The Playboy and The James Bond

3 The Connery Bond

The next phase of the relationship between James Bond and Playboy began in November 1965. The Playboy issue celebrated Bond's inter- national popularity with the first Bond-themed cover, a Bond-related pictorial, plus an 'exclusive' interview with Sean Connery, the previously little-known Scottish-born actor who was already at this time firmly in the public consciousness as James Bond. This is the first of three chapters to use as a point of reference the 1965 November issue of Playboy, and these especially memorable Bond-themed magazine features. It is particularly notable that, following the box-office success of Goldfinger in 1964, and nearing the peak of what Time magazine labelled 'Bon- domania', when much of the world was going mad about Bond, Connery gave his only major interview during the filming of the fourth Bond film Thunderball (1965) to Playboy.1 This new phase of the Playboy-Bond connection signals a shift in attention away from Ian Fleming and towards the Bond films. With this in mind, this chapter will introduce how Playboy endorsed Connery's Bond as a contemporary role model both on and beyond the screen, and as an iconic embodiment of the playboy fantasy ideal that was being readily imagined.

Bond on the big screen

Prior to November 1965, Playboy had made only a few direct mentions of the Bond films, having focused mainly on developing a relationship with Fleming and the literary Bond. To begin with, in May 1963, the response from 'Playboy After Hours' to Dr No's (1962) release in America was less than enthusiastic. The opening of the review was decidedly

unpromising: 'James Bond, the secret agent whose international affairs brighten the course of British foreign affairs (and the current pages of Playboy), makes an inauspiciously hoked-up screen debut in Dr No.' This film review was in the same issue in which Playboy proudly presented the second instalment of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the first of the Fleming Bond books to be serialised in its pages. As yet though, the magazine demonstrated no such fondness for the screen Bond. 'In recent years, Ian Fleming's smoothy sleuth has given the old tough-guy dick a poke in his private eye', observed Playboy, 'but this Technicolor tingler doesn't do much to make it clear why a plentiful public (including JFK) have put their stock in Bond.' Fortunately, Dr No was not a total letdown in Playboy's opinion; the review ventured that 'Sean Connery, square-jawed and agile, makes a Bond who repays interest.' The beauty of the women of Bond was also an obvious attraction. Nonetheless, overall 'Playboy After Hours' could not recommend the first Bond film to Playboy readers. The review regretfully concluded that 'the super- chromatic Technicolor and the farfetched, far-from-super script make one sadly shake his head. No.'2

Following this disappointment about Dr No, when From Russia with Love (1963) was released in America the next year, Playboy considered that the second Bond film was happily 'superior to number one'. Where the review of Dr No had ruled the film's approach to Bond to be impos- sibly over-the-top, the reaction to From Russia with Love was more approving of the spectacular way that the novels were being adapted for the screen. 'The episodes are strung together like sausage links: just when you think it's over, along comes another tasty hunk of baloney' joked 'Playboy After Hours'. The review ended with the rhetorical question: 'But what's wrong with baloney when it's this enjoyable?'3

In these and other reviews Playboy noticed that there were some differences between the Bond books that many of its readers enjoyed and the new Bond films being made by Eon Productions. The previous chapter described how the Bond films were funded by US film studio United Artists, and that this was part of a wider trend in the 1960s of American-financed, British-registered co-productions, aimed at an international market. This was one of several factors that influenced the style and tone of the early Bond films, which depended on action and thrills to give entertainment value, adding some topical references and a sense of humour. When compared with later additions to the