The James Bonds who might have been
Question: What truth is there to the stories about the actors who might have played Bond? I've read that Roger Moore was considered to originate the role but was unavailable because he was committed to
The Saint (or was too strongly identified with that role), so Timothy Dalton got the part because Pierce Brosnan was obligated to
Remington Steele. On a slightly unrelated thread, do you have any feelings about how strongly certain characters are identified with certain portrayers? Sean Connery's likeness is associated with Bond long after his departure from the series - his is the face you see in comics and video games. Douglas
FlickChick: Second question first:
Sean Connery is the classic example of an actor whose face is indelibly connected with a fictional character, just as
Basil Rathbone is the face of Sherlock Holmes. Rathbone, to be sure, looks rather like Sidney Paget's illustrations for
Strand magazine, in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared, but Doyle himself apparently complained that when he saw the great detective in his mind's eye, he didn't see the handsome fellow Paget drew. And frankly, Sean Connery looks less like the 007
Ian Fleming described in his books than does
Pierce Brosnan, starting with the "longish nose" and the "carelessly brushed," side-parted hair falling over Bond's eyebrow - Connery's hair was already thinning in
Dr. No (1962), when he was all of 31 years old. But the fact is, these things are details. What matters is that Connery embodied the essence of Bond-ness, just as Rathbone was Holmesian to the nth degree, and illustrators go back to their features when they're looking to depict these familiar and hugely popular characters.
Now, to the men who might have been James Bond, had the planets aligned themselves differently and the gods been in a more playful mood. Let's start with
Roger Moore: Although there's a good deal of controversy about when Moore's name was first bruited about in Bond circles, longtime producer
Albert "Cubby" Broccoli claimed in his autobiography that Moore was Fleming's own first choice for the role - this despite the fact that Moore was a pretty boy of the first order. But Fleming also said he envisioned the suave
David Niven in the role, and Moore was definitely a younger variation on the refined, elegant Niven persona; Fleming is also said to have liked
James Mason,
Cary Grant and
Edward Underdown, a little-known stage-trained actor who'd been making movies since the 1930s. All these actors make sense when you remember that Fleming was a rakish, well-born, athletic, witty connoisseur of the good life from a wealthy family; he'd even worked in intelligence during World War II. Bond was therefore his own boyish fantasy version of himself. It also goes a long way to explaining why Fleming was so unimpressed by Connery, whom he called "unrefined," which I take to mean common as dirt. There was talk about Moore taking over in 1967 when Connery announced that he'd had enough of the role and Moore had been playing sleuthing playboy Simon Templar in
The Saint for the better part of seven years. Interestingly, the 23-year-old
Timothy Dalton's name apparently came up at the same time, even though he was a raw newcomer with no feature-film credits; he apparently turned down the part. One-timer
George Lazenby was cast in
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and Connery came back for
Diamonds Are Forever (1971), so Moore didn't get to step in until
Live and Let Die (1973).
I vividly remember the Brosnan flap: I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for successful actors, but I felt bad for him. Once again, Dalton was apparently offered the role of Bond but couldn't take it because he was committed to
Brenda Starr (1989) (ouch!). Brosnan as a con man who assumes the role of a suave detective-agency head on TV's
Remington Steele put him in the running, especially since the series had just been canceled and he was at liberty. But the wave of publicity that followed his invitation to play Bond persuaded NBC executives to revive
Steele; Brosnan's contract required him to stay and Dalton's schedule was freed up, so Dalton became Bond for
The Living Daylights (1987) and
License to Kill (1989). The somewhat disappointing U.S. box office of those, combined with internal issues pertaining to ownership of the Bond franchise rights, resulted in a six-year Bond-movie drought. Dalton resigned from the series, and Brosnan, by then free of the
Remington Steele yoke, was able to step in for
Goldeneye (1995). Although Brosnan was a great Bond, the way things played out was, to my mind, doubly unfortunate. First, I think Dalton was underrated and that if he'd had the chance to make another film, he might have settled into the role in the eyes of fans. Second, if Brosnan had been able to start making Bond films a decade earlier, he wouldn't have aged out of the series so quickly: The difference between beginning to play an action-oriented role when you're in your early forties and when you're in your early fifties is significant.
Beyond those two, who
did eventually become Bond after hurdling some significant obstacles, there are all kinds of tantalizing might-have-beens in this saga.
Terence Young, who directed
Dr. No, liked RADA-trained actor
Richard Johnson before Connery became the front-runner; Johnson went on to play U.K. pulp-novel detective Bulldog Drummand in the thrillers
Deadlier Than the Male (1966) and
Some Girls Do (1969), both widely perceived as Bond knockoffs.
Patrick McGoohan, star of the cult U.K. TV series
Danger Man (broadcast in the U.S. as
Secret Agent), was offered the role of James Bond after
Danger Man was canceled at the end of its 1961 season (it was subsequently revived); he passed. There are innumerable stories as to why, including that he found the character reprehensible - John Drake, his
Danger Man/
Secret Agent character wasn't a womanizer and used violence only as a last resort. In a 1995 interview with the Bond site
Her Majesty's Secret Service, McGoohan said it was nothing more than that he wasn't wild for the script and that someone he didn't want to work with had already been hired. One of the most unlikely sounding early possibilities was comedian
Sid James, best known for the bawdy, lowbrow
Carry On... films. I always assumed it was just a rumor that he'd screen-tested for Bond, but the test turned up on the DVD box set of the U.K. comedy series
Bless This House (1971-1976). So there you go.
Irish-born, New Zealand-raised
Sam Neill tested during the Brosnan/Dalton mess; he later got his opportunity to shine in the espionage realm with the starring role in the series
Reilly: The Ace of Spies (1983). Both English actor
Julian Glover and rugged American actor
John Gavin -
Janet Leigh's boyfriend in
Psycho (1960) - went out for the role after Lazenby; Gavin apparently signed a contract with EON in 1970, but Connery came back for his last hurrah. Ten years later, Glover got a consolation prize in the form of playing
For Your Eyes Only (1981) bad guy Ari Kristatos, and shortly after, Cubby Broccoli apparently handed
James Brolin (now Mr. Barbra Streisand) a contract to play Bond while Moore was in negotiations to return for
Octopussy (1983). Brolin did a screen test opposite
Maud Adams while Moore was in negotiations, but Moore re-upped and that was the end of that. Yet another of my favorite "wow, that would have been something different" involves the late
David Warbeck, a New Zealand-born, RADA-trained actor who made a bunch of Euro-exploitation movies in the '70s. In the book
David Warbeck: The Man and His Movies, Warbeck, who died in 1997, swore he was under contract to EON throughout that entire period as a sort of understudy who could be thrown in to a new Bond film at a moment's notice if Moore walked. An unlikely candidate to outside eyes but, frankly, no more unlikely than Lazenby.
