WI: George Lazenby Accepts The Six-Picture Deal to Play James Bond

One of the most infamous decisions in cinema history was George Lazenby's rejection of a one million dollar deal to play James Bond in six more movies after "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969). His agent told him that Bond was a fad who would be irrelevant in the 1970's. Lazenby foolishly listened, and as a result he was blackballed by the entire film industry and has become a joke for the rest of his life. But what if Lazenby accepted the deal and continued to play Bond for the next six films?
 

Marc

Donor
One of the most infamous decisions in cinema history was George Lazenby's rejection of a one million dollar deal to play James Bond in six more movies after "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969). His agent told him that Bond was a fad who would be irrelevant in the 1970's. Lazenby foolishly listened, and as a result he was blackballed by the entire film industry and has become a joke for the rest of his life. But what if Lazenby accepted the deal and continued to play Bond for the next six films?

A marginally better set of films (Moore really was terrible in hindsight at least). Lazenby becomes quite wealthy (good on him), the sun also rises...
 
I personally think Lazenby had potential and could have become a better actor with more time to learn the craft. OHMSS more than any previous Bond film since From Russia with Love felt grounded and populated with characters that are real people. In that sense Lazenby was inspired casting since he brought more vulnerability to the role than Connery did.

However the producers were more keen on guaranteeing box office success so once Connery quit the role for good they decided to make the movies campy pastiches of whatever genre was popular at the box office. So as a result we got campy movies like Live and Let Die (Blaxploitation), The Man with the Golden Gung (kung-fu) and Moonraker (Star Wars).

Moore was game to play Bond that way but I don't Lazenby would have been good for such an interpretation of the character as a wisecracking fop.
 
Moore was game to play Bond that way but I don't Lazenby would have been good for such an interpretation of the character as a wisecracking fop.

On the other hand, given the perception that Lazenby was a bad actor who played a stale Bond some fans may get tired of the character or at least Lazenby's portrayal.
 
On the other hand, given the perception that Lazenby was a bad actor who played a stale Bond some fans may get tired of the character or at least Lazenby's portrayal.

Since the Bond movies follow established formula I don't think the lead actor playing Bond can in of himself tank the franchise.

Lazenby was given a pretty daunting task since he was a model with no acting experience but expected to play a leading man role. I think audiences would have warmed to him and the movies themselves would sink or swim on the merits of the script and action sequences.

OHMSS is a better Bond movie than Diamonds Are Forever even though the latter has a better lead actor in Connery.
 
Biggest challenge for George Lazenby is director Guy Hamilton, who disliked Lazenby acting.
with Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun
Lazenby would face each time Guy Hamilton as director
next were some problems with productions on location like Harlem in Live and Let Die
i guess that Lazenby would quit during production of Live and Let Die do those Issues...
 
Biggest challenge for George Lazenby is director Guy Hamilton, who disliked Lazenby acting.
with Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun
Lazenby would face each time Guy Hamilton as director
next were some problems with productions on location like Harlem in Live and Let Die
i guess that Lazenby would quit during production of Live and Let Die do those Issues...

Hamilton was brought on board for those movies because the studio wanted to completely rebuke Lazenby and OHMSS and return to what fans loved about Connery's films. If Lazenby stays, it's very unlikely that Hamilton would return.
 
I personally think Lazenby had potential and could have become a better actor with more time to learn the craft. OHMSS more than any previous Bond film since From Russia with Love felt grounded and populated with characters that are real people. In that sense Lazenby was inspired casting since he brought more vulnerability to the role than Connery did.

However the producers were more keen on guaranteeing box office success so once Connery quit the role for good they decided to make the movies campy pastiches of whatever genre was popular at the box office. So as a result we got campy movies like Live and Let Die (Blaxploitation), The Man with the Golden Gung (kung-fu) and Moonraker (Star Wars).

Moore was game to play Bond that way but I don't Lazenby would have been good for such an interpretation of the character as a wisecracking fop.
Or the OTL and ITTL merge closer than expected towards the end of the deal - see Lazenby in The Man From Hong Kong (1975)...
 
Or the OTL and ITTL merge closer than expected towards the end of the deal - see Lazenby in The Man From Hong Kong (1975)...

Perhaps Lazenby does two or three more movies before negotiating a release from his contract so he can do martial arts films with Bruce Lee. Interestingly, Lazenby was about to meet with Lee before he died in 1973. Butterflies could result in Lee avoiding an early death, and Lazenby goes on to have a relatively successful post-Bond career.

If Lazenby leaves the Bond role in 1973 or 1974, I wonder who would be chosen to replace him. After the young Lazenby, producers might not want to go with Roger Moore who was actually older than Connery.
 
I personally think Lazenby had potential and could have become a better actor with more time to learn the craft. OHMSS more than any previous Bond film since From Russia with Love felt grounded and populated with characters that are real people. In that sense Lazenby was inspired casting since he brought more vulnerability to the role than Connery did.

OHMSS is certainly my favourite of the early Bond films and it follows the book quite closely. Lazenby's perceived weakness is actually a strength, because in the book, Bond goes into Blofeld's lair with no equipment or back up and he's shitting himself he's going to be caught at any moment. Connery couldn't have pulled that off, but Lazenby is perfect. Add to that a perfect female lead in Dianna Rigg, some superb cinematography (I saw it some years back on the big screen and the ski chases are breathtaking, especially the second one in the daytime), and one of John Barry's best Bond scores. It's one of the strongest releases in the series.

A real pity that Lazenby didn't stick around for another. Not that it hasn't stopped various people cobbling together trailers for a Lazenby "Diamonds are Forever" on youtube. Here's one of the better ones.

 
We have two MAJOR effects on pop culture:

Bruce Lee lives. The meeting he was at where had the fatal allergic reaction to aspirin was in relation to a project with George Lazenby. If Lazenby is still playing Bond, that meeting never happens.

The other effect is that, while we also lose Connery's last turn at the charachter, we are spared Moore turning the franchise into a parody. OHMSS is one of the better Bond movies, be interesting to.see where Lazenby takes things.
 
The other effect is that, while we also lose Connery's last turn at the charachter, we are spared Moore turning the franchise into a parody. OHMSS is one of the better Bond movies, be interesting to.see where Lazenby takes things.

Throughout the 1970s the Bond series would probably be closer to the books, for better and for worse. Ian Fleming originally intended Bond to be a dull personality, which is how Lazenby played the role. I think after two or three films fans would be tired of this and would want to see a change. If Lazenby leaves the role in the mid seventies, the studio might hire Timothy Dalton ten years early some as officials had wanted to do after Connery left for good. At the time Dalton turned down the role thinking he was too young, but in 1974 he'd be around the same age as Lazenby when he took over.
 
At the time reaction to Lazenby was rather
mixed, with many critics blasting him for
being wooden & boring. On the other hand
Alexander Walker of the London EVENING
STANDARD was positively glowing in his
assessment of Lazenby: “Forget the rumors.
The ones obviously put about by SMERSH.
The truth is that George Lazenby is almost
as good a James Bond as the man this film
calls ‘the other fella’. Next time he’ll have
eased himself even more comfortably into
the tailored shoulder holster.”* I rather
agree with Mr Walker. Sure, Lazenby @
times could have been more animated but
hey this is James Bond, not Hamlet we’re
talking about here. He was fine in the action
scenes, threw quips around easily, & mana-
ged to convince us all he really was smitten
with Diana Rigg(no mean feat since we now
know she despised him). All this in what was virtually his movie debut, succeeding a very popular, almost beloved, figure. Surely, as Walker said, after this Lazenby could only
have gotten better.

So I think he could have played Bond for six pictures per the original deal. If nothing else, the Roger Moore Bond films would have thus been butterflied away(by all accounts Roger was a nice guy personally, & I learned to tolerate him in the role, but I also think that of all the actors who have played 007 Roger Moore was the worst- or least impressive).

*- Quoted in Sinclair McKay, THE MAN WITH
THE GOLDEN TOUCH(2008), p. 125. An ab-
solutely delightful look @ the James Bond
films, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig.
 
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I rather
agree with Mr Walker. Sure, Lazenby @
times could have been more animated but
hey this is James Bond, not Hamlet we’re
talking about here.

I agree that Lazenby wasn't terrible, but his portrayal of Bond just didn't hit the mark. He was too young, was dull as a block of wood, and looked awkward on screen. He came off more as a teenager impersonating Bond than the real deal. Even in the scene in which his new wife dies, Lazenby's Bond is barely moved. (Contrast that to Craig in his first outing as Bond, who looks like his whole world has been destroyed when Vesper dies in Casino Royale). But for that I blame the producers, not Lazenby: it was their fault that they hired a 29 year old model who never acted before. However I do think that Lazenby could've learned to give his portrayal more gravitas and emotional depth. I believe that after OHMSS they were planning to do The Man With the Golden Gun with Lazenby. I don't like the OTL film they made of that story, despite Christopher Lee's amazing performance as the villain, but perhaps with a more serious tone it could've worked better.
 
Screen Shot 2018-11-10 at 1.35.28 PM.png
]. I believe that after OHMSS they were planning to do The Man With the Golden Gun with Lazenby. I don't like the OTL film they made of that story, despite Christopher Lee's amazing performance as the villain, but perhaps with a more serious tone it could've worked better.
 
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The next few Bond movies adhere closer to the books than the ones we've seen. We get a darker Diamonds are Forever, similar to the trailer Wooksta posted, and the plot is a hybrid of OTL's DAF and the novel version of You Only Live Twice (quite possibly switching out the Garden of Death for the old west town Spectreville from the DAF novel). At the end of the movie, Bond is knocked unconscious and develops amnesia, and Tiffany Case takes him in.

The sequel, The Man With the Golden Gun, is nearly identical to the book (aside from a location change for Live and Let Die's sake). Bond returns to MI6 HQ looking very dissheveled, and attempts to kill M. It's revealed that in between the end of DAF and the start of this movie, Bond was brainwashed by the KGB. Once de-programmed, he is given a chance to redeem himself by going to South Korea and assassinating Franscisco Scaramanga, one of the most wanted hitmen in the world and a current associate of the KGB. As he finds out, Scaramanga is part of a plot with some hotel developers to create friction between tourists and the people so that the locals begin to resent capitalism and return to communism, and there's something about a prostitution ring in there, but the driving force of the plot here is Bond's inevitable duel with Scaramanga.

The next Bond movie, Live and Let Die, is the traditional escapist fare rather than the character-based films of the first half of Lazenby's tenure. It's still kind of racist, and this time around, it incorporates the novel's "pirate gold money laundering scheme" plot.
 
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Okay @mr1940s, after Diamonds are Forever Lazenby probably does Golden Gun at some point. Since it was the last full-length Bond story that Fleming wrote (though not the last 007 work published under his name), that would be a fitting movie for Lazenby to retire on sometime in the mid-70s.
 
It's fascinating to look at the US box office that year - OHMSS was number ten, outgrossed two-to-one by Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider. The top ten is a peculiar collision of New Hollywood and the remnants of the old guard (Hello Dolly, True Grit, and Paint Your Wagon were also popular that year). It's also the last great year for the Western; Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch were released in 1969 as well. And Butch Cassidy.

I've always though Lazenby was okay in the role. For a large part of the film he's dubbed, which doesn't work; he's good in the fights and is surprisingly effective when he has to convey terror and dejection. There's a sequence where the baddies are chasing him in a funfair and he essentially gives up - at which point Diana Rigg saves him - but instead of coming across as a wimp he really does seem to be at the end of his tether.

The problem is that although OHMSS was great fun the three films that followed were awful. Diamonds Are Forever is a plotless mess, Live and Let Die feels very small-scale and Golden Gun is just bland. That would have killed him off and perhaps even killed off the Bond franchise if he had stayed on. In the era of New Hollywood Bond was out of time - it wasn't until disco and the massive excess of Spy Who Loved Me that Bond really made a comeback.
 
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