Truth be told, given today’s date of October 31st, I was all set to serve up a spooky smorgasbord for Halloween, but given this morning’s news of Sir Sean’s passing, it just didn’t seem right.
I won’t presume to think anything I say about the subject at hand is important simply because I’m the one saying it, rather what compels me to say anything at all is Connery’s importance in my life. Not that I knew him personally or even so much as saw him in a crowd, but he’s the first actor I can recall who I was always happy to see in a movie. To put it another way, he’s largely responsible for my passion for movies, and I wouldn’t be writing about them without that.
Sure, Connery was James Bond (in a way that no one ever could or will be again), anyone who knows me at all knows what that means to me, but he was so much more, not the least of which the star of two seminal films in my life: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and The Hunt for Red October (not to mention Darby O’Gill and the Little People, which was required mid-March viewing in my house).
When I got to college I looked into some deeper cuts: The Great Train Robbery, The Presidio, Outland. I still haven’t seen his full catalogue (including Highlander; arrest me), but at this point I’m glad I still have so much left to discover.
I mean, Connery was just so cool. Cool enough to be Indy’s dad. Cool enough to be a Russian sub captain you openly rooted for. Cool enough to shine alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones in a leather catsuit. And, most importantly, cool enough to be Scottish in every role he played, no matter the character’s actual ethnicity. It didn’t matter; he was Sean Connery.
He aged like the finest of wines; anyone could see that. He even looked better playing Bond (un-officially) in 1983 than he did (officially) in 1971. All part of the legend that was Sir Sean.
And for as humorless as he may have been painted in his life off-screen, he had quite the gift for comedy on-screen. It was he who brought so much of the “Old Man” to the elder Henry Jones, despite being only twelve years senior to Harrison Ford. It was he who insisted on the dry wit for James Bond to make the character work for the movies, as opposed to the slightly more dull character of Ian Fleming’s novels.
When Connery retired from acting (thanks Fox…), I was still in high school, but it never felt like he had truly left us. He was alive and we still had all his great work to watch, not to mention he’d show up at Wimbledon from time to time. But now, the book is finally closed.
Ninety years of a full life, and he went out in his sleep in the Bahamas.
May we all be so lucky.
P.S.
Wear your friggin’ mask. You’re not cooler than Connery’s Bond.
