Would-be Bond: The naked truth

Roger Green's screen test for Diamonds Are Forever

DURING the shooting of Sean Connery’s fifth James Bond film, You Only Live Twice, on location in Japan, there were rumblings that this was to be Connery’s final fling as 007.

 

The Scottish actor had grown restless and disgruntled with the role as the production time of each film had grown longer and longer, leaving him little time to consider other film roles – and he also believed he was being short-changed by the producers Albert R ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. 

True to his word, at the premiere of the film at the Odeon Leicester Square on June 12, 1967, when was asked by Her Majesty The Queen, “I understand this to be your last Bond film.” “Yes ma’am, this is definitely the last time for me!” he replied.

With Sean Connery’s departure, the producers searched high and low for their new Bond until Australian model George Lazenby talked his way into the role for the sixth Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

Although the film was far from being a flop, it didn’t match the returns of the preceding two films; this, together with Lazenby’s mercurial personality, and that he decided to walk away from the role after only one appearance, meant for the second time in two years the producers were back to square one looking for a new Bond.

In 1970, Bond filmmakers EON Productions began screen testing various likely looking actors for the 007 role. None of the actors screen tested were ever revealed – until now.

 

Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever

Enter New Zealander Roger Green – ex-All Blacks rugby union player, ex-sheep farmer, and party animal. After appearing in the 1970 film Waterloo, which enabled him to become a member of British Actors Equity, Green appeared with the Soho Theatre company. 

Green, now 77, and back living in New Zealand, running a land company and also as a clinician working in the field of drug and alcohol dependency, remembers: “About that time I played the lead Troglodyte in a tale based on The Iliad and The Odyssey in a BBC2 literary programme. 

“Nobody told me I was to be fully nude on the location, lounging about on the Devon coast. The irony of it was that the programme was transmitted at the same time as Miss World was on BBC1. Fortunately very few watched the first full frontal male nude on British television – but perhaps Broccoli and Saltzman did! 

“I could never understand what the Bond producers saw in me, as I’m well aware that training and experience were required before one succeeded in this cutthroat business. Still, who was I to complain?  

As a New Zealand sheep farmer, footloose in the drawing rooms of Belgravia I was having a ball – the swinging Sixties were in full flight; there were hundreds of actresses around and most of the guys seemed to be gay! 

 

Connery in a scene of Diamonds Are Forever

“I did take some private drama lessons which possibly stood me in good stead, but not enough to win me roles when competing with the likes of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.

“My friend Johnny Harrison was a theatrical agent who felt I would make a good Bond, and he got me meetings with Cubby Broccoli and Harry. Broccoli said they were considering me for the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever.

“I was relieved when Broccoli said, “We’re not so concerned with your acting ability, we are more interested in how athletic you are’. This was music to my ears – I’d been a rugby player who played for the Junior All Blacks in 1959.”

Green went for a screen test at Pinewood studios, having had a practice session with a stuntman on how to do screen fighting. 

“I turned up at Pinewood in at 6am in a suit and tie. The very lovely Imogen Hassall was playing the role of Tiffany Case that morning in the tests. The Bond main stunt-arranger and stuntman Bob Simmons took the part of Peter Franks, the character who Bond is impersonating, and who proceeds to take a swing at Bond. 

“The test began with Bond pouring himself a drink and lighting a cigarette with Tiffany Case in her boudoir wearing a negligee. Dialogue takes place between them when there is a knock at the door and Tiffany asks Bond to ‘See who that is, will you?”’.

  

“Bond opens the door, Bob Simmons introduces himself and proceeds to swing at Bond, who of course does not let up until the intruder is lying dead on the floor. Bond straightens his tie and both he and Tiffany look down on the intruder’s body.

Tiffany asks who he is and Bond says, ‘I’ve tangled with him before. Bond, British agent!’. Tiffany says: ‘James Bond? The famous double-o seven licenced to kill?’. ‘Oh, you’ve heard of him?’ Bond replies. Cut!”

“The audition ended with the director Guy Hamilton saying, ‘You have a great chance of getting this part, we will get back in touch with your agent.’ For this sheep farmer on extended holiday in the UK this was certainly an event to cause me to walk on air for the next three months.”

“I understood that Roger Moore was also up for the role but his inclusion was not serious at that time. I was told by my agent that all the others tested were “let go” one-by-one over the next three months. I was quite confident but was realistic enough to realize the odds were great that I would not get the part, after all I was not a trained actor, nor had I sought the role in the first place. 

“Eventually I read in the press that Sean Connery had done a deal with United Artists to return one final time in Diamonds Are Forever, and they would also finance two other non-Bond movies he was interested in, and I was let go.

 

“My agent said that Hamilton, Broccoli and Saltzman had wished me to play the role but United Artists had said, ‘Not another unknown Antipodean actor please!’.”

“Unusually, the production company gave me a copy of my screentest, which I’ve watched again recently – it really stands up pretty well.” 

Unbeknown to Roger Green, sometime after his screen test the American actor John Gavin was actually signed and put under contract to play James Bond by Cubby Broccoli, but United Artist’s President, David Picker, countermanded Broccoli’s decision and insisted they get Sean Connery back in the role and that the majority of the film should be set and shot in the USA. 

Sean Connery won a $1.25 million-dollar salary, a bonus if the shoot went longer than scheduled, a back-end percentage (12.5% of the gross), contractual freedom from having to talk to the producers (with whom he was feuding at the time), and United Artists would also finance two film projects of Connery’s choice. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Amazingly, producer Cubby Broccoli insisted that John Gavin be paid the full salary called for in his contract – and the actor still receives residuals today from a film in which he never appeared.

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