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George Lazenby

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George Lazenby as James Bond 007.
George Lazenby as James Bond 007.

George Robert Lazenby (born 5 September, 1939) is an Australian actor best known for portraying James Bond in the 1969 film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Contents

Biography

George Lazenby was born in Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia, and served in the Australian Army Special forces and as a military unarmed combat instructor. He moved to London in 1964; working as a car salesman and as a model, then as an advertising actor, by 1968, he was the highest-paid male model in the world (reportedly, in 1967, he made £40,000 directly from modeling, and £60,000 from commercials and product endorsements—equivalent to more than one million pounds in 2004); he was also the European Marlboro Man. In the 1970s he worked in Hong Kong with Bruce Lee; a planned luncheon meeting with Lee and Raymond Chow to discuss a movie project collapsed, with Lee's sudden death. Despite having starred in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), the combined gross earnings of which exceeded $100 million worldwide in the 1970s (then the standard establishing an actor as a box office success), Lazenby's career never flourished.

He then focused on business and real estate investments and ended up owning mansions in Hawaii, Brentwood, California, Australia, and a 600-acre (2.4 km²) ranch estate in Valyermo, California, a small town about 17 miles southeast of Palmdale, California; he also owns a portside penthouse apartment in Hong Kong, and an estate home in Maryland. In 2002, he married his second wife, former tennis player Pam Shriver; they have three children, George, born 12 July, 2004, and twins Caitlin Elizabeth and Samuel Robert, born October 2005; he also has an adult daughter, Melanie, from his first marriage to Christina "Chrissie" Gannett Lazenby. Lazenby also sired a son, Zack, with his first wife, who died of brain cancer in 1994. Lazenby's first wife, Christina Gannett, is heiress to the Gannett Newspaper Publishing empire.

Today, Lazenby enjoys sailing, motorcycle racing, car racing, reading, watching movies, playing golf, and playing tennis.

James Bond

Although he had previously worked in TV advertising and an Italian B-movie spy movie, George Lazenby's first serious acting role was as James Bond in the film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Lazenby is the second, official actor to portray the British secret agent, following Sean Connery, who had become a cultural icon in the role. Lazenby had a difficult task in filling these shoes, and nearly everything about his portrayal of Bond has been controversial. The film's producers, perhaps mistrusting Lazenby's ability to carry the picture, took the unusual step of overdubbing Lazenby's voice with that of George Baker in major scenes in which Bond impersonated Baker's character. The technique had never been used in a Bond film for a leading actor whose first language was English. It was rumoured that Lazenby had been "difficult to work with". Lazenby subsequently admitted that he had neither the maturity nor the experience to completely understand the studio system.[[Citing sources citation needed]] According to an interview with Lazenby, the difficulties were due to director Peter R. Hunt refusing to talk directly to Lazenby after Lazenby was too brusque in passing on a request that Hunt's friends clear a set before filmingInterview in Bondage, magazine of the James Bond 007 Fan Club. Allegedly, there also were personality conflicts with leading lady, Diana Rigg, who, despite playing a supporting role to Lazenby, already was an established star. However, according to director Hunt, these rumours are untrue and there were no such difficulties—or else they were minor—and that he would have agreed to direct Diamonds are Forever if Lazenby had accepted the contract. [Retrovision magazine interview with Peter R. Hunt] . During the production, Lazenby's manager, Ronan O'Rahilly, talked him into refusing a seven-movie contract on grounds that the James Bond character was out of touch with the times.

Lazenby's performance as James Bond is controversial. Most viewers appreciate his athletic prowess in the part, especially in action scenes where it is obvious he did many of his own stunts, but many have been dismissive, even hostile toward his interpretation of Bond. In retrospect, to a degree, Sean Connery's intense following among Bond film fans has reduced Lazenby's estimation. Moreover, viewers tend either to find Lazenby's laconic style cold-blooded, at times callow and humorless, or else perfectly appropriate to the character of a violent, determined and superficially charming spy. Certainly, Lazenby's James Bond is a man less amused by life than was Connery's, less accessible, more a man who lives from ruse to ruse, more stoic and resigned. Until he falls in love, he is a hedonist without pleasure. There is evidence that this characterization of Bond was deliberate: Lazenby's first line as Bond, after the woman whose life he saves drives away, was the quip, "This never happened to the other fellow," a reference to Connery, whose Bond conspicuously never failed at seduction. Moreover, director Hunt has stated in an interview that "I was very insistent that we stay with the story of the book", and that he repeatedly reshot scenes were he was unhappy with Lazenby's portrayal of emotion [Retrovision magazine interview with Peter R. Hunt] .

Commercially, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is widely believed to have paled in comparison to the previous Bond film You Only Live Twice and to the following, Diamonds Are Forever (both featured Sean Connery as James Bond); this has been partly attributed to a poor publicity campaign. In fact, the film was not much less successful than You Only Live Twice, taking about 80% the box office gross with 74% of the budget [IMDB business data for On Her Majesty's Secret Service] [IMDB business data for You Only Live Twice] , and was the second highest grossing film of 1969. (It also been suggested that it was partly arresting a slide in what was at the time a declining franchise; receipts for You Only Live Twice already reflected a substantial decline from the previous hit Thunderball, yet, in comparison, the receipts for On Her Majesty's Secret Service declined at a lesser rate than did those of You Only Live Twice). When adjusted for inflation, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the median performer of the entire James Bond franchise.

Critical response to On Her Majesty's Secret Service remains sharply divided, affecting estimates of George Lazenby's potential as James Bond. It follows the plot of the novel more closely than did the other film adaptations of the eponymous source novels, including serious dramatic subject matter pivotal to the development of Bond's character: Bond's contemplated resignation from MI6; his comically botched impersonation of a sexually ascetic genealogist at a mountaintop allegies clinic for beautiful young women; and his brief, tragic marriage to the daughter of a Corsican crime syndicate leader. American movie reviewer Leonard Maltin has suggested that had Sean Connery held the leading role, On Her Majesty's Secret Service would have epitomised the series.

Lazenby has portrayed James Bond several times through the years in numerous parodies and unofficial 007 roles, most notably the 1983 TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, titled "Diamonds Aren't Forever".

Selected filmography

George Lazenby 1968.
George Lazenby 1968.

External links

References


Preceded by:
Sean Connery
1962–1967 		James Bond actor
1969 		Followed by:
Sean Connery
1971

 

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