Sean Connery 2

from V JUNE/JULY 1988 This is also the Sean Connery who for years was bottled in Bond, frustrated because no one knew-nor seemed to careabout what he could do besides "kiss kiss bang bang." No wonder he ealled Agent 007 "a cross, a privilege, a joke and as bloody intrusive as a nightmare." Although the role made him a star in 1962's Dr. No, his Bond was so sueeessfuland so merehandisable-it obscured his identity. "There are theater owners throughout the world who still think James Bond is the name of an actor," one of the film series' produeers said in 1973. "They never heard of Sean Connery."

Yet Connery knew they were his features on the tiny Bond doll that shot daggers out of its shoes; his portrayal being parodied in Bond Bread commereials and used to sell "official" 007 items: raincoats, lingerie, toilet paper. He was the one hounded by the press in restaurants, stores, even bathrooms. So he quit, saying goodbye to 007 in 1967, and headed toward critical respectability-a trip with its lows to be sure, but which reached a high this year with an Oscar for his work in The Untouchables. The performance is no surprise, though the belated recognition is.

Connery has played a very diverse lot in his 40 non-Bond films: a monk- The Name of the Rose (1986); a coal miner-The Molly Maguires (1970); an Arab-The Next Man (1976); a cowboy-Shalako (1968); an Antarctic explorer-The Red Tent (1971); a Norwegian hostage negotiator -The Terrorists (1975); a playboy murderer- Woman of Straw (1964); and a soon-to-be murdered Greek king-Time Bandits (1981). The names have been as varied as the parts: Zed the Exterminator-Zardoz (1974); Duke AndersonThe Anderson Tapes (1971); Robin Hood-Robin and Marian (1976); Patrick Hale- Wrong Is Right (1982); Danny Dravot-The Man Who Would Be King (1975); Raisuli the Magnificent The Wind and the Lion (1975); Samson Shillitoe-A Fine Madness (1966); and, of course, Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables. But for all their diversity, these roles are connected by the same threads and colored by Connery's perspective on life.

Connery in Goldfinger

  Is it, for example, the actor or the character O'Neil-an outer space marshal in 1981's Outland who says: "They sent me to this pile of .... because they think I belong here. I want to find out, well, if they're right. There's a whole machine that works because everybody does what they're supposed to. I've found out I was supposed to be something I didn't like. That's my rotten little part in the rotten machine. I don't like it, so I'm going to find out if they're right."

This is the voice of a man testing himself, fighting his own fears and failures in an odds-against effort to succeed. He is frightened, yet he goes on, much as Malone-the cop in The Untouchables goes on in spite of age, and fear, and the near certainty of death. There are some things worth doing no matter what the cost.

Born Thomas Connery in Edinburgh on August 25, 1930, he came from a rough, workingclass background. "We weren't starving or anything," he once noted. "Father used to work too hard for that-from nine in the morning until nine at night. But we had just one cold water tap in the place, no hot water, no bathroom. We had to eat, dress and wash in the kitchen, and my brother had to sleep there, too. Looking back now, I suppose they were pretty tough conditions but we didn't think so at the time. It was the only life we knew."

He quit school at 15 and, after a stint in the Navy, began acting almost by accident, as a lark auditioning for a touring production of South Pacific. He got a chorus part and by the end of the run he was hooked. He became obsessed with succeeding. "Lots of young actors are dead keen to become a star," observed an early acting teacher. "Lots of young actors are also dead lazy. Sean had a real insatiable desire to learn the business. Later, when people looked at the cool urbanity of Bond and the huge success, they said, 'Wow, that was easy for him.' But, by God, it was sweat and tears all the way."  

Ad for 1970s reissue of two Bonds.

While Bond made him, Connery was determined, even at the beginning, to balance the spy with other parts, "I didn't want to only be known as Sean Connery, the man who plays James Bond," he remarked in 1965. "I wanted to be known as Sean Connery, the actor. Don't think this is because I don't like James Bond. I love him, The character has been wonderful for me."

But the celluloid marriage soured, though not from Bond's intolerance of Connery's "infidelities." 1964's Marnie, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, was one of Connery's more prestigious non-Bond roles in this pel'iod. Although the film was a critical and commercial flop, Connery is riveting as a man searching for the secret of his wife's past, displaying the fierce, almost brutal magnetism that became his trademark.

Connery would parlay those same qualities into critical raves for A Fine Madness (1966), a comedy in which he portrays Samson Shillitoe, a workingclass poet in New York City who constantly rails against hypocrisy. He is powerful, flamboyant, foolish and vibrant-in fact, it's the first film in which he seems to let himself go, as though the character's search for "art" has freed the artist portraying him. It is no coincidence Connery's non-Bond characters have been concerned with truth and integrity.

He often talks about honesty and straight-dealing; at such times, he could easily be reciting dialogue from The Anderson Tapes, his first popular success after Bond. In the film, he plays Duke Anderson, a balding safecracker just released from 10 years in prison; a man who, according to one character, is "always hammering on locked doors."

Something about this sort of role must appeal to Connery-why else play an aging Robin Hood trying to recapture his youth in Robin and Marian? Or a frightened cop defying the system in Outland and The Untouchables? After The Anderson Tapes, continuing success remained elusive. He returned to Bond, briefly, in 1971 and then made a string of flops, notable mostly for dealing with typical Connery issues: The Offence (originally titled Something Like the Truth) and Zardoz are about self-discovery, while The Terrorists is about betrayal. Then in 1975, Connery's 007 "identity" was finally overshadowed by the acclaim for his performances in two films: The Wind and the Lion and The Man Who Would Be King.  

Zardoz

In Wind, he is Raisuli, a 1904 Berber chieftain who creates an international incident by kidnapping an American widow and her children. Connery's broad smile, his lyrical speech, his vibrant laugh, all make him a hero in the tradition of Flynn and Gable, imperious yet slightly self-mocking.

But The Man Who Would Be King won Connery his greatest accolades. Wrote Pauline Kael in The New Yorker: "With the glorious exceptions of Brando and Olivier, there's no screen actor I'd rather watch than Sean Connery. His vitality may make him the most richly masculine of all English-speaking actors."

He continued to refine his persona with the beautiful, touching Robin and Marian, shot in six weeks by Richard Lester in 1976. The movie, about a middle-aged Robin Hood's return to Sherwood Forest 20 years after his youth, is a meditation on love, ideals, hope and glory-and about coming to terms with who you are. "I've hardly lost a battle and I don't know what I've won," complains Robin, a man of simple beliefs who himself is not simple. He is strong but vulnerable, all-knowing but innocent. He is, in short, the personification of the Connery hero. "I like contrast," Connery recently told the New York Times, "I like it when an actor looks one thing and conveys something else, perhaps something diametrically opposite."

Hunt for Red October

Connery also likes to be involved in every step of a film's creation. In Outland and Wrong Is Right, he helped on the rewrites. In The Man Who Would Be King, he and costar Michael Caine developed much of the characters' comic business. On Five Days One Summer, director Fred Zinnemann accepted "95 percent" of Connery's ideas for script changes. Connery's concern with the big picture extends beyond picture-making. In 1972, he established the Scottish Educational Trust fund for the underprivileged Scots and takes great care in helping friends; he reportedly took a small role in Highlander (thus lending the film his "bankability") as a favor to the director, a Scot and a chum.

But his life is his own. "It's hard to get to know him," observes director Terry Gilliam, "He's very charming and very pleasant and every night in Morocco [where Connery's sequences in Time Bandits were filmed] we had dinner together. It was just one of those things, you never felt you quite got the guy, He knows how to protect the privacy he's got."

In fact, when he married his second wife, French artist Micheline Roquebrune (whom he met playing golf), his only comment was: "I confirm she is French and we are married. End of subject."

The last two films before The Untouchables, Five Days One Summer and The Name of the Rose, both explore many of Connery's favorite themes. In the first, a bittersweet love story, he is an older man-practical, honest-caught up in an obsessive, passionate love affair with his 22-year-old niece. He offers the role sadness, anger, self-deceit, self-knowledge and humor.

It is this last quality which helps the character to stay virile and alive no matter what he does and, for Connery, no matter what he plays. It is laughter which helps keep life's inequities in perspective and which lends Connery's people much of their appeal. "Laughter is particular to man," observes his William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose, based on the bestselling mystery story set in the Middle Ages. As William, he is a 12th century monk more in !ove with truth than faith, a man who understands theconflicts and contradictions of life and what really gives it meaning: "How peaceful life would be without love. How safe, how tranquil. And how dull."

The Terrorists

To read these words is to hear Connery say them, with irony, melancholy and passion. That we can do this is a measure of how effective an actor he has become and why, though Kevin Costner is the hero of The Untouchables, Connery is the star. When he departs, the movie loses its form, its life. He is impressive and powerful as the frightened, frightening cop who carries a cross of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes-and asks Eliot Ness: "What are you prepared to do [to achieve your ends]?"

It is a question Connery must constantly ask himself as the actor whom British critic Neil Sinyard has correctly dubbed "the acceptable face of heroism in an anti-heroic age." For Connery, life means believing in yourself and "something like the truth." Trite? Simple? Only if you discount what Connery has accomplished; only if you ignore the man himself who, in typical style, listed as his life's goals: "I hope to work, support my children and die quietly without pain."

 

The Ten Best Un-Bond Performances

The Wind and the Lion

 

The Untouchables 1987. Kevin Costner, Robert VeNiro. Vir. Brian de Palma. 119 mins. CC. Paramount (R). $89.95. De Palma's ode to shotgun justice brought Connery his first Oscar as Chicago's one good cop: an unorthodox, frightened-yet-frightening maverick named James (Malone, not Bond)

The Name Of The Rose 1986. F. Murray Abraham. Vir. JeanJacquesAnnaud.128 mins. Nelson (R). $19.98. Reason vs, zealotry, with Connery amusing as a medieval Sherlock Holmes,

Five Days One Summer 1982. Betsy Brantley. Vir. Fred Zinnemann. 108 mins. Warner (PC). $69.95. Bittersweet tale about an incestuous May-December romance. Beautifully photographed in Switzerland, the movie is haunting and carried by Connery's layered performance.

Outland 1981. Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen. Vir. Peter Hyams. 111 mins. Warner (R). $19.98. Fast-paced science-fiction out of High Noon, as outer space marshal Connery goes up against a corrupt establishment.

Robin And Marian 1976. Audrey Hepburn, Nicol WiUiamson, Robert Shaw. Vir. Richard Lester. 106 mins.RCA/Columbia (PC). $59.95. Hepburn is beautiful and Connery uplifting as a middle-aged Robin Hood in search of his youth, A tear-jerker, not above poking fun at itself,

The Man Who Would Be King 1975. Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer. Vir. John Huston. 129 mins. CC.CBS/Fox (PC). $59.98. Friendship is the theme and Connery and Caine have a wonderful rapport as two rogues who, for a little while at least, get to rule,a world.

The Wind And The Lion 1975. Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston. Vir. John Milius. 120 mins. MCM/UA (PC ). {$59. 95. Heavy on the jingoism, but Connery gives a wry performance as the Raisuli, last of the Berber chieftains (and the only one with a Scottish accent).

Zardoz 1974. Charlotte Rampling. Vir. John Boorman. 104 mins. Key (R). $59.98. A bizarre camp classic in which a befuddled Connery is Zed, the only virile man'in a sterile community ofthe future.

The Anderson Tapes 1971. Vyan Cannon, Christopher Walken. Vir. Sidney Lumet. 98 mins. RCA/Columbia (R). $64.95. Dumb, though Connery holds it together. Really an anti-Bond flick, hinted at by the actor's opening tirade: "You just took ten years out of my life!" Get it? 

Marnie

Marnie 1964. Tippi Hedren. Vir. Alfred Hitchcock. 129 mins. MCA (PC). $59.95. In a reversal of Hitchcock's earlier Spellbound, Connery is brutal intellectual Mark Rutland, who marries kleptomaniac Hedren to probe her body and soul.

 

A LOOK BACK By TOM SOTER

This was the one that got away. I wrote it for V, a short-lived but impressively designed video magazine. My editor, Peter Hyack, knew of my interest in Sean Connery, and when the Scottish one-time Bond was tapped for an Oscar nomination in 1988, he tried to get me an interview with Connery. When that failed, he told me to write an analysis of the actor's career, "and make it sound like you interviewed him." I don't know if I succeeded in that little charade, but on re-reading it, I think it's not a bad piece.