NEW YORK: Variety
Honor Blackman,
the potent British actress who took James Bond’s breath away as Galore in “Goldfinger” and who starred as the leather-clad, judoflipping Cathy Gale in “The Avengers,” has died. She was 94.
Blackman’s family said in a statement Monday that she died peacefully of natural causes at her home in Lewes, in southeastern England.
The honey-voiced Blackman first became a household name in the 1960s spy TV series “The Avengers.” She joined the show in the second season as Cathy Gale, the leather-wearing anthropologist with martial arts skills. Blackman departed the show for Bond before “The Avengers” was exported to America, but her performance solving cases opposite Patrick Macnee caught the eye of Bond producer, Albert R. Broccoli. She and Macnee also recorded the hit song, “Kinky Boots,” together.
But just as “The Avengers” was growing in popularity, Blackman departed it for the third James Bond film, playing Galore in 1964s “Goldfinger.” In it, she makes an impression from the start, memorably introducing herself to Sean Connery’s just awoken James Bond.
Blackman was 39 and five years older than Connery when she landed the role of Bond’s love interest, and she long maintained the term of “Bond girl” didn’t apply to her. In the film, Galore is the leader of a group of women aviators enlisted by the villain Auric Goldfinger.
She uses judo (a skill carried over from “The Avengers”) to attack Bond and their foreplay is physical and combative.
The character’s double-entendre name was one producers said they had to convince censors to permit. But Galore has regularly ranked as among the most popular “Bond women.”
“She was an extraordinary talent and a beloved member of the Bond family. Our thoughts are with her family at this time,” said Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.
Honor Blackman was born in East London on Aug 22, 1925. Her father, Frederick Blackman,
was a civil servant clerk. She recalled her father giving her the choice, as a teenager, of taking biking or elocution lessons. She chose the lessons, and went to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and acting in the West End. (AP)
NEW YORK:
Hollywood’s summer movie season is all but finished. “Top Gun Maverick” became the latest would-be blockbuster to be rescheduled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Paramount Pictures announced that sequel to the 1986 original will now open Dec 23 instead of June 24. “Top Gun Maverick,” starring Tom Cruise, follows an exodus of the big-budget spectacles that annually land in theaters in summertime.
Most of the season’s top movies have in the last week departed the summer. With the pandemic’s quickening spread, it remains uncertain when movie theaters will reopen, or how much appetite moviegoers will have to visit cinemas when they initially open their doors.
Summer is typically Hollywood’s most lucrative time of year, when the studios unleash a barrage of sequels, superhero films and action movies. Last year, summer ticket sales accounted for $4.3 billion in US and Canadian theaters.
“Ghostbusters: Afterlife,”“Wonder Woman 1984,”“Black Widow,” “Morbius” and “In the Heights” have all been delayed or taken off the schedule, along with major spring releases including “No Time to Die” and “Mulan.” (AP)