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Biography
He was born Thomas Connery in
Fountainbridge, in the south-west of Edinburgh, on the 25th of August,
1930. Though the city's inhabitants are famed for their soft, cultured
tones and Brit-Scot traditions, Connery, whose great-grandfather had
been an Irish Catholic tinker from Wexford, was from the other side of
the tracks, Fountainbridge being an industrial area of squeezed
tenements, soot-blackened chimneys and the McEwan's Brewery.
His father, Joe Connery, the son of a
Glasgow bookie's runner, had come here in the twenties, seeking work in
that bleak time of pay cuts and redundancies, and finding it at the
North British Rubber Works at £2 a week.
It was a tough, tough time. Joe and his young wife Euphemia Maclean
(known as Effie) lived in a 2-room, top-floor flat, with one bedroom, a
kitchen/living room and an outside toilet. When Thomas was born he slept
in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, and would only get a proper (sofa)
bed when his brother Neil arrived 8 years later. Outside the air was
thick with fumes from the brewery, the rubber factory and the
confectioners. In fact, the reek was so pungent that outsiders had been
known to faint clean away.
The Connerys, though, were made of
sterner stuff, particularly young Thomas, who thrived in this dirty,
crowded place. As a kid he was impulsive, and always ambitious, with a
real flair for sports, especially football. On the pitch he was the Roy
Keane of Fountainbridge, savage and ultra-competitive. Even more
intimidating, he quickly grew to be huge, earning the nickname Big
Tam.
But he was bright too, in a streetwise
way. Mental arithmetic was no problem for a kid with a family history of
bookmaking, and comic books led him to be a keen reader. Attending
Bruntsfield Primary School, he was often frustrated at being held back
by the slow progress of kids less bright than himself (a trait he would
carry into his cinema career). Naturally, this would lead to trouble.
Anyway, Tam preferred to be playing soccer or fishing in the Grand Union
Canal, using his mum's old nylon stockings.
When Neil was born in 1938, the family were under real financial
pressure. And it says everything about Tam's ambition and industry, his
sense of independence and responsibility and his amazing bravado that,
at age 9 and with no prompting, he got a job at Kennedy's Dairy Stables,
before the school day began working on a delivery dray. It wasn't simply
toil - he loved horses. Soon, he'd also be working in the evenings as a
butcher's assistant. Even before WW2 he was taking home £3 a week, all
of which he gave to his mum, who saved what she could for him.
As the war kicked off, for a time the local schools were requisitioned
by the authorities, with the kids being tutored in the houses of the
seriously wealthy. The situation didn't last for long, but it left a
lasting impression on Tam, who realised that, though the rich liked to
have their milk delivered, they weren't so keen on having the deliverers
in their homes.
The boy would now equate money with
power, and his dreams of escape and freedom would be coupled with a
hard-nosed business sense that would later make him one of cinema's
toughest negotiators. Indeed, were it not for other people's lack of
vision, it might have made him a bona fide Goldwyn-style mogul.
During the war, Joe Connery would work at Rolls-Royce in Glasgow,
returning home at weekends. Sean, meanwhile, graduated from Bruntsfield
at 11 and began his two compulsory years of secondary education. Toffs
would go to Boroughmuir to learn languages and economics, preparing them
for the professions.
Tam and his rough herbert buddies could
look forward only to semi-skilled industrial labour, and were thus sent
to Darroch to learn science, metalwork and the like. Throughout, he'd
continue to work at his milk round, and deliver newspapers, too.
The war gave a big lift to business in
Fountainbridge and at last there was money in people's pockets. The bars
were buzzing and the streets filled with chancers and tricksters. Tam
revelled in the boisterous activity. His physique was now well-developed
and, though usually a reasonable guy, he'd bash anyone who messed with
him. He was a strange sort, affable and physical, but also sensitive,
even melodramatic.
Perhaps due to his beloved comic books,
he had a heightened sense of adventure and was a natural risk-taker.
Once, daring some vertiginous slope, he rode a sledge into a tree, badly
cracking his head, and spending 5 days in hospital and 10 more in
convalescence. Needless to say he was back on his sled at the earliest
opportunity. And there was always football. Once he purposely failed a
grammar school entrance exam because he knew they played rugby instead.
Throughout the forties, holidays would be spent at his mum's parents'
place, a country cottage just north of Kirkcaldy, across the Firth of
Forth from Edinburgh. For young Tam, not only was this a much-needed
break from work but the solitude allowed his imagination to run riot.
There was a different kind of life here - pigs, chickens and wide open
spaces. There was granddad Neil Maclean, too, a big, strong,
whiskey-loving bear of a man with a real lust for life.
His exuberance would leave a profound
mark on his grand-son. Another influence would be the cinema, then in
boom-time. Though Tam was not as rabid a fan as his dad, he still spent
many an hour before the flickering screen in Fountainbridge's Blue
Halls, known to the locals as "the gaff". Adventures were
Tam's thing, the seat-edge sci-fi of Flash Gordon and, particularly, the
romance and machismo of westerns.
At 14, Tam left school and began to deliver milk full-time, quickly
rising to run his own cart. The extra money would come in helpful as Joe
would break his wrist and nose in an industrial accident, and Effie
would have to go out charring. The family would usually eat just
porridge and potato stew, taking their baths at the public pool. Even
so, once Tam had managed to squirrel away £75 he was keen to possess
some material symbol of his efforts. His dream of a motorbike summarily
quashed by his father, instead he spent £56 on an upright piano.
Still his greatest wish was for escape, to see the world and take life
by the throat. Yet his first real attempt was not successful. Signing up
for 7 years in the Royal Navy (plus another 5 in the Volunteer Service),
he trained near Lochinver, then was moved down to Portsmouth where he'd
serve in a gunnery school, in an anti-aircraft crew, then be assigned as
Able Seaman to HMS Formidable.
This wasn't really seeing the world. In
fact, though he enjoyed his stint in the navy's boxing team, it was a
pretty poor show all round. So it was painful but pleasing when, after
two years, at age 19, he was diagnosed with peptic ulcers and discharged
with a disability pension of 6s 8d a week. He was glad to be out, though
in times of stress the ulcers would plague him for the rest of his life.
Back in Fountainbridge, life seemed all
the more dull. He was a big hit in the local dancehalls, using his money
to score glamorous girlfriends, but it wasn't enough. To build his
escape fund, he toiled in the steel mills and on the roads, delivered
coal and worked as an odd-job man. Eventually, getting a grant from the
British Legion who, in the wake of the war were keen to aid the young
disabled, he took a course in French polishing, in the summer of 1951
being taken on at a cabinet works.
Here he worked on sideboards, wardrobes,
even coffins, and this might have been his career had his curiosity and
frugality not combined to push him in a new direction. When John Hogg,
an experienced cabinet maker, mentioned there was extra money to be made
that Christmas by helping out backstage at the Kings Theatre, Tam showed
an interest. So Hogg took him down there and procured him a job working
on the sets and costumes. He loved it - there was a freedom of lifestyle
and expression here that he'd not experienced before. And there was
money.
Meanwhile he was still excelling on the football pitch. There were even
rumours that Celtic were interested - the perfect side for a proud Scot
with an Irish Catholic background. But Tam now had other things on his
mind. To further impress the ladies, he took up body-building, training
three nights a week at the Dunedin Amateur Weightlifting Club under the
former Mr Scotland Jimmy Laurie. His improved physique would wow the
girls when, in spring of 1952, he left his job to become lifeguard at
the Portobello Pool. To make extra cash, he also posed in a thong for
students at the Edinburgh College of Art, making another tidy sum per
hour. Monetarily at least, life was looking good.
Now matters began to pick up pace. In late 1952 a touring production of
The Glorious Years, starring Anna Neagle, was to play the Empire for 5
weeks. Tam got in as a spear carrier, once more revelling in stage life.
There was a new extra-glamorous girlfriend in the pop singer Maxine
Daniels, daughter of Kenny Lynch. And at last, having swapped his
pension for a lump sum of £90, there was a motorbike, which he'd drive
down to Manchester at weekends to pose for arty photo mags. During the
week he'd work in the print room at the Edinburgh Evening News, and
occasionally served as a dancehall bouncer.
After three years training, he was certainly big enough for the latter
occupation. And his buff body would now, in a roundabout way, lead him
to the big-time he craved. Along with Jimmy Laurie, he went down to
London to compete in the Mr Universe competition at the Scala (Arnold
wasn't the first, then). Disappointingly, he came only third in the
Junior class but, as luck would have it, one of his rivals mentioned
some auditions being held for South Pacific at the Theatre Royal. Tam
went down there, bluffed about his experience, and scored a job touring
the country at £12 a week.
Though he was initially cast just as one of the musclemen in the routine
for There's Nothing Like A Dame, Tam, as ever, applied himself
rigorously to self-improvement. Boarding with actor Robert Henderson, he
was encouraged to read and began to fill his head with Ibsen, Joyce,
Shaw, Proust and Tolstoy. He was seldom seen without a book in his hand
and a portable tape recorder he'd use to practise speeches. Soon he was
understudying several of the acting roles and was working under a new
name - Sean.
And yet it still might have gone
differently. While playing for the show's football team, Sean was
spotted by Matt Busby's scouts and offered a trial with Manchester
United (how close Roy Keane came to following in his footsteps!). But
Connery, by now convinced by Henderson that he could make it as a movie
star, kept on his chosen course, rising through the ranks to the role of
Lt Buzz Adams (originally played in the West End by Larry Hagman),
starring alongside Henderson and Millicent Martin.
But it wasn't all good. Half way through the show's two-year run, Carol
Sopel joined as the love interest (she'd perform Happy Talk) and Connery
fell for her big-time. Sadly, her Jewish parents would not permit a
marriage and it ended with Sean badly bruised. Soon, though, he'd take
up with Julie Hamilton, a photographer and step-daughter of politician
Michael Foot. She'd support and encourage him as he made his initial
breakthroughs.
With the tour over he took a flat off London's Kings Road, took
elocution lessons and looked desperately for work. Nothing doing.
Finally Henderson gave him a break by hiring him as a court usher in a
production of A Witness For The Prosecution he was directing at the Q
Theatre in Richmond. Madly keen to make an impression, Connery swept
onto the stage in a big black cloak - a cloak that was taken from him
before the second performance. He'd stay on at the Q for Point Of
Departure and A Witch In Time, there was nothing else going on.
1956 proved a better year. In Oxford he won parts in The Bacchae and
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna Christie. He'd also score
several minor TV roles that led to him being taken on by an agent early
in 1957. Now things would begin to move. First he would make his screen
debut playing Alfie Bass's stooge in the gangland thriller No Road Back.
Then would come the big one, Requiem For A Heavyweight. Written by Rod
Serling, this had been a big live TV hit in the US and the BBC hoped to
replicate its success in the UK.
Then, 10 days before it was due to run,
star Jack Palance pulled out. Desperate auditions took place to find a
new Mountain McClintock, the boxer who risks blindness to help his
manager pay off his debts. Connery stepped up but no one was keen to
risk him in a live performance, he was too rough. But the producer's
wife, set to play the love interest, saw something in the young man, a
kind of "animal power" and suggested that he'd be a big hit
with the female audience. Connery was in, with Warren Mitchell playing
his trainer. The show was a hit and the reviews glowing. It also marked
Connery's first meeting with his great friend Michael Caine.
Now the studios were after him, but, ever
the canny one, Connery took his time. He appeared alongside Sid James in
Hell Drivers, directed by Cy Endfield (soon to direct Zulu, Caine's
breakthrough), and then Time Lock, where a kid is trapped in a bank
vault (this was produced by the Thomas/Rogers team that would soon
embark on the Carry On series). Before these were released, in late
1957, Sean would sign a long term deal with 20th Century Fox, worth £120
a week.
It was a good deal, but it brought no work. Connery's accent was a
problem, as was his powerful physique. He nearly won the lead opposite
Ingrid Bergman in The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness but instead had to make
do with a small part as a sailor involved in the smuggling of political
prisoners in Terence Young's Action Of The Tiger. This was a poor film,
but it would stand him in better stead than many of his great movies, as
a guilty Young felt he owed Connery a favour. He'd pay it back in
spades.
Unable to offer him anything, Fox now loaned Connery out for Another
Time, Another Place, which brought him his first taste of real Hollywood
glamour. This was a vehicle for the fast-fading sex goddess Lana Turner,
who here played a newspaperwoman seduced by Sean's war correspondent in
London during the Blitz. During the shoot, Turner's then-boyfriend, the
gangster-type Johnny Stompanato, arrived on the set and pulled a gun on
Connery, demanding he leave Turner alone (the pair were reportedly
dating). Connery decked him and Turner had him deported. A year later,
in one of Hollywood's most infamous trials, Turner's young daughter
would admit to stabbing Stompanato to death. Many felt it was a cover-up
to save Turner from the electric chair.
Sadly, the movie was another failure, and Connery returned to TV for a
production of Anna Christie. Here the lead was taken by film star Diane
Cilento, known as the "high IQ sex kitten", a cosmopolitan
woman and a product of RADA, married with a child but on the verge of
splitting from her husband. Connery suggested extra rehearsals and she
agreed, becoming something of a mentor to him. The pair would enrol
together at Yat Malgrem's Movement School, with Cilento pushing him to
read Stanislavsky, Flaubert and the classics. He was growing fast.
1958 saw Connery at last win a major lead with Disney's Darby O'Gill And
The Little People. This took him to Hollywood where his initially
enjoyable time became increasingly fraught. Stompanato's ex boss, Mickey
Cohen, it seemed, did not buy the murder story and was after revenge.
Connery would move out of Hollywood for the final stages of production
and take off home as soon as he could, turning down contracts with the
TV series Maverick and Wyatt Earp and hoping instead for a movie hit
with Darby. It didn't come. Though the film brought him a debut record
in Pretty Irish Girl, the reviews were rough and the film a relative
stiff.
Now rising ahead of such new Brit stars
as Caine, Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, Connery won a major part in
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure. Unfortunately, it was his last role for a
couple of years as Cilento went down with TB and Sean decided to put his
movie career on hold to be close to her.
Turning down the lead in El Cid, he
returned to Edinburgh to perform The Seagull with Sybill Thorndike, did
The Crucible on TV with Susannah York, then Naked with Cilento onstage
at Oxford. 1960 saw him back in Oxford for another go at The Bacchae and
Anna Christie, then he played Harry Hotspur opposite Robert Hardy in
Henry IV.
His stage career was burgeoning but his eye always on the big prize.
Turning down a chance to play a lead in Joan Littlewood's Macbeth, set
to tour Russia, he instead returned to the screen in The Frightened
City, billed as the "toughest crime move ever made", and the
Brit comedy On The Fiddle. With nothing else on the horizon, he played
in Macbeth on TV, and Anna Karenina, acting as Vronsky to Claire Bloom's
titular heroine. He also caused a sensation by appearing in a loincloth
in Anouilh's Judith, a naughty forerunner to The Blue Room and The
Graduate.
Despite the furore, Judith was not a hit. But it did bring Connery back
to the attention of Terence Young. Young was at the time in discussions
with two producers hoping to bring Ian Fleming's hit James Bond novels
to the screen. Rex Harrison was one possibility to play 007, as were
David Niven and Cary Grant. None were interested. Auditions were held,
Sean (who'd just had a small role in The Longest Day) being seen on the
strength of good reviews for Anna Karenina.
As with Requiem For A Heavyweight, it
took a woman to see the obvious, producer Albert Broccoli's wife noting
Connery's charisma. He was offered the role and accepted. Test scenes
were shot and sent to United Artists who, reacting in much the same way
as Decca did to The Beatles around the same time, sent back a telegram
saying "See if you can do better". Forty years later, people
would STILL be trying to do better.
In November, 1961, Connery signed up as James Bond in a deal that would
hold him for six years. For his first outing, Dr No, he would receive an
upfront fee of £5000. His friends were amazed - they'd always seen him
as more of a Beatnik type. But Terence Young saw something else and,
repaying his earlier debt, gave Connery a crash course in cultured
behaviour. Filming would begin in January, 1962, with Ursula Andress
co-starring as Honey Rider (Julie Christie and many others having failed
Broccoli's infamous "tit test").
In real-life romance, Connery, on several
occasions jilted by Cilento, would be connected with actresses Sue Lloyd
and Shelley Winters, as well as model Joyce Webber. Cilento, though,
would always return. Now in the throes of divorce, by the autumn she was
pregnant with Sean's child. After the premiere of Dr No, Connery would
propose and the couple would marry on Gibraltar. Son Jason (later TV's
Robin Hood) would arrive 6 weeks later to join Sean's step-daughter Gigi.
Dr No, wherein Bond foils a nutty
scientist ruining rocket launches, was a massive hit in Europe. And,
though United Artists were dubious, it opened to great reviews in the US
six months later, in May, 1963. By then, though, a second Bond, From
Russia With Love, was already in production with a bigger budget. Here
the evil SPECTRE organisation was introduced, aiming to top Bond and
mess up the Brits and the Russkies with a stolen decoder.
Again it was a major European success and
also broke America. With JFK's assassination sending Cold War panic into
overdrive, the release of the film 5 months later could hardly have been
better timed. Indeed, with the Beatles introducing a new liberalism,
Bond's decadent approach to life's luxuries was absolutely contemporary,
utterly cool.
But even though James Bond had lifted Connery to stardom, already he was
aware of the dangers of typecasting. What he wanted was to be seen as a
great movie actor, an all-rounder who could dominate Hollywood for
decades. To break the mould he took Woman Of Straw, as a complete git
persuading nurse Gina Lollobrigida to marry his rich, infirmed uncle
Ralph Richardson so they can share the spoils. Rumours claimed Connery
was difficult on-set, demanding script changes, but Sean blamed
Lollobrigida's ego and waltzed off with his first $1 million pay-check.
Now retiring from the stage, Connery pushed for excellent screen roles
and got one with Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, playing a wealthy executive
hoping to cure the kleptomaniac employee he loves. There were also plans
to star in John Ford's Young Cassidy, a biopic of playwright Sean
O'Casey. Unfortunately, scheduling would ruin this as Connery had to be
back at Pinewood for another Bond. Indeed, it was quite a difficult time
as Cilento, nominated for Tom Jones, had just been beaten to the Oscar
by Margaret Rutherford.
As he had done with From Russia With Love, Connery did extra rehearsals
with Cilento. The pair would try hard to find a project to film together
- Moll Flanders and Call Me When The Cross Turns Over being just two -
but scheduling would always make it impossible. This was mostly due to
Connery's extraordinary new fame.
When the third Bond instalment,
Goldfinger, opened in London it was to scenes of mob hysteria. Really
inventing the Bond formula of kooky villains and super-gadgets, it made
its $2 million costs back five times over in just 14 weeks. Connery
would be America's number one box office star, while in Japan Mr
Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang was bigger than The Beatles.
Connery, of course, reacted by seeking deeper work with renowned
film-makers. Next up was The Hill, directed by Sidney Lumet, famed for
the bleak but inventive and moving The Pawnbroker. This saw Connery as
Joe Roberts, a soldier sent to a detention camp in North Africa then
forced to climb a hill over and over in full kit for striking an
officer. It was a great role, with Connery tortured yet resilient as
he's tested beyond endurance, and, despite the fact that he didn't wear
the toupee he'd been sporting since Marnie, it won him the first great
reviews of his career.
Now it was really looking good. Connery
received another £150,000 for The Hill, with £200,000 plus a
percentage for the next Bond flick, Thunderball. But at home it wasn't
so bright. Cilento, who found marriage constricting in the first place,
was not enjoying being known as Mrs Bond (she was, after all, a big star
in her own right), and the pressure was on. When Raquel Welch chose to
take Fantastic Voyage rather than Thunderball and was replaced by former
Miss France Claudine Auger there were rumours of an affair with Connery,
who'd just moved out of the family home. The bond with Cilento was
strong, though, and the pair would reconcile quickly.
Thunderball, where SPECTRE steal some nuclear aircraft, was another
monster, and Connery now tried to balance his married life and career.
As Cilento was off to the US to film Hombre with Paul Newman, Connery
decided to film A Fine Madness in New York, coincidentally with Newman's
wife, Joanne Woodward.
This was a real step away from his
previous work as he starred as Samson Shillitoe, a lusty renegade poet
tormented by an epic he can't bring himself to write and the pressures
of the modern world. Treated by therapists who'd really rather cut his
brain out, he comes to win over many who thought him insane. Now a cult
classic, the film would show Connery approaching the kind of charismatic
performance that, 30 years later, would be his absolute speciality.
Once more, it was back to Bond. The fifth instalment was intended to be
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Brigitte Bardot as the main Bond
squeeze, but there were set-building problems and the production was
cancelled. Instead, You Only Live Twice, written by Roald Dahl, filled
the void and Connery took off for Japan, along with his wife.
By now they'd worked out a solution to
their career problems, Cilento becoming an author and publishing her
first novel, The Manipulator (sleeve design by Connery) in 1967. Connery
too was hoping to step out of the limelight, hoping to produce an
all-Scottish Macbeth as well as write poetry. Nevertheless, the press
attention they received in Japan was near-unbearable.
With You Only Live Twice, wherein Donald Pleasance's Blofeld stole some
spaceships and tried to set up a Cold War apocalypse, making another
killing at the box office, Connery felt it really was time for a change.
To do Bond again, he said, he'd need $2.8 million and a hefty
percentage. He had other ideas, too, one being that along with the
producers and using the leverage of Bond he could take over United
Artists and take it back to the good old days of Charlie Chaplin and
Mary Pickford. The producers, though, were after ready cash and, as
negotiations broke down, turned to George Lazenby.
Connery, meanwhile, began to turn his
attention back to his beloved Scotland. Turning down The Charge Of The
Light Brigade, he wrote and directed The Bowler And The Bunnet, a
documentary on the problems of Clydeside. Then, though refusing to run
for the Scottish National Party at the General election, he helped set
up what would become the Scottish International Educational Trust,
dedicated to raising funds for underprivileged kids.
Keen to leave Bond behind, he began to choose his projects very
carefully. First came Shalako, amazingly his only western, where he
played a scout leading a party of aristocrats through dangerous
territory. Here he'd be accompanied both by Bardot and Honor Blackman,
earlier Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. Though he took a whopping $1.2
million plus 30%, he did not enjoy the shoot, Bardot bringing along the
kind of press menagerie he was trying to avoid.
After a two-year sabbatical from films, Connery was advised to do a
Michael Caine and keep his profile high by taking as many roles as
possible. He began with the rollicking adventure The Molly Maguires,
directed by Hombre helmsman Martin Ritt. Here he was Kehoe, head of a
secret society of Irish miners, leading attacks on their merciless
employers, Richard Harris playing an infiltrator. From here he'd move on
to The Red Tent, playing Roald Amundsen and trying to rescue Peter Finch
when his transarctic expedition is a disaster. Both movies were worthy
entertainment, but both would wind up in the Top 50 money losers of all
time.
It was a tricky time. Connery now decided to direct his wife and Robert
Hardy in I've Seen You Suck Lemons, where they'd play a brother and
sister moving towards incest. Hardy would remember the rehearsals as
lengthy, passionate affairs. He particularly recall being sent to
"the think tank", a zinc-lined sentry box the Connerys kept in
their study. The play would open in Oxford, tour for a month, but close
soon after its arrival in London. Worse for Connery, Roman Polanski now
announced his gritty production of Macbeth - he'd been beaten to it.
As said, a tricky time. Connery returned to the top of the box office
charts by reteaming with Sidney Lumet for the superior heist thriller
The Anderson Tapes. Yet Bond was always in the background and he was
tempted back once more for Diamonds Are Forever, receiving not just $1.2
million plus a percentage, but also a United Artists guarantee of two
more films of his choice. An amazing offer. As he didn't need the money
he gave it all to the Scottish International Educational Trust.
Having failed to win the Peter Finch part
in Sunday Bloody Sunday, and having finally split form Cilento, Connery
threw himself into Diamonds with renewed vigour. Now, after the soppy
feeling-fest of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the accent was on
exaggeration and camp jokiness, with Bond thwarting gay hitmen and
Blofeld's attempts to use lasers in space to ransom the world. The
public loved it.
Off-screen his life continued to be turbulent. His divorce was
announced, and his father died of cancer, hitting the production of
Sean's next film, The Offence (once more with Lumet, this saw him a cop
questioning a suspected rapist and gradually disintegrating at the
horror of it all). Then, attending a golf tournament in Morocco, he met
Micheline Roquebrune, a painter, golfer and multi-linguist, with a
failed marriage and 3 kids. Both would win their tournaments and, over
the summer of 1972, they would grow ever-closer.
As the relationship continued, Connery agreed to appear in John
Boorman's Zardoz, stepping in when Burt Reynolds (the star of Boorman's
Deliverance) pulled out with a hernia problem. This was a sci-fi epic
concerned the Vortex, a protected area in a decimated world, where
immortals live lives of perfection. Connery would play Zed, a renegade
from the outside, who breaks into the Vortex and, promising such earthly
delights as ageing and death, gets the likes of Charlotte Rampling to
follow him. It was a fascinating effort, but a box office failure.
Now on a roll, Connery followed this with Ransom, where he played a
security chief outwitting Ian McShane's terrorist gang. Then he took his
place on the Orient Express, queuing up to stab the unfortunate Richard
Widmark. Living mostly in Spain, he'd do his best to take roles that
would be filmed in that country. First up was John Milius's The Wind And
The Lion, a swashbuckling romance where he played a Berber leader who
kidnaps Candice Bergen and demands ransom from America.
Outside of this, he'd marry Micheline and
also, in an unusual move, leave the world of investment. Since his early
Bond success, Connery had played the markets with famous success,
usually being referred to both as a film star and businessman. Now he
revealed that he'd made far less than anyone, including himself, had
imagined. He'd get out, and concentrate solely on his film career and
the Trust.
With Roger Moore now proving a success as
Bond, Connery could perhaps leave the role behind at last. His next role
would certainly help. Directed by John Huston, he joined buddy Michael
Caine in Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. Interestingly,
Huston had tried to film this 20 years before, with Gable and Bogart as
the leads. Now Caine and Connery would take their places as the two
lowly soldiers who seek their fortune in the Himalayas, Connery becoming
king of a tribe there. It was a really rousing effort, boisterous fun
though dark in places, and it was a smash, Connery's first post-Bond
success.
Keeping to period pieces, he moved on to
Robin And Marian, playing Robin Hood in decline, engaging in late-life
love with Audrey Hepburn (he'd earlier turned down her Wait Until Dark)
and battling once more with the brutal Sheriff (Robert Shaw, with whom
he'd enjoyed a spectacular scrap in From Russia With Love). His next
effort would be the arty The Next Man where he played an Arab politician
trying to work out a deal with Israel and feed the Third World. It
stank, and it sank.
Now, as if to cement his status as one of the world's leading stars (and
clearly unmindful of his Longest Day experience), Sean took one of the
major leads in Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far, appearing as
Major General Roy Urquhart, commander of the bridgehead at Arnhem during
one of Britain's worst disasters of WW2. It was a reasonable success,
but there was some tension when Connery, one of the first big stars to
sign up, discovered that Robert Redford was taking a cool $2 million.
His business sense and notion of his own worth could not tolerate this
and he successfully fought for a 50% pay rise.
Though he was still undoubtedly big news, Connery now entered a
professionally fraught period in his career. In general his movies were
either weak or ignored. Meteor saw him as a scientist teaming with
Russian boffin Natalie Wood to save the Earth from being pulverised. The
First Great Train Robbery had him turning over a train carrying bullion
intended for troops in the Crimean War.
Then came Cuba, re-uniting him with Robin
And Marian director Richard Lester. Here he was a British soldier hired
by the Batista government to help save them from Castro's
revolutionaries. Connery had wanted Diana Ross as his love interest,
instead he got the too-young Brooke Adams. It didn't work.
Despite now having Michael Ovitz as his agent, it kept getting worse.
Though Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, wherein Connery played a Minotaur-battling
Agamemnon, was superb, it was a box office dud. So was Outland, High
Noon set in outer space and one of Connery's pet projects. Fred
Zinnemann's Five Days Of Summer and Richard Brooks' The Man With The
Deadly Lens fared no better. When Sean was then sued (unsuccessfully) by
his former accountant who demanded a huge percentage take from Connery's
last 13 films, it seemed his life was directly mirroring that of his
Sixties musical counterparts, The Beatles. Huge stardom then financial
acrimony in the artistic doldrums.
Where to go, what to do? Desperate to get
back on track he turned to the guy who gave him it all in the first
place - James Bond. Producer Kevin McClory had for years been trying to
remake Thunderball, in 1975 approaching Connery with a Len Deighton
script entitled Bond Of The Secret Service. Cubby Broccoli had fought
hard against this and the struggle had gone on for years, till McClory
finally sold his rights on. Now all necessary papers were in place, and
Connery signed on for the cheekily titled Never Say Never Again, this
time battling dodgy tycoons in league with SPECTRE as nukes are pointed
at the good guys yet again.
It took money but wasn't a real success. Connery railed against the
incompetence of the film-makers, claiming to have pretty much produced
it along with the assistant director. Worse, his mother Effie suffered a
stroke during filming (she'd die a couple of years later). Then Connery
was unsuccessful when he attempted to sue Broccoli and his Eon company
for $225 million in unreturned profits.
Now past 50, Sean needed to find other, better roles. One of them wasn't
in Sword Of The Valiant, an Arthurian legend that was not well
delivered. If he'd waited just a little longer for a mediaeval myth he
could have had Ladyhawke, a film he'd naturally turn down.
But now things turned around yet again. First there was Highlander, a
sword and sorcery epic shot in MTV style, where Connery played Ramirez,
an immortal knight who teaches young Scot Christopher Lambert how to
fight, lest he be attacked by the monstrous Kurgen. Though a box office
flop it was a huge video hit, setting Connery back on the road to
greater things.
And greater things came his way
immediately when he won a BAFTA for his performance as Brother William
of Baskerville, solving monastery murders in a film adaptation of
Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose. The critics loved it and Connery,
who played Brother William as noble but tough and street-wise, had found
a way of growing old gracefully onscreen.
Despite all his hits and his efforts at widening his oeuvre, Connery had
never received the artistic respect he felt he deserved. This arrived
now when he played Jimmy Malone, a street cop protecting Kevin
Costner's Eliot Ness from De Niro's Al Capone in Brian De Palma's
The Untouchables. When he took the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (the
year after his mate Caine took it for Hannah And Her Sisters<?I>),
he received two standing ovations. He'd also take a Golden Globe.
Once again the offers were flooding in, allowing Connery to turn down
Baron Munchausen, High spirits, Air America and Sleeping With The Enemy.
Instead he re-joined Sidney Lumet for Family Business, an unconvincing
Mafia comedy where he just wasn't old enough to be Dustin Hoffman's dad.
Then came The Presidio where he was an army cop helping the San
Francisco police hunt the killer of a military policewoman. Again, it
was half-arsed stuff.
But better news was ahead. Steven
Spielberg was looking for a man to play Harrison
Ford's dad in the third Indiana Jones flick and thought only James
Bond was up to the job. Producer George Lucas was unsure but Spielberg
was adamant and Connery, having had Tom Stoppard step in to beef up his
part, signed on. It was a major hit (Connery being nominated for a
Golden Globe), as was The Hunt For Red October where Connery played a
Russian officer who defects in a nuclear sub (Klaus Maria Brandauer
having dropped out).
It was now that Connery had a real fright. When nodules were found in
his throat, he pulled out of Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are
Dead and underwent several minor laser operations. In the back of his
mind was the fate of his Shalako co-star Jack Hawkins, who'd died of
cancer, and also that of his own father. But thankfully the ops were
successful and, after speech therapy with a doctor who'd treated Dolly
Parton and Mickey Rorke, he was back.
Now Connery re-entered the world of spying with The Russia House as a
publisher who gets involved in sending nuclear secrets to the West and
engages in a love affair with Michelle
Pfeiffer. Then came the execrable Highlander II where he reprised
his role as Ramirez and was basically too big for one of the flimsiest
movies ever made.
This he followed with a brief appearance
as a returning King Richard in Costner's Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.
Then there was Medicine Man where he sought a cure for cancer in the
dwindling rain forests. This would be the first production by his own
Fountainbridge Films, a company he'd close 10 years later after disputes
with his business partner.
After this, he'd enter another run of pretty ropey material. Rising Sun
saw him and Wesley Snipes investigating a murder connected to Japanese
businessmen. A Good Man In Africa saw him comically battling bureaucracy
and corruption, while Just Cause had him as a law professor helping a
young guy framed for murder by Laurence
Fishburne.
Then he'd play King Arthur, cuckolded by Richard
Gere and Julia Ormond in the silly First Knight, and provide the
dragon's voice in the occasionally impressive Dragonheart. It really
wasn't looking good, particularly now Pierce
Brosnan had picked up the Bond mantle and scored a smash with
GoldenEye.
Connery needed an action smash of his own, and he got it through Jerry
Bruckheimer and The Rock. Here he played a masterful old con who has to
help Nicolas
Cage break into Alcatraz and foil a terror group led by disgruntled
soldier Ed
Harris (who'd provided a memorable cameo as a crazy serial killer in
Just Cause). Packed with smart one-liners, mind-boggling car chases and
eye-popping explosions, it was a mighty hit. And Connery, at 65 once
again an action star, was back on top.
Interestingly, given the TV series was
like a continuation of the Bond idea back in the Sixties, Connery now
moved on to the big screen version of The Avengers. He might have
guessed the karma was bad when, while filming in London, someone dropped
a brick off a bridge onto his windscreen. The movie was notoriously
poor. He moved on to the lower profile Playing By Heart, a collection of
love affairs co-starring Gena Rowlands, then hit the heights once more
with Entrapment, playing a sexy master thief who gets investigator
Catherine Zeta-Jones to join him in a mega-robbery in Malaysia's Twin
Towers.
Following this with Finding Forrester, another hit where he played a
reclusive author who helps a young black kid succeed at an Upper East
Side prep school, Connery was now bankable once again. And he proved it
with his next outing, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, an
adventure based on an Alan Moore comic book wherein fictional heroes
like Allan Quartermain (Connery), Dorian Gray, Dr Jekyll and The
Invisible Man battle to save the world from an evil mastermind bent upon
starting World War One years before its time. It was a rough shoot, with
floods in Prague causing mayhem, and Connery had a major and very public
spat with director Stephen Norrington, but the movie's performance was
not bad.
Beyond this, there were other triumphs. Back in 1991, Connery was
extremely proud to be made a Freeman of Edinburgh, that same year taking
a much more active role in Scottish politics. Not only would he
contribute to the Scottish National Party, he'd actually get onstage to
argue for devolution, helping in no small part to bring about the
formation of a Scottish parliament in 1999. Despite this revolutionary
behaviour, he would be knighted by the Queen in 2000.
Having been knighted, won an Oscar and taken in over $1.5 billion at the
box office, Big Tam Connery had every right to feel satisfied with his
efforts. All the more so because his popularity with the public never
seems to wane. He regularly charts alongside Tom
Hanks, Mel
Gibson and Julia
Roberts in polls of people's favourite movie stars. And, even in his
seventies, he does well in the Sexiest Star polls, too. Indeed, one
magazine's readers had him as the Sexiest Man of the 20th Century, the
male counterpart to Marilyn Monroe. Really, the man's a marvel. ~
Dominic Wills
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