Remembering Sean Connery

Today is Halloween, and normally I would reserve these pages for a discussion of same. Perhaps I will do this later. For now I want to say a few words about the late Sir Thomas Sean Connery, who has died at the age of 90 years, leaving behind a gigantic legacy, and depriving us of one of the very last of the truly iconic leading-men. The number of such men is very small naturally and in some senses is limited to a different era, and every one we lose permanently reduces the total figure and cannot be replaced. Actors like Sir Christopher Lee, Charlton Heston, Michael Caine (technically Sir Maurice), George C. Scott and Connery were and are marked not only by their success as actors, their fame, money, awards, and (in the cases of the British), knighthoods, but by the fact that they were of those generations that grew up in remarkably tough circumstances. Lee served in WW2 in many capacities in many theaters of war and was wounded at least once. Heston also served in WW2 in the horrible Aleutian Islands campaign and was badly hurt. Caine grew up dirt poor, survived the Blitz, and fought in Korea. Scott served in the Marines and later used to hire bodyguards "to protect people from me."

Connery's mum was a maid, his father a truck driver. He had very little education and joined the Royal Navy at 16 because he had no prospects. After he got out of the service, he worked as everything from an artist's model to a milkman and often had multiple jobs at the same time well into his 20s. All the odds were against him succeeding at anything, but he was gifted with good looks and athleticism and his parents had instilled in him an almost brutal work-ethic. His first seven years as an actor brought him a total of ten movie roles, until at last he landed a small but memorable role in the classic WW2 movie The Longest Day. It may have been this appearance that got him cast as James Bond in Dr. No the following year. The rest was cinematic history.

Like most movie stars, Connery's career was a roller-coaster ride. He made a total of seven appearances as Bond but, like Basil Rathbone with Sherlock Holmes, he began to feel bored, constricted and even resentful of the role which made him famous. Connery felt he was an actor of considerable range, power and charisma, and playing the cartoonishly suave secret agent was hardly a challenge. He aggressively sought out projects which conflicted with the Bond image and which offered him a chance to show the world what he could do. Some of the choices he made were terrible: films like Zardoz,Meteor, Rising Sun, The Avengers and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are the sort of thing actors do when they are desperate for work or cash, or are bored silly, or because the project they buy ain't the project they get -- a fairly common occurrence in the movie business. At other times he was wrongly overlooked by critics who were too busy attacking the film in which he appeared without paying heed to the quality of his performance: The Name of the Rose is such a movie.

But even many of his outright box-office failures were triumphs in their own way. Films like The Hill, about the cruel, even vicious condition of a disciplinary camp for British soldiers during WW2, The Offence, in which Connery plays a trauma-haunted cop who murders a man during a "routine" interrogation, or his sword-wielding, peacock-feather-hat-sporting character in Highlander, showed that he was considerably more than a handsome guy who could fire blanks at extras and deliver droll, slightly cruel one-liners on the set of a Bond movie. Hell, even a film as frustrating in its execution as Outland showcased Connery's ability to play toughness at different levels, and to layer heroic roles with angst and vulnerability.

In addition to simply good films, or flicks in which he was good but the project left something to be desired, Connery can be said to have appeared in a number of classics both major and minor, from the aforementioned Longest Day to the greatest of all Bond movies, the letter-perfect Goldfinger -- the only Bond film in which we really see the character sweat, and the story is all the better for it. He delivered a masterful performance in The Man Who Would Be King as a down-on-his-luck mercenary who goes crazy with power when primitive tribesman believe him to be a god. He used subtlety to convey both the heroic qualities and the flaws of a real-life British general on the losing side of a battle in the WW2 epic A Bridge Too Far. But many will best recall his Oscar-winning performance in The Untouchables as his signature masterpiece. His portrayal of Jimmy Malone, a broken-down old Chicago cop who has to overcome his own fear to help bring down Al Capone, not only revived his career, it demonstrated (after more than three decades in the business) that he was the sort of actor who could make you forget that Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro and Andy Garcia were even in the goddamned picture. A rather outre Irish accent aside, he was that good.

But the best Sean Connery story of all Sean Connery stories has nothing to do with his acting career. It is a piece of badassery from his youth, and it is the final image I intend to leave with you today.

Back in the 1950s, Connery was in a pool hall in Edinburgh, Scotland playing billiards and chatting up the ladies. He had brought with him a very nice leather jacket which he lay on the edge of the billiards table. He did not know that the pool hall was turf claimed by a local street gang called the Valdors, who were known for inflicting brutal beatings, face-slashings and stabbings on their rivals and any who defied their authority. The Valdors' uniform was a leather jacket. They didn't care for young men who were not Valdors wearing leather in their sight, so one of the Valdors went up to Connery's table and slammed his very expensive jacket on the floor, then gave him a look as if to say, "What are you gonna do about it, mate?"

The place went silent. Connery looked at the gangster and said, in what I assume was his best Connery voice: "I'll give you exactly five seconds to put that back."

The gangster stared at him for four seconds... and then put it back. Evidently he saw something in that big bastard he did not care to tangle with. But he was now humiliated. So he hatched a plan for revenge. He and five of his mates waited a few days, then tracked Connery down to the Palais nightclub where he was employed. When Connery got off work they chased him through the streets, meaning to beat him to a pulp and then take his jacket as a trophy.

Connery scaled a 15-foot fence to get away but found himself cornered on a balcony. He had to fight if he wanted to survive. It looked like the end, because as a rule, it is only in the movies in which he had yet to star that one man defeats six; but there were factors the gangsters hadn't calculated.

1) Connery was in training for the Mr. Universe competition and was then regarded as one of the strongest men in Great Britain. Photos available online reveal that he possessed a truly awesome physique on a 6'2" frame.
2) His strength coach was a retired British Army physical fitness instructor.
3) To increase his actual physical strength, and not just the appearance of his muscles, as well as to provide for himself, he worked days as a laborer, mainly on construction sites.
4) His night job at the Palais was bouncer.

The gangsters attacked, but they couldn't get at him more than 2 at a time because of the narrowness of the balcony. Big mistake. Connery beat the shit out of all of them, one pair at a time. According to Michael Caine, one of Connery's best freinds, during the fight, he actually smashed two of the Valdors' heads together coconut-style, knocking them both unconscious. Connery beat them so badly that after it was over, the battered gang leader actually offered him membership in the Valdors. Connery "very politely declined" and after that had no more trouble with the gang.

In the end, the reason Sean Connery played a badass so well is that he wasn't playing.

Rest in peace, Sir Knight. And please leave something up there for the rest of us.