Posted on 09/24/2009 6:09:47 PM PDT by Perdogg
An invitation to join Dame Shirley Bassey at the Ritz Casino is not to be ignored - reports The Times. After unveiling her new album, The Performance, we ask the Welsh wonder, 72, if she is ready to return glamour and hummability to that much abased commodity, the James Bond theme tune.
(Excerpt) Read more at mi6.co.uk ...
Moore looked 70 years old and Tanya Roberts was a disaster.
Tanya Roberts was the most annoying Bond girl ever. I remember wanting Bond to leave her the burning elevator shaft, just so she’d shut up.
Joan got a facelift towards the end of “Knots Landing” that made Nancy Pelosi look like Adriana Lima. =8-0
The best Bond girl in AVTAK was undoubtedly Fiona Fullerton’s Pola “The Bubbles Tickle My Tchaikovsky” Ivanova, who was criminally underused. Roberts was a disaster with zero chemistry with Rog. Why is it always the really hot ones with two minutes of screentime that are infinitely better than the principal female leads ?
She turned down the Sharon Stone role in Basic Instinct (1992) because the film had "too much nudity and sexual content"
Tina Turner’s ‘Goldeneye’ was by far the best of the modern Bond’s. It was written/composed by Bono/Edge.
A stunner. She married a wealthy Irish media guy, had two kids. She quit acting and turned down a lot of parts.
I think she turned down other parts because of too much nudity, sex or content. An actress or actor with moral standards. Amazing.
She was very nice looking in “IJ and the last crusade”. However, it was implied in the movie that she slept with Indy’s father played by Sean Connery.
I have to admit that Lulu’s “The Man With The Golden Gun” is a guilty pleasure of mine.
Don’t get me wrong, she sung the hell out of “To Sir, With Love”, but TMWTGG was like nails on a chalkboard. Not one of John Barry’s finer moments.
I saw OHMSS for the first uncut and uninterrupted in many years, I think HBO, about 25 years ago, showed them all one time only.
My Observations
1) Sean Connery could have never pulled this movie off. Lazenby might not have the best actor to play Bond (he might have been too young for this particular film), but of the three Bonds at the time, he was the best for this film. This film was more a “Fleming” James Bond movie not a “Cubby” Broccoli James Bond movie.
2) Diana Rigg was stunning in this movie. I think she did a good acting job, eventhough the novel had Tracy Draco as a blond. In the Bond novels, there is a lot of sybolism regarding the hair color of a woman. Her role on the Avengers probably made people think less of her as a Bond woman than others.
3) Telly Savalas did fine as Bloefeld. Maybe it just seemed odd that Bloefeld had an american accent. He did a better job than Charles Grey in DAF.
4) Angela Scoular was H-O-T-T (as Ruby).
I don’t know, that was always a great debate on the James Bond newsgroup as to whether Connery could pull off the emotionalism required for OHMSS. It is a real shame that he didn’t stick with the franchise to see him do it. But I think he might’ve been able to do it, and it would’ve made Bond less superhero and more human. Witness his breakdown in “The Offence” and you can see his range. The one scene I could’ve seen him having a problem with however is after he’s gone down the mountain from Piz Gloria down to the village and he looks genuinely scared, a moment before Tracy skates right up to him. That worked for Lazenby just fine, but Connery would’ve been awkward and out of character.
Rigg’s Tracy was almost about as tough a Bond girl as we had seen to that point (with Honor Blackman just about as good, another former Avenger). You could actually see her as an equal, and could walk away from Bond without breaking a sweat.
Yeah, well, as I said with respect to Telly, a “New Yorker Blofeld” was just a little too peculiar. It wasn’t that he didn’t necessarily look the part, his being American was too much a distraction (and I kept expecting him to walk over to Lazenby and say, “Who loves ya, baby ?”). Charles Gray was a caricature of Blofeld. I think Donald Pleasance was the definitive one. Ice cold, no schtick, brutal and evil. Pleasance had an excellent range as an actor, which helped, too.
Can’t agree on Angela Scoular. I thought she was a bit too... eh... English (and not in a good way). Her friendly exchange with Lazenby (their chatty discussion) was a little odd, too. It worked for Lazenby as Bond, but it would’ve been, again, awkward were the scene with Connery. I read Scoular was battling bowel cancer as of earlier this year, something similar to Farrah Fawcett’s, I believe.
Aw, drat. Does that mean I have to be all sensitive and PC and stuff when you make a typing gaffe (even if it is genuinely funny) ? Chubby Broccoli was priceless. :-P
That's ironic about her having bowel cancer, Lois Maxwell died of bowel cancer.
I had more of a crush on the adorable Mie Hama in the prior YOLT. Angela Scoular was also in the original “Casino Royale” spoof, which was chock full of stunning females (chiefly among them a young Jackie Bissett). I forgot that Maxwell had that particular cancer, although she was a bit older than Scoular when she contracted it (and was able to battle it for several years).
I’d also mention when I saw Honor Blackman in some tv special not too long ago, she looked astonishing attractive for someone nearly 80 (she looked like she did in “Goldfinger”, merely with silver hair. If she had a facelift, you couldn’t tell).
One other person, however, where aging was not kind was the Goldfinger girl who got sprayed with the gold paint, Shirley Eaton. My parents saw her at some function here in Nashville several years ago. She, and I kid you not, looked like Charles Gray’s Blofeld when he got dressed up in drag to escape The Whyte House in “Diamonds Are Forever.” =8-0
Virginia North who played Marc Draco’s “secretary” in OHMSS died of cancer in 2004. I don’t know what kind.
TMWTGG is definitely a guilty pleasure.
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