One less of the genuine seven

By now you will have read every obituary of Sir Sean Connery, so there’s not a lot left that I could add. Every tribute has commented on his being the actor who defined James Bond, and while there was much more to his canon than that one part, over six ‘official’ appearances as 007 he helped create the modern cinematic franchise. Almost 60 years on - give or take delays - it is still an event, and one of only a handful of film series that can genuinely classed as such.

Connery was the definitive Bond, not that he was meant to be. Ian Fleming himself had a very different idea for who should play his raffish gentleman spy. Cary Grant, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton were all in the frame to play Bond in Dr. No, and Connery’s physical appearance (an “over-developed stunt man”, according to Fleming) counted against him in the mind of the author who felt that the Scottish former milkman and coffin polisher was “unrefined”. And yet, today, we think of nothing else. Whatever fondness exists for Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and, the closest Bond has come to Connery’s authenticity, Daniel Craig, the first actor to say the words “Bond, James Bond” in that immortal casino scene in Dr. No cast the Scot indelibly as the 007 rarely improved upon.

Of course, the films that followed played their part: I still adore Dr. No and From Russia With Love for their noirish simplicity, unencumbered by the ‘gags’ and the gadgets that became the Bond films’ trademark. By Connery’s third outing, Goldfinger, director Guy Hamilton and longtime Bond designer Ken Adam started to spread their wings with the trickery and elaborate sets that would become an integral part of the total 007 theatre. But throughout them all, from Dr. No to Diamonds Are Forever, Connery was the undoubted star, even if he’d grown bored after his fifth appearance, You Only Live Twice, and was persuaded back to the part with a substantial cheque (a record fee at the time) in Diamonds, following George Lazenby’s one and only (and, it must be said, good) appearance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

What followed, however, in Connery’s filmography, is the subject of some debate. Bond turned him into “one of the seven greatest film stars of all time”, according to Steven Spielberg, who would cast him as Indiana Jones’ father in The Last Crusade. Bond gave him the ability to pick and choose what he played, and when he played. There were questionable efforts, like The Man Who Would Be King and John Boorman’s sci-fi adventure, Sardoz, and even big-budget Hollywood blockbusters like The Rock which no doubt chewed up Connery’s star power, but was hardly a high cinematic watermark. But, like his age contemporary Clint Eastwood, amongst the so-so career fillers sat some genuine mid-career gems. The Untouchables comes immediately to mind: Brian de Palma’s gritty Chicago masterpiece, setting the wholesome Elliott Ness (Kevin Costner) against Al Capone (Robert De Niro), finds Connery on fine form as Irish-American cop Jimmy Malone, providing Ness with street-smart patriarchy. “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way,” he guides his earnest younger associate, delivering a line with atypical understatement. 

Then there was The Hunt For Red October, another big budget yarn, based on Tom Clancy’s blockbuster novel, in which Connery - with no change whatsoever to his Scottish brogue - plays the rogue Russian submarine commander Marko Ramius, who steals a revolutionary new sub and parks it off the coast of America before defecting, making a new cinema hero out of the Jack Ryan character in the process. What it shares with The Rock in terms of confected tension, Connery - and a bizarre hairpiece - elevates it to something far more engrossing. As with his Indiana Jones outing, and The Untouchables, these are the films that underline Connery’s undisputed - some might say, unsurpassed - star power.

Indeed, taking the helicopter view of Sean Connery, whether you rate him for his Bond films, his occasional obscurities or the big-budget commercial monsters that cashed in on his fame, Hollywood has lost one of its greatest players. Charm, charisma, an occasional edge (and let’s not get into his politically incorrect comments…), the working class Scot traversed borders. He was 90 when he died, a good innings as they say. Even if he’d been in retirement since 2006, he’d put in a body of work that was everything we should love about a movie star. A proper movie star. And Steven Spielberg, of all people should know what they’re really like.