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Authors: Roger Moore

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Among the most frequently asked questions I am asked in interviews (and I assume this is true of any other retired 007) is, ‘Who is your favourite Bond girl?’

‘Oh! How original!’ I exclaim. ‘No one has ever asked me that before.’

I never give an answer as I think it is terribly unfair to name one co-star as being any better than another; you immediately upset someone. ‘What was wrong with me?’ they cry out.

Avoiding naming names also allows me to talk about some leading ladies without actually identifying them, though if I drop the odd hint, you might put two and two together.

In the 1960s, while playing Simon Templar, I was being interviewed by a television station and the journalist started off with, ‘You’ve played Ivanhoe, Maverick and now the Saint … you must have got through a lot of leading ladies in your time.’

‘You can’t say that!’ I cried.

The happiest days of Bond’s life. Mr and Mrs James Bond in
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
.

My interrogator didn’t seem to realize what he was saying. He re-phrased it and said virtually the same thing again. I cringe whenever I see the clip.

Normally when you have a scene involving kissing a lady (or I guess a man if you fancy it), you never actually go in for the kiss during rehearsal as it tends to smudge make-up and ruffle hair. You just go through the motions, move in close, say ‘and they kiss’ and get on with the rest of the scene. In
The Spy Who Loved Me
I rehearsed one such scene with an Italian actress, and it all seemed to go rather well. Lewis Gilbert leaned over and said, ‘Can we have a sample of the kiss, dear?’

Suddenly from across the stage floor, this long snake-like tongue shot at me at the speed of light, worked its way around my teeth like dental floss and plunged deep into my throat. I was quite taken aback.

There is certainly no romance in a love scene, save that for the dressing room, if you’re lucky – and if your wife ever walks in on you, heed the advice of Burt Lancaster as relayed to me by Tony Curtis: ‘Just continue, and when you get home, explain they have people that look like you on the film.’

My good friend Jill St John, Mrs Robert Wagner these days, showing that diamonds are a girl’s best friend in 1971.

 

My first leading lady, Jane Seymour. In the casting session, she removed her hat, shook her head, and let her long hair fall out. There was no question of anyone else after that.

Far from being a romantic moment of intimacy shared by two people, a film love scene is often witnessed by fifty or sixty crew members, many being hairy-arsed technicians in the rafters clenching fists and shouting, ‘Go on, Rog! Give her one for us!’ It does rather put one off one’s stride. And if there’s mention on the call sheet of a love scene, or one of at least partial nudity, it always amazes me how the crew size swells and we tend to inherit workers from adjacent stages and productions.

WHO WILL IT BE?

There is always a huge interest in who is going to be cast as the next Bond girl, not least among the crew, and inevitably there is a press conference to introduce her. She then has a few minutes to talk about being ‘different from the normal Bond girls’ by ‘being independent, tough, intelligent and a new type of girl’. They all say it.

Many girls, particularly in the early films, were cast because of their ravishing good looks. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m no sexist either, let me add. If they happened to have rather large busts, that certainly sealed their involvement as far as Cubby was concerned. He was what you’d call ‘a boob man’. Though he also once remarked, on set, while looking at one of the lovely beauties wandering about, that she had a ‘particularly lovely derrière’. The lady seemingly also had particularly good hearing, as she turned, pounced and told Cubby he was a ‘sexist, misogynist swine’ and went into a long diatribe about how women have been kept down over the centuries by men like him, and how women are actually better than men, and how dare he treat her like a bimbo.

His and Hers outfits came as standard on this set. Lois Chiles as Dr Holly Goodhead. In explaining away her character’s name to her father she said, ‘I’m a doctor, with a very good head on my shoulders.’ Well, what else would it mean?

Another time we incurred the wrath of one of our leading ladies was when Lewis Gilbert offered me a little direction: ‘Roger, when you come in and she sees you …’

‘She!
She
?’ exclaimed the intelligent, tough, independent beauty. ‘I have a name and it is ******!’ and she spelled it out in a very loud voice.

‘I wasn’t talking to you, dear, I was talking to
him
,’ Lewis replied rather nonchalantly.

On another occasion, when giving direction to the same lady, Lewis suggested, ‘You come in here, and follow him over there.’

‘Why do I always have to follow
him
?’ she asked.

‘Because, dear, he is f***ing James Bond!’ Lewis helpfully replied.

To be perfectly honest, ladies cast in a Bond film were primarily signed because of their beauty, charm, charisma and, oh yes, a little acting ability helped too. It’s no great secret that Nikki Van Der Zyl dubbed many of the voices in the sixties films, because their accents were considered a little too heavy, but their outstanding beauty made them much sought-after individuals.

The lovely Cassandra Harris played Countess Lisl. She was joined by her young husband for the premiere. Cubby thought he could be a candidate for Bond …

 

If you’re going to fool around in a wardrobe, I suggest you do it with the delectable Madeline Smith.

Not all were very experienced in screen acting technique, and I recall all too well a sequence when cigarette smoke (or actually a stun gas) had to be blown into my face. For smoke, talcum powder was substituted, and instead of blowing it slightly to the side of my face the lady in question blew it straight into my eye – not just in one take, but in four. It wasn’t one of my favourite days.

Just ahead of a rather large set piece, involving big explosions, another leading lady wondered why my make-up man had presented me with a set of earplugs. I explained the noise would be rather deafening. ‘Oh well, that won’t bother me as I’ll stand near you.’ I had to explain that it was
me
they were trying to kill.

Towards the end of my tenure, I believe I was extraordinarily patient and good-willed with two leading ladies who became obsessive about dashing back to their handbags after every take to re-apply lipstick and face powder. I’d wait and wait for them to reappear with another layer, say a line and then disappear again. This went on incessantly and wasted so much time. When they weren’t looking, I decided to take the lipsticks out of the bags, and built a little pile of them, along with powder puffs and mirrors, but the ladies never really noticed as, without flinching, they dipped their hand in to their bottomless bags to produce yet another one. Heaven only knows how many sets they owned.

The character of Goodnight appears in Ian Fleming’s books
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
and
You Only Live Twice
as Bond’s secretary, before becoming a fully-fledged Bond girl in
The Man With The Golden Gun.
Britt Ekland was a great fan of the books and lobbied the producers to cast her in the role. Then, as is often the way in this business, she read an article saying Swedish actress Maud Adams had been confirmed as the next Bond girl. Her heart sank. Of course, she then received a call to say she had got the part after all, Maud was playing the villain’s girlfriend, Andrea Anders.

My Swedish friend Britt Ekland.
Bon appétit
, and Goodnight.

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