made famous in America by Hollywood legend Jack Palance. When Palance refused to travel to London, the director's wife suggested Sean.
"The ladies will like him," she said.
A year later, he was alongside Lana Turner - proper Tinsel Town royalty - in the film Another Time, Another Place. Her boyfriend, the mobster Johnny Stompanato, reacted badly to rumours of a romance.
He stormed on set and pulled out a gun. Connery grabbed it from his hand and overpowered him, before others stepped in and kicked him off set.
The name's Bond...
And then came Bond. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had acquired the rights to film Ian Fleming's novels and were looking for an actor to portray 007.
Richard Burton, Cary Grant and Rex Harrison were all considered, even Lord Lucan and the BBC's Peter Snow.
It was Broccoli's wife, Dana, who persuaded her husband that Connery had the magnetism and sexual chemistry for the part.
That view was not originally shared by Bond's creator, Ian Fleming. "I'm looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stuntman," he insisted.
But Broccoli was right, and Fleming was wrong. The author quickly changed his mind when he saw him on screen. He even wrote a half-Scottish history for the character in some of his later works.
A director friend, Terence Young, took Connery under his wing, taking him to expensive restaurants and casinos; teaching him how to carry himself, so the slightly gauche Scot would pass as a suave and sophisticated secret agent.
Connery made the character his own, blending ruthlessness with sardonic wit. Many critics didn't like it and some of the reviews were scathing. But the public did not agree.
The action scenes, sex and exotic locations were a winning formula. The first film, Dr No, made a pile of money at the box office. Even abroad it was hugely successful; with President Kennedy requesting a private screening at the White House.
More outings swiftly followed - From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) and You Only Live Twice (1967).
It was exhausting and occasionally dangerous. At one point, he was thrown into a pool full of sharks with only a flexi-glass screen for protection. When one of the creatures got through, Connery beat the hastiest of retreats.
There was other work, including Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, and The Hill, a drama about a wartime British Army prison in North Africa.
But by the time You Only Live Twice was completed, Connery was tiring of Bond and feared being typecast.
He turned down On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with the role given to Australian actor George Lazenby, whose career never recovered.
Saltzman and Broccoli lured Connery back for Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, meeting the actor's demand for a then record $1.25m fee. Connery used it to set up the Scottish International Education Trust, supporting the careers of up-and-coming Scottish artists.
The film had mixed reviews, with some critics complaining the film relied too much on camp humour, a theme that would continue and develop under his successor, Roger Moore.
Connery starred in the Rudyard Kipling tale The Man Who Would Be King alongside his great friend Michael Caine, but most of the next decade was spent in supporting roles, such as in Time Bandits, or as part of an ensemble cast in films like A Bridge Too Far.
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