George Lazenby

I meant to post this sooner, especially after I had posted about my friend’s story of meeting Timothy Dalton. He was telling me his Bond story after I told him about myself meeting Lazenby.

I deliver food to patients at a hospital and for three days George Lazenby was a patient. He’s all better now, you can see it on his social media.

Bringing breakfast in one morning when I saw this handsome older man and immediately I thought “oh shit that’s George Lazenby.”

I spoke with him a number of times during his stay and he would talk a lot about Australia and how he grew up. His uncle taught him to drive at six years old so he could pick up his dad who was working in town far away from where they lived.

He told me he sailed from England to Sicily after taking one sailing lesson the day before.

He told me how the helicopter pilot from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” let him fly down the mountain one day.

One day at lunch, he was pretty restless and wanted to get out of the hospital and he was like “I shouldn’t be here. I should be out racing cars!”

I got the full Lazenby experience in person, he was a very chatty fellow. In fact, the second time I spoke with him a speech therapist came in and said “Hi I’m with speech therapy. I wanted to see how you’re doing.” And as I was leaving the room, I thought yeah he doesn’t need her 😆

So without Lazenby in mind, what are your feelings about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service? What’s good and not so good around the film?

This is just a list for anyone out there who is into Bond age.

Yet their appearances as 007 are epochs apart.

Lazenby is the Bond actor that many fans of the series love to hate, solely because he only did one film. He wasn’t bad in the role— impressive considering he had never acted before! Lazenby had everything I think a Bond actor should have: a natural charm, good looks, assertiveness, and the ability to throw a good punch! Lazenby especially excelled at the latter. Even if you think Lazenby’s performance is a bit stiff at times, remember that it took the most of the other Bond actors about 3 films to really command the role. Connery really solidified his portrayal as Bond in his 3rd film “Goldfinger”; as did Moore in his 3rd “The Spy Who Loved Me”. I think if Lazenby had stayed with the role, he could have been a great Bond!! Thoughts?

In 1969, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, or OHMSS for short, was released. In it, Bond, who had been played by Sean Connery in the previous 5 films, was now played by George Lazenby. This would be the only time George Lazenby would play 007 as he would quit the role before the premiere of the movie.

Why would George Lazenby refuse the millions of dollars offered to him and leave the Bond franchise?

There were several factors. His agent had told him that the James Bond franchise would be outdated when the 70's arrived and that he'd be better off doing westerns.

He was also worried about being typecasted, fearing that people would only remember him as being James Bond. Ironically, the dude's best remembered for being the actor who played James Bond once.

And finally, he wasn't happy with how he was treated by the producers of the films, saying, "The producers made me feel like I was mindless. They disregarded everything I suggested simply because I hadn't been in the film business like them for about a thousand years."

George Lazenby now regrets his decision to leave the franchise after only one film but ultimately, bad advice and a big ego have robbed us of a proper continuation of OHMSS.

My friend and I have been watching all the Bond movies in release order, 2 at a time, since he'd never seen them. Today was YOLT and OHMSS. He's been going into them blind, and I thought it'd be fun to not warn him about OHMSS and see what his reaction was.

He asked me before we started, "is this Sean Connery's last one?" And I answered with a half-truth, "No, it's not his last one, that's the next one." Lol.

Anyways, that whole intro, my friend was like "oh he still has the cigarette case from YOLT, oh that's the rifle from FRWL," etc.

Then some confused silence when they show his chin. I think at this point he thought something was up, but didn't want to say anything out loud in case he was crazy.

When Bond starts running across the beach, he said "Woah, he runs a lot better in this one..."

Then on the full face reveal, I looked at him with a ":O" face, and he went "WHAT".

The physicality of the beach fight scene kinda blew him away, and even I felt like it was a refreshing jolt of energy over the last few we'd watched.

Then the opening credits started and I said "hahah i lied to you" and explained the story behind the casting, his mind was blown. He'd never heard of this guy, he thought there were only 5 bonds.

Anyways he loved the movie and we had a great time. For those curious, his current ranking so far is:

1. FRWL

2. TB

3. OHMSS

4. GF

5. YOLT

6. Dr. No

Just saw OHMSS for the first time and to be frank, I thought George wasn’t that bad. I’ve always heard how terrible and wooden he was but I don’t see it. Ok it’s not an Oscar worthy performance but the early Bond films were all like that. He def brought a real physicality to the role. And the end is heartbreaking. Honestly I think peoples main beef with him, was that he wasn’t Connery. It must have beeen hard being the first guy to replace Him. It’s a shame he didn’t come back. Usually it takes at least two films for the actor to really ‘Get’ Bond. And it would have been great to get an actual follow up to OHMSS