On Her Majesty's Secret Service The Queen's 007 (Japan) Producer: EON Released: 1969

Worst Line:
Bond: "The name is Bond - James Bond."

Best Line:
Bond: "This never happened to the other fellow..."

Most shameless line:
Blofeld: "We'll head him off at the precipice."

The New Guy

The search for a new Bond was compared with the search for Scarlett O'Hara. Unfortunately Vivian Leigh was already dead, so George Lazenby, a car salesman with a part time job as a male model, won the role.

To get the part, Lazenby spent most of what money he had on a Saville Row suit and a Rolex watch, and then while getting a Bond-type haircut Cubby Broccoli walked into the same salon, made the connection and later offered him a chance at the part.

Elaborate action tests were done with a full crew, as UA wanted to see fighting footage of Bond applicants. Lazenby won, though he tended to flinch when punches were thrown at him.

In the 2012 documentary Everything or Nothing, Lazenby recounts a moment during his marathon screen-testing process when Broccoli and Saltzman, fearing his background as a male model meant he was gay, sent a girl to his hotel room. The next morning, they were satisfied they had a heterosexual 007.

Lazenby was given the same deal Connery was in his first film - 22,000 pounds, as well as a chauffeured limousine and a furnished London apartment.

Good Cut

Originally the filmmakers planned to introduce the new Bond in an English hospital, where Bond undergoes plastic surgery to change his face. This was supposed to outwit Bond's enemies and smoothly introduce George Lazenby in the role. Once written, everyone hated it, and screenwriter Richard Maibaum gratefully threw it out.

Undercover

Actresses considered for the part of Tracy Draco included Bridget Bardot (she said she'd only agree if they let her play Bond) and Catherine Deneuve.

Diana Rigg was finally chosen partly because of her appearance as Emma Peel in British TV's spy series The Avengers.

Lazenby and Rigg had a bad relationship on set. One rumor was that Rigg ate garlic before filming the love scenes. She published an announcement concerning his behavior on the set, placing it in a trade paper.

George Lazenby in October of 1999, during an interview in the show "Clarkson" on BBC2: "Just to relax, the crew were having a bit of fun and said one morning 'You're going to this scene with all the girls around the table and we're going to pan underneath the table and show this girl writing her room number on your leg . .. and so they said 'Do you mind if we have a bit of fun with her?' so I say 'Not at all!' So they got this pan of water with a huge german sausage and I didn't know what the hell they were doing. I said, 'That's a hell of a big sausage ... and then they went and camera-taped it to my leg underneath the table and I could feel something going on, but I didn't know what was going on and meanwhile the actress next to me had to put her hand down there, and this was supposed to be the big laugh. They said 'Turn Over' and away they went and panned the camera under the table, her hand went down to my leg and no reaction from her. The guys were there scratching their heads, thinking she must have missed it and after the shot was over she said to me... 'You've got no pants on!'"

Lazenby tried to get Broccoli to hire Blood, Sweat and Tears ("Spinnin' Wheel") for the soundtrack.

Although Lazenby didn't get along with the filmmakers, he did do pretty well with the ladies - especially the young actresses in the production: "I had almost every girl on the Bond film I wanted," he said afterwards. One of the most beautiful, Julie Edge ('Scandinavian' girl, at right), was reluctant, but told him, "I'll pick the time when it's my turn." Two weeks later she whispered to him: "The moment is now. It's now or never." To the surprise of nobody looking at this photograph, Lazenby "gave in."

Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny): "I quite liked George. I mean, I don't think he was much of an actor, but his escapades amused me immensely... The way he would chase women was just a hoot."

George Lazenby: "A lot of girls on the set were available and ready for fun. But there were exceptions. And one of them was Joanna Lumley ('English' girl, now a star of Absolutely Fabulous). "Every weekend I asked Joanna to come away with me. And every weekend she turned me down. But she was curious to know what all the other girls were making such a fuss about. So one weekend, to my surprise, she accepted my invitation."

The next morning in bed, Joanna suggested they both run away to Tangier. "Think of the publicity it would get you," she said. "Joanna, I don't need the press," Lazenby replied. "You might not," she said, "But I sure as hell do." Lazenby: "Not listening to Joanna Lumley was one of the many mistakes I was to make during my brief reign as James Bond."

Lazenby felt he was being mistreated by the producers, and refused a multi-picture deal. Cubby Broccoli shrugged off the rejection, reasoning "there were fourteen Tarzans."

The death of Tracy was originally to take place during the teaser of the next Bond film, but with Lazenby's departure from the series a foregone conclusion, it was included here to tie up loose ends.

Albert Broccoli: "He could have been a good Bond, but the minute he signed up, he became impossible. He now says he made a mistake. Occassionally, he would call and say he wanted to do Bond again, but I said we couldn't do that. It was a good movie, though, with a good script. George did the best he could in the role.."

10 Feb 1970
[i]On Her Majesty's Secret Service[/i] is an almost weightless adventure movie that lodges in the memory, and the stomach, because of its spectacularly exciting action sequences which should promptly be stored in the Museum of Modern Art's Film Archives as textbook examples of creating thrills and tension through editing. The five or six punchups, chases, and escapes in Secret Service are more than adequate recompense for the puny small talk and lethargic exposition of the new James Bond movie.



The extra fun in Secret Service comes from acquiring a taste for George Lazenby, Sean Connery's successor as 007. Lazenby lacks Connery's sexual authority, sophistication, and sense of danger - he seems too young, or perhaps too immature for the part - but it is just this vulnerability, this look of being exhausted after a bone-breaking fight, that makes Lazenby work as the vulnerable, love-prone Bond that Ian Fleming created for this installment of the series, and makes the pathetic dénouement as touchingly felt as it is. If Your Faithful
Chronicler must be dragged (kicking and screaming, of course) into the Seventies, it may as well be with this image of a sadder, wiser James Bond, the cartoon that cried.
Richard Corliss · National Review

In her Edinburgh Fringe television show, presenter Sue Perkins interviewed former Bond girl Dame Diana Rigg about her new show and her past on stage and screen earlier this week. When talk came to her Bond role, Perkins described her as "the only girl who Bond wanted to marry."

Rigg: I know and what a James Bond that was. He was a nightmare! Oh God, I wish it had have been Roger or Sean but no... I got George.

Perkins: What was so bad about George?

Rigg: Well he was stupid for starters. He was ghastly. He had read too many film magazines and thought that was the way you have to behave. Oh, he was ghastly. And I had to marry the man!

Perkins: Well, not for very long.

Rigg: No, thank God! When the shot went through the temple I went 'Uh, thank God.'

Publicists for the film had a horrible dilemma: How to promote a film and a new lead actor for a film series after the new lead actor had just quit. So they promoted the action and the Bond mystique while playing down Lazenby: Who could race down a moutain doing 60 m.p.h. on one ski? Who would hang from a steel cable that spans a 2,000 ft gorge? Who would try and outrun a Swiss avalanche? Who would hitch a ride on a speeding bobsled? Who would stand in the middle of a time bomb and take pictures? Who else but James Bond!

Illustration: Mad Magazine