How Walt Disney charmed Sean Connery on his first visit to Hollywood
Picture the scene: James Bond and Walt Disney go to the races in Ireland. Sounds a bit surreal, right? Well, it’s exactly what happened in 1959 when Sean Connery starred in Darby O’Gill and the Little People for Walt Disney Productions – and Walt himself took a shine to the ruggedly handsome young Scot.
Throughout the 1950s, Connery plied his trade in British theatre and television. He had bit parts in musicals and now-forgotten TV shows like Sailor of Fortune and Dixon of Dock Green. He also reportedly had an encounter with infamous US gangster Johnny Stompanato on the set of the film Another Time, Another Place. The tall, strapping Connery allegedly knocked the criminal on his backside after he pulled a gun on his girlfriend – and Connery’s co-star – Lana Turner.
After five years in the theatre, Connery graduated from punching out gangsters to punching out pugilists in the live BBC Television production of Requiem for a Heavyweight. His performance as boxer ‘Mountain’ McLintock – a role that originated on US TV by Jack Palance – caught the attention of Hollywood, and soon he was signed up for a contract with Fox.
Much to Connery’s chagrin, though, he didn’t wind up doing much of anything with Fox, and the studio simply loaned him out to Disney to make Darby O’Gill in 1959. Amusingly, Connery claims that when he turned up at the Disney studio in Burbank, California, in his blue Ford Impala convertible, the security guards didn’t want to let him in because they had no idea who he was. Eventually, though, he was granted access, and on his first day of shooting, he met head honcho Disney himself.
Disney reportedly gave Connery a tour of the studio, and they got on like a house on fire. Then, when the movie was released in Ireland, he and his leading man visited the races together for a day out. In 1996, while promoting The Rock – which was produced by Walt Disney Studios and distributed by subsidiary Buena Vista – Connery was asked about the animation legend. He said, “I found him absolutely charming”, and added that, back in those days, Disney was “a very harmonious studio”.
One of Connery’s funnier recollections, though, was of an area of the studio that would likely be branded problematic today. He chuckled: “When I went there – it must be 38 years ago, now – there was a place called ‘The Nunnery,’ where there were women making all the pen drawings, and no men were allowed in there”. Other Disney employees have vouched for Connery’s claim over the years, including animator Jack Kinney, who intimated that the male and female artists were separated because it was frowned upon to “dip your pen in the company ink”.
Disney reportedly took such a liking to Connery that he followed his career closely over the next seven years until his death in 1966. It must have amused him to see Connery land the role that would define his career. Undoubtedly, Disney would have enjoyed watching the four iconic Bond films Connery starred in between 1962 and 1965: Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball.
