The Season of Bond: Reappraising George Lazenby in OHMSS

The Christmas Bond!

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has long been the black sheep of the Bond series. Bond fans mostly agree that the casting of George Lazenby is the weak link in an otherwise strong entry in the series, one that has received appropriate reappraisals over the year.

Lazenby famously took over for Sean Connery after Connery had (visibly) tired of the role in You Only Live Twice. Despite the opportunity to reprise the role, Lazenby walked away from doing future movies, mistakenly believing that Bond would become an antiquated character in the 1970s.

OHMSS’s grounded action, sublime stunts, and emotional story arc have all aged the film extremely well. Director Peter Hunt does a masterful job of cutting around Lazenby’s stiff, awkward, stilted performance. Lazenby sells the action scenes well, but he looks exactly like someone who has never had to sit and deliver lines on screen before.

But would the movie have really been better with Sean Connery still in the role? I’m not so sure. OHMSS doesn’t just stick out because Lazenby is taking over the role from the original (and some might say definitive) Bond. It sticks out because it’s telling a story about a significantly different Bond.

From the jump, OHMSS doesn’t try to hide the fact that there’s a new actor in the role of Bond. Lazenby breaks the fourth wall with his famous quip, “This never happened to the other fellow,” just before the credits roll.

The film still goes out of its way to tell the audience that this is still the James Bond they know and love — like the blatant homages as Bond goes through his desk, pulling out prominent props from the preceding films. But Lazenby’s Bond feels different from Connery’s in tangible ways, beyond just the actor.

For a start, Lazenby plays Bond as significantly less confident in his own abilities and prowess. Connery’s Bond was the kind of man who was never out of ideas. Sure, he could be a little panicked, like when Goldfinger has him restrained with a laser pointed at his crotch, or when Red Grant has him on his knees at gunpoint on the Orient Express. But even when we come close to seeing his Bond lose his cool, Connery is still in control on some level, never doubting his ability to wriggle out of some new crisis.

Lazenby plays Bond as much more emotional and self-doubting. There’s that fourth wall moment where he expresses some winking frustration at the audience after he’s initially spurned by Tracy. Beyond that, he seems to even doubt his own sexual prowess, conveying doubt in his ability to bed two women in the same night, quipping the second woman would “have to be” an inspiration for him.

But more significantly, Lazenby’s best moment in an otherwise flat performance comes after his escape from Piz Gloria. Desperately trying to evade capture, Bond gets lost in a crowd of skiers and Christmas party revelers. His Bond is downright scared as he’s visibly startled by a bear mascot in his face. When he goes to sit on a bench in the middle of a crowd, trying to blend in, he looks frightened, exhausted — even defeated. He’s only saved by the arrival of Tracy.

Finally, at the end of the film, his Bond looks appropriately devastated cradling Tracy’s dead body. Connery played his Bond like a man never capable of falling in love, a man who treated women as nothing more than disposable. But Lazenby’s Bond was actually capable of emotional investment in another person.

It’s a rare moment of humanity for an otherwise unflappable character. That sort of emotion would be built upon in the performances of later Bonds, especially Daniel Craig.

Casting Connery in OHMSS likely would have improved the biggest weakness in the film in that a lot of the film has to compensate for Lazenby’s stiffness. At the same time, though, it is a little difficult to envision his Bond acting with the same vulnerability. OHMSS might only really work because of the novelty of Lazenby’s performance. At certain moments, it feels like a radically different Bond.

Connery was an undeniably great actor with underrated range, and he does some really great work with Bond, especially in his earlier films. But for OHMSS and that specific Bond, maybe, just maybe, Lazenby was a better fit for the tuxedo.