James Bond -Generational Gap question

[FedoraFan112390]

In the 60s, the Connery years, were the Bond films appreciated by the GI Generation (1910-1924), or were they more often something Boomers enjoyed? Just out of curiosity, for anyone who grew up in the era.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

I was born in 1961, and I liked the Bond movies. If you're a Bond fan, you should really read the book and then watch the movie(s). The differences are hilarious. Sean Connery was really great. My Dad had the books that were out before 1975, some were a whole 40 cents.

Later

 

[Fading Fast]

My Dad was born in 1924 and he loved the Bond films. To him, Connery was Bond and he only tolerated Moore in the roll. But to your point, he said that Bond films were a "big deal" when they first came out and he went to see everyone in the movie theatre (which he didn't do often). My Dad and I weren't close (we didn't fight or have any drama, just weren't close), but Bond films were one of the few things we shared and we'd watch them when they came on TV.

 

[Doctor Strange]

The Bond films cut across the generational divide, at least they did in the sixties. My parents - born in 1919 and 1923: both served in WWII - were early fans of TV shows like Secret Agent and Mission: Impossible, which we watched together as a family. We also went as a family to see theatrical double features of the earlier Bond films circa 1968, once my folks thought my sister and I were old enough to handle their "racier" aspects. We all liked the Bond flicks then: nobody was accusing them of sexism/racism/etc. yet. The only complaints you heard were about the unlikely story beats and improbable spy technology.

The thing that may be really hard for young people to understand is that there used to be something called the General Audience. With only three TV networks (plus a smattering of local stations depending on how close to a big city you were) and most households only owning a single TV set - this being long before there were VHS tapes or other home video media - you mostly had to watch together. And even though the local movie theaters changed what they were showing every couple of weeks, it was still a vastly smaller pool of potential viewing. Sure, there were varied genres like kids movies and adult dramas (on both TV and in theaters)... but there was nothing like the enormous availability of everything, and narrowcasting specialization of today, when each family member can be watching something different on a different device. TV viewing used to be a far more communal experience!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Don't forget also that the first few Bond films kicked off an entire "secret agent/spy" popular culture fad that swept thru the mid-sixties like wildfire -- from about 1964 to 1968 or so, Bond and Bond-knockoffs were everywhere. It wasn't the WWII generation that was consuming most of this effluvia -- it was most popular with kids and teenagers -- but they were absolutely the ones who were *selling* it.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Absolutely! I was totally into The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Avengers, The Prisoner, the aforementioned Secret Agent and Mission: Impossible, the two Derek Flint films, and tons of other shows and films about secret agents. I had the toy James Bond pistol that turned into a rifle with a scope, stock, silencer even before I'd seen a Bond film. And other spy toys too.

And what did I ask my parents to get me for my big bar mitzvah gift in 1967? A real Minox "spy camera"!

Lizzie is, as always, dead-on. The sixties spy craze was huge among boomer kids. Our parents may have appreciated the intrigue and sex more, but the gadgets and those spy heroes' pure cool hooked us youngsters.

 

[Harp]

My Dad was born in 1924 and he loved the Bond films. To him, Connery was Bond and he only tolerated Moore

Connery is the most identified with Bond, yet he never fit the Cambridge/Royal Navy mold Ian Fleming styled-at least in my opinion.
Moore, of course, ridiculed the role and the others who tried 007 were passable but none stand out.

Pierce Brosnan though showed that it takes an Irishman to play Bond.

 

[Fading Fast]

Connery is the most identified with Bond, yet he never fit the Cambridge/Royal Navy mold Ian Fleming styled-at least in my opinion.
Moore, of course, ridiculed the role and the others who tried 007 were passable but none stand out.

Pierce Brosnan though showed that it takes an Irishman to play Bond.

I'd have to go back and read some of he novels, which I haven't done in many, many years, to have a full sense of how Fleming limed Bond, but I thought that while he had a surface polish, he was a true killer underneath. To me, Connery captured that better than even the much lauded Craig. While Craig has the killer part down (and most of the others didn't - Dalton did somewhat, but he just seemed annoyed the entire time he was playing Bond), Connery came close to having both characteristics.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our parents may have appreciated the intrigue and sex more, but the gadgets and those spy heroes' pure cool hooked us youngsters.

The Bond movies really redefined the whole image of what a "spy" was -- before the craze, the popular-culture image of a spy was drawn from a range of unattractive, villian-oriented caricatures. Spies were seen as furtive, creepy characters, or smiling duplicitous weasels, or scar-faced Nazi operatives, or, going back to the twenties, the cartoon image of the bomb-throwing bearded Bolshevik. No kid wanted to carry a lunch box with a picture of Whittaker Chambers on it. But Bond took the whole image and completely changed it by making the spy a hero -- giving us the image that still exists today.

Real spies, no doubt, were very pleased with this.

 

[Stearmen]

Interesting little trivia I just found out! There have been 25 Bond films, only 14 stared either Coonery and Moore. They are tied at 7 each.

 

[emigran]

Don't forget also that the first few Bond films kicked off an entire "secret agent/spy" popular culture fad that swept thru the mid-sixties like wildfire -- from about 1964 to 1968 or so, Bond and Bond-knockoffs were everywhere. It wasn't the WWII generation that was consuming most of this effluvia -- it was most popular with kids and teenagers -- but they were absolutely the ones who were *selling* it.

Yep... Matt Helm and Our Man Flint... THe Avengers etc...

 

[rjb1]

To add a data point to the original question as to whether the WWII-vets cared about James Bond and James Bond movies, in my case the answer is definitely not. I know for sure that my Dad never went to see a JB movie, and I would bet all the money in my pocket that his same-age friends never did either. Looking back on it, and knowing them, it would have never have even come up as a possibility.

As they used to say in the South, I "take after" my Dad and have read only one James Bond novel and only seen one James Bond movie. No appeal at all...

Concerning the proliferation of Bond knock-offs, the only one that I did like was "Danger Man/Secret Agent", with Patrick McGoohan. I liked the realism and the fact that his #1 task as a spy was staying unobtrusive. No guns, no flying cars, no laser beams, etc. ...

Not counting the fact that it was a one-premise spy-spoof show, "Get Smart" made the most of that premise, with writing from Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.
I still smile at the "Maltese Falcon" episode entitled "Tequila Mockingbird" in which the agents (Max and 99) go to Mexico to find a golden-bird statue (the Tequila Mockingbird).
I also liked the Charlie Chan parody in which they worked with the Chinese detective Harry Hoo - name of honorable episode: "Hoo Done It".
(If the Mel Brooks/Buck Henry style of humor appeals, just look over some of the other episode titles. Dana Wynter plays a woman who kills several of her husbands and is named Ann... Episode title: "Widow Often Annie"...)

 

[Benzadmiral]

My mother was the one in my family who discovered the Bond novels. She'd bring them home, the Signet paperbacks from the early Sixties with "Ian Fleming" and "A James Bond Thriller" in large type across the covers. One night she handed me "Doctor No" and told me to read the "venomous centipede crawling on Bond in bed" scene. I was hooked.

Mom was born in 1916. I don't know if she ever saw any of the films.

My father enjoyed the novels too; after reading one, he would pencil the year of publication on the back cover next to Fleming's picture. At least one of my Bond copies has that on it. He was born in 1907 or -09. Again I have no idea if he ever saw one of the films -- but he did like "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," and got me hooked on that.

The point, I guess, was that in my family, everybody was a Bond fan, no matter when he/she was born.

RJB1, I believe there was also a "Get Smart" episode called "The Treasure of C. Errol Madre," with Broderick Crawford as Madre. . . . GS did a parody of "I Spy" too, with a cameo by Robert Culp.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Ian Fleming was a veteran of WW2 and so was Bond. The novels were written with that demographic in mind and whatever popularity they had, was with the sort of people who buy spy thrillers and murder mysteries.

The movies were something of a phenomenon, with appeal to different age groups.

There were lots of authors before Fleming who mined this particular vein of gold, including John Buchan and Somerset Maugham.

 

[Harp]

Concerning the proliferation of Bond knock-offs, the only one that I did like was "Danger Man/Secret Agent", with Patrick McGoohan. I liked the realism and the fact that his #1 task as a spy was staying unobtrusive.

As remarked earlier, it takes an Irishman to play Bond-or a similar spy. :spy:
McGoohan portrayed a more chaste and focused man; supposedly at his own insistence to accord his perception of the professional.

 

[RegentSt1965]

A couple of years ago I added to the books I had from the sixties to make the set and re-read them all. Then, with the benefit of having read a few books about the technical developments for SOE ( Special Operations Executive - the men and women sent into Europe to, in Churchill's words , "set Europe ablaze") and " Ian Fleming’s Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII" (by Nicholas Rankin) I got the novels a bit better second time around.
Of course, the films got even further away from Fleming's creation in both characterisation and equipment. E.g the most he has in in-car gadgetry at first was a long barrelled colt 45 under the seat and a supercharger. With this context Connery seems, for the age, to be the closest to the "ex-commando killer...." that Fleming portrayed. Like many people I feel the recent Mendes/Craig films, particularly Skyfall get us back to where Fleming might have put a present day Bond.
As to the 60's, this boomer went to see Dr No when he was under age (of course) with my mate Cavan (both 14) . All was going well, what with a couple of off-duty sailors helpfully vouching to a sceptical cinema ticket office lady that we were over 16. Cavan nearly screwed it up then by asking for a "half" i.e. under 16 ticket. I hastily said that he had just had his 16th birthday and forgot he had to pay full price, and we were in and had my ideas of film changed for ever.
My Dad (Bomber command - 26 tours over Europe until VE day) was never interested in going though, to best of my knowledge. Like a lot of his contemporaries he liked the classic Brit WW11 films like Guns of Navarone and Dambusters etc.

 

[Worf]

My take on Bond is completely different. I was caught up in the spy craze, but never saw a Connery Bond Film cause we flat out couldn't afford to go. I've seen them all now on the small screen of course. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. dominated till it became silly. I also read Marvel's "Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." from the first issue which I still posses, right up through Jim Sterenko's work on the book. While in the Service I saw the Moore Bond films and hated them immensely. But when you're stuck on some god forsaken post you watch what you get.

Worf

Remember true believers... "Don't Yield! Back S.H.I.E.L.D.!

 

[Stearmen]

A couple of years ago I added to the books I had from the sixties to make the set and re-read them all. Then, with the benefit of having read a few books about the technical developments for SOE ( Special Operations Executive - the men and women sent into Europe to, in Churchill's words , "set Europe ablaze") and " Ian Fleming’s Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII" (by Nicholas Rankin) I got the novels a bit better second time around.
Of course, the films got even further away from Fleming's creation in both characterisation and equipment. E.g the most he has in in-car gadgetry at first was a long barrelled colt 45 under the seat and a supercharger. With this context Connery seems, for the age, to be the closest to the "ex-commando killer...." that Fleming portrayed. Like many people I feel the recent Mendes/Craig films, particularly Skyfall get us back to where Fleming might have put a present day Bond.
As to the 60's, this boomer went to see Dr No when he was under age (of course) with my mate Cavan (both 14) . All was going well, what with a couple of off-duty sailors helpfully vouching to a sceptical cinema ticket office lady that we were over 16. Cavan nearly screwed it up then by asking for a "half" i.e. under 16 ticket. I hastily said that he had just had his 16th birthday and forgot he had to pay full price, and we were in and had my ideas of film changed for ever.
My Dad (Bomber command - 26 tours over Europe until VE day) was never interested in going though, to best of my knowledge. Like a lot of his contemporaries he liked the classic Brit WW11 films like Guns of Navarone and Dambusters etc.

By your criteria, the best Bond was David Niven in Casino Royal! The only gadget he had was an automatic gate opener on his 4.5 Liter Supercharged Bentley, much like the books! He used his brain to get out of most situations.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Connery is the most identified with Bond, yet he never fit the Cambridge/Royal Navy mold Ian Fleming styled-at least in my opinion.
Moore, of course, ridiculed the role and the others who tried 007 were passable but none stand out.

Pierce Brosnan though showed that it takes an Irishman to play Bond.

Ugh. Brosnan was only slightly better than Moore. Bond is not a thoughtful prettyboy, and certainly not a "gentleman spy". He's a brute, a hired killer. An intelligent brute, but a brute nonetheless.

 

[Harp]

Bond is not a thoughtful prettyboy, and certainly not a "gentleman spy". He's a brute, a hired killer. An intelligent brute, but a brute nonetheless.

Thespian issues aside, Fleming's 007 was recruited from the Royal Navy, and had been educated at public school and Cambridge
prior to World War II; ostensibly an officer with requisite polish, not a barrow boy out of London's hardscrabble East End, so the brute
issue is rendered moot. Innate lethality is not the sum of Bond, who, though enigmatic and mercurial, remains open to reasonable
interpretation and the actor's craft of capture. Connery had the lethality down pat, and Brosnan certainly possessed that trait.
The man himself remains elusive, subject to scrutiny.