THE TRIBUNE
Monday, November 2, 2020, PAGE 1
Sir Sean Connery The Last Great Matinée Idol Christopher Ondaatje marvels at the distinguished acting career of the awardwinning Scottish actor who immortalised the role of James Bond in spy movies. This article was first published in Weekend in November 2017
LONG before James Bond, and long before Sir Sean Connery, there was a tiny baby “Tommy” Connery born to Joe Connery, a truck driver, and Euphemia, a laundress, on 25 August 1930 in Fountainbridge, Scotland. The Connerys were really poor, and they lived in a neighbourhood where the stench from the local rubber mill and brewery was known as “the street of a thousand smells”. Their home was a two-room flat where the baby slept in a cupboard drawer because they didn’t have the money to buy a crib. Joe Connery brought home only a few shillings a week and those were often spent on whisky and gambling. Tommy grew up on the streets of Fountainbridge where the local gangs called him “Big Tam” because of his size and his eventual ability to dominate his playmates. He went to the local Tollcross elementary school and was clever and quick, grasping the fundamentals of mathematics, reading avidly and dreaming up fantastic stories of Martians and madmen. Even as a young boy he loved going to films and often skipped school to go to Blue Halls, the local movie house, to watch the pictures. When Tommy was eight years old his brother Neil was born, and he delighted in the role of big brother. The boys were inseparable and they fished in the local canal using their mother’s stockings for fishing line. Together the brothers often skipped school and mixed with some rough boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Tommy Connery left school when he was 13 years old to work for the local dairy, St Cuthbert’s Co-operative Society, as a milkman. It was his first job. He grew quickly and was 6ft 2in by the time he was 18. His full name was Thomas Sean Connery and, apart from being called Tommy, he was also called Sean long before he was an actor. When he was young, he had an Irish friend named Séamus and those who knew them both had decided to call Connery by his middle name whenever both were present. The name stuck. Three years later, he joined the Royal Navy, and received two tattoos on his arm. He still has them today: “MUM AND DAD” and “SCOTLAND FOREVER”. Although he signed on for seven years he was released after three because of a duodenal ulcer. He returned to his job for St Cuthbert’s Co-operative Society, then got work as a lorry driver, a lifeguard, a labourer, an artist’s model (in the Edinburgh College of Art), and a coffin polisher. He saved money to become a member of the Dunedin Weightlifting Club – “not so much to be
fit, but to look good for the girls”. From 1951, he trained seiously with a gym instructor from the British Army. His gym mates nominated him for the Mr Universe contest. In 1953, he travelled nine hours to get to London where the competitions were being held. He introduced himself as “Mr Scotland”, and was chosen third in the tall men’s division and given a medal. Connery was a keen footballer and played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days, where he was offered a trial with East Fife. In a football match against a local team that Matt Busby, Manager of Manchester United, happened to be scouting, Busby offered Connery a contract worth £25 a week and he was tempted to accept. “I realised that a topclass footballer could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23. I decided to become an actor and it turned out to be one of my more intelligent
moves.” While in SEAN Connery in roles, London clockwise from top left, as at the Mr James Bond; in Thunderball, shot in the Bahamas; Universe with Shirley Eaton in contest, Goldfinger; being given and after a Japanese bath in You receivlisted Only Live Twice; and in his ing his as a Oscar-winning role in The medal, a chorus Untouchables. local castmember ing director in the liked the look 1953 South of the tall ScotPacific protish kid and asked gramme. By him to join the chorus the time the production of South Pacific – a new reached Edinburgh, he musical by Rodgers and had been given the part of Hammerstein playing on Marine Corporal Hamilton Drury Lane in London’s Steeves and was undertheatre district. studying two of the juvenile “I didn’t have a voice, leads. His salary was raised couldn’t dance. But I could from £12 to £14-10s a week. look good standing there.” The following year, One rehearsal was all it returning to Edinburgh, took for Connery to decide Connery was promoted to to gamble everything on the featured role of Lieumaking acting his full-time tenant Buzz Adams. In career. It was then that he Edinburgh, Connery was chose the stage name Sean targeted by the notorious Connery. Valdor gang, one of the “It seemed to go more most ruthless in the city. He with my image than Tom or was followed by six gang Tommy.” members to a 15ft high Sean Connery was thus balcony at the Palais de
Danse. There, Connery launched an attack singlehandedly against the gang members, grabbing one by the throat and another by the biceps and cracking their heads together. From then on, he was treated with great respect by the gang and gained a reputation as a tough character. Connery also liked the reputation of being a rugged ladies man, but developed a serious interest in the theatre through the American actor Robert Henderson who lent him copies of the Henrik Ibsen works Hedda Gabler, The Wild Drunk, and When We Dead Awaken, and gave him the works of Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and William Shakespeare to digest. In addition, Henderson urged him to take elocution lessons and got him parts at
the Maida Vale Theatre in London. He began pursuing a career in film only after he was cast as an extra in the Herbert Wilcox 1954 musical Lilacs in the Spring with Anna Neagle. He secured several bit parts as an extra but was constantly struggling to make ends meet. He was reduced to being a part-time babysitter for journalist Peter Noble and his actress wife Mary Noble. While there he met Shelley Winters, who later said that Connery was one of the most charming Scotsmen she had ever met. She spent many evenings drinking beer with him. At about this time, Connery’s American actor friend Robert Henderson got him a job for £6 a week at the Q Theatre Production of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution. This role was followed by a number of minor stage parts until Canadian director Alvin Rakoff gave him multiple roles in The Condemned shot on location in Dover, Kent. In 1956, he appeared in the theatrical production of Epitaph, and played a minor role as a hoodlum in the Ladies of the Manor episode of the BBC TV series Dixon of Dock Green. He also had small TV parts in Sailor of Fortune and The Jack Benny Programme. Things turned around somewhat in 1957. He hired Richard Hatton as his agent - who got him the role of Spike, a minor