Director who turned up the glamour in Bond
1922-2016
GUY Hamilton, who has died at the age of 93, was a film director who mastered the blockbuster, from action-adventure to whodunnits, and found his métier in the swaggering glamour of the James Bond series, for which he directed four of the most famous titles.
It was a successful run that opened to Shirley Bassey’s brassy Goldfinger theme in 1964 and closed a decade later with the licensed-to-kill agent dispatching a scowling Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
Along with two other outings — Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Live and Let Die (1973) — they made a classic 007 quartet.
Directing a film, Hamilton once said, demanded “a hide like a rhinoceros”. His proved particularly thick, a resilience forged — as had been the case with James Bond — by his wartime service with covert naval operations. His films, even the thrillers, were often struck through with a wry humour drawn from his war days.
During Hamilton’s time on the Bond bridge he navigated the divergent styles of Sean Connery and Roger Moore, developed the banter with Secret Intelligence Service cohorts such as Q and M, and ratcheted up the exotic locales, glamour and gadgetry.
“Bond couldn’t have just any yacht,” said Hamilton. “It had to be the biggest yacht in the world. We were creating a dream world, defining what was ‘Bondian’.”
Ian Mervyn Guy Hamilton was born on September 16 1922 in Paris, where his father was the press attaché to the British embassy. From an early age Guy was intent on a career in film. At 17 he joined the accounts department of a film studio in Nice, moving to the shooting floor shortly after. As war loomed he escaped to North Africa — on board he discovered that another refugee was Somerset Maugham, whose butler made tea in a bully-beef tin.
During the war Hamilton served in the Royal Navy and in January 1944 found himself caught up in an adventure befitting the imagination of Ian Fleming. He was left behind on the Breton shores on a mission to drop off agents. He and his five companions had to make contact with the Resistance.
“First we stayed with a Breton family, but that got too hot for us.
“When the Germans came snooping round they moved us out into this deserted shepherd’s hut in the middle of a forest. The Germans knew that we were around somewhere, but we evaded them, and were picked up four weeks later. I had a month’s holiday in Brittany.”
Hamilton was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his missions to France and Norway.
After the war Hamilton cut his directing teeth assisting John Huston on The African Queen and Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol and The Third Man.
Directing The Colditz Story in 1955, in which he explored male bravado under guard, raised Hamilton’s currency. In 1962, producers “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman offered him directing duties on Dr No. He turned them down, owing to commitments, but had no such qualms two years later in taking on Goldfinger.
Working for the Bond producers, whom he considered “a wonderful DREAM WORLD: Guy Hamilton directs Britt Ekland in the Bond thriller ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’
Hamilton found himself in an adventure befitting Ian Fleming
double act”, Hamilton was keen to make his mark on the 007 brand. The wit was quick and the sex sizzling. Moreover, the barnstorming theme, delivered with hurricane-like gusto by Bassey, was a more strident opening than in Bond’s previous outings. “Well, I don’t know whether it’s going to be a hit or not, Harry,” Hamilton told Saltzman, “but I know, dramatically, it works.” It became the best-known Bond theme of all.
The Bond franchise made Hamilton’s name, supporting a career that thrived to the early 1980s. He corralled large ensemble casts for Battle of Britain (1969) and Evil Under the Sun (1980), in which Peter Ustinov’s corpulent Hercule Poirot interrogates a smorgasbord of suspects.
Hamilton retired to Majorca with his second wife, Kerima, a noted French beauty. They lived in Bondian style in a villa described by a visitor as “a gin-pink modernist slab jutting from the peak of a Majorcan mountainside, complete with Cinemascope picture windows, curvaceous swimming pool, basement screening room and cocktail bar”. — © The Daily Telegraph, London