Lay Off Lazenby! An Appreciation Of The Aussie Actor's Performance In On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Also undercutting that ruthlessness is a certain staginess to the fight scenes. Though noisy and destructive to much scenery, the fights featured showy uppercuts more suited to a student stage production of West Side Story.  His chase scenes on the Swiss slopes, in one case alongside Rigg,  go goofy when insert shots show the downhill sprints against a projected landscape. Still, many of the unadulterated ski sequences, in which Olympian Willy Bogner at times doubled, set a breathless standard for later Bond snow  chases.

All carps aside, this is a boldly sui generis Bond film, one that sought to break the mold, and as Taylor notes,“breaks your heart,” thanks to the death of 007's great love.  The key to its surprising emotionality  is the believabity of the Tracy-James romance. Somehow, even in the corny set-up of a nighttime retreat from a blizzard in a picturesque barn, and with the supposedly licensed-to-kill Bond saying, “I love you—I know I’ll never find another girl like you”, we believe it all.

Much credit goes to Rigg for her naturalistic chops, but against the popular myth that Lazenby was hired simply as a big rangy lug stands the actual performance, in which he shows himself to be an accomplished listener. Whether it’s the troubled Tracy, her likably haute-gangster dad,  or the highly watchable — if  not always convincingly aristocratic — Savalas, each secondary player has a tale to tell, and  Lazenby as Bond almost invariably responds with the right degree of empathy, skepticism, or gravitas. He also has the necessary gearing to pop out of a limo with the instruction, “Keep my martini cool.”

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Better yet, though, in the play within a play where Bond has to remain the starchy, asexual  genealogical researcher even as he’s trying to lure some vixen into bed,  Lazenby lies straight-faced when the girl reminds him he’s supposd to be uninterested in cozying up to women. “Usually I don’t,” he insists.  He also tells some threatening Bluto that “Guns make me nervous,”  quite a Cary Grant- style turn from a guy who, in a later scene, chokes a thug to death with the edge of a ski.

There’s even a rather invigorating bromance that deepens the film’s emotionality. How can we not be stirred when Tracy's devoted father and her desperate lover take to the choppers to wreak vengeance on her kidnapers?  Moments like that seem all the better because Hunt and his cadre are willing to take the mickey, as when Bond is frog-marched into one compound by thugs. As they cross frame, we linger  on a little person, a  male housekeeper, who whistles the “Goldfinger” theme while sweeping up.

Lazenby, alas, wasn’t destined to be a star, and, indeed, he soon went hipster, actually stating that Dennis Hopper was the director he most wanted to work with.   Based on his admitted arrogance and some advice from his agent that he now regrets taking, Lazenby turned down the chance to sign on for seven Bond films. Most of his On Her Majesty's Secret Service colleagues — including the stuntman who calls him “one of the boys,” the screenwriter, cinematographer, and director — assert that he would have done fine at that.  Instead, Lazenby would grow long hair and a beard, sail around the world, publicly call Bond a brute, essay a sad series of bit parts, briefly marry former tennis star Pam Shriver in 2008, and reportedly is writing his memoir, The Other Fella.

However. If you’re looking to refresh your Bond appreciation, and especially if you skipped On Her Majesty’s the first time around because you’d heard it dismissed, give it a try. And raise a whisky (or yes, the shaken-not-stirred martini, which is  obligatorily cited in the film) to Lazenby. He may not have been the  immortal Bond, but, as Bond himself says of one bad guy who skis into a giant snow thrower and is ejected from its twin ports as thick, raspberry stains in the hurtling whiteness: “He had lots of guts.”

Fred Schruers, a freelance writer living in Los Angeles, has contributed to Rolling Stone, Premiere, the Los Angeles Times,  and many other publications. 

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