If you
must like James Bond films, then you
can do no better than enjoying the Bond films staring Sir Roger Moore (born 1927).
Though the Moore films are nothing like the Bond novels of Ian Fleming (1908-1964), they have
qualities that appeal greatly to your correspondent. Moore’s Bond films are light entertainments,
with a leading man who really gets the joke.
Few
premises are more ridiculous than a world famous secret agent, and Moore’s Bond
travels (often to some of the most exotic or glamorous places on the globe)
with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.
More than any other actor to inhabit the role, Moore was the complete
Gentleman Hero – he lacked the cruelty of Sean
Connery or Daniel Craig, the crudity
of Timothy Dalton and the nouveau
riche affectations of Pierce Brosnan,
but he was always accessible and amusing.
In an era when we must suffer through Batman movies that take themselves “seriously” (perhaps one of the
most telling indications of our cultural and intellectual rot), Moore’s trifles
are a welcome balm indeed.
These
thoughts flittered through my mind last week when I had the great pleasure of
attending a question and answer session with legendary actor last Thursday at
New York’s Player’s Club. The event was presented under the auspices of
the Hudson Union Society, with Moore
in a discussion about his history as Bond during this, the Fiftieth Anniversary
of the James Bond film series.
To those
of us who grew up with Moore’s Bond pictures, it comes as something as a shock
to realize that Moore is now 85 years old.
Though visibly slowed by age, Moore took the stage with a glass of wine
and answered interview questions and queries from the audience for more than an
hour before stopping to meet every attendee and sign copies of his new book, Bond on Bond. Many of us then retired to the bar.
Sipping
his wine, Moore said, “I don’t have a drinking problem: I can always find
liquor” and the evening was off and running.
When asked which was his favorite Bond film, Moore told the audience it
was the current release, Skyfall. Then, under his breath, he murmured, “they
paid me to say that.”
Moore’s
self-decrepitating humor never failed him.
Commenting on the extremely muscular turn of Daniel Craig – noted
especially for gratuitous shots on the beach and in bathing trunks, the
octogenarian hero said, “they wanted me for those scenes, but I was busy that
day.”
Moore
told wonderful stories of Hervé
Villechaize (1943 – 1993), whom he playfully described as a “sex maniac”
who slept with over 54 women during the making of The Man With the Golden Gun.
“But,” Moore says, “I told him it doesn’t count if you pay for it.” He also remembered his years at the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art where, “I learned more about sex than about acting.”
Moore told
stories about his turn as Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes in New York (“John Huston played Moriarty and said
he couldn’t remember his lines, so the art department made the most beautiful
idiot cards you had ever seen – all done by hand in calligraphy. And the bugger was letter perfect when he showed
up: he never needed them”); about his inability to ski (“my children would tell
me to stay home whenever they had field trips – I was an embarrassment to them”);
and expressed his disdain for pop has-been Grace
Jones (“next question”). And
watching the audience laugh along with him, I thought it was a shame that Moore
became such a bankable leading man when his greatest talents were as a light
comedian.
Moore
stated that his one unfilled dream was to play the villain in a Bond film –
they often have the best dialog and work many fewer days. I believe that ship has sailed, but it
would’ve been a wonderful coda to an amusing – and amused – career.
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