Big screen: There’s an underlying decency in Roger Moore’s Bond. A bit of old England might have died but Moore’s character keeps the flame of chivalry burning.
Why Moore was the greatest James Bond
I’m heartbroken at the death of Roger Moore. He was my Bond. Not Fleming’s Bond, as Bond is in the books, but the nicest Bond and Bond as he ought to be. With a charming, witty performance, Moore established himself as the quintessential English gentleman. The heir to David Niven.
He wasn’t a one part wonder, though. Moore was famous before he was Bond for playing Ivanhoe and Simon Templar, AKA The Saint, and had established himself as a matinee idol. My grandmother had a crush on him from back when he was a knitwear model and claimed, when she was working as a clairvoyant, to have read his palm (I think this was a lie).
Those early TV roles were generally two dimensional but any doubts that Moore could act are confounded by watching The Man Who Haunted Himself, an existential 1970 movie about a man undergoing a terrifying midlife crisis. He also showed he could do comedy in The Cannonball Run. He was the only good thing about 1983’s Curse of the Pink Panther (and he was very, very good).
Underlying decency
Moore’s career as Bond didn’t start too well. Taking over from Sean Connery in 1973’s Live and Let Die was tough and his first two movies forced Moore to play Bond as he is in the books: callous and unlovely.
But when they suddenly got it right in The Spy Who Loved Me, they cracked a formula that, for my money, produced the best Bond film of the lot.
This movie has it all. A villain with webbed fingers. A hoodlum with steel teeth. Lifts with false bottoms that drop down to a shark tank. And a Union Jack parachute jump that makes you proud to be British.
Better still, Moore had finally started to make the part his own. His acting was dismissed by cynics as eyebrow acrobatics, but there are several scenes in that movie that only he could do — from wandering around Egyptian ruins in a flawless tuxedo to acknowledging his responsibility for the death of an agent’s lover; regret flashes, momentarily, across his face.
There’s an underlying decency in Moore’s Bond. I never quite believed that Connery would “go back for the girl” if a villain tied her to a rack — but Moore did it several times. Bond remained Bond — slipping from one bed to another — but at least this one would send his ex-lovers a Christmas card once in a while.
Flame of chivalry
Four things stand out about Moore’s films. One’s the humour: “What do you think you’re doing?” Sir Frederick asks when he catches Bond in bed with a Russian lovely. “Keeping the British end up, sir,” he replies. Second, the gadgets — Moore was the only Bond, as far as I know, to drive a gondola hovercraft through the streets of Venice (a pigeon does a double-take).
Third, the fashions. Moore kept the safari jacket industry afloat. And fourth, his encroaching age. Moore was 57 when he made his last Bond, A
View to a Kill. This was a bit of a joke among some, but they forget that the cult of youth is recent invention.
When I was boy, we were still taught to respect age and idolise our elders. No one questioned John Wayne starring in The Shootist at 69. By the time that Moore was pinned to the bed by the muscular Grace Jones — a look of terror on his face — he had crossed from being mere actor to a star, and movie stars are ageless.
They are eternal, too. Roger Moore will live on most Sunday afternoons — for as long as his lovely, funny, thrilling films are shown on TV. As for the rest of us, a bit of old England might have died but it’s our duty, chaps, to keep the flame of chivalry burning.
There’s an underlying decency in Moore’s Bond. I never quite believed that Connery would “go back for the girl” if a villain tied her to a rack — but Moore did it several times.