The James Bond scene that nearly killed Sean Connery: “Cubby Broccoli’s idea”
Despite the near-constant investment, the untold betting figures and about as much interest as any franchise can be given without a single movie or series confirmed to be on the way, it is still somewhat unimaginable just how much people desire James Bond.
Apart from the fact that the secret agent tells people his first and last name whenever he meets them, the character of Bond is thought of with affectionate terms by almost everybody. Over the years, he has developed and matured, and now is pitched more as a tortured hero than a quipping action master. However, actually becoming James Bond is a matter usually reserved for the imagination of young children.
Donning his famed tuxedo, lifting a golden gun and dispatching enemies of the crown is a role which almost everybody in the world has fantasised over but never been able to enact in any real capacity, save for a few lucky actors who have been given 007’s attire and coveted license in a host of beloved movies. If one man is the most intrinsically linked to Bond other than its author, Ian Fleming, then it must be Sean Connery.
Considered by a large majority of Bond fans to be the defining on-screen version of the secret agent, though others may argue that Daniel Craig has done some fine work in challenging him, Connery’s role as Bond epitomised the growth of Britain’s cultural sway in the mid-20th century. Charming, suave, witty and ultimately undeniably chic, Connery was a man about town that was hard to bring down.
In more recent years, Connery’s turn as Bond, which was as flecked with unwelcomed misogyny as it was flying bullets, has been somewhat marred, both by the changing times and the actor’s unwillingness to change with them as he neared the end of his life. While his position as an untouchable icon has certainly been tarnished, Connery’s Bond is still not without its value.
Across five different movies, Connery gave a defining performance as the agent, but it was not without its peril. Bond is one of the most action-packed pieces of cinema around, and when Connery was at the helm, these stunts were largely performed with practical effects, unlike Daniel Craig’s incarnation. It means Connery’s Bond, with the actor always enjoying performing his own stunts, was always under just that little more stress.
During a particular scene in the filming of Dr No in Jamaica, Connery almost lost his life. The movie was hot on a shoestring budget of $1million and saw as many corners cut as humanly possible. Terence Young, a producer on set, remembered the near-death experience: “He’s very lucky to be alive. We damn near killed him. When we rehearsed it, he drove about five or ten miles an hour, just to see if he could go under it, and he cleared it by about four inches.”
A run-through in the bag, it was time to kick things up a notch. “But as we were shooting it,” explained Young to Rolling Stone, “he was coming at 40, 50 miles an hour —and he suddenly realised the car was bouncing two feet up in the air, and there he was with his head sticking out. It so happened that the last bounce came just before he reached the thing and he went down and under — or he would’ve been killed.”
A unique set of bumps on the road is the kind of unlikely moment that many would point to as a mark of the wretched, farfetchedness of James Bond as a concept that actually happened to Connery and, by the sounds of things, saved his life. But, for Connery, it was all in good fun.
“If I remember correctly, going under the crane was [famed bon producer] Cubby Broccoli’s idea. Maybe,” Connery said to the publication, with a figurative wink and nod to their pair’s frosty relationship. “He’d paid very heavy insurance beforehand,” he quipped.
Thankfully, Connery survived the ordeal and made four more James Bond movies after the 1962 effort. His position as one of the untouchable men of the 1960s may have soured over the years, and, like Bond, he would have likely needed a welcomed social tune-up, but his position as the ultimate James Bond actor feels unlikely to slip just yet.
