To my horror, on the set the other day I heard Harry bawling ‘Nigger’. He was not trying to start a race riot, but simply calling to our English props man, ‘Nigger’ Weymouth, a nickname he has answered to since the days of silent cinema. I pointed out that it might be better to find him another name here in the racial hotbed of Louisiana, so we hav

Moving day in the movie business is a mammoth military operation. Two tons of equipment to be dismantled, crated and shipped to the airport for customs clearance ready for the flight to Jamaica took the unit most of Saturday. Nobody felt much like it as they were all fragile from the effects of the farewell party our US crew had thrown the night be

Half a mile up a hillside, our props for the love scene were ready. It was to take place during a picnic, and blankets and a table-cloth were laid out and the set cleared and closed. Except for John Bryson and the unit stills man, George Whitear, photographers were barred, so when we saw a long lens peeping through the palms, there was near panic.

After the day’s work, I got back to the hotel, hot, sticky and tired, and ran straight into trouble. David Steen, a freelance photographer I have known for some years, who joined us in New Orleans, asked me to do a still with Gloria, with us posing as a bride and groom to be captioned ‘Mr & Mrs Bond’. David got the idea after a scene in which B

When Yaphet Kotto came to New Orleans and gave the Black Power salute, there were those who said he had a chip on his

Disaster was averted when the pontoon carrying, if you’ll pardon the pun, twenty-one people was swept out of control in a wide, strong current. The water was slapping over the side, and everybody was nervously clutching scripts, cameras and cans of film. Jerry and I felt suitably heroic when we saved the day by pushing the bows of our powerboat up

night before, saying: ‘Good luck for the following day and go break a leg,’ which I had nearly done, and I added: ‘If I don’t do what I am told, you have my full permission to kick me up the backside.’ I’m glad to say he didn’t that day, but there are many more to come.

Today, the fourteenth day I have played Bond before the cameras, was momentous because I said my first lines. Last evening, I went through the scene, carefully committing it to memory, and was word perfect when I arrived on set. I suggested to David Hedison (Felix Leiter, my CIA buddy in the film), sitting having his suntan evened off around the ey

B-Day Eight. In front of an outdoor altar on the rolling lawns of the Treadway estate, the movie marriage, that we hope will never be consummated, is being solemnised. The bayou flows peacefully by and a nuptial nicely hangs in the air like the soft Spanish moss from the circling trees. But the beautiful bride, the groom, the bridesmaids, the vicar