"Roger Moore as James Bond Was the Epitome of Cool". A New Documentary Proves It
To anyone who came of moviegoing age between 1973 and 1985 – or, Live and Let Die and A View to a Kill – there's a fair chance that Roger Moore will be the classic James Bond.
To anyone else, there's a fair chance that Roger Moore will be the cheesiest James Bond – a punning, wooden Austin Powers that Daniel Craig's 007 did everything to assassinate.
A new documentary, From Roger Moore, with Love makes the case for the defence.
Or, at least, puts up a spirited defence that for everything that so appeals to Alan Partridge ("I'm Roger Moore. Bang! Blood dribbles down. We're on a submarine"), Moore was in on the joke.
Charting Moore's rise from shy London schoolboy through to signing a seven-year contract with MGM in the 1950s, to series like Ivanhoe, The Alaskans and, later, The Persuaders! to playing proto-Bond Simon Templar in 1960s cult TV show The Saint, the focus of From Roger Moore... is inevitably the Bond years that defined him.
With interviewees including Pierce Brosnan, Christopher Walken, Joan Collins, Jane Seymour, Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, plus Moore's three children with Italian actress and wife number three, Luisa Mattioli, it's an entertaining watch.
Director Jack Cocker also employees a storytelling device that is likely to make Moore's tale especially memorable – first person narration via an uncanny soundalike.
Esquire spoke to Cocker about the making the documentary, Moore's enviable life and why "the chocolate theory" suggests the next James Bond might be someone sweet.
Esquire: Why did you want to make this film?
Jack Cocker: Roger was my Bond. I was born in ‘75 so I missed the first few films but I remember going to see Octopussy (1983) and A View To A Kill (1985) with my brother at the cinema. Even though I’m Scottish-born and still live in Scotland, and its sort-of sacrilege to say that anyone other than Connery is your Bond up here. But Roger was my Bond. And like many men, and women, of my generation I still have a big soft spot for him. To be offered the job was a delight. I grabbed the chance with both hands.
Do we all have formative relationships with our Bonds? Or are some Bonds more iconic than others?
I was in a shop recently and I got chatting to a woman who said “Oh, Pierce Brosnan is my Bond” – she was about 10 years younger than me. I think everyone’s got their own. When Roger became Bond, he and Connery were good friends. After The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and especially with Moonraker (1979), he bought the average age of the audience down considerably, and Connery used to tease him about it. He would say, “You’ve got the Disney crowd, the teenyboppers”. Well, I was one of those. I loved him for it. Obviously, he wasn’t quite as mean or as threatening or cold and hard as Connery. He was a new kind of male role model, I suppose, for the times.
You've used a narrator to tell his story in the first person. An interesting choice.
It was the first idea I had when I came on board. I think it’s a much more inviting way to tell a story for an audience. Obviously, we had to clear that with [Moore’s] family. There was talk of maybe trying to do it through AI, but that’s a legal minefield. Also, I know everybody’s very excited about it, but I just don’t think you can get the same kind of quality of a performance. You can’t riff in a recording studio the way you can with somebody like [a narrator].
They certainly nail Moore’s laid-back delivery.
And I think the way he played Bond… it wasn’t really winking at the audience, but it was certainly allowing the audience to know that he was in on the joke and that they were allowed to come in and laugh too, you know?
There’s this idea in the documentary of Roger Moore’s greatest creation being “Roger Moore” – a character he inhabited. Can you talk about that?
It sounds like a sort of fabrication on the part of a filmmaker, but actually [Moore] said it himself. During the research period for this, before we start filming, I watched an awful lot of archive footage – not just from the UK, but from America and Europe. It was amazing to see Roger spanning so many years. There was one piece of archive which I found, actually from quite late in his life. I think it was for a program for BBC Wales about [Welsh singer, and Moore’s second wife] Dorothy Squires. In it he said, “You know, before I met Dorothy, I was very nervous, very timid. What she gave me was the confidence to walk into a room. For the time I met Dorothy, I began developing a persona. I became somebody called 'Roger Moore'".
And that was helpful in making this film?
Hearing him say that unlocked something for me. He knew what he was. It wasn’t an accident. He built this persona. He always felt that he was lucky, that he’d won the lottery. And he did so by playing this role. And people seemed to like it, so he kept doing it. He was blessed, obviously, with incredible good looks. But he was also very, very sharp; very witty. All his friends and family spoke about how funny he was. That gave the film a kind of central thrust.
As Christopher Walken says "He was funny, he was handsome, he was charming, he dressed well..." He was also a tax exile living the good life in Switzerland, married four times, with a penchant for luxury. Roger Moore basically was James Bond, wasn’t he?
Early on we were thinking about calling this The Real Roger Moore. But then the real Roger Moore is not that far away from the Roger Moore that you see on screen. Like Christopher Walken says, he was the same guy. He dressed well. He was suave, he was debonair, he was funny, he was great company. The early time he had at MGM, and the television roles Ivanhoe and The Alaskans, they were okay. He carved out a career for himself. But the Venn diagram of Roger Moore off-screen and Roger Moore on-screen, sort of coalesced and became one circle with The Saint.
I just-about recall The Saint.
I happened to ask Pierce Brosnan an off-the-cuff question about The Saint, and it turned out he was a huge fan – he had queued up to get Roger’s autograph when he played Simon Templar.
He was very into clothes, wasn't he?
He was, he was very, very into clothes. I saw some amazing outfits in the archive. And obviously, you know, he was synonymous with the safari suit. People rip the piss a little bit, but I think it’s due a comeback. In his Persuaders! days he was actually credited as a costume designer. He designed his own outfits, working hand-in-hand with a fashion company [several British mills and tailors made the suits Moore wore as globetrotting playboy Lord Brett Sinclair in the show]. And he famously had a very long running friendship with [British bespoke tailor and “the man who dressed the Sixties”] Doug Hayward, who did the suits for the Bond movies.
What did they get up to?
Doug Hayward would come down to the south of France to do fittings for Roger for the Bond movies. He would bring this special brand of sausage that Roger loved. They had a little gang called the Mayfair Orphans, who would hang out in Doug's tailor shop on [London’s] Mount Street. Michael Caine, [founder of Tramp nightclub] Johnny Gold, [photographer] Terry O’Neill, and Roger. They would all just hang out in there and then go for lunch at Scott’s, and maybe buy a suit.
What a life!
I had a whole section about fashion. We’d interviewed Delroy Smith, who cut some of Roger’s suits for Doug Hayward. And [journalist] Glenys Roberts, who’d been married to Doug. That’s one of my biggest regrets, really. We just couldn't quite squeeze it into the film.
Surely he was the most stylish Bond?
Well, I think so! I’m sure Millennials will have a different opinion. You see the way he walks onto those chat shows. He’s always got a lit cigar. He looks immaculate. You can see why so many men think he’s the epitome of cool.
There’s a line that really made me laugh. By way of explaining one of his own infidelities: “What can I say? We spoke the international language of love".
“What can I say….” became a bit of a Get Out Of Jail Free card for us, for when he’s been a bit naughty in his personal life. As you'll know from having seen the film, he had a very interesting, colourful love life. But the central relationship of his life was with [Italian actress] Luisa [Mattioli]. They were married 30 years and had three children together. It’s a pretty amazing story about how they met, and it's lovely to hear it from their own kids, Deborah and Jeffrey and Christian.
There’s a section with Christian watching some of his dad’s home movies. It’s very moving.
Christian had never seen that stuff. It was the Karen Steyn, the producer, who contacted the family and suggested that the film be made. When I came on board, Karen and I flew to Gstaad to meet the family and introduce ourselves. I took a small camera with me, just in case there was anything worth filming. And I'm really glad I did.
What happened?
While we were there, he said, “You know, my dad was a very keen home video guy. He had all these video tapes". And so I filmed Jeffrey rooting around in the basement and looking through bags and whatnot. And lo and behold, he turned up about 40 tapes. VHS and Betamax. We didn’t know what was on any of them. They were just piled up on the table in front of us. I felt like we’d struck gold. We took them back, very carefully, to this company that baked them in an incubator. You have to bake them at a low temperature to dry out any of the gummy stuff, which is built up over the years, so it doesn't clog up the machine. And then one by one, they started digitising these tapes and feeding through the footage. And we just started watching all this stuff, which Roger had filmed – he was an early adopter of this kind of gadgetry. Christian hadn't seen any of it. So, it was lovely to sit with him and show him some of that and film his reaction. But yeah, he did get quite emotional.
Moore liked gadgets. Just like James Bond!
In later life he was very into emailing. A lot of his friends would talk about how he would send on jokes by email. He had a little computer station in his chalet in Switzerland. Yeah, he was big into the gadgets.
I had no idea Live and Let Die got such terrible reviews.
They weren't all terrible. But there was a fair bit of scepticism at Roger Moore coming in. I mean, he was a TV star, really. Up until that point, he had made a few films. But he was more known for The Persuaders! Then, what had happened before, with Connery leaving [with You Only Live Twice, 1967], George Lazenby doing one [On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969] then Connery coming back [Diamonds Are Forever, 1971], the whole thing was in a bit of an unsteady state. So, yeah, he wasn’t universally loved. Certainly not by the critics. But as Burt Reynolds says [in the documentary] “The critics don't decide who gets to be a star. It’s the people who decide”. And clearly the people voted with their feet.
The New York Times called him “a vast garden ornament”.
I’ve seen probably seen this film one hundred times, and that line makes me laugh every time I hear it. “Mr. Moore functions like a vast garden ornament”. I suppose it was good for me, in terms of having that mini narrative within his Bond work. That first one is a critical dud. The second one is another critical flop [The Man With The Golden Gun, 1974] – although they’re both successful financially. And by the third one [The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977] he decides to stop trying to turn Roger Moore into James Bond. Turn James Bond into Roger Moore. And that’s where it all clicks. You know, there’s more humour. He's more insouciant. He’s the classic Roger Moore we all love, with the raised eyebrow. And that was where things really started cooking for him.
You say The Spy Who Loved Me “saved the franchise”.
I’m mean – that’s a bit of a claim. But you have to remember that nowadays, we’re all used to there being a new Bond every 10 years or whatever. But back then, it hadn't really been done. They'd tried it once, and it had not really succeeded. And so, who knows? If The Spy Who Loved Me hadn’t been a success, the whole thing might have gone tits up. I don't know if you’ve heard the chocolate theory with James Bonds?
Please go on.
So: Sean Connery, dark chocolate. Roger Moore, milk chocolate. Timothy Dalton, dark chocolate. Pierce Brosnan, milk chocolate. Daniel Craig, dark chocolate. So maybe we’re going to have a sugary Bond next.
Who is going to be the next James Bond, then?
I have no idea. And I interviewed Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli [who run Eon Productions, the production company that makes the Bond films] for the film, and I didn’t even ask.
How many times a day do you think they get asked that question?
Exactly. Like they’re suddenly going to tell me. Being in Eon’s offices, though – that was amazing. Just thinking: “Oh my God – that’s the table that Cubby [Broccoli, Barbara’s dad] and Harry [Saltzman; who with Cubby produced the first nine Bond films] and Roger have sat around and thrashed out a contract”.
The Saint proved a kind of audition for Moore’s Bond, in the same way it’s said Layer Cake (2004) did for Daniel Craig.
Harry Saltzman actually said that they wanted Roger for Dr. No. If you speak to Bond aficionados, there’s some debate as to whether that’s true or not, but Harry says it – there’s some behind-the-scenes footage from Live and Let Die where he’s talking about that and says he wasn’t available, he was doing TV. And then they wanted him again for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and he was again tied up with a TV contract. But Roger himself said he could never have done Dr. No because I think he knew what worked best for him. He saw himself almost as a light comedian, in the vein of Cary Grant. He said “Most of the movies Cary did, I could have done”. He didn’t have that sort of mean, killer instinct that Connery had.
Connery had more grit.
Connery, you could believe that he would kill you. He was believable as a killer. Roger wrestled with those moments where he was asked to be meaner in Bond films. There’s a couple of famous scenes. One where he twists Maud Adams’s arm in The Man With The Golden Gun [Adams played “Bond girl” Andrea Anders]. And there’s another one from For Your Eyes Only, where he kicks [Belgian henchman] Locque. He’s suspended in a car, teetering on the edge of a cliff. And Roger’s got this little badge, and he wanted to throw this badge into the car – the added weight of this tiny badge would tip it over a cliff. But John Glen, the director, said “No, you’ve got to kick that car off the cliff. We need you mean”. He struggled with those kind of directions. Because I think he knew where his appeal lay. As Pierce Brosnan says, “He knew how to play Roger Moore”. And that’s a gift. It really is.
History hasn’t always been kind to Moore’s acting – the raised eyebrow, as you say, and accusations of being wooden. Do we think of him more kindly now?
I mean, some of the things from those films have not aged well. I guess the great thing about Roger was that he was always one step ahead of that. He was so self-deprecating, self-effacing. I don't know if you remember the Spitting Image sketch with him – where they said “Give me anger”; “Now give me anguish” [the joke in the 1980s satirical puppet show was that Moore’s range was so limited, he conveyed every emotion with a raised eyebrow] I think Roger loved all that, right? There's a hilarious story when Alan Partridge is doing Knowing Me, Knowing You and they’re supposed to have Roger Moore on as a guest. The running gag all the way through the show is that Roger Moore is on his way from the airport, but he still hasn’t turned up at the end of the show. And Roger’s dad actually called him from Frinton-on-Sea, where he lived. Roger’s in Gstaad. He said “That’s a terrible thing he did to that poor man. You didn't show up to the chat show”. Roger couldn't understand what was going on.
Is there a Roger Moore film we might not know, that you can recommend?
I’ve got two, actually. One is The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) which, as Roger says, is about the only time he was ever allowed to act. He plays two roles in it. Sort of a Jekyll and Hyde storyline. It’s pretty groovy. The other film I would recommend is North Sea Hijack (1980) where he plays a sort of Wes Anderson-esque character. He trains a crack team of aquatic commandos to overcome an oil rig that’s been hijacked. I love it because you get a glimpse of what it would have been like if he’d been allowed to be a character actor. He plays this hilarious guy called ffolkes – with two fs [both lower case] – and he’s a sort-of hard-drinking, cat-loving, needlepoint-sewing, military man who wears a beanie hat for most of the film. He’s brilliant. It’s really funny. Check that one out.
From Roger Moore, with Love will be screening exclusively in Everyman and Picturehouse Cinemas on 15 and 18 December. Then on BBC Two on Christmas Day at 9pm
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