The terrifying moment Roger Moore “flung a chair” at a Bond girl: “One day, I snapped”
It’s impossible to state a case for it being among the best in the long-running series, but the final stand of Roger Moore as James Bond in A View to a Kill nonetheless occupies a unique place in the franchise’s history.
Of course, the most notable is that it marked the leading man’s seventh and final stint under the tuxedo, which was at least a couple of movies too late. The Moore era gradually kept slipping further and further towards self-parody, with the actor far too long in the tooth at 57 to be convincing.
The studio did try to replace him several times before then, though, with Timothy Dalton rejecting the opportunity long before he was eventually hired because he didn’t care for the creative direction. In addition, David Warbeck was contracted in the event Moore vacated the part, James Brolin screen-tested, and Mel Gibson knocked it back.
The title track by Duran Duran made its own slice of history as the first Bond theme to top the Billboard ‘Hot 100’ charts. David Bowie was publicly announced as the villainous Max Zorin in early promotional materials before dropping out to be replaced by Christopher Walken, and A View to a Kill also marked the on-screen debut of Dolph Lundgren.
At the time, the future Rocky IV star and action hero was the bodyguard and boyfriend of Grace Jones, who exuded menacing charisma as Zorin’s second-in-command, May Day, following in a long and proud tradition of Bond girls being given immensely stupid names. Although the two ended up on good terms, Moore found himself growing increasingly frustrated by Jones early on during production, with her habit of blasting loud music at their shared accommodation causing him to lose his temper.
“Every day in her dressing room, she played very loud rock music that made the walls shake. An afternoon nap was out of the question,” he wrote in his autobiography My Word is My Bond: A Memoir. “I did ask her several times to turn it down, to no avail.”
Deciding that action needed to be taken, Moore stormed down to Jones’ residence with vengeance on his mind. “One day, I snapped. I marched into her room, yanked the plug out, and then flung a chair at the wall,” he continued. “The dent is still there.”
One man who was never a fan of Moore, was his predecessor in the bond role, Sean Connery who thought Moore was, aside from the off-stage issues, was a caricature of what James bond should be while under the spotlight. “I played Bond with the reality, credibility, and hopefully still encompassing stance and effect and what have you, and out of it some indigenous humour,” Connery said. “And anything that happens is possible. I feel that Roger – which I think he may have inherited in part from after Diamonds Are Forever, where they were already getting into that area of too much hardware – that that was more important.”
Connery struggled giving away the role, and clearly did not enjoy Moore’s performances, and how much they had diverged from the Bond he had created. “His is a sort of parody of the character, as it were, so you would go for the laugh or the humour at whatever the cost of the credibility or the reality,” Connery continued to note of Moore’s efforts. “I think that’s basically the difference. I think he took another direction with it that way and acquired an entirely different audience.”
Fortunately, it didn’t cause any bad blood between the two, with Moore going on to reveal that when they were preparing to shoot their love scene in A View to a Kill, Jones sprung a surprise by “bringing with her an enormous black sex toy”. If there’s one way to respond to a co-star launching a chair across a hotel room, bringing a dildo on set is it.
