Will The
Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up-Once Again On The War Of Words About The Man-And
The Legend-With “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Seth
Garth
On Her
Majesty’s Secret Service, starring Diana Riggs, Telly Savalas, George Lazenby, based
on the novel by Ian Fleming, 1969
Young up and
coming young writer Will Bradley, folded like an accordion, folded int one of those
origami constructions when divine site manager Greg Green asked him to once again
do “dueling” reviews with me on the world historic question of who the real James
Bond, you know Bond, James Bond, was, is since they are still cranking the
bastards out and are even talking about bringing in a black Bond to reflect the
times and despite Brexit the changing demographics of the British Empire, or
whatever they call the remnant of an empire upon which the sun never. Of course
that world historic question finally resolved itself around my championing the original
cinematic James Bond, ruggedly handsome and every young women’s wet dream at
the time Sean Connery who could probably still pull his weight in the role and
young wet behind the ears and clueless Bradley plucking pretty boy and prissy
Pierce Brosnan out of his slumber. Needless to say I beat poor young Will like
a gong every time he even tried to put these two in the same paragraph. Made
him look silly and naïve to think that somehow a guy like Pierce’s Bond who admittedly
was nothing but a technie wonk and had no inner resources to get him through
the hard parts could cut the mustard. So when the question came up about reviewing
this post-Sean venture, On His, No Her
Majesty’s Secret Service drawn from an Ian Fleming book he pleaded illness or
something. Seeing that non-descript mercifully one-off George Lazenby was to do
the Bond role that might have been the beginning of wisdom for the lad, for him
to learn his craft a bit by bowing out. (Christ would anybody, even Will, want
to champion a Bond named George against guys with names like Sean and even Pierce.)
It is probably
just as well Will bowed out since although I am feeling mellow these days while
I am working with my protégé Sarah Lemoyne trying to get her up the vicious
film reviewer food chain I am nevertheless ready for some verbal fisticuffs. I
have stayed on the sidelines while Sarah learns the ropes, learns how to take
on all-comers including the legendary Sam Lowell on his own turf, his film noir
expertise. (In the inevitable need these days for transparency I have to admit
that Sam and I have known each other forever, grew up together, which however
does not preclude me from being miffed at him for hanging around too long and
not letting the younger set go through their paces and so I was, am happy to
help sweet young Sarah out and she appreciates me giving her the real deal
lowdown.)
Even Sam
recently admitted that she had talent despite his salacious remarks that there
was “something going on between us,” between Sarah and I which has gotten her
in trouble with her companion Clara. For the record, and both Sarah and Clara
know this since I spoke about it one night when I took them both on to dinner,
if I wanted to have a romance with Sarah I would not be shy about taking dead
aim at her (and made Clara laugh that night when I mentioned just as she had done
in her turn with Sarah). But I am not doing so for a couple of very good
reasons which should end the gossip-I still am shell-shocked by my three unsuccessful
marriages with its attendant brood of college worthy kids whom I am still
paying off college tuitions on and for crying out loud I am no Johnny Silver
with his young Penn State graduate student for I am old enough to be Sarah’s grandfather,
have kids older than her. Done.
To the film
which is what I get paid to do. Whatever short-comings I found in Pierce
Brosnan’s Bond by comparison with this Lazenby guy he seems like a ruggedly
handsome virile, energetic character not afraid to speak more than one sentence
at a time. Where the fuck they got this guy and why after Sean left is beyond
me. Maybe he reflected the serious decline of the Empire or whatever the
configuration, Commonwealth I guess they call the neo-colonial set-up and the
inability as in Sean’s time to single-handedly save the Queen’s bacon. Lazenby
could only save the queens, you, know the guys that in the old days we called
light on their feet, prissy, silly which is a polite way to say not manly
enough for the job. The plotline such as it reflects that since if you can
believe this Lazenby’s Bond has only one lady-love, fetching Diana Riggs as a
countess. No love them and leave them for dear George. Sickening.
Here’s the
play. Bond is still hot as hell in attempting for many reasons to nail this
bastard Blofeld who has been nothing but a nemesis for a long time. Looking for
leads he runs across the Countess whose father is a king hell king leader of a
mob, a well-connected mob. The price for the Blofeld info-from Papa charm
daring apple of his eye, or rather spit in his eye daughter. And Jimmy buys in.
In any case the leads from Pa get him to Switzerland and Blofeld’s latest front-a
research lab for ravenous young women. Real deal-they are the latter day “angels
of death” evocative of the old Nazi crowd who are brainwashed into ruining the
world’s food supply via various toxics which is really what dear Mr. B, played by
hard-ass television star Telly Savalas and his private army of thugs and hangers-on
are about. Naturally with a world-wide apparatus of deadly agents B makes his
big play-pay or die world. And the world crumbles including sweet boy M (who never
got over being roasted alive by Kim Philby and the Cambridge boys) of MI5-Her
Majesty’s Secret Service.
But not
Jimmy, not the Countess and more importantly not Papa who has his own ax to grind
with blowhard B. Together they take down or think they have taken down B and
his nefarious plans. Figuring B was toast Jimmy got all swoony over the
Countess and they got married and all lovey-dovey.
Except remember this is loner Bond, love them and leave them Bond, and we have
to think of the next film and whoever will do the Bond role since George
rightfully bowed out -Blofeld didn’t die and came back to machine gun the poor
Countess down leaving Jimmy bereft. WTF even Will would have to back off on
this one.
If you're an espionage aficionado, an Ian Fleming follower or a 007 devotee then you must know who wrote the “Trout Memo” and what it was all about. If not, and you want to be an espionage illuminatus, you had best Google “Trout Memo”. Of course, most espionage aficionados and real spies have read Bill Fairclough's epic spy thriller #BeyondEnkription in #TheBurlingtonFiles series. It was written by a real secret agent for espionage cognoscenti and actual spies and even includes many examples of lesser known spy practices that Ian Fleming would have loved.
ReplyDeleteThe protagonist of The Burlington Files, Edward Burlington aka Bill Fairclough, lived just as “fast and furious” a life as James Bond or even the Gray Man did but with one subtle difference: it actually happened. Indeed, all his exploits in London, Nassau and Port au Prince in the first stand-alone novel in the series are based on hard facts some of which you can even check out with press cuttings.
By the way, Fairclough’s MI6 handler Mac aka Col Alan Pemberton CVO MBE knew Ian Fleming, Kim Philby and KGB Col Oleg Gordievsky. No surprise then that John le Carré refused to write a series of collaborative spy novels with Fairclough given Philby ended John le Carré’s MI6 career. Little wonder also that in hindsight Ian Fleming was thankful that he didn’t work directly for MI6.