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

Sylva Koscina , the best Bond girl that never was !

Sylva Koscina was the best Bond Girl that never was...

She was so nearly Daniela Bianchi in From Russia With Love, 1963. And Claudine Auger in Thunderball, 1965.

Sylva was missed, not miffed.

Her attitude was, win some, lose some. And she adored the UK films she did make, for producer Betty Box (who turned down the Bond franchise), including her copy-Bond, Deadlier Than The Male, with one of the many nearly-007s, Richard Johnson ( NdA : one my all time personnal Bond ripp off favourite ) . Sylva, a Yugoslav-born Italian star, was perfect Fleming material.

Maybe a tad too hot... “As you can see, I dress simply in my private life. Cinema - is different. I invented the topless look, you know. In Three Tales of Love, with Rossano Brazzi. Very easy for me to wear a transparent halter like that. A bra I do not need. Today, no. Maybe in a few years... I don’t lke them. They are cumbersome, ugly, no? Not feminine at all. The only time I wear a bra is when I have to take one off in the movies! This is not exhibitionism. This is my work.”

Yes, ma’am. Tony Crawley [Every 007 film has a page on Tony’s website, crawleyscasting calls.com]

The name's Taylor...Rod Taylor ...Who ?

Cannes, 1997

There was one helluva lotta interest in Welcome To Woop-Woop at the 50th Cannes festival.

It was another off-beat Australian movie from Stephan Elliott, flamboyant director of the highly successful Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, in 1994.

Woop-Woop, however, was the sound of instant vomit.

A major (and quite delirious) disappointment.

No matter, it had served my purpose. It had brought the craggy Aussie, Rod Taylor - the Russell Crowe of his hey-day - back to Europe.

We’d not sunk a schooner or two together for 28 years. Back in 1969 was when he’d summed up his movies for me (The Birds, Zabriskie Point, The Time Machine, The Mercenaries) as “the usual Rod Taylor bullshit.”
Now he had a bigger surprise...

The cowardly British spy, Boysie Oakes, in The Liquidator (by John Gardner, no less) had not been the only spy offered to him when he was a hot Rod. “I’m sure I never told you this before, but back in the 60s Cubby Broccoli - dear old Cubby! - said he had something for me. I should do a test. He had these books written by Ian Fleming. Whaddyer mean, I yelled, a fucking TV series? No fucking way!”
Taylor laughed, cracked open another bottle. “I should be shot in the head.”

Tony Crawley
Photo © Tony Crawley
[Every 007 film has a page on Tony’s website, crawleyscasting calls.com]

The name's Warbeck...David Warbeck...Who ?

1973
This time Sean was gone. For good. (Well, never say never...)
To take over Live And Let Die, Hollywood wanted McQueen, Newman or Redford. (Honest!) Pat McGoohan still refused.
Cubby checked Michael McStay, Simon Oates and John Ronane while waiting for Roger Mortuary to be free.
When he wasn’t... well, I ran into David Warbeck promoting his awful Russ Meyer flick, Black Snake ( NdA : still worth seeing ...But not for Warbeck ! ) .
A New Zealander of Scots descent, David was a London schoolteacher between acting gigs.
He had great news for me.
If Roger wasn’t free of The Persuaders, it would be Bond, David Bond. “That’s what they tell me.”
We did an interview, to be released as soon as his news became official.
It didn’t.
On holiday in Menton, I saw a British paper: THE SAINT IS NEW 007. Damn!
Warbeck would be considered again (twice) and became (a) totally ignored by UK films and (b) a star of Roman rip-offs of Bond/Rambo/Indy, whatever action hero was hot.
He was also James Coburn’s pal in Sergio Leone’s Duck You Sucker!
In one spaghetti thriller, Warbeck actually said: “You’re muddling me with Roger Moore.”
Nice guy, nice try... but not quite.

Tony Crawley
[Every 007 film has a page on Tony’s website, crawleyscasting calls.com]

Terence Cooper , the perfect Bond ?

1966.

The call was so secret even the phone bell sounded muffled. “Ya wanna meet the new 007? And be first in the world to interview him?”

Sure! When, where? “Call ya soon.”

That’s how I met Terence Cooper, one of the caboodle of Bonds in the four-ringed circus of the first Casino Royale.

He’d been waiting in the SIS corridors for ten years to be 007.

“When producer Kevin McClory tried to get Bond on the screen,” he told me in Gerry’s Bar (where else?), “he had a contract with... guess who’s name on it? No, not Sean’s. Mine.

In 1957 ! Five years before Dr. No. Sean doesn’t play the part right.

Me? Just hope I get across OK without tripping over the flaming carpet.”

Very Bondian - a falling black comma of hair; sent down from Oxford for “various irregular activities” - Cooper called himself the greatest con-man. (Or second, after McClory).

He almost punched out Casino producer Charles Feldman when they met at the Pickwick Club. “Thought he was making a pass at my girlfriends.”

No, he gave Cooper a seven-year contract, rising from £250 to £1,000 a week.

“Why? I don’t know. I was always very rude to him, so he didn’t know what to make of me. But, as all the other people who treated him like that happened to have great talent, Charlie probably mistook me for being a tremendous actor.”

Charlie wuz wrong!

Tony Crawley - www.crawleyscastingcalls.com

Girls, ( Golden ) Gun & Gizmos : The James Bond London Science Museum Exhibition Press Day ! - Oct.2002

Or...How I got the cold shoulder from Honor Blackman ( and I'm still wondering why to this day ! )

Back in Autumn 2002 , the usual Bond craziness engulfed the World Medias .
I was hired by a TV production company to cover the Press day of the 007 London Science Museum exhibition - the very first of its kind in Europe , where Eon graciously displayed props, sketches , vehicles and various gadgets used in the James Bond films since 1962...

Add to this a string of super guests stars ( Sir Christopher Lee, various Bond girls ) and the -rare- presence of both Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson together and you'll probably understand why I was drooling like Tex Avery's proverbial wolf ...

Being ' French TV ' , we were given the red carpet treatment and I joyously passed from one Celebrity guest to another , followed by my faifhfull cameraman , to get the most of the unique day .
We were lucky enough to get sweet Caroline Munro , the producer himself - Mickey G - who even called his half-sister to join us ( she declined as usual , being notoriously shy of the medias . Damnit...) , Sir Christopher Lee ,etc.,etc...

But there was someone I had never met so far in the assembly .
A Bond girl of legend , former P.A of a certain Mr Goldfinger ...
So , with my usual French charm , I decided to ask Mrs Honor Blackman a quick interview .
Haven't figured out to this day what happened then, but the lady quickly shot back a stern ' no ' and then headed straight to the toilets ( overdose of petits fours ? ) .

We were really flabbergasted by her behaviour - and even more so when learning later a James Bond Fan friend of mine had managed that very morning to get her pic taken right besides Mrs Pussy Galore ( hated when this happen...To others ! ) .

Incidentally , this kind of ' thank you , but no thank you ' behaviour also occured to me with ...George Lazenby , when trying to interview him at the 2002 Ian Fleming Foundation Stoke Park Anniversary Golf course ...The guy politely told us ' please wait for me here ...' and we never saw him again of the whole day ...

Sometimes you asked yourself questions like ' what the hell do those people think they are ? '

Smelling a rat ?

According to Ian Lancaster Fleming , civil servant James Bond buys his eau de Toilettte and perfume at Floris .

I keep on wondering how the heck the guy has enough money to buy those ( and his tailored-made shirts , and his own brand of cigarettes , and , etc., etc... )

Perhaps the salaries at MI6 were astronomically high in the 50's ?

:D

Thanks to Julien Vialon for bringing back those samples from his latest London trip ...

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© 2010