Despite the success of the films, Connery worried about becoming typecast as Agent 007. To guard against it, he took a number of other parts, including a role in Marnie, the 1964 Alfred Hitchcock thriller. But movie fans the world over had fallen in love with his Bond persona, and he continued to go back to the role. By the end of 1967, though, after doing five Bond films, Connery had grown weary of the part. He announced that You Only Live Twice was his last Bond film.
After a prolonged search for a replacement, EON Productions named Australian actor and model George Lazenby as the next James Bond. Even though Lazenby was offered a seven-picture deal, he signed a contract for only one film after his agent convinced him that the womanizing Bond would likely become an archaic stereotype in the sexually liberated 1970s. In 1969, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service appeared with Lazenby as Agent 007. The film did well at the box office, but critical reception was divided, and there were many who said it would have been the best of all the Bond films if Connery had been in the lead role.
Lazenby’s decision to sign a one-picture deal opened the door for Connery, who was lured back to do one more Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). The forty-year-old actor certainly didn’t need the money, but he was offered such a lucrative deal that he said, “I was really bribed into it.” As with all previous Bond films, it was a commercial success, but this one was panned by many critics (Danny Peary said it was “one of the most forgettable movies of the entire Bond series”). Connery announced, once again, that Diamonds Are Forever would be his last Bond film. This time he really meant it, he assured his future wife, the French painter Micheline Roqueburne. She replied, “Never say never!”
Over the next twelve years, Connery starred in more than a dozen films, including Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would be King (1975), and Robin and Marian, a lovely 1976 film in which he played an aging Robin Hood who was still in love with the lovely Maid Marian, played by Audrey Hepburn. In the last half of the decade, he gave respectable performances in a number of other films, none of which became great hits.
In 1983, a dozen years after he said he would never again play Agent 007—and sixteen years after his first pledge to retire from the series—Connery appeared in yet another Bond film. This one was a remake of the 1965 film Thunderball. It is sometimes referred to as an “unofficial” Bond film because it was not produced by EON Productions, who started the franchise. The title of the film was:
Never Say Never Again
Never Say Never Again was the first Bond film to have a title that was not written by Ian Fleming. With Kim Basinger playing the sultry Domino Petachi, the love interest to a middle-aged, but still handsome, Connery, the film was a commercial as well as a critical success. Film critic Roger Ebert loved the film, but he especially praised Connery’s performance:Sean Connery says he’ll never make another James Bond movie, and maybe I believe him. But the fact that he made this one, so many years later, is one of those small show-business miracles that never happen. There was never a Beatles reunion. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez don’t appear on the same stage anymore. But here, by God, is Sean Connery as Sir James Bond. Good work, 007.
Near the end of the film, Bond and Domino are lounging in a hot tub when they are interrupted by an emissary from the British Secret Service (played by English actor Rowan Atkinson), who pleads with Agent 007 to stay with the Service. The battle-weary Bond, who now seems ready to settle into retirement, replies, “Never again.” At that moment, Domino walks up to him and says, “Never?” And then, as Bond takes Domino into his arms, the film’s soundtrack kicks in with singers repeating the musical refrain, “Never. Never Say Never Again.” As the film comes to an end, Bond kisses Domino and breaks the time-honored fourth wall of stage and screen by giving a knowing wink to the audience. This final scene contains the only reference to the film’s title, and one could have easily gotten to the end of the movie and wondered, “So what does the title have to do with the movie’s plot?” And then, as the credits roll, we get a hint of an answer:
Title “Never Say Never Again” by Micheline Connery
After the film was released, Connery revealed the pledge he made to his wife more than a dozen years earlier—and her response. To honor her, he chose her reply as the title of his very last Bond film.
While Never Say Never Again is a great title, it’s not the most famous neverism to be used to title a film. That honor goes to the 1941 W. C. Fields cinema classic:
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
In the late 1800s, a number of sayings about taking advantage of “easy marks” originated in gambling circles, and this one went on to become a signature line for W. C. Fields. Fields did not, however, author the line. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations has long attributed the saying to E. F. Albee, a vaudeville impresario and grandfather of playwright Edward Albee. Ralph Keyes, in The Quote Verifier, says that Wilson Mizner is the probable author, most likely picking it up during his years as a gambler in California and Alaska. Fields, who was a pal of Mizner’s, first ad-libbed the line in his 1923 play Poppy, and he formally incorporated the saying in a 1936 film by the same title.
When Fields used the saying to title his 1941 film, the line became indelibly associated with him (although trivia fans love to point out that the line is never actually uttered in the film). More than three decades later, the saying was still so well known that Mel Brooks offered a slightly altered version as the tagline for his 1974 film Blazing Saddles: “Never Give a Saga an Even Break.”
The most fascinating neverisms, however, don’t occur in the titles of films or plays, but in the dialogue that is contained within them. Some lines that have achieved a legendary status in the theatrical world were first heard on the live stage:
Never fight fair with a stranger, boy.
You’ll never get out of the jungle that way.ARTHUR MILLER, from the character Ben
in Death of a Salesman (1949)
And almost all diehard cinema fans will remember this famous line:
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
This quotation comes from The Godfather, Part III (screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo). In the film, the aging Don Corleone (Al Pacino) offers this nugget of hard-won wisdom to nephew Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), just after the young man heatedly talks about killing Joey Zasa, an enemy of the family. In offering his advice, Corleone is playing a kind of mentoring role to Mancini, his planned successor. A little later, the hotheaded nephew once again displays his impulsive nature when he exclaims, “I say we hit back and take Zasa out!” Don Corleone, once again dispenses more godfatherly advice: