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MI6 looks back at the "On Her Majesty's Secret
Service" premiere in 1969, and what the press
had to say...
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OHMSS - The Premiere & Press
17th August 2005
On Thursday 18 December 1969, Leicester Square’s Odeon cinema
played hosted to world premiere of the first 007 film with a different
James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Lazenby met his public for the first and only time officially
as Bond when the film premiered at the Leicester Square Odeon,
accompanying Diana Rigg and disappointed many by turning up with
decidedly un-Bond-like shoulder length hair and a heavy beard.
It followed an appearance a day earlier
on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson".
Lazenby shocked the studio audience and millions of television
viewers when he appeared as Carson's main guest sporting
long hair and a full beard.
Lazenby then delivered the biggest shock of all when he
told Carson that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"
was going to be his only Bond film, as he had decided he
was quitting the role and opting out of his contract. Lazenby
said he would get other acting roles, and that his Bond
contract, which was one and a half pages thick, was too
demanding on him. It took a few moments for Carson and the
audience to realize that Lazenby was not joking. Producers
Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were watching the show
and were furious with Lazenby's appearance and announcement,
as they felt both would severely hurt the box-office gross.
O.H.M.S.S. opened in Los Angles on the same day as the
UK, and a day later it went up against Alfred Hitchcock's
"Topaz". Also on general release were "Hello
Dolly!" and "John and Mary".
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The film went on to make a slow but healthy return of $22,800,000,
$82,000,000 total Worldwide. O.H.M.S.S. out grossed its nearest
competitor approximately two to one at the US box office for it's
first 3 weeks of release, where according to Variety, it was the
most popular film in the country for four solid weeks - clocking
up $9,117,000 in US theatrical rentals.
It set 3 box office records in it's opening week, including largest
opening day gross, largest one-day gross, and largest opening
weekend gross. After four weeks at number one at the box-office
it fell to second place as it was replaced in the top spot by
"Easy Rider". O.H.M.S.S. was the second highest grossing
movie at the box office released in 1969, after only "Butch
Cassidy and The Sundance Kid", which took the top spot for
the year.
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What The Critics Said...
Film of break-neck physical excitement and stunning visual
attractions in which George Lazenby replaced Sean Connery
as James Bond.
Lazenby is pleasant, capable and attractive in the role,
but he suffers in the inevitable comparison with Connery.
He doesn't have the latter's physique, voice and saturnine,
virile looks.
The baddie's hideout is perched on the peak of a Swiss
alp, part Playboy Penthouse, part Frankenstein's laboratory,
and part cave of the mountain troll. There Telly Savalas
is experimenting with biological warfare to take over the
world, under the guise of being a research institute for
treating allergies.
In Service Bond finds his true love, Diana Rigg, coolly
beautiful, intelligent, sardonic, and his equal in bed,
on skis, driving hellbent on icy mountain roads, and with
a few karate chops of her own.
– Staff Variety UK |
A bare fact must be faced. The superheated screen activities
of Ian Fleming's supersleuth and sex symbol, James Bond, are as
inevitable as sex or crime or "On Her Majesty's Secret Service,"
the sixth steaming annal in the sock 'em and spoof 'em spy series
that crashed into the DeMille and other local theaters yesterday.
Serious criticism of such an esteemed institution would be tantamount
to throwing rocks at Buckingham Palace, but it does call for a
handful of pebbles. Devotees will note that Sean Connery, the
virile, suave conqueror of all those dastards and dames in the
five previous capers, has given up his 007 Bond credentials to
George Lazenby, a 30-year-old Australian newcomer to films. He's
tall, dark, handsome and has a dimpled chin. But Mr. Lazenby,
if not a spurious Bond, is merely a casual, pleasant, satisfactory
replacement.
For the record, he plays a decidedly second fiddle to an overabundance
of continuous action, a soundtrack as explosive as the London
Blitz, and flip dialogue and characterizations set against some
authentic, truly spectacular Portuguese and Swiss scenic backgrounds,
caught in eyecatching colors.
What are Bond's problems now? They're too numerous, as usual,
to hold the constant attention of anyone other than a charter
member of Her Majesty's Secret Service. What sets our bully boy
off and fighting, running, shooting and loving this time is a
lissome, leggy lass mysteriously bent on drowning herself in the
waves thunderously crashing on a lonely Portuguese beach.
First thing you know he's involved in a battle with two toughs
that is as full of karate chops and belts in the belly as a brawl
in a Singapore alley. To the credit of Richard Maibaum, the scenarist,
the film's tongue-in-cheek attitude is set right at the outset.
Once our new Bond emerges triumphant, he turns to the audience
and says, somewhat plaintively: "This never happened to the
other fellow."
But it does. The lady of his life, the svelte Diana Rigg, who
learned her karate chops from the British TV "Avenger"
series, is the daughter of the blandly effete Gabriele Ferzetti,
Mafioso-like tycoon, who likes Bond and wants to destroy that
Spectre chief, Telly Savalas, his competition in world crime.
That suits Bond too, and practically right off he's in Switzerland,
where our villain maintains an eyrie atop an Alp.
It's an inaccessible retreat, supposedly
an institute for allergy research complete with hired guns,
scientific gimmicks and an international conclave of allegedly
allergic beauties who are really being brainwashed by the
oily, bald-domed Mr. Savalas to spread his biological destruction
of the world's food supply. Get it?
Bond dallies with the dolls, of course, but the heart of
the matter is a series of chases shot by the 41-year-old
Peter Hunt, second unit director of the previous adventures,
who's making his directorial debut with this one. The chases
are breakneck, devastating affairs.
A viewer must remember what seems to be the longest ski
chase and bobsled run ever, full of gunfire and spills,
that even includes an avalanche. There also is a decibel-filled
fight amid clanging Swiss cow bells, the jarring bombing
of that eyrie by helicopter-borne rescuers and the inadvertent
clashes of the escaping Bond and Miss Rigg in a slithering,
bang-up stock car race. One must say amen to a colleague's
observation:
"I never expected to see Switzerland defoliated like
"this."
It should be reported that the producers and distributors
already have rung up a reported $82,200,000 on their first
five Bond issues. It is not ungallant to report that Bond
marries Miss Rigg, who is gunned down and killed by Savalas
on their honeymoon. So it is reasonable to expect that Bond
inevitably will be loving, shooting and running again.
– New York Times A. H. WEILER
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"Might have been the best Bond if not for the bland Lazenby."
- Jeffrey M. Anderson, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
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`Lazenby's voice is more suave than sexy-sinister.
But he could pass for the other fellow's twin on the shady
side of the casino. In battle tactics there's nothing to
let you know which has the better stuntman stand-in. And
Lazenby definitely wins in fighting his way alone into a
skin-fit shirt ...
One load Lazenby doesn't have to carry is the electronic
gadgetry. He depends on what God, not IBM, gave him except
for an automatic safecracker that slaves away on the enemy's
combination while Bond reads the fold-out section of Playboy.
(That puts the machine in its place.)
`The result is a film with far more human action than in
most recent Bonds. And a lot more zip and pow, not to mention
zowie, inside the action ...The film's glaring error is
to end four times before it actually does, a sure sign of
film makers so surfeited with good scenes they want to cram
them all in - and in the end take our appetite away. But
Bond is definitely all set for the seventies.'
- Evening Standard's Alexander Walker
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`I must say that it's quite a jolly frolic in the familiar money-spinning
fashion, Not a penny spared on production values, smart direction
from Peter Hunt, and a shrewd eye kept throughout on the well-worn
mixture of sex, violence, thrills and laughs.
- Derek Malcolm in The Guardian
`I don't agree with the press,' `They should have given him an
A for Effort. It's true he's not Olivier, but Olivier could not
play Bond in any circumstances. In fairness to George, he must
have something Olivier doesn't have. There will be a lot of tear
stains on the bank deposit slips.'
- Albert Broccoli in The Sunday Times.
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