(Hum the James Bond Theme while reading this)
Dum dum dum dum
Dum dum dum dum
da da tee da da da daa
da da ta da daaaaaa
da da tee da da da daaa
da de da dot ta da daaaaaaaa
Roger Moore was never my favorite James Bond. I mean, Sean Connery, come on. Nobody’s “Bond, James Bond,” like the Scot.
Never mind. When James Bond dies – even if it is Roger Moore - my thoughts go flashing back again to…Goldfinger.
The first time I saw James Bond was in the Carma Theatre with a bunch of the boys…Kent Kinsinger, John Lehman, probably Max Eastman. Maybe Larry Eikenbary. We were, I believe, freshmen on bicycles.
The popcorn was a quarter. No girls in the audience. Why would there be? This was a guy’s movie. Especially for guys who weren’t old enough to drive, but thought they were pretty hot stuff.
We actually were hot stuff, I think, because we had out-foxed our mothers explaining Goldfinger was just another action movie. Mothers, at least our mothers, said, “Go the movies.”
All one has to do is to recite the name of the leading woman in Goldfinger – no American male from my era would flunk this test. Thank goodness, our mother's never asked this question.
See what I mean.
Oh, I could recite my favorite Bond line, like “Shocking.” That’s when Connery pushes the villain into the bathtub and tosses a plugged-in floor fan into the tub.
Or, my favorite Bond countdown. How many bombs ready to blow up the world did he dismantle with only 7 seconds on the clock?
Here’s the thing.
And, I think there’s something to this. We all know that Bond is a sex-crazed maniac. No doubt even worse.
However, in the Sean Connery Bond’s it was all left to the imagination. His boy-gets-the-girl scenes always…I mean always…faded out at the moment of truth.
You never saw any skin. Just the fade out. Connery's Bond made you think.
With this reasoning, the only thought process needed in today's movies is "Where did I park the car?"
Back to Goldfinger. At the end of of the movie, just when you think you’ve witnessed it all, this sentence pops up on the screen:
THE END
of Goldfinger
but not of James Bond.
What a relief. Let’s get a bag of popcorn to go.
