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culturespy · 7 years

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Saying goodbye to my hero, Sir Roger Moore. Baby, you were the best!

When I was 15 years old, I wanted to be Roger Moore.

If you saw my bedroom walls back then, you would know. Roger Moore found a place on all four of them. I broke out the Scotch tape to put up full-page magazine photos surrounded by Moonraker trading cards, and of course the Bond film posters. I had Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me to start with because those were the films that got me hooked on Roger Moore and James Bond. The For Your Eyes Only poster with those sexy legs came along after a while, and an Octopussy poster went up a few weeks before my high school graduation.

My mother called this the shrine, and she wasn’t far off. Roger Moore was my idol. My teenage life was measured in the two-year periods from one of his Bond films to the next. In between I got my chance to catch up with his two earlier films, Live and Led Die and The Man With the Golden Gun, when they appeared on the ABC Sunday Night Movie. Sure, I was also excited to see the Sean Connery movies for the first time, but completing my Roger Moore 007 experience was more important.

And, oh, that glorious week in the summer of 1980 when a double feature of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker played at Cinema 18! Cinema 18 was Erie’s sleaziest theater; it used to be a porno house. But not even a questionable cinema floor was going to stop me from seeing Spy on the big screen—the way it was meant to be seen!—for the first time.

Also to mark time between films, I scanned magazines for interviews with Roger Moore and the TV Guide listings for talk show appearances. When Roger was on the Merv Griffith or Mike Douglas shows, I sat in front of the television set with my tape recorder running. Every golden word had to be preserved.

It may sound shallow, but in a large part I am who I am today because I saw The Spy Who Loved Me when I was 13. I’ve written about that momentous first viewing before, but I should point out that Spy was not my first James Bond film. I had previously seen Dr. No, From Russia With Love and most of Goldfinger—the first three Bonds, all starring Sean Connery.

But even though I had seen the films I would later consider Connery’s best, I didn’t connect with him the way I connected with Roger Moore that first time I saw Spy Who Loved Me. So what was it that drew me to Rog? I think that extra bit of cockiness helped. Roger Moore exuded cool invincibility.

The scene that most struck me comes near the end, just as Bond arrives at the oceanic base of the evil Stromberg (Kurt Jurgens). Bond steps inside an elevator with a trap door in the floor. Bond doesn’t know about the trap door, but we the viewers do because Stromberg used it at the beginning of the movie to drop his double-crossing secretary into the shark tank below. The elevator doors close, and Stromberg hits the button to activate the trap door.

The first time I watched this, I was tense. “Oh no!” I thought. I expected Bond to plunge into the tank, where he would fight the shark. But the shark tank on Stromberg’s monitor remained Bond-free. Then the elevator pinged and the door opened and there, to Stromberg’s surprise and mine, was Bond, his feet straddling the trap door. “You were expecting me to drop in,” he drawled.

That was one of those corny lines that sounded so natural coming out of Roger Moore’s mouth. Moore would always undercut his own talent, saying that all he could do was quip and raise his eyebrows, but he made it seem so effortless. If you want proof it’s not easy to deliver a throwaway quip, watch the last two Pierce Brosnan Bond movies. (I don’t like being mean to Pierce, but he got stuck playing Moore half the time and Connery the other half, and the discomfort sometimes showed.)

What I grew to admire above all else about Roger Moore was that he was suave. I wanted to be suave. I wanted to charm ladies with that kind of a deep, smooth voice. I wanted to put on a tuxedo and saunter into a tony nightspot on the Cote D’Azure. I wanted to go to a Cordon Bleu restaurant and order red wine with anything but fish (OK, I did learn a thing or two from Connery.) I never got to do any of those things, but I did teach myself to raise my eyebrow RM style.

One of the benefits of being a Roger Moore fan in the early ‘80s was, thanks to the popularity of Spy and Moonraker, CBS started showing reruns of The Saint late nights during the week. This was my chance to get acquainted with Roger’s other signature role, and I grew to love Simon Templar nearly as much as James Bond and the works of Leslie Charteris soon joined those of Ian Fleming on my bookcase. However, because these episodes ran late on school nights, I tended to fall asleep in the last 15 minutes. I used to joke I had the endings to about a dozen Saint episodes locked in my subconscious. Several decades later I bought the DVD box set to finally learn how those episodes ended.

But it also wasn’t easy being a Roger Moore fan in those days, believe me. We had to contend with the older generation of 007 fans, the ones who condemned Roger Moore for committing the mortal sin of not being Sean Connery. The divide between Connery fans and Moore fans ran deep (nobody really talked much about George Lazenby back then). We Moore fans were constantly told we weren’t true Bond fans, as if we were less able to appreciate Ian Fleming’s novels because we came of age when Roger Moore was carrying the Walther PPK. The early James Bond fans clubs were run by people who hated Roger Moore and let us know it with every newsletter. The only book on the Bond films at the time, simply titled The James Bond Films, was written by a guy, John Brosnan, who also hated Roger Moore but had to grudgingly admit Spy was pretty damned good.

Time and three subsequent Bond actors have made this issue largely irrelevant, but things were heated when I was young and I admit I still have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I probably don’t appreciate Sean Connery as much as I should because of it, but, truly, I don’t dislike any Bond actor. I appreciate what each of them has brought to the role. I just appreciate Roger Moore best.

When pushed hard enough, I would defend Moore’s Bond as more than a smooth quip machine. It would have been easier if Moore himself had been on my side. A master of self-deprecation, Moore would insist in interviews he never took Bond seriously. Asked how he made acting choices as 007, Moore would reply, “Sometimes I wear a white dinner jacket and sometimes I wear a black one.”

Despite his protestations, Roger Moore did take Bond seriously. He may be remembered for the grins and the one-liners, but he had his tough and poignant moments as well. Listen to calm, assured way he tells Melina, “We’re not dead yet,” before they are keel-hauled in For Your Eyes Only. Watch how he winces when Anya Amasova mentions his deceased wife in Spy. Look at the anger in his face when he discovers General Orlov’s plot to kill thousands with a nuclear blast in Octopussy. These aren’t the only moments. The insouciance Moore projected was what first attracted me to his 007, but on the proper occasion he knew how to make Bond human rather than superhuman.

This leads me to Roger’s greatest 007 moment. It’s one that, curiously, won’t make many of the tribute compilations you can find online these days. It is a moment when he is at once smooth and steely and I can’t imagine Connery playing it so well (sorry, chip on my shoulder). You’ll find it near the beginning of Octopussy—the film containing Moore’s best performance, if you ask me—as Bond first confronts the villain, Kamal Kahn (Louis Jourdan, a dark reflection of Moore’s elegance) at the backgammon table.

Bond’s sharp eyes have caught Kahn cheating with a pair of loaded dice that come up double six when needed. Bond takes the seat across from Kahn and raises the stakes by betting the film’s MacGuffin, the Faberge egg. If Bond rolls anything but a double six, he loses. Bond connives to take control of Kahn’s dice, gives his opponent a cold stare, rolls the dice and—still locking eyes with Kahn—declares, “Double sixes.”

When I first saw Octopussy my good friend and fellow Moore Bond fan Brian Sheridan was seated next to me. “Whoah!” Brian said under his breath, “He didn’t even look down!” We knew we had just seen Roger Moore put proof to an earlier theme song: Nobody does it better.

I went to college and my Roger Moore posters came with me. Dorm rooms need decorations too. A new poster went up as Roger departed Bond with A View to a Kill—one film too late, but we’ll leave it at that. Another fellow came along, and a poster declaring Timothy Dalton as “The Most Dangerous Bond. Ever.” appeared on my wall shortly before I graduated Marquette University.

Roger Moore was no longer James Bond, but I was still his fan. Apartment walls also could use a few movie posters, I found. The burgeoning home video industry meant I could watch his movies pretty much whenever I wanted.

At the urging of his friend Audrey Hepburn (my all-time favorite actress), Roger Moore became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and I found a new reason to admire him. He didn’t show up on the screen much anymore, but stories of his generosity continued.

When Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond movie, GoldenEye, was released in 1995 I was reading a magazine article about its production. One of the crew members interviewed for the story went off on an unexpected tangent. He said that the Bond film family, the regular crew that Cubby Broccoli had employed for decades, dearly missed Roger Moore. He treated everyone on set, from his co-stars to the grips, as mates and kept them all laughing. As improbable as it may sound, he said, a lot of the regulars would have loved to see Moore return as Bond.

Testimonials like that became common. It seemed no one who had ever worked with Roger Moore spoke an unkind word about him. Sometimes people would go out of their way to praise him. In a career retrospective for the AV Club, actress Nancy Allen started gushing—quite to her interviewer’s surprise—about working with Moore on a mostly forgotten TV movie called The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.

Although Moore was becoming more and more obscure on this side of the Atlantic, I could tell from press reports that the elder Moore was now regarded as a national treasure in the UK. After Desmond “Q” Llewellyn died in 1999, Roger gracefully stepped into the role of unofficial spokesman for the Bond franchise. When Roger became Sir Roger in 2003, I cheered.

In his later years, Sir Roger Moore became something of a magical person. Warmth and kindness and humor just seemed to flow from him. His tweets were hilarious, though he never missed an opportunity to raise consciousness about his beloved UNICEF. His speaking tours of the UK were interspersed with press reports of him grabbing a meal at a local restaurant, or even showing up at a pharmacy, and regaling everyone he met. It cheered my heart to see that my childhood hero was, by all accounts, simply a wonderful person.

In 2012, a dream came true for me. When Moore was promoting his latest book, Bond on Bond, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 007 films, I had the opportunity to interview him for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was just a phone interview, alas, but I still got to talk to my hero of 34 years. He was as warm and funny and gracious as I had hoped as we talked about kicking the car off the cliff in For Your Eyes Only and pulling pranks on Desmond Llewellyn. He broke my heart a bit when I asked about the Lotus Esprit from Spy Who Loved Me (still my dream car) and he said he didn’t like it. “My legs are too long.” Still, when I hung up the phone I was thrilled. It was one of the happiest days of my life. And when I concluded the conversation, I was careful to say, “Thank you for being my idol.”

Those words came back to me the morning of Tuesday, April 23. I had just arrived at the YMCA and wanted to take a quick look at Facebook before heading to my 8:15 aerobics class. Instead of the usual Snoopy cartoon, I got punched in the face by the first report of my hero’s death. I was angry at first. There were no other reports yet, so I assumed it was a hoax even though the source, the London Standard, sounded trustworthy enough. I went straight to Roger’s Twitter page, hoping to find a tweet saying, “Relax. I’m still alive.” Instead I found the statement from his children, and I knew it was real. My childhood hero was gone.

I didn’t make it to my aerobics class. I couldn’t look away from my phone as the tributes trickled in. I was grateful there was a box of Kleenex nearby in the lobby.

Several days have passed, and the Roger Moore tributes have continued. I was fortunate to participate in one on the Spybrary podcast. But of all the words said and written about Roger Moore since he passed, the ones that most struck me came from Ian Ogilvy, who succeeded Moore as Simon Templar in Return of the Saint. In a Facebook post, Ogilvy wrote: “If everybody could comport themselves in the style of Roger Moore, who was beloved by everybody and hated by none, the world would be a nicer place.”

When I was in high school, I imitated Roger Moore because he was suave. Now I plan to imitate him because he was good.

I am 51 years old, and I still want to be Roger Moore.

#Roger Moore #Roger Moore remembered #James Bond #007 #The Saint #Simon Templar #UNICEF #Sean Connery #Pierce Brosnan #Ian Ogilvy #Live and Let Die #The Man With the Golden Gun #The Spy Who Loved Me #Moonraker #For Your Eyes Only #Octopussy #A View to a Kill #RIP

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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Roger Moore, Debonair 007 in Seven James Bond Movies, Dies at 89

Roger Moore, the suave British actor who put romance before ruthlessness in his portrayal of James Bond in seven of the famous franchises films, has died. He was 89.

Roger Moore

Photographer: Peter Ruck/BIPs via Getty Images

He died Tuesday in Switzerland “after a short but brave battle with cancer,” Moores three children said in a letter shared on their fathers Twitter account. “We know our own love and admiration will be magnified many times over, across the world, by people who knew him for his films, his television shows and his passionate work for Unicef, which he considered to be his greatest achievement,” they wrote.

For 12 years, from “Live and Let Die” (1973) through “A View to a Kill” (1985), Moore owned the role of Agent 007, the martini-drinking, lady-loving British spy introduced in the novels of Ian Fleming. His take on the character was compared, inevitably, to that of Sean Connery, the original movie Bond.

“Gone were the macho toughness and ruthlessness of Connerys Bond,” wrote Michael Di Leo in “The Spy Who Thrilled Us: A Guide to the Best of Cinematic James Bond” (2002). “In their place, Moore played up Bonds suave and humorous side, and his films reflected this new tone.”

Moores take on the beloved film character generated mixed reactions, as reflected in surveys and polls done in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of Bond films. 313744903

Flowers are placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star of actor Roger Moore on May 23.

Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

Third Place

A poll of Americans by CBSs “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair magazine ranked Moore as third-best of the six movie Bonds, behind Connery and Pierce Brosnan. He came in third, after Connery and Daniel Craig, in a survey by the U.K.s Guardian newspaper. He ranked fourth, ahead of short-timers Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby, in a 2012 survey by NPR.

For his part, Moore said Craig, who took over the part in 2006, became his favorite Bond with “Skyfall” (2012).

In his 2008 memoir, “My Word Is My Bond,” Moore took issue with the rap that he — or anyone else, for that matter — could portray Bond too lightly.

He wrote of Bond: “How can he be a spy, yet walk into any bar in the world and have the bartender recognize him and serve him his favorite drink? Come on, its all a big joke.”

Roger George Moore was born on Oct. 14, 1927, in southwest London, the only child of George Moore, a police constable and amateur actor, and the former Lily Pope. With his grammar-school classmates, he was evacuated to southern England from 1939 to 1941 to escape the German bombing of London.

Army Service

At 18, following a year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he was called to military service and served with the British Army in postwar Germany.

Back in London at 21, he acted in plays on stage and television, then moved to New York, where he found roles in two episodes of the television drama series “Robert Montgomery Presents.” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. gave him a film contract, and he debuted on the big screen in “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (1954), with Elizabeth Taylor.

He got to kiss Lana Turner, in “Diane” (1956), before MGM cut him loose. He starred in the British TV series “Ivanhoe” in 1958-1959, then was signed by Warner Bros. Studios for films such as “The Miracle” (1959) and “ The Sins of Rachel Cade” (1961). He joined the cast of “Maverick,” the ABC Western, in 1960 as its star, James Garner, was leaving.

Moore opening the door of his Volvo for Isabelle McMillan in a scene from the television series The Saint.

Photographer: Len Trievnor/Express via Getty Images

In “The Saint,” which aired in the U.K. on ITV, Moore found his biggest pre-Bond role, as Simon Templar, a roguish criminal with Robin Hood values. The show was picked up by NBC for an American audience.

Bond Role

Moore was working on another ITV series, “The Persuaders!” — with Tony Curtis — when James Bond came calling.

He was friends with Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, producers of the Bond movies, from Londons gambling clubs. After Connery finished his six-picture run with “Diamonds Are Forever” (1971), Broccoli and Saltzman offered Moore the role.

In reviewing Moores debut, “Live and Let Die,” New York Times critic Vincent Canby found him “more than acceptable in the role that made Sean Connery rich and unhappy with type-casting.” On the other hand, Richard Schickel of Time magazine said Moore and his co-stars “suffer a sort of weightlessness, a lack of humanness, which is what Sean Connery as 007 lent previous Bond adventures.”

Toughen Up

In Moores second Bond feature, “The Man with the Golden Gun” (1974), director Guy Hamilton “wanted to toughen up my Bond a little,” Moore wrote, partly by having him threaten to break the arm of the villains girlfriend, played by Maud Adams.

“That sort of characterization didnt sit easily with me,” Moore wrote. “I suggested my Bond would have charmed the information out of her by bedding her first. My Bond was a lover and a giggler. However, Guy was keen to make my Bond a little more ruthless, as Flemings original had been.”

Moore and Richard Kiel on the set of "The Spy Who Loved Me".

Photographer: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

“The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977), which introduced the henchman known as Jaws, played by 7-foot, 2-inch Richard Kiel, is often cited as the best of Moores seven Bond films.

It was followed by “Moonraker” (1979), again with Kiel as Jaws; “For Your Eyes Only” (1981); a reunion with Adams in “Octopussy” (1983); and, finally, “A View to a Kill,” released when Moore was 57. The Bond franchise was then passed to Dalton.

Moore insisted he was a grateful star throughout his Bond tenure, having “never forgotten my roots and how lucky I have been.” Broccoli gave a conflicting account in an autobiography he finished just before his death in 1996.

Sizable Ego

In the book, co-written by Donald Zec, Broccoli said Moore grew a sizable ego and by the end was springing “bizarre, neurotic little tricks,” such as demanding private planes and declining to appear at promotional events.

Moore spoofed his Bond connection in the all-star comedy “The Cannonball Run” (1981). His character, Seymour Goldfarb Jr., tells a menacing biker, “I must warn you, Im Roger Moore!” Unimpressed, the biker slugs him in the mouth.

Long active with the United Nations Childrens Fund, Moore was knighted in 2003 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Moores first three marriages, to ice skater Doorn van Steyn, singer Dorothy Squires and Italian actress Luisa Mattioli, ended in divorce. With Mattioli, he had three children: Deborah, Geoffrey and Christian. In 2002, he married Christina Tholstrup.

Moore and his wife Cristina Tholstrup in 2015.

Photographer: Valery Hache/AFP via Getty Images