James Bond, as featured on birthday cards

Anyone looking for birthday cards in WHSmith or a similar purveyor of greetings cards is likely to have seen those cards which picture some of the events in the year of the recipient's birth. If you're after that sort of thing for a James Bond fan, then you might be interested in the 'Time of Your Life' range of cards.

Like most cards of this type, the 'Time of Your Life' cards are adorned with images of newspaper headlines, key events, and stars of stage and screen relevant to a particular year, but what is especially interesting is that James Bond is well represented.

The card for 1965 includes a photo of Sean Connery, no doubt reflecting the fact that one of the biggest films of that year was Thunderball. Roger Moore is pictured alongside Britt Ekland and Maud Adams on the card for 1974, the year in which The Man With The Golden Gun was released, and he appears again on the card for 1979, when Moonraker hit the screens. A publicity shot of Timothy Dalton and Carey Lowell from Licence to Kill is shown on the card for 1989, while the card for 1995 boasts a picture of Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye mode.
 

The Time of Your Life range featuring James Bond

The card series ends in 1999, so there's no picture of Daniel Craig's Bond, but remarkably Ian Fleming is not forgotten. The card for 1953 includes the newspaper-style headline: 'Ian Fleming writes Bond novel Casino Royale.'

With James Bond referenced so prominently, the cards might well appeal to the Bond fan. More generally, though, the cards attest to the enormous success of the Bond films and their lasting impact on popular culture. With over 50 years of the Bond films, each one a blockbuster, the card makers were certainly spoiled for choice.

Who is the best James Bond?

A recent poll conducted on behalf of CBS News by SSRS revealed that Sean Connery remains America's favourite James Bond. Fifty per cent of respondents went for Connery when asked who was the best Bond. Pierce Brosnan was second with 12%, closely followed by Roger Moore, who polled 11%. Daniel Craig was third with 8%, while George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton brought up the rear with 1% each. While the margin of error of plus or minus 3% suggests that the differences between Brosnan, Moore, and probably Craig, are not statistically significant, Connery's place at the top is clear enough.

The poll reminded me of the 'Pint of Milk' interviews that feature in Empire magazine. Each month, a well-known actor, writer or director is asked a series of quirky questions largely unrelated to their latest release or career in film. The questions vary between interviews, but all interviewees are asked, “how much is a pint of milk?” Another question asked on a fairly regular basis is, “who is the best James Bond?” Looking through an archive of classic 'Pint of Milk' interviews on Empire Online, I was interested to see the responses to that question. As with the respondents in the CBS poll, the film-making community seems to favour Sean Connery.

All the interviews available online appear to have been conducted during the tenure of Pierce Brosnan, who consequently gets an honourable mention from most interviewees. So, on the question of the best Bond, Peter Ustinov thought that nobody could touch Connery, but considered that Brosnan had developed into 006 at least. Dan Ackroyd similarly thought Connery the best, but conceded that Brosnan was doing a wonderful job. Michael Keaton admitted he wasn't particularly familiar with the film series, but said that he liked Connery. Though he hadn't seen any of the Brosnan films, Keaton thought Brosnan looked natural in the role. Kyle MacLachlan went with Connery as the best Bond, with, unusually, Roger Moore a close second. Brosnan, he thought, was suave, but lacked the element of danger. Tim Robbins, in response to the question of the best Bond, answered “Mike Myers”.

Judging by these surveys, Sean Connery's position as 'best Bond' is unassailable. Quite how we measure the notion of best Bond is debatable to say the least, but the responses nevertheless point to certain important qualities. Two of them appear to be danger and toughness, which are strongly associated with Connery's portrayal. These are evidently not enough, however, as Timothy Dalton, who took a gritty approach to the role, is at the bottom of the CBS poll, while Daniel Craig, a tough, muscular Bond, only manages a middling position. Possibly a perceived lack of humour in Dalton's and Craig's Bond, certainly when compared with the Connery, Brosnan and Moore eras, is a factor here.

The Empire interviews suggest that being the current Bond boosts the ranking of that actor. Had the interviews taken place more recently, the interviewees might have placed Daniel Craig second. On the other hand, the results of the CBS poll pointed to an age factor to the responses. Respondents over the age of 45 tended to pick Roger Moore as second best Bond, while those under 45 went with Brosnan, suggesting that people tend to regard the Bond they grew up with or first saw as their (second) favourite Bond.

As for Connery, there is a remarkable consensus among all respondents that Connery is the best Bond. I wonder, though, whether the view has become so well established in popular culture that it is now almost a natural response given without much consideration or critical thought. Like any meme that is successful by being long-lived, widespread and oft-repeated, the view or meme that Connery is the best James Bond (along with the opposite meme that Lazenby is (usually) considered the worst Bond) is somewhat self-perpetuating. Connery is likely to remain on the top spot for a while yet, no matter how well the Bond films of Daniel Craig and his successors do at the box office.

The Making of The Living Daylights - a review

Charles Helfenstein has done it again. After astounding the Bond-fan community with his exhaustive account of the making of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the author has returned with another extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at a Bond film. Why Helfenstein settled on The Living Daylights is not explained, but like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Timothy Dalton's first Bond film represents something of a milestone for the series, heralding a more serious Bond firmly rooted in Fleming, which continues to resonate today in the era of Daniel Craig.

Helfenstein's examination of the film begins with Ian Fleming's short story of the same name. The origins of the story lay in the murky landscape of 1960s' Berlin, the front line of the Cold War where defection, assassination, clandestine meetings, shady deals and acts of notorious individuals were a near-daily occurrence. As usual, Fleming distilled a tremendous amount of research into the story, having for example visited important locations, read up on the latest sports rifles, and perused catalogues of classical recordings for the perfect music to defect to. Fleming also took a personal interest in the illustration to accompany the story's publication in the Sunday Times Magazine. The image, a heart pierced by an arrow, had originally been considered for the dustjacket of The Spy Who Loved Me, and recalled the bleeding hearts motif of the Casino Royale first-edition cover art. Unfortunately for Fleming, the design was rejected for a second time.

Most of the Helfenstein's book, though, is naturally concerned with the film adaptation. After Roger Moore resigned from Bond duty in 1985, early drafts of the Bond film to follow A View to a Kill presented an origins story for Bond, taking him back to his time as an officer in the Royal Navy and his early brushes with British intelligence. Bond is introduced to the key personnel – M, Q and Moneypenny – and, 26 years before Skyfall, is returned to his ancestral home in Scotland. The ideas of Skyfall may seem radical, but their seeds were planted long before.

The treatment, however, was rejected, and screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G Wilson began work on what would become The Living Daylights. Helfenstein dispels the myth that screenplay was written with Roger Moore in mind, although it is notable that the film's story boards show a Bond that looks remarkably like (a youthful) Roger Moore.

But with Roger Moore hanging up his Walther PPK, who was going to play Bond? That Pierce Brosnan had actually been awarded the role before his commitments to the TV show Remington Steele pulled him away is well known, but there were a host of other candidates in the running. There were, as well, many more names mentioned by the press, which has served to confuse the history of the casting. While Helfenstein is correct to name Mark Greenstreet as one of the actors who auditioned for the role, I am not certain that his information on Trevor Eve is so accurate. Though the author, citing John Glen, names him as an official candidate, Trevor Eve, in response to my enquiries, told me that he was never screen-tested, though he did have an informal meeting with Barbara Broccoli.

Ultimately, the prize of playing Bond went to Timothy Dalton. Reading Helfenstein's book, one is reminded of just how committed Dalton was to the role. He read and analysed the Bond books for clues to his portrayal, and was quoted as saying that he approached the role with a responsibility to Fleming's writing. Dalton was keen to perform as much stuntwork as he could (“I was terrified”, said second-unit director Arthur Wooster), while director of photography, Alec Mills, remembered Dalton's intensity: “You really believed he was going to kill him [Koskov]”.

For director John Glen, filming in Austria reacquainted him with the locations of The Third Man, on which he was assistant editor, and these, along with the shared themes of subterfuge and intrigue, allowed Glen to repeat some of the tricks of The Third Man and in places give The Living Daylights the look of a classic film-noir.

The Living Daylights opened to very healthy ticket sales and a generally favourable reaction. Helfenstein has assembled a collection of reviews, both positive and negative, that remarkably could have been written today in response to any of Daniel Craig's films. Variety thought the film a “cut above the series norm of super-hero fantasy”, while Time suggested that “the film forfeits sniggering humor [sic] to accentuate action and character.” Some of the negative reviews focused on the villains, who were thought not sufficiently larger than life or deadly enough, and pointed to the film's relative lack of humour. “Fight scenes are conducted in grim silence and in the most swift and expedient fashion”, wrote the BBC's Tom Coates.

Charles Helfenstein's book, lavishly illustrated, is a superb achievement, and deserves to be read by every Bond aficionado. In light of Daniel Craig's portrayal, the book also reminds us that, while Timothy Dalton's Bond was not necessarily ahead of its time – The Living Daylights packed  cinemas and Dalton's tenure was assured into the 1990s – the direction in which Craig's films have been taken was a path first trodden back in 1986/87 (and indeed intermittently through the Pierce Brosnan era).

Almost Bond

The actor Mark Greenstreet screen-tested for the role of James Bond in The Living Daylights in 1986 when Roger Moore retired from the part after completing A View to a Kill (1985). He came very close to winning the role, but it ultimately went to Timothy Dalton. In 2006, I spoke to Mark about his brush with the world of 007.

Mark Greenstreet rose to prominence in the BBC TV series Bret Farrar. This English country-estate-set crime drama, broadcast in 1986, starred Mark in the title role of a man persuaded to pretend to be a long-lost son to help claim a family fortune, but is then implicated in the murder of the man he impersonates. The drama was a hit in the US, and Mark soon drew the attention of producer Cubby Broccoli. Some may have considered Mark, then 25 years old, to be a little young for Bond, but Mark saw the influence of the teen-orientated ‘Brat Pack’ films and its large fan-base in Broccoli’s interest.

After watching all the Bond films to prepare himself, Mark was interviewed at EON’s Mayfair office by Barbara Broccoli, Michael G Wilson, and associate producer Tom Pevsner. Then it was off to the costumer to be fitted with the regulation dinner suit, and to be supplied with the spy’s essential accessory – a gun holster.

The screen test took place at Pinewood in front of Cubby Broccoli, director John Glen, and the main film crew. For tests, Glen always recreated scenes from Dr No and From Russia With Love. As Bond, Mark shot the duplicitous Professor Dent and seduced Tatiana Romanova (played by Fiona Fullerton) in a steamy bedroom scene. He also had to do some fighting and order breakfast. If only for a day, Mark was James Bond. Time enough, though for a surreal meeting in the toilets with Michael Biehn, who was at Pinewood filming Aliens and also in character.

The test went well, and Mark had a lovely time, but there his involvement with Bond ended. A case, perhaps of so close, and yet so Farrar. But if he had won the part, what would Mark Greenstreet’s Bond have been like? Mark thought that the later films were missing a hard edge. ‘When Connery slapped a woman, you felt like she wanted it’, he told me. Chances are, then, that Mark’s portrayal would have been closer to Sean Connery than Roger Moore. The actor who did become Bond, Timothy Dalton, took a similar approach, and his performance in The Living Daylights (1987) was lauded. It seems that after the Moore years, a relatively serious portrayal was inevitable as a trend to return to the roots of Fleming’s James Bond began to hold sway.