"Half the world loved Sean Connery and half the world loved Roger Moore," explained Timothy Dalton in one of those interminable Best of 007 shows that ITV used to trot out to coincide with every new Bond film. It seemed that for his interpretation of everyone's favourite secret agent, the world was not quite enough.
Dalton's Bond is a curious anomaly in the cinematic 007 cannon - uncomfortably sandwiched between matinee idols Moore and Brosnan, and a victim of more unlikely circumstance than would be plausible even in the Seventies excess of Moonraker. He is the final Bond due a reappraisal and as he returns to our screens in Sky's excellent Penny Dreadful now seems an appropriate time to remember the original "dark Bond."
In the wake of euphoria that greeted the release of
Goldeneye in 1995, it started to become rather trendy to chime in that On Her Majesty's Secret Service was actually a pretty good movie and that one hit wonder George Lazenby wasn't the disaster that pop culture had painted him as. (David Arnold's epic recording of the theme tune with the Propellerheads certainly didn't hurt the film's reputation either.) Lazenby wisely started giving humble, reflective interviews, explaining that he was a fool for turning down Diamonds Are Foreverand embracing his legacy as the forgotten Bond.
More recently, the hardcore Bond fans who were so vocal in their condemnation of Roger Moore's playboy Bond have softened in their views, perhaps because Moore has become a bona fide national treasure, or perhaps because some of his Bond films are actually amongst the best in the series once the blinkers come off. Even his safari suits are beginning to become style touchpoints: Angelo Galasso recently tweeted a picture of Moore wearing a white dinner jacket with huge lapels in The Man With The Golden Gun, citing him as the most stylish James Bond and describing him as "endless inspiration."
But what of Dalton? The quiet, self effacing actor who has always kept his private life away from the tabloids, has always been loyal to the Bond franchise (he was a pall bearer at producer Cubby Broccoli's funeral) without surrendering himself to endless retrospective chat shows and conventions. And perhaps as a result, people are finally beginning to appreciate his two Bond films for the stylish, underrated thrillers they have always been.
When Roger Moore quit Bond in 1985, his announcement was greeted with skepticism. The 58 year old actor was well known for saying each Bond film would be his last and the rumour mill immediately ground into action, suggesting that he would be lured back with another $5m and talk of Bette Davis playing a Bond villainess. But this time Moore meant it: his 007 swansong A View To A Kill had dramatically underperformed at the box office and the lure of semi-retirement in Switzerland was too much. The hunt was on for a new 007 for the first time in 12 long years.
Finding a replacement was no mean feat as Moore had won over audiences if not critics, cementing his reputation as the movie star Bond when his sixth outing, Octopussy, trounced a rogue Sean Connery Bond - Never Say Never Again - at the box office. Initially the producers decided to stick with the winning Moore formula and hired Pierce Brosnan as their new James Bond. A handsome, charming television actor with the popular series
Remmington Steele behind him, Brosnan was a star cut from the same block as Moore. But fate conspired against him and the network which made Remmington Steele called him back for another series. Step forward Timothy Dalton as the new 007.
There is talk that Dalton had been considered as 007 for On Her Majesty's Secret Service, though he seems worlds apart from beefcake Aussie Lazenby, and that he was used as a stalking horse to beat Moore's price down around the time of
Octopussy. Either way, he was on Eon Productions' radar and eminently suitable for the part.
Dalton's core appeal would be that he was a genuinely fresh choice: by the end of his tenure Moore was all permatan, hair lacquer and Doug Hayward power suits. Dalton was paler, like he'd been in the shadows, slightly thinning around his widow's peak and his Bond wore nondescript suits made by Benjamin Simon. Dalton's Bond was brooding and dangerous and he made him feel more like a spy and less like a playboy crimefighter.
Audiences agreed: The Living Daylights was a genuine smash at the box office, taking over $190m at the box office, even if US admissions were down on the Roger Moore films. And The Living Daylights is a particularly good Bond film: had it a more charismatic villain and an iconic Bond girl there is little doubt it would stand amongst the very best in the series.
Plans were almost immediately underway to develop the first real Dalton Bond - The Living Daylights had not been written specifically for him - and it was immediately decided to go as dark as possible. The result, License Revoked (later
License To Kill amidst fears American audiences wouldn't know what "revoked" meant), was really a natural successor to
On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Dalton was a seething, ferocious Bond launching a personal vendetta against the drugs cartel who has maimed his friend Felix Leiter and raped and killed Leiter's new bride. The film is unlike any other Bond - our man from MI6 is a deadpan killing machine 20 years before Daniel Craig convinced us that his was a fresh approach, cutting a swathe through unsettlingly realistic villains in a series of violent set pieces. I remember only too well, as a nine year old, the playground scandal when License To Kill was awarded a 15 at the cinema. The video nasty of Bond films became an instant talking point at schools up and down the country as older brother generated tales of its extreme sex and violence were magnified incessantly.
Away from the school gates the film was considerably less successful than its predecessor, however, and it floundered in the face of competition from both Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade and the box office phenomenon that was
Batman. A worldwide gross of over $150m was by no means a disaster (Moore's second film, The Man With The Golden Gun, significantly underperformed at the box office too) but American admissions were down again, suggestion that audiences wanted tropical spectacle from their Bond films, not gritty revenge thrillers set in urban landscapes. It was time for a rethink: but fate was about to intervene once more.
As the Broccoli dynasty regrouped to plan the next Bond film, it was distracted by a protracted legal battle over television rights with studio MGM. The court case dragged on for years, seemingly forever, but behind the scenes, plans were afoot for Dalton's third Bond film, a cold war tale pitting Bond against a rogue "00" named Trevelyan: its working title was Goldeneye.
For Dalton, the unending delays with the third film must have been incredibly frustrating: both Moore and Connery had played to their box office strengths between 007 assignments whereas Dalton ended up being the only decent thing in ill-fated superhero movie
The Rocketeer. Eventually the waiting became too much: on April 12th 1994, Timothy Dalton announced that he would not be playing James Bond for a third time, some five years after his last appearance in the role. Pierce Brosnan finally stepped in and took a million plaudits for making the series feel fresh again, which it didn't really: it was more that Bond had been away for so long that audiences were ready to welcome him back.
The prospect of Dalton in Goldeneye is a tantalizing one: watching him square off against both Judi Dench and Sean Bean would have been electrifying and it felt as though the movie had a marketing push beyond that afforded the previous two films. But it was not to be and Dalton moved on without a hint of bitterness, enjoying acclaim and professional respect in his Hollywood career.
When Brosnan was replaced by Daniel Craig, there was fear that the "blonde Bond" would be "another Timothy Dalton" but when he proved to be exactly that it was suddenly the only way Bond should ever have been played. Craig's *Dark Knight-*era Bond comes across as a more fashion-forward version of Dalton's, proving that timing really is everything. So as you see Dalton deliver his iconic "I'd murder the world" line in Penny Dreadful, spare a thought for the most underrated of the James Bonds: he was never less than his own man in the part and he was all the better for it.
Penny Dreadful is on Sky Atlantic at 9pm and on Sky Plus.
Jonathan Sothcott is the independent film producer behind Richwater Films.
