Connery, Sean Connery

Before, During, and After His Most Famous Role

By: Herbie J Pilato, Barbara Carrera - foreword, Professor Richard Demarco CBE - introduction

Narrated by: Herbie J Pilato, Michael Butler Murray

With an in-depth perspective, Connery, Sean Connery defines and distinguishes the iconic star's life and career before, during, and after his most famous role. With a foreword by Barbara Carrera, the actor's costar from Never Say Never Again (his final British secret agent film), and an introduction by Richard Demarco (Connery's lifelong friend), this book also features exclusive commentary from actors like Brendan Lynch (another of Connery's lifelong friends), Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball), Tippi Hedren (Marnie), and more.

©2023 Herbie J Pilato (P)2023 Tantor

The Best Connery Bio I've Read So Far

This biography of the first James Bond in the theatrical releases does a good job of summarizing the man, but is frustrating in the sense that we don't get Connery's direct input. While clips and quotes are taken from Connery's interviews over the years, there still seems to be an elusive part of Sean Connery that no biographer has yet captured in a book.

In a recent interview with John Rhys-Davies on the "Inside You with Michael Rosenbaum" podcast, Connery's co-star in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, describes Connery as the ultimate Alpha Male. I suppose this description sums up the man in a few words better than analyses of his movie role choices and off-screen behavior on the golf course or the bedroom. Rhys-Davies said that when you're around Connery you sense a tension in him that never goes away. He was always on guard around other people. Also, as an introvert, Connery was not one to hang around a movie set any longer than necessary. Once he was rich, he would fly in, do his scenes, take a big pile of cash, and fly back to one of his gorgeous homes.

The first 2/3 of the book mostly put Connery in a positive light as someone who always respected the entire crew of any production he was a part of, as well as co-stars in his films. Yet, he had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, so there are no doubt many stories left out of his history since he must have come across lots of incompetence and rudeness across his 70 films. The public has heard of only a few of these encounters, such as his famous behind-the-scenes fights with the director of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Stephen Norrington. That particular feud sent Connery into permanent retirement from acting.

One area I had hoped for more background details was his feud with Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman While everyone is aware that Connery always felt underpaid for his movies as James Bond, he was granted the right to negotiate his salary with each successive Bond film. By 1967, he reportedly made $1 million for You Only Live Twice. I don't think it was the movies salaries he resented so much as not being brought in as a partner to share in the massive profits of the Bond franchise. Connery, rightly or wrongly, considered himself a major factor in the movies box office blockbuster tallies. Up to that time in the early to mid-1960's, no actor had ever had the power to demand a seat at the producer's table to be cut in to a massive profit machine. In fact, Broccoli and Saltzman were reportedly loathe to share the profits with one another, let alone a third person in the form of Sean Connery. But once Connery saw Dean Martin negotiate a sweet deal on the Matt Helm movies for large salaries and a cut of the profits, Connery was hellbent on getting the same deal or better for himself. Too bad for Dean Martin that the Matt Helm movies were awful and died off quickly.

Connery did make headway in this realm with his negotiation on Diamonds Are Forever by getting a then-record salary of $1.25 million AND and 5% cut of the profits. But this wasn't Broccoli and Saltzman's doing; this deal was negotiated by a desperate MGM executive who needed the James Bond movies to be huge money makers once again after faltering with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. If Broccoli and Saltzman had final choice on the DAF actor, it would have been American actor John Galvin or a desperate attempt to get Lazenby to do one more Bond movie. They didn't want Connery back at all.

Besides the monetary disputes between Connery and the Bond producers, I think Broccoli and Saltzman didn't respect him as a person. In their minds, he was still the rough edged lorry driver they hired on the cheap for Dr. No and didn't seem to appreciate how crucial Connery was to making the theatrical movies such successes.

One interesting story from Connery, himself, was a 1983 interview when he was promoting Never Say Never Again. When asked about his experience with the Bond movies, he compared Broccoli and Saltzman to gangsters. He said they enhanced their lifestyles by enjoying expensive dinners, travel arrangements, and limo services by charging all those costs back to movie budgets. As a firsthand witness to these shady accounting practices, Connery was incensed when they refused to negotiate with him for better terms.

But all of the above is supposition on my part based on bits and pieces i've read over the years about the Connery-Bond feud. This book won't give you much more insight than I've given here. I do think Connery's fight for a better share of profits in a blockbuster franchise did set a standard for other actors later on when negotiating with huge franchise projects like Star Wars, Harry Potter, X-Men, Lord of the Rings, and the Marvel movies. But the Bond franchise was running parallel to all of those movie series for 60 years and doing quite well, thank you very much.

The book attempts to deal with some of Connery's character flaws, but doesn't address the subject head on until near the end of the book. For example, it delves lightly and gently into Connery's serial cheating on both wives, Diane Cilento and Micheline Roquebrune, Connery was loathe to ever discuss his out of wedlock affairs, but we get a distinct sense that Connery's sense of morality was that he was entitled to sleep with other women. His marriages were strictly patriarchal in nature, so neither Diane nor Michelene had much to say in pushing back on his behavior or male dominated way of thinking. The book covers a bit about Connery's shutdown of Diane's acting and writing careers because he thought a woman's place was in the home. Connery was certainly no role model for feminism.

The famous Barbara Walters 1987 interview with Sean had him standing by his sexist remarks from a 1965 Playboy interview, despite his being in the running for Best Supporting Actor in The Untouchables (he won). In 1917, Diane Cilento published an autobiography in which she cited an incident when Connery beat her over some dispute they were having. Connery fought to keep the book from being published, but was not successful. Connery appears to have been quite vain about his public image and couldn't tolerate negative press about himself.

Connery also seemed to treat business partners the worst. There is one story of a manager in a London theater that Connery owned who was deathly afraid of him. Nearly every encounter with Connery was a shouted scolding about how poorly he was managing the theater. It was quite an abusive relationship that went on for many years until the manager quit the theater once and for all.

Another sad story occurred with Connery's production company, Fountainbridge Films, that dissolved in 2002. Reputedly the breakup was largely due to friction between Connery and his business partner, Rhona Tollefson. It seemed that the more closely Connery worked with people in his employ, the worse sort of boss he became.

There's no doubt Connery had a lot of courage to take chances and pursue roles that pleased him personally. Very few actors would walk away from a thriving movie franchise to spend years in relative obscurity on projects like The Offence, Zardoz, The Man Who Would Be King, The Great Train Robbery, or Cuba. Yet his notorious demand for money limited his choices for many films because studios just couldn't afford the prices he tried to charge and his non-Bond movies were mostly box office disappointments. He was a stickler for being paid his maximum market value throughout his career. It's a surprise that small, low budget movies like The Hill ever got made because Sean still demanded a large fee even for those kind of roles.

"Connery, Sean Connery" at least attempts to paint the most well rounded view of Connery's good and bad traits, If you're a big Connery fan, it's worth listening to for its insight in his life and choices at different points in his career.

My only regret is that Connery's two attempts at issuing an autobiography never materialized because he just couldn't stand to have many facts of his life made public and drove away the ghost writers for those projects. This book makes no mention of "Being a Scot", Connery's self-penned tribute to Scotland that was widely panned for drifting into political diatribes. So, this biography is about the most insight you'll get from one book about this enigmatic cinema icon.

The Life of Sean Connery

The author gushed about the wonderful Sean Connery - especially at the end. I almost turned it off early because I was getting nauseated. Sean Connery's life was described, his movie selections mentioned and a little about his personal life. It was an adequate description of his life. I'm glad I listened, but now am on to better things.