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Was Roger Moore the most caddish James Bond in his Live and Let Die debut?
Dragonpol
https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
I have this thesis of long-standing about Roger Moore in LALD. I thought that it was high time that I shared it with y'all. Here it is:
It seems to me that Roger Moore's debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973) showcased the new Bond actor as something of a caddish gentleman spy who enjoyed the finer things in life even at the expense of other's lives. For example, see the numbered points I have made below as evidence of my "Moore Bond in LALD is a cad" theory:
1. Moore Bond sleeps with Agent Caruso of the Italian Secret Service, then he attempts to keep her hidden from his boss M, who makes an unexpected early morning visit to him at his home to brief him on the deaths of 3 British agents in a 24 hour period.
2. Moore Bond sleeps with supposed CIA rookie agent Rosie Carver and then brandishes a gun in front of her when he reveals to her that he knows that she is in fact a fraud double agent in the pay of Dr. Kananga. She replies how could he kill her with his gun after they have just made love. Moore Bond replies, "Well, I certainly wouldn't have before". To this Rosie replies, "Damn!" On running away after Moore Bond asks her to "make her choice" of him or Kananga she is silently shot by a remote controlled scarecrow in the employ of Dr. Kananga. She was about to reveal her true role as an agent of Kananga. It could be convincingly argued that Bond is equally to blame for her death. He makes her run off to her death by scarecrow after all.
3. Moore Bond hijacks Mrs Bell's Bleaker School of Flying plane flying lesson. As a result of "winging it" in a series of madcap stunts that relieve the plane of its wings Mrs Bell is reported to be "in intensive care, but she'll pull through." There is a clear lack of sincerity when Moore Bond asks Felix Leiter "How is Mrs Bell?". Look at his ironical eyes and their expression if you are unconvinced! Yes, Moore Bo0nd does equate to Lighter Bond, but it should have its limits, surely?
4. Moore Bond makes love to Solitaire in LALD by using a rigged deck full of 'Lovers' cards. He sleeps with her, thus by "compelling her to Earthly love" (before Dr Kananga can) he has made her powers of ESP useless, just as happened to her mother before her. Look again at Moore Bond's face when she explains all of this. he'd be more interested in a quickie. Jane Seymour is on record in a 1999 programme about Bond saying that he wasn't all that great a guy as he had more than stacked the hand in his favour to convince poor Solitaire that the cards said they were destined to be lovers. As such, he subjected her to physical abuse by Dr Kananga and near-death at the hands of a Voodoo witch doctor and general death-dealer (who killed MI6 agent Baines in the PTS) with a serpent (and the Great Stinking Goat or Satan himself on his head). Of course Moore Bond saves the day, but it was surely a close-run thing when one considers how close that snake was to her body. It was quite literally Steve Irwin close. True story.
Moore Bond shows a little of Ian Fleming's character - as a young man he was a rather selfish lover by all accounts. As Dunstan, a wartime colleague said, "You had to get yourself killed before his emotions showed". The lack of emotion by Moore Bond in LALD is derived from the high-living of his creator, though not really from the Biond of the books, who was never really a cad, the atypical quote "The bitch is dead now" on Vesper Lynd at the end of Casino Royale quite aside of course, and that was arguably justifiable. Roger Moore truly deserves credit here for adding the caddish element of Fleming in here as a boon to the film Bond here. Who said that Moore wasn't Flemingeque, eh? Moore's acting in LALD is superlative and he nails the Eton drop-out upper-class Bond image on his first go, despite those that say this only appeared in TSWLM.
Perhaps there are other examples, but this will suffice for now, I think.
So what do we think of the "Moore Bond as a cad in LALD" theory?
Don't be shy.
The troubleshooter @Dragonpol is back, tommy-gun in hand and this time it's personal!
It seems to me that Roger Moore's debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973) showcased the new Bond actor as something of a caddish gentleman spy who enjoyed the finer things in life even at the expense of other's lives. For example, see the numbered points I have made below as evidence of my "Moore Bond in LALD is a cad" theory:
1. Moore Bond sleeps with Agent Caruso of the Italian Secret Service, then he attempts to keep her hidden from his boss M, who makes an unexpected early morning visit to him at his home to brief him on the deaths of 3 British agents in a 24 hour period.
2. Moore Bond sleeps with supposed CIA rookie agent Rosie Carver and then brandishes a gun in front of her when he reveals to her that he knows that she is in fact a fraud double agent in the pay of Dr. Kananga. She replies how could he kill her with his gun after they have just made love. Moore Bond replies, "Well, I certainly wouldn't have before". To this Rosie replies, "Damn!" On running away after Moore Bond asks her to "make her choice" of him or Kananga she is silently shot by a remote controlled scarecrow in the employ of Dr. Kananga. She was about to reveal her true role as an agent of Kananga. It could be convincingly argued that Bond is equally to blame for her death. He makes her run off to her death by scarecrow after all.
3. Moore Bond hijacks Mrs Bell's Bleaker School of Flying plane flying lesson. As a result of "winging it" in a series of madcap stunts that relieve the plane of its wings Mrs Bell is reported to be "in intensive care, but she'll pull through." There is a clear lack of sincerity when Moore Bond asks Felix Leiter "How is Mrs Bell?". Look at his ironical eyes and their expression if you are unconvinced! Yes, Moore Bo0nd does equate to Lighter Bond, but it should have its limits, surely?
4. Moore Bond makes love to Solitaire in LALD by using a rigged deck full of 'Lovers' cards. He sleeps with her, thus by "compelling her to Earthly love" (before Dr Kananga can) he has made her powers of ESP useless, just as happened to her mother before her. Look again at Moore Bond's face when she explains all of this. he'd be more interested in a quickie. Jane Seymour is on record in a 1999 programme about Bond saying that he wasn't all that great a guy as he had more than stacked the hand in his favour to convince poor Solitaire that the cards said they were destined to be lovers. As such, he subjected her to physical abuse by Dr Kananga and near-death at the hands of a Voodoo witch doctor and general death-dealer (who killed MI6 agent Baines in the PTS) with a serpent (and the Great Stinking Goat or Satan himself on his head). Of course Moore Bond saves the day, but it was surely a close-run thing when one considers how close that snake was to her body. It was quite literally Steve Irwin close. True story.
Moore Bond shows a little of Ian Fleming's character - as a young man he was a rather selfish lover by all accounts. As Dunstan, a wartime colleague said, "You had to get yourself killed before his emotions showed". The lack of emotion by Moore Bond in LALD is derived from the high-living of his creator, though not really from the Biond of the books, who was never really a cad, the atypical quote "The bitch is dead now" on Vesper Lynd at the end of Casino Royale quite aside of course, and that was arguably justifiable. Roger Moore truly deserves credit here for adding the caddish element of Fleming in here as a boon to the film Bond here. Who said that Moore wasn't Flemingeque, eh? Moore's acting in LALD is superlative and he nails the Eton drop-out upper-class Bond image on his first go, despite those that say this only appeared in TSWLM.
Perhaps there are other examples, but this will suffice for now, I think.
So what do we think of the "Moore Bond as a cad in LALD" theory?
Don't be shy.
The troubleshooter @Dragonpol is back, tommy-gun in hand and this time it's personal!
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Comments
Yes, thanks. Just working from memory here, though I viewed LALD recently. I think the caddish thing may have started a bit in TB and DAF too with Connery Bond. It continued into TMWTGG too, arguably. Moore was a very versatile actor as I hope I have made clear above. He played James Bond in more different modes than any other actor to play the role IMHO.
Essentially, I am agreeing with you. If Moore is a cad, he is the most charming one and still a gentleman (I don't usually mix "cad" with "gentleman"). He did have the smoothest way with the ladies. During his tenure, women would look at him and be ready to hand over their own room key. Sean had that, too, though. But Roger seemed to glide through the world like it was his personal oyster so to speak, sampling randomly with hardly a care as to consequences.
Craig in CR and QOS was a bid caddish, too: Solange and Strawberry Fields. He was hardly more than a cad towards them.
I agree very much with this point that I made bold. It was his rather cavalier approach to getting pleasure "with hardly a care as to consequences" that I was referring to in my OP above, @4EverBonded. Thanking you very much for your (as usual) very thoughtful reply. And you're right re the Craig era, but I just haven't seen them enough as yet as much as I love them.
I'm not saying that Bond behaved exactly like a gentleman here but if we are to believe that Solitaire had the ability to predict the future then he really did nothing but speed up the process of something that was inevitable. Solitaire really did believe in the cards, as Bond said, and she believed that they would be lovers from the moment she turned the Lovers card over in the Filet of Soul. She was just having a difficult time accepting it. So I fail to see how Bond took advantage of her unless she truly did not have the gift of foresight.
Well to reply to that I would say that as Jane Seymour herself said in an interview in 1999 Bond was not all that swell a guy as he made Solitaire take the 'Lovers' tarot card from a rigged deck, thus tricking her into bed. If he was so sure they were to be lovers surely he wouldn't have needed to have rigged the deck, just like in the Fillet of Soul restaurant. I'm sure you see my point here. It was all a result of the rigged deck rather than "being in the cards" per se.
Well thank you very much - I assume you refer to my posts here or perhaps you mean my blog?
Yes, to give my own views was what I sought to do there. I'm not altogether hiding behind Jane Seymour - merely saying I'm in agreement with what she said about Bond being not all that great a guy as he tricked a woman into bed, regardless of the consequences for her. In effect, one could argue that Moore Bond was a cad who sought his own pleasure first and worried about the potential consequences very much later as a secondary concern.
Of course, in the interests of parity, it is indeed true that in the context of the film where voodoo and the supernatural are presented as reality and fact from the start in the film (see Solitaire reading the cards, "A man comes..." etc. overlaid with footage of Bond's flight. It could be argued successfully (as you have done @pachazo) that Solitaire realised early on in the Fillet of Soul that Bond and her were destined to be lovers in the future as the cards foretold it to be so when Bond asked of his future and picked the 'Lovers' card ("Us?") from the non-rigged deck of tarot cards.
I do acknowledge here that that does rather go against my caddish theory, although it could be said that Bond's reading that the 'Lovers' of the future may have been someone else entirely (for e.g. Rosie Carver) and not him and Solitaire. That is the flaw in this theory, if I may be so bold as to say so. Bond has to add "Us?" so that the audience will know this is what he and Tom Mankiewicz the screenwriter have planned, just in the same way that Q's watch in the film is shown in an innocent setting early on in the film before Bond uses it on the mission (although Mankiewicz does cheat the viewer by not revealing the buzz saw which seems like a cop out of the shark plinth scene near the end of the film. Of course now that we have all seen the film LALD we know that Solitaire and Bond do indeed become lovers as the story of the film progresses. What I am saying here, in defence of my "Moore Bond as a cad in LALD" theory is, it did not seem to be inevitable after the Fillet of Soul 'Lovers' card pick by Moore Bond near the start of the film that Solitaire and Moore Bond would indeed become lovers. The fact that it was a Bond film and that the women he meets on a mission often become lovers may have told us this, but that is an example of James Bond film tropes at play in the screenplay and does not go against my theory of Bond as a cad at all, in my view. Bond did after all pro-actively seek out Solitaire at her retreat using a hang glider and he did after all use a totally decked hand consisting entirely of 'Lovers' tarot cards. As a said before, if it truly was in the cards why did he not rely on them alone and their power of prophecy - the answer is he didn't really believe in them and so he rigged the deck in order to trick Solitaire into bed. As a result of this fact, he was surely a cad and nothing else, no? Another example is when Solitaire predicted Bond's death and it was Rosie Carver's death, Solitaire tells Dr Kananga that "it must have been the girl's death" and that "If you do not ask specific questions I cannot be responsible for your misinterpretation of the answers", which if applied to the Fillet of Soul 'Lovers' card scene would fit as Bond only asked of his own future, and not that of him and Solitaire both! Bond did after all say, "Rather a sweeping statement, considering we've never met." when Solitaire says that he will not succeed in his mission. He then asked "Nothing about my future?", as I said, he most definitely did not ask about their future together so the 'Lovers' card revealed nothing in that regard, even though that may have been what was intended by the scriptwriter.
I do hope that I have explained things better this time, @pachazo. This is quite a complex area, despite appearances to the contrary. I think that my theory of Moore Bond as a cad in LALD still stands, but I'll happily go into more depth on this if need be.
-I don't think Bond believes in tarot. He did not in the original novel and correct me if I'm wrong but he seems rather dismissive about it in the movie too.
-Solitaire may not be a clairvoyant and tarot/voodoo may be all hogwash in the movie (I think they leave it ambiguous), but in this case it does not have any bearing on her sincere believe that she is. She also will sincerely believe that she lost a power she never had with her virginity.
-When the lovers card shows up, it may be purely coincidental, however Solitaire believes that it is foretelling her future, because of confirmation bias.
-Bond, if he does think tarot is pure superstition, he does not think that sleeping with her will change anything about her (non) gift.
I see that now. Thank you for clearing that up for me. Also, I do enjoy your writing and your blog.
I wasn't trying to disprove your theory as a whole. On the contrary, I agree with this assessment in a number of ways. Especially in Moore's first two films.
What is also interesting is that the cards could have foretold the future because they (or whatever supernatural force is behind them) knew that they would be lovers because of the fact that Bond was going to "trick" her into sleeping with him. Although if she had not turned that particular card over in the first place then would he have still used the same trick? It's a little like the chicken and the egg paradox.
If the cards were predicting that Bond and Rosie would be lovers then why doesn't Solitaire just tell Bond that this is the case when he asks her? She seems quite shaken up about it as if she knows for sure that it will indeed be her and Bond. It's implied later on in the film that she has never made a mistake predicting the future before. I think that it's pretty clear what the cards are telling us here. Or as clear as it possibly can be when discussing Tarot cards predicting the future!
Well of course Bond doesn't believe in the cards. Like I said, he wasn't behaving exactly like a gentleman when he rigged the deck. He most certainly wanted to have sex with her and he used whatever means necessary to help him reach this goal. However, I also think that he had a genuine desire to save her from Kanaga's oppression. You can make this case in a lot of Bond movies of course. He is going to do what he has to do to complete his mission but he is not without some compassion. You can argue that he uses women and of course at times he does to satisfy his own selfish sexual desires. He also wants to help these women though and sometimes goes to great lengths to help them escape the monsters that they are enslaved to.
Didn't that happen after she had slept with Bond though? Perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought that it was. If it was after then she had "lost" her powers and that's why she made the mistake. If I'm wrong then I suppose that you have disproved my theory. I will have to watch the movie again!
This is an interesting statement as well. What mission was she referring to? Considering that Bond did succeed in his mission then I guess that it's proven very early on that the cards are not accurate 100% of the time. So perhaps it's just a big farce after all and she was extremely lucky all these years to make the right guesses!
@pachazo, you make some very good points, but like you I really need to watch the film again before I can comment any further.
GF - Basically forcing himself on Pussy
TB - Blackmailing Patricia in the spa to sleep with him so he won't tell on her for leaving him in the stretcher
CR - Bond was only using Solange and because of it she ended up dead. (Same could be said for Jill in GF).
Keeping a woman secret isn't necessarily caddish. Being discreet could be considered gentlemenly.
What Jane Seymour says about the Bond doesn't really matter. She's hardly a James Bond film expert. She may have said what she said to make the softer Moore seem more deadly and fitting of the role. As well, the look on Bond's face is more of disbelief in the supernatural, I'm sure. Though I've not seen that movie recently so will take a look later this week to be sure.
Now that you mention it, Connery was probably the biggest cad of them all.
definition of cad- A man whose behavior is unprincipled or dishonorable.
Agreed - Connery was regarded as sexual dynamite that no woman could surely resist, lesbian or not. And you are right about the mores of the time.
For myself, views that will probably get the ladies upset even with me, it was a different time then and women did get objectified and male chauvinism ruled the day until the "Women's Lib" movement started to push those views to the side. It certainly wasn't right by today's standards and you'd never see the Pussy/Fearing incidents in a Bond film today, but then it was what it was and quite possibly why women considered Bond to be a "guy thing" and weren't interested, although we do know that Connery was a major sex symbol and heartthrob to many of these same women when not playing Bond. Regarding Pussy, I always thought the smile she was trying to restrain when Bond was awakening told me she was liking what she saw, at that point her lesbian angle was totally ignored from book to screenplay to more allow for what was to come, or she never could have been turned for the sake of attraction. I understand why Bond forced himself on her, he was out of time for subtleties and absolutely had to try and take advantage of what he saw on the plane and turn her because he had elected to stay to learn Goldfinger's plan rather than make a break for it when he could have, and she was the key to stopping him gaining access. But I am still a bit uncomfortable personally with that scene, right or wrong for being so.
Pat Fearing, it was just Bond being a cad and him taking advantage of her statement. She's not resisting the idea too hard and I never had an issue there.
From the very start Bond was portrayed as a total bastard towards women, just someone who used women for recreation:
DN - One night stand with Sylvia; just shagged her and left. Shagged Miss Taro just to pass the time while the police arrived.
FRWL - Went to 'pimp for England' without a care in the world. HIs behaviour with the two gypsy girls is hardly something out of Mills and Boon either.
GF - Let Bonita take the blackjack to the head without flinching, shagged Jill 5 minutes after meeting her, the infamous 'rape' of Pussy.
TB - Forces Pat into sex to stop him grassing her to her boss, lets Fiona take the bullet, shags Domino then tells her her brothers dead.
YOLT - nothing really. Shags Helga as part of his escape but whats wrong with that?
OHMSS - shags a bird who's suicidal, shags 3 random birds back to back.
DAF - Not much wrong here. Wasnt Bond's fault Plenty got slung out of the window.
So in comparison with the above Rog in LALD just continues in Sean's footsteps.
You could say the stacking of the pack for Solitaire is particularly dastardly but then its no worse than shagging Domino and then telling her brother is dead while shes still putting her knickers back on.
And as for this:
Is this the best youve got to back up your theory? I would think it pretty clear that Mrs Bell is not in intensive care seeing as how she didnt suffer a scratch. The exchange is clearly just banter between Felix and Bond. If Bond is insincere then what about Felix's annoyed barking of 'intensive care' at him?
Astute observations that this was part of Flemings character but to say its something Moore invented is a long way from the truth as it was there from day one.
Strangely I never get the impression that the literary Bond is a cad. Or at least not as much of one. Yes theres the rant about Vesper 'getting herself kidnapped like a heroine in a bloody cartoon strip' but generally he seems to care about the Bond girls feelings, even if he's not shy about shagging them when the opportunity arises.
Classic @TheWizardOfIce
I think all Connery, Lazenby and Moore were all quite caddish, but it's been diluted with the advent of womens lib, it seems.
BTW, I'll review it a bit in a different thread but Roger looked amazing in TMWTGG.