On Saturday, cinema lost another icon. Hollywood’s first ever Bond, Sean Connery, died at the age of 90. He was sexy and sophisticated. He personified the word “suave.” He had a throaty voice and a crusty personality. And he dominated the silver screen for decades with roles in movies as wide and varied as Highlander, The Hunt for Red October, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Rock, and The Name of the Rose. He would win an Oscar in 1998 for his role in The Untouchables.
Here are three of our favourite performances.
I admire your courage Miss…?
Trench. Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck Mister..?
Bond. James Bond.
And there you have it. If not the most iconic three words ever uttered in cinema, then definitely the most iconic introduction ever seen on screen. Sir Thomas Sean Connery, or as when he introduced himself to writer Brian Koppelman, “I’m Sean. Throw a Sir on that and watch me walk out the door.”
Sir Sean Connery has and always will be my James Bond. There were many after him that tried to either emulate, or run away from, his portrayal of 007, but no one, in my eyes at least, holds a candle to this original version.
As someone who has never read Ian Fleming’s novels, Connery’s James Bond was the epitome of the suave English agent. Always ready for action and never losing his cool. Not with a laser slowly making its way up to his crotch, not when awoken in the middle of the night with a tarantula crawling up his body, not when he walks in on a naked dead woman covered in gold. Sir Sean Connery’s James Bond wasn’t so much rough and tumble as much as he was in complete control.
Sir Sean Connery’s upbringing in rowdy Edinburgh may not have made him seem the automatic choice for the gentleman spy, but what he brought to the character – the coldness, the machismo, the quiet strength – made his version of James Bond unlike any we’ve seen since. And while his portrayal of James Bond is no doubt problematic in 2020, that is more the fault of history than it is of the man playing the part. Although Sir Sean Connery himself may have had his own fights and faults, his contribution to cinema is indisputable.
Excuse me sir, but seeing as how you have walked out the door, I shall refer to you by your full name, honorific title and all.
Bond. *flicks lighter shut* James Bond.
“It IS you Junior!”
The first movie that I watched multiple times at the cinema was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I was eight when that movie came out and I would lie, and plead, and trick various members of my family into taking me to see it over and over again. I love that movie. And in no small part due to the indelible mark that Sean Connery would leave as Dr. Henry Jones Sr.
My mother had introduced me to Sean Connery by way of James Bond (he is still her favourite), and I had only ever seen him in that role. Up until that point, he was always the perfectly put together gentleman spy, and I remember my pre-teen mind not being able to reconcile the fact that this was one and the same man.
Here he was, in a tweed suit and bucket hat, hounding, and harrying, and hammering away at Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones. Here he was clowning around and doing slapstick. (That scene where both Dr. Jones’ are tied together in chairs remains an absolute delight.) Here he was making me laugh.
I didn’t know he could do that. I knew that Connery was cool, but I had no idea that he could be bookish, and saintly, and self-satisfied, and downright wacky.
It was this hilarious interplay between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery that made the Last Crusade such a joy to me. It was a father/son relationship that I had never before encountered on screen, and one that both men pull off magnificently despite a mere 12 year age gap between them.
Up until that point, Sean Connery and James Bond were indistinguishable from one another. But it was after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade did I see him for the extraordinarily gifted performer that he was.
By all account Sean Connery was a …complicated man.
In amongst the tributes to him over the weekend on his passing there have been reminders that while he stole the hearts of moviegoers everywhere as James Bond, he also shared some of the… less seemly attributes with the role that made him famous.
Others have addressed this aspect of his persona far better than I ever could, so I’ll restrict my memories to another, more personal, aspect of his legend.
Long before Scarlett Johansson ran into trouble portraying characters she clearly wasn’t representative of, Sean Connery was out there proving that he could play anyone, any nationality, any background… as long as they had a Scottish accent.
He never proved this better than with Ramirez in Highlander and Ramius in The Hunt For Red October.
While it may have felt a bit of a stretch that the father of all-American hero, Indiana Jones, was actually Scottish, or that any Irish person wouldn’t automatically cry foul at his “Irish American” accent in The Untouchables, Connery’s roles in Highlander and Red October showed that he didn’t give a damn what people thought, and apparently, neither did Hollywood.
As the over 2,000 year old Egyptian (but assumed to be Spanish) Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez in Highlander, Connery’s accent passes almost unnoticed, thanks to Frenchman Christopher Lambert’s mangling of the Scottish accent. Without this piece of casting we wouldn’t have the had the joy of hearing Sir Sean, in his thick Scottish accent, ask:
“Haggis, what is haggis?”
In The Hunt for Red October, the accent to role discrepancy wasn’t quite so noticeable, thanks to the genius conceit that all the Russian dialogue is filtered through some kind of cinematic universal translator. This excuses all sorts of accents for the Russian Naval officers. As Marko Ramius, however, it’s Connery’s burr that lends extra authority when he says, “Give me a ping Vassily, one ping only please,” as he communicates clandestinely with Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan.
While it may have been a source of mirth at the time (I can remember at least one stand-up comedian making hay from Connery’s casting), these parts showed Connery settling into older roles, although there were still plenty of age inappropriate romantic pairings yet to come. With only six credits this century, it’s a pity we didn’t get to see more performances, but many of the ones we got were like diamonds, and as we all know, Diamonds Are Forever.
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