The longest-serving 007 bowed out of service on Monday. Sir Roger Moore, who played James Bond for 12 years, finally yielded to cancer. For all of Sean Connery’s lithe presence, intense eyes, an unreadable mind, all-consuming presence and taut physicality, it was his successor Moore who made Bond loveable, human and immensely charming. As a takeaway from his celebrated role, he loved his martinis till diabetes prevented him from being indulgent.
For many Indians, Moore imprinted himself on our consciousness with Octopussy, the only film in the Bond franchise to have been extensively shot in India, Udaipur to be precise. It was then that he worked with two of our then global Indians, Kabir Bedi (the villain’s sidekick) and tennis legend Vijay Amritraj (his ally). The Moore-Bedi face-off on the roof of the twin-prop plane saw a little podgy Bond plummet the machete-wielding, lanky and fitter Govind to his death. Perhaps Bedi too remembered that moment as he tweeted, “Farewell Roger! What a wonderful life you had! Honoured to have fought your #JamesBond in Octopussy. Many memories.”
Moore is the oldest actor to have played Bond — he was 45 in live and let Die (1973), and 58 when he announced his retirement in1985. He hated that he had to lose weight and subscribe to the stringent requirements of a spy thriller. Action and chases were not Sir Moore’s thing at all and he made up for all of that with a bit of whimsy, arched eyebrows, sparkling wit and playful quirks. Moore’s Bond, therefore, was very different from the version created by Ian Fleming. Screenwriters like George MacDonald Fraser cast him as a seasoned, debonair playboy who would always have a trick or gadget in stock when he needed it. And underneath all that was a skilled detective with a cunning mind, who just wouldn’t go for needless blood or gore. In keeping with the Cold War intrigues, Moore’s Bond even went to space in the Moonraker and deftly battled the bulky villain Jaws with mindgames.
Moore’s relaxed style seemed a commentary on the essential ridiculousness of the Bond films, in which the handsome British secret agent was as adept at mixing martinis, bedding beautiful women and ordering gourmet meals as he was at disposing of super-villains trying to take over the world.
“To me, the Bond situations are so ridiculous, so outrageous,” he once said. “I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy and yet, everybody knows he’s a spy. Every bartender in the world offers him martinis that are shaken, not stirred. What kind of serious spy is recognised everywhere he goesIJ It’s outrageous. So you have to treat the humour outrageously as well.”
Though Bond women have undergone a transformation in recent times, they acquiesced to Moore’s blue eyes rather willingly with a “Oh James!” Moore’s Bond may have treated them as playthings but he seemed to get away with it. A facet which was rectified with the advent of successive Bonds. And Moore’s bond didn’t slash them up either out of revenge.
While he never eclipsed Sean Connery in the public’s eye as the definitive James Bond, Moore did play the role of secret agent in just as many films as Connery did, and he managed to do so while “finding a joke in every situation,” according to film critic Rex Reed.
The actor, who came to the role in 1973 after Connery tired of it, had already enjoyed a long career in films and television, albeit with mixed success.
Born in london, the only child of a policeman, Moore had studied painting before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He played a few small roles in theatre and films before his mandatory army duty, then moved to Hollywood in the 1950s. He appeared opposite Elizabeth Taylor in 1954’s The last Time I Saw Paris and with Eleanor Parker in Interrupted Melody the following year.
In 1970, he became managing director for the European company for Faberge’s Brut Productions. Three years later, he made his first Bond film, live and let Die. He would make six more, The Man With the Golden Gun, The Spy Who loved Me, Octopussy, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill over the next 12 years. And while the Bond of the Ian Fleming novels that the films were based on was generally described as being in his 30s, Moore would stay with the role until he was 57.
He continued to work regularly in films after handing over Bond to Timothy Dalton, but never with the same success. His post-Bond films included such forgettable efforts as The Quest with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Spice World with the Spice Girls.
In 1991, Moore became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, having been introduced to the role by the late actress Audrey Hepburn. As Hepburn had, he threw much of his energy into the task. “I felt small, insignificant and rather ashamed that I had travelled so much making films and ignored what was going on around me,” he said in describing how the work had affected him.
In 1996, when his UNICEF job took him to the World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, he disclosed that he too had been a victim. “I was molested when I was a child — not seriously — but I didn’t tell my mother until I was 16, because I felt that it was something to be ashamed of.” Moore received the Dag Hammarskjold Inspiration Award for his work with UNICEF and was named a commander in France’s National Order of Arts and letters in 2008, an award he said was worth “more than an Oscar.” And he was certainly more than Bond. For not before or after was one who bonded his viewers with his charisma than punches.
(With agencies)