It's a tough job but...

1963

My first year in London as assistant editor of the Rank Organisation’s Showtime Magazine.

First assignment: Catching up with the Beatles on the last day of A Hard Day’s Night (doing the jumping in a field near Twickenham Studios).

Next: Watching Sean Connery make Goldfinger (ironically delivering a line about the Beatles to Shirley Eaton).

Next: Interviewing Honor Blackman at home. One helluva week! I recall the school clock opposite her Hammersmith apartment striking 12.

High noon! Good timing - she’d just got up.

“Night-clubbing until 4.30,” she explained, curling up on her sofa.

She’d been on the UK screen scene since 1947 - a long wait for fame.

“Our writers just don’t seem able to write for women. It was a fight to get Cathy Gale’s character approved in The Avengers. Same for Pussy Galore. She’s a fascinating creature, the least predictable of all of Bond’s flames. As for James, it would be very square of me to knock his bad traits - viciousness, ruthlessness with women... That’s why we like him, isn’t it? He’s rather a gorgeous type to have a wild affair with. A weekend in Paris, say. No more than that. You couldn’t pin him down.”

Tony Crawley Photos © Media Bis 2010 www.crawleyscasting calls.com