Farewell, Sean Connery

Public Domain

Seven Bond films, including You Only Live Twice (my first) which I begged my very conservative parents to let us watch on television for the first time at my even more conservative grandparents house because “Seen [sic] Connery is in it!”  Pretty uncomfortable evening as Bond took a long series of different women to bed, but a great movie and a legendary actor.

Connery gave us such memorable characters and performances as:

• Darby O’Gill and the Little People,
• The Longest Day,
• Dr. No,
• From Russia with Love,
• Goldfinger,
• Thunderball,
• You Only Live Twice,
• Diamonds Are Forever,
• The Wind and the Lion (as Moroccan Sharif Mulai Ahmed er Raisuni),
• A Bridge Too Far (as Maj. Gen. Roy Urquhart, British 1st Airborne Division in WWII’s Operation Market Garden),
• Outland (as Marshal William T. O’Niel who reveals that “There’s a whole machine that works because everybody does what they’re supposed to. And I found out… I was supposed to be something I didn’t like. That’s what’s in the program. That’s my rotten little part, in the rotten machine… I don’t like it.”,
• Time Bandits (as King Agamemnon, who teaches Kevin something far more important than how to kill people in battle (the art of misdirection, vis-à-vis the shell game), and as one of the British firemen who later rescues Kevin from his burning bedroom, giving him a suspiciously knowing wink),
• Never Say Never Again,
• Highlander (as immortal dandy and sword master Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez, who teaches Connor MacLeod about his “gift” and prepares him for his showdown with the evil Kurgan),
• The Name of the Rose (as the brilliant Franciscan logician William of Baskerville),
• The Untouchables (as the incorruptible beat-cop-turned-crusader Jim Malone),
• The Presidio,
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (as Indy’s Dad, Henry Jones, Sr.),
• The Hunt for Red October (as the Russian Navy’s thick Scot’s brogue-speaking “Vilnius Nastavnic” or “Vilnius Schoolmaster) Captain Marko Ramius: “Wunsh again we play our dangerush game … againsht our old ad-VER-sharies, the American navy … “),
• The Russia House,
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (as King Richard the Lionheart),
• The Rock (as escaped Alcatraz convict John Patrick Mason),
• Finding Forrester, and
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (as legendary English big game hunter and adventurer Allan Quatermain)

It’s hard to imagine an actor with more charisma and range.

He was also a long-time, vocal supporter of Scottish independence and was subsequently knighted.

He will be missed.

Listen, Practice, Change, Act Justly, Live Well

Photo by Evelina Zhu on Pexels.com

“Our bodies tell the truth, even when our minds are in denial. We are called to embodied practice: of stretching sore muscles, of practicing justice, of equanimity for solidarity.”

— Pádraig Ó Tuama, Poetry Unbound