Oh, Roger! We all want Moore
Sir roger Moore’s third book comes on the back of what he calls ‘the phenomenal, worldwide success’ of his autobiography, My Word is My Bond, amounting, he adds, to two copies sold in paperback and one (in Burkina Faso) in hardback.
This winning self-deprecation continues throughout: he also declares Daniel Craig the perfect James Bond, who ‘looks as though he could actually kill . . . whereas i just hugged or bored them to death’.
it is perfectly true that, in terms of his own acting ability, Moore has plenty to be modest about. What he does have in his favour is a decency and affability that, far more than versatility as an actor, have turned him into one of his profession’s most respected elder statesmen.
And which, by the by, have yielded friendships that he draws on in this collection of showbiz anecdotes, although he is not averse to telling stories second or even third-hand.
Such as one about John Gielgud who, on being invited by MPs Glenda Jackson and Gyles Brandreth to celebrate his 90th bi r t hday at t he House of Commons, declared he’d be delighted to join them, since ‘most of my real friends are dead’.
The same, alas, is also true of 86- year- old Moore. The cast of this book have mostly relocated to the celestial cutting-room. But even in death, they are an illustrious bunch. i had no idea, f or example, that Moore was friendly with Frank Sinatra, whom he first met at a fundraising dinner in Hollywood in the 1950s, at which Sinatra fell out, loudly and publicly, with John Wayne.
Jack Warner, the head of Warner Brothers, had bid $1,000 for one of his contract artists, Gordon Macrae, to sing at the event, only for ‘Duke’ Wayne to bid $2,000 for Macrae not to sing.
Sinatra was a friend of Macrae’s, and considered it an unforgivable insult. He and the Duke duly squared up to each other, and it wasn’t just their stature as
bona fide superstars, but also their difference in size, writes Moore, that made the spectacle ‘something i’ll never forget’.
The old trouper is certainly wellequipped for some classy namedropping. Lana Turner, no less, taught him the art of screen-kissing (‘passion without pressure’) on the set of the 1956 film Diane.
And he once took Bette Davis to the dog track at White City, where everyone was too preoccupied with the greyhounds to notice the tiny, middle-aged woman thoroughly enjoying herself going back and forth to the betting counter was a proper, Hollywood giant.
This book could do with more personal encounters such as that, and less recycling of other people’s stories — including a few that are downright whiskery with age. The best tales are Moore’s own, and i enjoyed the revelation that his great pal David Niven had no time for his neighbour on the French riviera, rex Harrison, much to the latter’s chagrin. ‘He’s never invited me for dinner or a drink,’ Harrison used to grumble. ‘Niv’ is one of the many nicknames and diminutives that pepper this book, along with the likes of ‘Albie’ Finney and ‘Greg’ Peck. Moore grew hugely fond of Peck, whom he met at Niven’s house in the early 1970s, and the affection was clearly mutual.
Once, at the height of the IRA threat in London, Moore left the house in Belgravia that Peck had rented while making The Omen to find his host underneath his car, checking it for bombs.
if that story is entirely consistent with Peck’s screen image as a thoroughly decent cove, another, about John Mills, is dramatically at odds with the public perception. Apparently, that most upstanding of actors, the very embodiment of
20 The number of women Roger Moore seduced as
James Bond
the British stiff upper lip, had a party piece that he unveiled on the sets of most films he worked on: he used to drop his trousers, pass wind thunderously, and then ignite it. ice Cold in Alex will never seem the same again.
Somewhat more wholesomely, there is a nice story about Moore’s ‘dear friend’ Cubby Broccoli, the legendary Bond producer, whose passionate Anglophilia dated from an encounter with a waiter at the Savoy, on Broccoli’s inaugural visit to England in 1948.
ON HIS first morning, he went down to breakfast and ordered bacon and eggs, only to be told that, because of rationing, he couldn’t have any.
But, a couple of days later, the same waiter delivered two boiled eggs under a silver dome, and discreetly confided that he’d smuggled them in from home.
Broccoli became instantly smitten with England and the English, and later insisted on making all his Bond films here. One wonders whether t hat anonymous waiter ever knew how much employment resulted from his simple act of generosity?
regrettably, the book does not enjoy quite the same standard of production as the Bond films. Spelling and grammatical errors abound, and one picture caption turns up eight pages early. But that’s not Moore’s fault.
Even if this book is not destined f or phenomenal, worldwide success, it certainly deserves to sell more than three copies — and far beyond Burkina Faso.