When Ian Fleming learned who would play James Bond on screen, he was not pleased. His secret agent was a suave, public-school sort of killer, and Fleming's casting daydreams ran to David Niven or Cary Grant; what the producers had signed instead was a 31-year-old Scot from working-class Edinburgh who had delivered milk, polished coffins, and oiled up on stage as a competitive bodybuilder, placing in the 1953 Mr Universe contest. Fleming's early verdict on Sean Connery, in remarks that have passed into legend, was that this overgrown stuntman was not his idea of Bond. Then Dr. No came out, Connery filled the screen, and the author performed one of the great conversions in casting history: in the later novels Fleming quietly gave Bond a Scottish father, retro-fitting his hero to the man who now owned him.
The producers who made the bet were Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, who had formed Eon Productions after Saltzman optioned the Bond novels. For Dr. No (1962), made for a modest budget of around $1 million, a bankable star was unaffordable and most of them were unwilling anyway. Cary Grant was genuinely discussed — Broccoli knew him well — but would commit to a single film, useless for a hoped-for series. Names like James Mason and Richard Burton circulated; Patrick McGoohan, television's Danger Man, is generally reported to have turned the part down on moral grounds. Connery got the role after a meeting in which he impressed the producers less with acting credentials than with sheer animal certainty, banging the desk and laying down how he saw the part. The clincher is one of the great casting anecdotes: watching him cross the street afterwards, the Eon camp saw the walk — Broccoli's wife Dana is usually credited with the observation that he moved like a big cat. Director Terence Young then took the rough Scot to his tailor and his restaurants and civilised him into the dinner jacket.
The Bonds that never were
Quizmasters feast on the near-misses, and there are decades of them. Before Eon existed, Bond had already been played — by an American. In 1954, CBS broadcast a live television adaptation of Casino Royale in its Climax! anthology series, with Barry Nelson as "Jimmy Bond", card-playing his way past Peter Lorre's villain. That makes Nelson, not Connery, the first screen Bond — a stock trick question. When Connery tired of the role after You Only Live Twice, the part went to George Lazenby, an Australian model with no acting experience who talked his way into On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) armed with a borrowed suit, a Connery-style haircut and considerable nerve — then, notoriously, walked away after one film on his agent's advice that Bond was finished. During the early-1970s scramble that followed, United Artists pursued American stars: Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds have both said they were sounded out and declined, Reynolds reportedly reasoning that Bond had to be British. Adam West, television's Batman, made the same point about himself. The role went back briefly to Connery for Diamonds Are Forever — his fee, famously enormous for the time, was largely donated to a Scottish charitable trust he founded — and then to Roger Moore, who played Bond seven times, more than anyone else in the Eon series.
The formula that survived everyone
The deeper lesson of Bond casting is that the producers, not the stars, held the franchise. Eon remained a family business — Broccoli's daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael G. Wilson ran it into the twenty-first century — and every recasting followed the same pattern: public scepticism, a hunt breathlessly covered by the press, and eventual acceptance. Timothy Dalton was mocked as too serious, Pierce Brosnan had been blocked for years by his television contract to Remington Steele, and Daniel Craig was greeted by a hostile campaign objecting, among other things, to a blond Bond — before Casino Royale (2006) repeated the Connery trick of silencing everyone by simply being good. Fleming did not live to see most of it; he died in 1964, months before Goldfinger made his creation the biggest franchise on earth. But he had already conceded the argument in the only currency that matters to a novelist — he rewrote the books to match the milkman.
Quiz nuggets
- Sean Connery, a former Edinburgh milkman and bodybuilder, competed in the 1953 Mr Universe contest before landing Dr. No (1962).
- Ian Fleming, initially dismissive of Connery, later gave Bond a Scottish father in the novels after seeing him on screen.
- The first screen Bond was American: Barry Nelson played "Jimmy Bond" in a live 1954 CBS television adaptation of Casino Royale.
- George Lazenby, an Australian model with no acting experience, played Bond once — in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).
- Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds both said they turned down Bond in the early 1970s; Roger Moore went on to play 007 seven times.