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Age no handicap as Sean Connery plays his way to 100 On the occasion of Sean Connery’s 90th birthday, Aubrey Malone spotlights the life - so far! - and extraordinary times of our favourite James Bond The Name is Connery, Sean Connery ‘Sir’ Sean is 90. Shaken but not stirred by the milestone, cinema’s best 007 by a mile celebrated it in the Bahamas with Micheline Roquebrune, his Moroccan-born artist wife of 45 years.
Sean Connery with Micheline Roquebrune, his Moroccan-born artist wife of 45 years.
He lives with her in the exclusive part of New Providence Island. Nearby is a beach, a marina and a golf course. A house without a golf course nearby is, to Connery, like a house without bricks. Films were always a sideline to getting his handicap down. Didn’t he once say, ‘I go from being Arnold Palmer to Lilli Palmer’? He was born Thomas Sean Connery in 1930 in a small flat in Edinburgh. There was no hot water and no bathroom. The communal lavatory was outside. For years he had only gas lighting.The Thomas and Sean came from his Irish grandfather. The street was called ‘the street of a thousand smells’ because of all the factories in the area. His father worked in one of them. His mother was a cleaning woman. ‘I didn’t know I lacked anything,’ he said, ‘because I had nothing to compare it with.’ Connery fought his way out of the poverty trap by doing everything he could – milkman, lorry driver, lifeguard, coffin polisher, artist’s model. He started a regime of body-building in the fifties and entered a Mr Universe competition in 1953, coming a very respectable third. He even had a try-out for Manchester United. Matt Busby thought he had potential on the field. Connery said no because a footballer’s career was too short. ‘He could be retired at 30,’ he claimed. He had a respectable stage career that’s often overlooked in biographies of him. Shakespeare was a paragon for him. He did a creditable Macbeth once. Ibsen and Pirandello were other heroes. He was also a fan of our own James Joyce. He played some forgettable screen villains before being chosen by Lana Turner to appear opposite her in the 1958 feature AnotherTime, Another Place. In between scenes he had a set-to with her gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. Stompanato thought they were having an affair. He visited the set one day and waved a gun in Connery’s face, telling him to stay away from Turner. Unperturbed, the fiery Scot flattened him with a right to the nose. He was advised to lie low for a while. Stompanato knew some Very Bad People. Lana’s daughter Cheryl would subsequently stab him to death after he beat Lana up. There was a rumour it was Lana herself who did it, letting Cheryl take the rap. 6 Senior Times l September - October 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie
Not many stars have colourful back stories like this. For most people, Connery began with Bond. Ian Fleming, his creator, wasn’t in favour of him playing him at first. ‘I’m looking for Commander James Bond,’ he said, ‘not an overgrown stunt man.’ Connery was 6ft 2in. Fleming thought he looked more like a bricklayer than the champagne-and-caviar hero he was supposed to be playing - and more likely to be swilling pints than Dom Perignon ’57. He also thought his accent would come against him. He spoke like his mouth was full of marbles. How was he going to play the role – in a kilt? He later amended that view, even giving Bond a Scottish father in You Only Live Twice. Connery’s view of Fleming was that he was ‘a terrible snob but great company.’ In Dr No, his first outing as the refined spy, he shared the screen with Ursula Andress. She emerged from the sea in ‘that’ bikini. Her surname was amended to ‘Undress.’ Some viewers thought her shoulders were as big as Connery’s. The film became a sensation, going all around the world. It made $6 million in America alone. In Japan it was translated as ‘No Need For Doctors.’ The phenomenon had begun. Britain was turning from grim black and white into glorious Technicolour. It was the era of the Beatles, Christine
