Bond On Bond (28 page)

When Cubby and Harry told me they’d signed an unknown model and former car salesman to play Bond, I was intrigued.

George Lazenby was incredibly laid back, and the first time I met him – at a cocktail party hosted by Cubby – he greeted me with, ‘You all right, mate?’

I’ve met him several times over the years since, and he’s always been equally pleasant and chatty. Though the last time we met in New York a few years ago he was somewhat more subdued, coming to terms with impending divorce and the effect that might have on his relationship with his young children.

I thought his was a great film, with style, energy and a terrific story, though I also felt it was helped along greatly by George Baker’s dubbing of the character in a third of the film; something Lazenby wasn’t aware of until he went to the premiere.

Of course, Lazenby had announced he was only going to make one movie, on the advice of his friend Ronan O’Rahilly, a music promoter who owned Radio Caroline, the famous pirate radio ship.

‘He was introducing me to the Beatles and people that, y’know …’ George said. ‘He took me to see them and said, “You know, Bond is over, it’s finished.” The movie that was out at the time was
Easy Rider
. And, you know, you had to look like one of those guys, a hippie. And so I believed him and he said, “You know, Clint Eastwood’s over there doing spaghetti westerns, getting a million bucks a go. You can do those things and make a couple of them in a couple of months and you got the million dollars. Don’t worry about the money.” I listened to that.’

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
director Peter Hunt made a conscious decision not to explain the change from Sean to George in the role of Jimmy Bond; it was just something audiences would (hopefully) accept. And in Maurice Binder’s opening credits, scenes from earlier Bond films were incorporated to underline the fact it was the same series. The one nod George gave to Sean was when he delivered the line, ‘This never happened to the other fella’.

It actually came about because George, doing his own stunts, said jokingly to the crew, ‘The other fella never had to do this!’

Peter Hunt overheard the remark and said, ‘Say that line after the opening scene.’ So he did.

Fatally, for United Artists, Lazenby never signed a contract. His adviser, O’Rahilly, sent the contract to his lawyer, ‘who was a real-estate lawyer’, and he kept sending it back. This went on throughout the filming of
On her Majesty’s Secret Service
. United Artists, meanwhile, thought he’d signed for seven movies.

George told me he was paid a $50,000 flat fee for the movie. They offered him $1 million to come back for a second, but he refused.

I know after Timothy Dalton had bowed out, George made a call to Cubby saying he was available. It was said half-jokingly, but given the chance I’m sure George would have turned in a good performance. The role went to Pierce, of course, and when we were leaving the
Die Another Day
premiere, I heard someone ask George what he thought of it and Pierce. ‘It’s made for young folk. It’s loud, full of action and doesn’t give you a rest. It’s one bang after another!’

Cubby had thought of Timothy as a potential 007 a couple of decades earlier but Timothy, probably very wisely, felt he was too young to play the character: ‘There was a time when Sean Connery gave up the role. I guess I, alongside quite a few other actors, was approached about the possibility of playing the part,’ he said. ‘That was for
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
. I was very flattered, but I think anybody would have been off their head to have taken over from Connery. I was also too young, Bond should be a man in his mid-thirties, at least – a mature adult who has been around.’

When I retired from the role in late 1985, Timothy was approached but was then committed to a London theatre production and a film,
Brenda Starr
, with Brooke Shields.

And so Cubby settled on the thirty-three-year-old Pierce Brosnan. As luck had it, with audience figures in decline, NBC had just cancelled Pierce’s TV show
Remington Steele
, but as word broke of Eon’s interest, NBC suddenly decided to renew the show and exercise their option on Brosnan’s contract.

Pierce had no choice but to press on with what was to be the final series of the show. Cubby tried to strike a deal whereby Brosnan could have made a couple of feature-length episodes either side of a Bond film, but NBC and production outfit MTM declined and offered up their own alternative terms – from which Cubby walked away.

Pierce was devastated and Cubby had a production looming without a star attached.

Sam Neill was briefly considered, as was an unknown Australian actor, Finlay Light, but Cubby went back to his first choice, Timothy Dalton, again and told him he was prepared to wait the six weeks until Timothy became available.

Lucky I have a sense of humour! As though I needed reminding I was in my mid-fifties, the British press kindly did so with a couple of newspaper cartoons. Ah to be fifty-six again!

On 6 August 1986, Eon Productions announced they had signed their new Bond – welshman Timothy Dalton. He won both my and Sean Connery’s approval; we both wished Timothy well in the role.

I read there was going to be a change in style with the new Bond: he was going to be less of a womaniser, tougher and closer to the darker character Ian Fleming wrote about. They wanted to get back to ‘Fleming’s Bond’.

With
The Living Daylights
on release, Eon started planning the next adventure,
Licence Revoked
(the title was later changed to
Licence To Kill
after research suggested a vast number of people didn’t know what ‘Licence Revoked’ meant). As per Timothy’s desire to see a darker Bond, the mission centred on a personal vendetta: avenging the brutal attack on Bond’s long-time CIA friend, Felix Leiter.

It became the first Bond film to receive a 15 rating in the UK because of ‘the level of on-screen violence and realism’.

The film opened in the summer of 1989 and found itself going head to head with other blockbuster action movies, including
Lethal Weapon 2
,
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
and
Batman
.

Its lower-than-anticipated worldwide gross caused MGM/United Artists to get nervous. Cubby began to wonder if the twenty-seven-year-old franchise needed a new captain, and put Eon’s parent company, Danjaq, up for sale with an asking price of £200 million.