It’s too much. Too much, that Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman, Sean Connery, and now John Le Carre all passed away in 2020. My 12 year old self has died, and certainly her heart is broken.
Robert Vaughn passed away in 2016. I held up pretty well under that blow. And after all, David McCallum is still tottering around at 87 on NCIS so there’s that. (I don’t watch though, preferring to keep him young and dashing in my memories.)
Well what do all these actors, and one author, have in common? They gave life and breath to glamorous espionage in the Cold War. And I was besotted with all things in the world of spies. Before I was a Star Trek fan, my true loves were Ilya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and I was crazy for CIA agents Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott on I Spy. And Mission: Impossible – now that was THE Sunday night treat.
But the gold standard for spies was 007. When Sean Connery looked up from the baccarat table and said, “Bond. James Bond” he had me. Lock, stock and beretta. Or Walther PPK. When the local drive-in was showing a double feature of Dr. No and From Russia With Love, I sweet-talked my parents into taking me and my almost-equally besotted cousin.
Now please think about this: we were 12. And not just any 12 – small town 12. In 1964. Naive is not too strong a word. Really, it’s the only word. Sheesh.
My tv spy shows gave way to police shows or new fads. But I couldn’t give up the world of espionage. I saw every spy movie possible: the Ipcress File, Our Man Flint. Flashy with gadgets, smoky with fog and atmosphere – I was scrunched up in the middle row of the theatre with popcorn and a Mars bar.
When Goldfinger (featuring the glorious Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore) was released it was a huge hit. And with it came the signature song and lush opening title. Please spare a moment to smile at the thought of 12 year old me uttering the name “Pussy Galore” to my parents. Thunderball was even bigger, promoted with a spread in Look magazine. You Only Live Twice was even more exotic. When Connery left it was a blow. George Lazenby tried his hand at the role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with Diana Rigg as the ill-fated Bond girl and wife. But Roger Moore had the savoir faire to wear a tux, drive a fast car, karate chop the villains, and bed the girl. Live and Let It Die. The Spy Who Loved Me. Moonraker. For Your Eyes Only. I can tell you who sang the title song of them all. Roger Moore finally retired and amid some controversy, Timothy Dalton took the helm for The Living Daylights, and License to Kill. Then Pierce Brosnan finally got his turn (originally considered when Dalton was chosen) and performed for four films. It was thought the franchise had run it’s course until Daniel Craig breathed new life into it. Casino Royale was great, Quantum of Solace stumbled slightly, but Skyfall was the reimagining Bond needed.
But I digress. Because I’m trying to tell you how stuck I was to the espionage genre. After I had read all the Bond books in our free-range library – if you had a library card, the librarian let you check it out – I worked my way through non-fiction about the CIA and it’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. I read William Donovan’s book about the founding of the CIA. I read about U-2 pilot Gary Powers and how he was traded for a Russian spy. I read about the British spy scandal. In high school US Government, I wrote a paper on the CIA that garnered the highest grade in the class. Why not? I’d only been researching the subject for six years.
When I was 14 I would have been called Goth if it were the 1980s. I wore a black turtleneck sweater, shorts, tights, and flats ALL the time. And I thought about espionage ALL the time. About being a secret agent sniper. I skulked around the neighborhood. I spent a lot of time in my head pretending and this was my favorite let’s pretend. I even read John Le Carre’s first best seller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which might as well have been a brick wall. That classic was a little too over the head of a naïve small town girl but I plowed through it any way. Ian Fleming and John Le Carre gave the spy world literary life, both glamorously flashy and grimy down-to-earth. I ate it up either way.
You’ve got to wonder why didn’t I consider a career with the CIA? Never occurred to me. Spies were such creatures of fantasy that world didn’t seem reality based, even though the Cold War was very real and in the news.
But I never gave them up either. Watching The Americans and Homeland brought back those old feelings of excitement and exotic mystery. The ending to The Americans was poignant and bittersweet but the end of Homeland seemed absolutely perfect and totally satisfying. I won’t spoil those – if you haven’t seen either series, be sure to watch to the end.
Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman were the cool girls who wore black and were the equal of any male. (I would have loved Diana Rigg in The Avengers but for the fact that I lived so far up in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains the signal of the nearest ABC-TV station couldn’t reach that far. My husband mourns her bitterly.) Sean Connery was the template for every other spy to follow. And if you wanted intellectual engagement and the precursor to the delights of Homeland, John Le Carre’s creatures were devious and real. They all brought the outside world to me. It might have been a fantasy world, but it was certainly larger than a town with barely 5000 population. (I said it was small.)
Last night we watched the pilot episode of a British series, Alex Rider, about a teenage spy out to avenge the death of his uncle. I think teenage me would have loved him.
January 12, 2021
Forced Perspective 