BY HANK REINEKE
In his 2008 memoir My
Word is My Bond, Roger Moore recalls the fortunes that followed his second
turn as James Bond in The Man with the
Golden Gun (1974). “It seemed I was in demand!†he gushed. “Scripts were
coming in to my agent and offers were being made everywhere.†Indeed, the success of his first Bond film Live and Let Die was not guaranteed, so
when audiences turned out in remarkable numbers - the film raked in more than
126 million at the worldwide box office - everyone at United Artists and Eon
Productions could breathe a little easier. It appeared that Moore’s interpret as agent 007 had been embraced by James
Bond fans worldwide. Live and Let Die would premiere in June
of 1973 with a massive press campaign. Throughout the summer of 1973 Moore would
work tirelessly on the promotion of the eighth James Bond film.
By September of 1973 Moore was due to get back to work on
his first post-Bond project. He and
former Bond film editor-director Peter Hunt (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) flew directly to Johannesburg,
South Africa, where a team awaited to begin work on Gold (1974). It was a
difficult production, beset by problems both logistical and political. Not the least of which was an uneasy
disagreement with the actor’s union due to the unit’s shooting the film in
apartheid-era South Africa. Moore would admit
to Hollywood columnist Earl Wilson that while he was duly proud of his work on Gold it was nevertheless an exhausting,
laborious and unglamorous shoot. The
actor rued that he and the film crew were routinely dispatched “6,000 feet
underground in a gold mine in South Africa. It was slightly claustrophobic and acrophobic, and [we] were dropping
4,000 feet in two minutes [into] miles and miles of tunnels.â€
Moore would soon be back in daylight. Piggybacking on his new found James Bond
fame, the years 1973-1985 would prove to be the actor’s most productive as the
principal marquee draw in feature films. Due to the commercial success of Moore’s first James Bond adventure, a
decision was made by UA and Eon to go with the momentum and get the announced
follow-up Bond adventure, The Man with
the Golden Gun into theaters as soon as possible. Their reasoning was sound, at least in
theory. They believed a quick follow-up to
Live and Let Die would even more
firmly establish Moore as the quintessential James Bond of the new decade. So it was on this gamble that principal
photography would commence on The Man
with the Golden Gun in April of 1974. It was, by the standards of the Bond franchise, an unusually rushed
production. Though a handsomely produced
film, the box office receipts and reviews for Moore’s second Bond outing were
less spectacular than for his first. The
film was released, somewhat incredibly, a mere eight months’ following the
start of filming.
If the ninth James Bond film fared less well than its
predecessor, it can partly be attributed to the fact that Moore had little to no
time to promote his second turn as oo7 as vigorously as his first. Filming on his next project, That Lucky Touch (1975), was scheduled to
commence in December of 1974, this date neatly overlapping with The Man with the Golden Gun’s hurried Christmas
holiday release. That Lucky Touch was shot on location in and around Brussels,
Belgium, and at Pinewood Studios. The
film was constructed as a romantic-comedy of sorts, Moore’s arms-dealing
Michael Scott falling in love with contrarian journalist Susannah York. But Moore’s fans certainly wouldn’t have
known the film was a Rom-Com had they trusted the misleading one-sheet posters
issued to promote the film.
Capitalizing on Moore’s success as the new James Bond –
or perhaps in recognition That Lucky
Touch as released was a complete dud - the film’s marketing team had done
their best to pass the film off to unsuspecting filmgoers as a new spy
adventure. The most egregious example of
this promotional shell-game was the poster depicting a tuxedoed Moore standing
center, right arm crossed against his chest and brandishing a pistol in the classic
James Bond fashion. He’s flanked on the
poster by two lovelies, the image of a roulette wheel serving as a suitably Bond-ish
backdrop behind them.
This was marketing at its crassest and most dishonest. This was no James Bond film; in fact it was
not even a terribly successful or interesting romantic-comedy. One critic dismissed the production as “an
inconsequential soufflé, flavored mildly with amusement.†Moore seemed - somewhat reluctantly – to
share agreement with that assessment. While he believed the film offered some “funny moments,†the pacing of the
screenplay was noticeably off and the resulting product disappointing. There would be other disappointing news on
the horizon. Moore learned that it might
be some time before he could again don James Bond’s famed shoulder-holster. The franchise was in temporary hiatus due to
a very public and fractious legal dissolution of the partnership between Bond producers
Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and United Artists.
Luckily, his association with the James Bond franchise
was enough to keep the scripts and offers coming in. There was plenty of work to keep himself busy
as an army of lawyers moved in to settle Bond’s legal affairs. Moore would appear
in his second film for Peter Hunt, Shout
at the Devil (1976), sharing the starring co-bill with tough-guy Lee
Marvin. Principal photography on that
film would take place from March 1975 through July 1975. Reading through scripts and considering other
offers late into the summer, Moore sat down for an interview with columnist
Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times
in September of ‘75. The actor announced
he had chosen his next project. He was soon
to begin an eight-week shoot in San Francisco for an independent film financed
by Italian money. The working title of
the film was The Sicilian Cross. “It’s about the Mafia and I’m mixed up in it,â€
he explained.