Sir Roger Moore (1927-2017)

It took a few more years and the more sober considered view of the grown man I eventually and grudgingly became, to rightly put Moore’s achievements into their correct context.

I remain a devotee of Fleming, Dalton and Connery, but I now appreciate that while Roger Moore’s Bond films may not possess the dramatic or artistic brilliance exhibited in the likes of From Russia With Love or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, for children growing up in the 1970s and 80s – like me – he WAS Bond, as much as Connery was to those whose formative years were the 1960s.

The sense of fun and style that Moore brought to his seven appearances as 007 won the films a wider family audience than before, ensuring James Bond’s cinematic survival into the 90s and beyond.

Given the tiresome and often mind-numbing mechanics of the filmmaking process, it is an underrated achievement to make playing James Bond look so effortless, but Moore managed it.

His insouciance, charisma and ability to connect with audiences young and old alike were the product of years of experience on television and in film, as well as solid training at RADA and within the Hollywood ‘studio system’.

Moore may not have possessed great dramatic range, but he developed an incredibly successful and entertaining persona, firstly as The Saint and later in The Persuaders with Tony Curtis, and eventually, with minor adjustments, on assuming the role of Bond. It was a persona which viewers instinctively warmed to.

An aspect of Moore’s life and career that has always fascinated me is the fact he grew up a couple of miles down the road from where I was born and brought up – namely in Stockwell and Streatham – or St. Ockwell and St. Reatham as he once charmingly renamed them.

The only child of a restaurant cashier and policeman, I would love to know at what point Moore was able to transmogrify his relatively humble origins as a South London lad into his eventual on and off screen persona of the quintessential upper-class English gentleman.

I wonder if, like Cary Grant’s transformation from ‘Archibald Leach’ a few years before him, 'Roger Moore' was actually a carefully and consciously constructed edifice and identity which this Stockwell lad adopted, and then subsumed himself within.

Speculation aside as to the private forces and ambitions that forged Moore's unique persona, it is unarguable that the man himself summed up some of the best virtues of upper class Britishness and Englishness – modesty, self deprecation, grace and politeness among them. There did not seem to be a trace of meanness or cruelty in his body, and he seemed refreshingly free of the precious or over-serious air that many actors possess.

Unique among all the Bonds, Moore never seemed to be overwhelmed by the role or resent the publicity it brought him, despite suffering criticism which, at times, was arguably more savage than that endured by his predecessors or successors. Indeed, Sir Roger once declared: “Being eternally known as James Bond has no down side” – sentiments I can’t ever imagine being expressed by Connery, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan or Craig.

In the final analysis, for me, Roger Moore wasn’t the greatest James Bond of all time, but he was a man who provided me with many wonderful childhood memories and who, in a strange way, I loved, even though I only met him once and very fleetingly.

From a human perspective, through his incredibly dedicated work for UNICEF, Sir Roger did more to enhance the public good than most actors or entertainers ever manage, while from the perspective of this 007 MAGAZINE contributor, he was the greatest, most graceful and gentlemanly advocate and ambassador the James Bond series ever had.

One gets the impression he would be satisfied with such an epitaph.

Rest in peace, Sir Roger.

See also: Leave them wanting Moore

Roger Moore FACT FILE