The first Bond girl
Eunice Gayson was a British stage and film actress who earned a footnote in cinema history in 1962’s Dr. No as Sylvia Trench, the first Bond girl.
She meets the British spy James Bond (Sean Connery) at the elegant club Le Cercle over a game of cards.
In their first scene, Bond sees her across the green feltcovered table clad in a crimson off-the-shoulder gown and asks her her name.
“Trench,” she replies. “Sylvia Trench.”
Whereupon Connery introduces himself: “Bond. James Bond.”
It would become the movie franchise’s signature line.
She first appeared on the set of Dr. No wearing a brown and gold dress, but director Terence Young insisted that it would be lost against the background. The only alternative was the bright red gown, which was several sizes too big and had to be held in place with clothespegs.
Movie viewers did not hear Gayson’s voice. Her lines were dubbed over by Nikki van der Zyl, a voice artist and dialogue coach who worked on several of the Bond films.
The producers, however, should perhaps have been more concerned about Connery.
“Sean was very nervous,” Gayson recalled of how her leading man was shaken and stirred.
“It was ‘The name’s Sean Bond — cut — James Connery — cut.” Eventually Young called an early lunch and she was charged with calming Connery down with a stiff drink.
Gayson had originally been due to play Miss Moneypenny in the Bond franchise, but her New York audition for The Sound of Music clashed with Miss Moneypenny’s filming dates.
Gayson repeated the Trench role in From Russia With Love (1963), but the character was cut from subsequent movies after filmmakers decided to introduce a new “Bond girl” in every film.
Gayson, who trained as an opera singer, came to Dr. No after performing the role of Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the 1961 London production of The Sound of Music.
After appearing in the Bond films, she acted in television shows, among them two 1960s spy series, The Saint (which starred a future James Bond, Roger Moore) and The Avengers. She remained a fixture in London theatre. Among other productions, she appeared in the comedy The Grass Is Greener in 1971 and, in the early ’90s, in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods as the grandmother.
She died on June 8, aged 90.