The Navarone/Bond connection

Cafe Society
1

I was watching the Guns of Navarone again on DVD, and reflected that there was a close connection between its sequel, Force 10 from Navarone* and the James Bond films.

To begin with, the director, Guy Hamilton, had directed four of the James Bond films, starting with Goldfinger. Then they got a roster of James Bond villains in key roles – Richard Kiel (who’d played Jaws in two Bond films), Robert Shaw (Red Grant in the second Bond film, From Russia with Love), and Barbara Bach (the title role in The Spy Who Loved Me, unless you concede that Bond was, and she was “me”). They got Edward Fox to take David Niven’s part as Miller. He hadn’t been a Bond villain, but he was the Jackal in day of the Jackal. And to complete the Bond stuff, he was M in Never Say never Again.

And, of course, Harrison Ford, who has no direct Bond connection, but was definitely the Bond competition in the Ludicrous Action Adventure Film set as Indiana Jones. Plus premier Bond Sean Connery played his father in the third Indy film.

If you include the original Guns of Navarone, you have David Niven, who was played Bond himself in Casino Royale and you have Walter Gotell as Leutnant Muesell, who played SPECTRE agent Morzeny in From Russia with Love and General Anatol Gogol in six Bond films (and the TV series James Bond, Jr.).

That seems a bit more than coincidence – I realize that they’re action/adventure series, but this looks like a deliberate effort. You don’t see so much crossover between Bond and Indiana Jones, for instance. But you do see such crossover between Bond and, say, The Avengers (four of the titular Avengers showed up in major roles in the Bond films)

*Made in 1978 and sorta based on the book of the same title by Alastair MacLean, who also wrote the book The Guns of Navarone. The sequel used scenes from the earlier film, made 17 years earlier, but none of the same actors. I have no idea what possessed them to make such a delayed sequel. Unabashed greed, I suspect.

2

Force 10 from Navarone was the first movie I ever recorded to keep on a VCR back in 1981 when cable TV played that film about hundred million times. I think Force 10 can be said to have the most gratuitous nude scene in movie history.

There is another Bond connection with Force 10, Edward Fox who played Miller was “M” in Never say Never Again.

3

Read the OP more carefully!

:stuck_out_tongue:

4

Nice catch. All of a sudden my mind’s racing at what would have been possible with Anthony Quinn in a couple of Bond Flicks; a more involved Felix Leiter perhaps?

5

Four? I only count three. Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, and Patrick Macnee. The only other “titular”* Avenger I can think of is Linda Thorson. Was she in a Bond film?

  • Like David Letterman, I just enjoy saying “titular”.
6

Joanna Lumley, long before AbFab, was in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and later in The New Avengers

7

Suspect it’s no more than the combination of three unsurprising factors: a) there are a couple of names - Kiel and Bach - who had some prominence in the period mainly as a result of the Bond films and who were cast on that transitory basis, b) Hamilton was the sort of safe-pair-of-hands who may have had a preference to work with people he’d done with before and so knew were reliable and c) the British acting world really isn’t that big, so there’s an enormous amount of potential overlap once you start looking for it.

Take Hamilton’s Battle of Britain, from roughly the same period. Still watchable enough, if creaky, has its moments and surely best remembered for the soundtrack. Nothing to do with Bond. By British standards, an all-star cast. Indeed, big names who generally probably felt superior to doing a Bond film: Harry Andrews, Trevor Howard, Kenneth More, Olivier, Plummer, Redgrave, Richardson. (Caine as a borderline case - famously friends with Connery and part of that generation, but … Harry Palmer in a Bond film?)
But you’ve also got Curd Jürgens, Robert Shaw, Edward Fox and Jack Gwillim (Thunderball and Casino Royale) all fairly high up the cast list.
And just flicking through the same film’s casts’ other credits, plenty of productions start cropping up more than once. Cromwell, Young Winston and some BBC series on Orde Wingate from 1976. Shaw and Susannah York in … well, you can recognise that one Cal. Overlapping connections are there if you look to any minor level of depth.

(Goldfinger is great, but Hamilton’s streak was as an assistant director. The Fallen Idol, The Third Man and The African Queen. That’s a CV.)