The 007 Diaries E-Book

Sir Roger Moore KBE

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 320

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Out of print for over forty years, The 007 Diaries introduces Roger Moore's James Bond Diary to a new generation of fans. To tie in with the release of his first James Bond film, Live and Let Die, Roger Moore agreed to keep a day-by-day diary throughout the film's production, which would be published just ahead of the premiere in July 1973. From his unveiling as the new 007 in 1972 through to his first scenes on location in New Orleans and his final shot in New York, Moore describes his whirlwind journey as cinema's most famous secret agent. Taking in the sights of Jamaica before returning to Pinewood Studios, Moore's razor wit and unique brand of humour is ever present. With tales from every location, including his encounters with his co-stars and key crew members, Moore offers the reader an unusually candid, amusing and hugely insightful behind-the-scenes look into the world's most successful film franchise.

Leseprobe

Cover illustrations:

Front: © Terry O’Neill

Back: © News UK

First published as Roger Moore as James Bond 007

in 1973 by Pan Books Ltd.

This edition published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Miramont Investments Ltd, 2018

Live and Let Die © 1973 Danjaq LLC and United Artists Corporation,All Rights Reserved

The right of Roger Moore to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8868 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Editor’s Note

Foreword by David Hedison

Acknowledgements

Cast

The 007 Diaries

Postscript by Gareth Owen

2018 Acknowledgements

EDITOR’S NOTE

In order to contextualise Sir Roger Moore’s wonderfully candid James Bond diary, we must remember that much has changed, both in the film industry and in society, since he wrote the book in 1972. Attitudes that would have once been commonplace are now markedly different, and idioms and expressions that were everyday are now all but obsolete. These diaries provide a unique snapshot of what it was like in the film industry at that time, when, on occasion, views were not as progressive as they are today. Because of this uniqueness, we have seen fit to present the diaries in their unabridged state, as they would have originally been published in the UK in 1973, barring the correction of minor spelling and grammatical errors.

FOREWORD BYDAVID HEDISON

Roger Moore first came into my life at the Cairo International Film Festival in 1963. We were at a gala performance of a local ballet troupe and I was seated, unknowingly, one row in front of him. After what I assumed to be the end of the performance, I stood and shouted bravo, quite a few times, towards the stage. When that ballet was followed by another – and then another – I realised I had been rather premature with my accolades. At the end of yet another dance, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Roger, who, in his rich baritone and with a sly smile on his face, said: ‘You’re not going to scream bravo again, are you, dear boy?’ We both howled with laughter, now united as comrades trapped in what seemed to be a never-ending performance.

Over the next 50-odd years, that gesture of camaraderie grew into the deepest friendship I have ever known. We would work together on The Saint and then later, in 1973, on Live and Let Die, both his first turn as James Bond and mine as Felix Leiter. I remember even then being impressed with his graciousness and kindness, his consideration of the crew and his fellow actors, and his crackling wit, which added a playful levity to the set – as you’ll discover in the pages ahead.

Roger welcomed me into the wonderful fold of his life. He hosted my family for Christmas in Switzerland and summer in the South of France, always eager to share the spoils of his stardom yet never one to act with exception or snobbery. When he became a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, I was not surprised, for I had witnessed his compassion and generosity for years.

I was heartbroken to learn of his death, on the day I turned 90, and thought back through all the wonderful times we had shared and the laughter and love that comes with great friendship. He was a dear, dear man, and will always be my greatest friend.

I’m so very pleased that we’re now able to enjoy the wonderful adventures he had making his first James Bond film with this book; it has certainly brought back many happy memories for me and I hope you’ll enjoy sharing in them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Harry Saltzman, Cubby Broccoli, Guy Hamilton, Dan and Hazel Slater, and Derek Coyte, without whom this would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank Sean Connery – with whom it would not have been possible.

CAST

James Bond

Roger Moore

Mr Big

Yaphet Kotto

Solitaire

Jane Seymour

Sherriff Pepper

Clifton James

Tee Hee

Julius W. Harris

Baron Samedi

Geoffrey Holder

Leiter

David Hedison

Rosie

Gloria Hendry

‘M’

Bernard Lee

Moneypenny

Lois Maxwell

Adam

Tommy Lane

Whisper

Earl Jolly Brown

Quarrel

Roy Stewart

Strutter

Lon Satton

Cab Driver 1

Arnold Williams

Mrs Bell

Ruth Kempf

Charlie

Joie Chitwood

Beautiful Girl

Madeline Smith

Dambala

Michael Ebbin

Sales Girl

Kubi Chaza

Singer

B.J. Arnau

They say when death is imminent your entire life flashes in front of your eyes. The only thing flashing before my eyes was a large corrugated iron shed sticking up out of the Louisiana bayou, which I was approaching at a fair old 60mph in an out of control boat. I knew I was going to hit it – and there was nothing I could do about it. I wound up in a heap on the floor, clutching my mouth, my knee throbbing, my shoulder numb, and what felt like fifty-four thousand teeth in my mouth all at once being slowly mangled up into little bits of gravel. Here I was, just about to start playing James Bond, with no teeth. How on earth did I get myself into such a situation?

It began on Sunday, 8 October 1972, when, as the new James Bond, I left England in a blaze of publicity for the first location in New Orleans. We flew via New York, and the journey was hysterical. Danny Kaye was aboard, and he started in on the stewardesses straight away. While the girl was standing up in front of the jumbo jet trying to show everybody how to put on a life jacket, there was Danny sitting there miming exactly what the poor girl was doing.

Our arrival in New York, where an elegant suite at the Sherry-Netherland awaited us, was – what can one say? – it was Bond-style. We had two cars laid on to meet us – one for our baggage and one for us. Danny rode in with us, and all he wanted to do was stop at a Sixth Avenue delicatessen and pick up some salt beef sandwiches. I wanted to get to the hotel as I was absolutely bushed. When we got to the Sherry-Netherland, where Danny keeps a permanent suite, he spent an hour on the phone trying to find the number of the Sixth Avenue delicatessen. He got them, finally, only to discover they weren’t prepared to deliver at that hour.

Early next morning, Arthur McGhee, the American costume consultant, took me out shopping to find some casual outfits for the film. It was Columbus Day, rather apt for me as Columbus was a man who didn’t know where he was going and when he got there didn’t know where he was. All we did was dodge the Columbus Day parades.

Danny took us to Brownies, a health food restaurant on Seventeenth Street, where we were joined by Topol and a very mysterious Israeli gentleman, whose name was only mumbled in introduction. I found out afterwards that he was the head of the Israeli Air Force, who was in America incognito. We were joined there by Arthur, triumphantly toting a dirty-brown Levi suit sixteen sizes too large, which he said would boil down to my size.

New Orleans, they say, is different. We arrived. We agreed – it is. My wife Luisa and I felt it straight away. It is a different scene and it is even a different kind of heat. We are staying at a beautiful hotel in the French Quarter called, appropriately enough, the ‘French Quarter Inn’.

Wednesday morning began with a rehearsal on the Irish Bayou for the fifteen-minute chase sequence; a highlight of Live and Let Die. I practised taking a boat fast, at 20, then 30, then 40, then 50, then 60mph around sharp U-bends. These are not ordinary outboard-engined powerboats: they are jets. The steering can only be controlled when the motor is turning. Three times we made the same sharp bend and three times the engines cut out and picked up again. As we came around for the fourth time, I said to the instructor with me in the boat: ‘I wonder if it will cut out again.’ Well, I pushed my luck and it did, and this time it didn’t pick up again.

We limped back to shore with a badly holed boat and likewise body. I was piled into a car, still in my swimming shorts, and driven back to New Orleans. My teeth, I felt, were the most important, so I saw a dentist first. A quick X-ray showed a fractured front tooth, which by then was hurting like mad. Then I was carted off to a clinic, where the doctor gave me the good news that my leg wasn’t broken and Luisa gave me the bad news that my pants were dirty. After what I had just gone through I wasn’t the least bit surprised. I was then taken back to my hotel to reflect on the day’s battle scars.

Thursday’s mail brought an offer from Cosmopolitan to be their centre page pin-up for the June issue to coincide with the opening of Live and Let Die. Fame at last! Me to be the bunny for liberated ladies! Needless to say, I was not about to pose in the altogether!

When I first knew I was going to do Bond, Harry Saltzman, who co-produces the Bond series with Cubby Broccoli, said it must be kept top secret, but he wanted me to meet the director, Guy Hamilton, away from the office where we would not be seen. We met at Scott’s in Mayfair, in true Bond-style, over a dozen oysters and martinis. I confessed to Guy that in reading the script I could only hear Sean’s voice saying: ‘My name is Bond.’ In fact, as I vocalised to myself, I found that I was giving it a Scottish accent. Guy said: ‘Look, Sean was Sean and you are you, and that is how it is going to be.’

Friday, the thirteenth. The first day of shooting began for me at about 6.30 in the morning after a very bad night with my painful leg, aching shoulder and rattling teeth. I staggered out of bed and decided I’d do my work-out, which I could get through apart from the knees-bend because my knees wouldn’t bend anymore.

Pushed underneath the door was a little envelope. It was a note from Guy on French Quarter Inn notepaper. It was headed, ‘Dawn. D-Day’ and read: ‘Into battle and very encouraged by your very kind note. Here’s good fortune to us all. As ever, Guy.’ The note he referred to was one I slipped under his door the night before, saying: ‘Good luck for the following day and go break a leg,’ which I had nearly done, and I added: ‘If I don’t do what I am told, you have my full permission to kick me up the backside.’ I’m glad to say he didn’t that day, but there are many more to come.

We were shooting about thirty miles outside New Orleans in a backwater bayou. Bond is escaping the lethal lieutenants of Mr Big, the black malevolent mastermind, who plans to bludgeon the Western powers with the way-out weapons of hard drugs and voodoo. The story sweeps from New York’s Harlem through New Orleans to Doctor Kananga’s sinister island of San Monique. We began to shoot the boat chase sequence today, and fortunately I was shot – by the camera that is – sitting down in the boat, so my limp did not show. I had one nasty moment when, on a sharp bend, my boat headed for the camera boat with Guy and about fifteen other people sitting in it. They were anchored there, but they seemed to be tearing towards me rather like the corrugated iron shed had. I thought: ‘Here we go again,’ but I managed to come around on the wheel and pull away. I fully expected Guy to bawl at me when I got back, but he was nice and said: ‘Great, great.’

Luisa and a handful of us, including Harry, lunched in an air-conditioned roadside café. Outside it was about ninety degrees as I washed my Creole shrimps down with Michelob, a very nice light American beer. Harry and Jackie, his wife, were helping theirs down with a white wine, but Harry was screaming because it wasn’t the Chablis he had ordered to be put on ice, and the poor little serving lady was running around in circles.

Lunch over, we got back to the boats. The water is dirty and slimy, so that when we back up and rev the motors, mud just churns up and the stench is awful. The water is all covered with nasty green algae, and you can see black snakes slithering through it. They put me at ease by telling me that the alligators were rather tired in this particular area, so they wouldn’t be likely to bite.

Jerry Comeaux, the boat organizer and stuntman, had to whip off his shirt three or four times and dive in to clear the duck weed out of the back of the jets. He was in and out amongst the slithering snakes and the filthy mud. But when the sun started to go down it was really a rather beautiful location.

Day One was done with, so I limped out of my boat and back to my beautiful motor home, as they call it, sixteen thousand dollars’ worth of home-on-wheels. I changed into my civvies and went back to the French Quarter Inn, to a large Jack Daniels with Branch water. Not water from the branch of the bayou I was in today, thank goodness.

Day Two. D-Day plus one, or B-Day for Bond plus one. It’s my birthday. Happy birthday. Waking up this Saturday morning to the six o’clock alarm was a nasty shock. I limped around the room on my paralysed leg, trying to do my morning work-out. I was in such a black mood that I started giving Luisa hell. She wasn’t at fault. I suppose I was resenting the fact that my leg was hurting and she hadn’t mentioned the fact that it was my birthday.

This morning, I decided I needed my favourite laxative cereal, All-Bran. Room service seemed determined not to understand when I asked for All-Bran. ‘All-what?’ said a deep-Southern voice over the telephone. The head waiter settled it with, ‘Give him a bowl of cornflakes.’ Luisa handed me my case, and as I took it by the handle it fell open, scattering everything. As she scooped the things back, I slammed out with, ‘You didn’t even remember it was my birthday.’

Harry Saltzman and I drove together to the location thirty miles outside New Orleans. It is deep in the swamp country; beautiful, but a breeding ground for mosquitoes, alligators and snakes.

When we got to today’s location there were two dozen-odd boats waiting for us and a pontoon; not the twenty-one blackjack variety, but one that bobs up and down on the bayou. We moved off deep into the jungle like Sanders of the River. Today, we were shooting a sequence in which Jimmy Bond, that’s me of course, is chased by three of the villain’s boats. It was quite simple. It just meant 60mph cut-ins and swerves around the bayou, finishing up with hair-raising jumps. Not the real big jumps. They are yet to come.

My limp matches that of Jimmy Cagney’s as The Gimp, so it’s just as well my early scenes are all in the boat. If I had to walk I’m afraid shooting would stop, unless they found someone to do the walking for me.

Naturally, Luisa didn’t join us today. Harry let word slip as we were coming to the location that she was laying on something for my birthday. I’m not supposed to know, but I have a feeling it is going to be a surprise party. I’m afraid I have a surprise for Luisa. I know Harry is finding a doctor this evening, who is going to try and straighten my leg out. The hot water treatment I have been having has not exactly been successful. All it has done is make my leg red and bloated.

The only relief of a day spent sitting in a hundred degrees of mosquito-infested swamp was to get back to some nice baked American ham in the air-conditioned home-on-wheels that is my dressing room. We keep the ice box stacked high with fresh, pure mineral water since I discovered that Mel, our home-on-wheels driver, is a fellow kidney sufferer. Mine started thirteen years ago when I made a picture in the Utah desert. The picture was The Gold of the Seven Saints with Clint Walker. We were shooting out in the desert, where the heat was 120 degrees and there was no shade. I got dehydrated. A year later, the problems started as a result of the dehydration and I began making kidney stones. In fact, two and a half years ago, just before I began The Persuaders!, I had minor surgery and two stones were removed. Oddly enough, Maurice Woodruff, the astrologer, told me three months before I even made the picture in Utah and before I knew I was going to do it that I would make a film in great discomfort, with a lot of heat, near water, and, as a result of the heat, I would suffer for many years.

Mine is not the only birthday on the set today. It is also the birthday of Derek Cracknell, the First Assistant, and Bill, one of the American grips. I knew it was Bill’s birthday because I carefully placed a big cigar – out of which I had only two puffs – down on the floor of the boat while I got into another one. When I looked for it again I caught sight of Bill grinning and waving my great big stogie. I can take a hint. Happy Birthday, Bill.

The place where we are shooting today is part of the great state of Louisiana, which is known as the sportsman’s paradise. It is the mosquitoes who get all the sport, picking us up and spitting us out. Somebody told me they saw a mosquito carrying a sparrow. I know it’s not true because I saw it. It was a pigeon.

Yesterday, the first day, I felt rather like a new boy with the crew because most of them had worked together before. It took them a day to discover that I wasn’t completely chicken. They really are a great crew. The director, Guy, and Bob Kindred, the camera operator, tied themselves on the front of a boat today tearing at 60mph up and down the bayou, photographing close-up reactions of me. That takes a lot of guts. It was then I knew why they wanted me to practice with the boats before commencement of principal photography; not so much for my safety, but more for theirs!

Monday morning and Day Three. Harry called me at eight to tell me we were going to a funeral. ‘That’s nice. Mine?’ I queried. It turned out he meant a jazz funeral for a famous musician, Sylvester George Handy, who was being buried at twelve o’clock. I was on ‘stand-by’, which means I could be called out to the location where the rest of the unit were shooting at any moment if they needed me. The best laid plans of mice and men – they did, and I had to tear out to the location in a great rush and never did get to the funeral. Undoubtedly, I will get to my own.

So, there I was again, roaring up and down the bayou with the villains in hot pursuit, plus the mosquitoes. I’d rather face the villains. The organisation of the boat chase is vast and varied. It will take over two weeks to shoot the eight minutes of final film that will appear on the screen. Luisa was with me and spent the whole day juggling a Nikkormat with a 200-zoom lens and looking beautiful. She is helping me by illustrating this book and a few papers around the world. She’s not just a pretty face.

A colossal crane moved in to lift ramps into place. I am about to jump the road at 75mph, and we have been stopping traffic on this section of the road where we have a car parked with a great motorboat sticking right through it. It is used in one of the sequences where the villain’s boat doesn’t make the jump over the road to the other water and piles straight into the sheriff’s car.

I am going to call Guy, our director, the General from now on. He is the complete commander in the field deploying his troops. There must be more than a hundred people on our unit, and to get them all working together is no mean feat, especially in this heat. We did a shot this afternoon in which a speedboat sails forty feet through the air, and watching the General organise this stunt was really something. Clifton James, who plays the red-neck sheriff, and Tommy Lane, who plays Adam, one of the villains, have to stand between two stretches of water while the boat zooms over their heads. I told John, the Wardrobe, to go and tell the sheriff that he needed his hat for a minute to put some Kleenex in it, just in case the boat hits him.

Everybody takes it in great spirit. We drew a crowd of thousands here today. I hope they are not like some crowds at airports, who don’t go to see the planes land but to see them crash.

Double top marks to the stuntmen on this picture. I have never seen anything like the two jumps Jerry Comeaux, the ace stunt boat driver, did today. He was doubling for one of the black actors and wore a Robertson’s marmalade wig and black face. On the second jump he took off on a forty-foot leap, hit the water, skidded in the wake of another boat, and flipped up to the bank. Everybody, including myself, rushed forward. The First Assistant was screaming, ‘Get back. I didn’t say anybody could get into the shot.’ The cameras were still turning. Happily, Jerry was all in one piece; his wig must have saved him.

He came back with me to my home-on-wheels, where I had some Jack Daniels waiting for him and a nurse to examine the base of his spine, which was hurting. As somebody helped him off with his wetsuit, the trousers he was wearing underneath came down exposing his rear end. He let out a scared shout. The tough guy was embarrassed about the nurse seeing his winkle. I told him what John Barrymore once said to Anthony Quinn: ‘How can I be proud of that in which every chimpanzee is my equal and every jackass my superior?’

B-Day Four, and we seem to be dogged by bad luck. It is either a gremlin or someone from SMERSH trying to sabotage Jimmy Bond’s activities. Yesterday, there was Jerry, who limped out still smiling from under his upturned boat, and today it was the turn of one of the other boat drivers, John Kerner. He was with me in the boat when I smashed my leg up and escaped with a cut chin. This time he was not so lucky. One of the wires holding the boat to the sheriff’s car snapped, and the flying wire caught him in the eye. It looks like they will have to operate. I wonder who will be next.

I am on ‘stand-by’ again today. It is a privilege I enjoy because it means I don’t have to sit around the set all day long doing nothing. Joel Rosen, our Second Assistant Director, who signs himself ‘Your favourite Assistant’ when he arranges a stand-by call for me, phoned to say that I was clear for the day. Luisa, Jackie and Harry and I took off to explore the French Quarter. It is a beautiful part of New Orleans with more art and curio shops, museums and restaurants than there are homes. The centre is Bourbon Street, which is very hot in the day and very sleazy. There are strip joints with real girls, strip joints with boy-girls, and strip joints with just boys, as well as a lot of good jazz joints.

We lunched in a Chinese restaurant called China Town, which was something of a new experience. Like the joke about the man who went into a restaurant and ordered the entire meal in Chinese, and the waiter was amazed because it was a French restaurant. In this Chinese restaurant the waitress was, for a start, black. Harry, a fastidious eater and somewhat of a gourmet, was suspicious of a Chinese restaurant on Bourbon Street and looked quizzically at the menu. Suddenly, a look of horror crossed his face. ‘Is that the cook?’ he queried, peering towards the kitchen from where a very black face beamed back. ‘Oh, no, sir,’ came the reply. ‘That’s one of our waiters. The owner is the cook and he is Chinese.’

I spent the afternoon in a very expensive fashion playing gin rummy with Harry. I have a feeling he only asks me to play to get my salary back.

Wednesday: B-Day five. At breakfast, I watched television; a horrifying amount of twaddle is served up at the breakfast hour. A small group of actresses and fringe show business people make the constant round of chat shows telling the same stories day after day, particularly the mid-European sisters, who I will refrain from naming, but they are darlinks, darlinks, darlinks. These ladies really enjoy talking about themselves. It is a mystery to me how the interviewer manages to look interested. I would rather spend the day in the swamp with the mosquitoes.

Today, we shot more of the boat sequence. The drama of the boat chase is relieved by the humorous character of Sheriff Pepper, who really gets the mickey taken out of him. Clifton James gives a beautiful performance as the Sheriff. One of the unit drivers was once a member of the local police force, and he managed to get hold of a copy of the script to show the real local sheriff. It says a lot for the hospitality and cooperation of the New Orleans police force that he didn’t have us thrown out of Louisiana. The Metropolitan police, or any other English police force, would not have taken such a send-up so kindly.

Unfortunately, it was a long lunch hour. Surprise, surprise, Harry had brought his cards and I paid for another day’s shooting. He is now talking about the second Bond, The Man with the Golden Gun, to begin shooting in August next year; financed, presumably, out of the money I will owe him when this one is over.

Sad to say our screenwriter, Tom Mankiewicz, has gone back to California. We’ll miss his smiling face, but he could be back. General Hamilton says we might run into some screenplay crisis in Jamaica, our next location. Tom, who co-wrote Diamonds Are Forever, is the son of that great writer, producer, director Joe Mankiewicz, who has just finished Sleuth in London with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.

Cloudy weather held up this afternoon’s shooting, so I was interviewed by a reporter from the local Dixie Rota; a very pretty young lady called Jennifer, with a ‘Y’all and shut ma mouth’ accent. Remind me to tell Tony Curtis that she had not heard of The Persuaders! She seemed doubtful that we had seen alligators nearby, although I told her we had seen one that very morning and it asked what time she was coming out.

B-Day Six started in the early morning dark humidity of Conti Street outside the French Quarter Inn, where the Plymouth Fury III waited. We wound our way up through Jackson Square to the French Market, the Covent Garden of New Orleans, with our headlights picking up pumpkins ready for morning buyers, some already decorated for Halloween. We sped out under the concrete pylons holding up the interstate highway to Slidell as the morning mist over the swamps and bayous slowly yielded to the yellow sun. Streaks of grey cloud threatened rain; a seventy per cent possibility today according to the radio.

Harry has bought me some espresso coffee. My Italian wife has accustomed me to coffee Italian-style; three cups and you don’t sleep for a week. Fred Goldberg, who I have to say is a very nice man because he is Vice President in charge of Advertising and Publicity for United Artists, who back and release Bond films worldwide, arrived today from New York, bringing me two boxes of Jamaican cigars. He is a very nice man. Speaking of cigars, I still have my secret supply of Havanas I smuggled through American customs.

John Kerner, one of the boat organizers, who got a piece of wire in his eye, re-joined the unit today after surgery. The keenness of him and everybody else to get to work is admirable.

Jerry Comeaux and I cruised up stream to go over the course for the day’s chase, and by half past nine we had been greeted by two alligators, three cottonmouth moccasins, and a hell of a lot of jumping trout. The only reptile of these parts that I haven’t met so far is the Copper Head. They are as poisonous as a rattlesnake, so I have no wish to expedite an introduction.

I had a surprise visitor today on the set. Bob Dix, son of that famous actor, Richard Dix. We were under contract at MGM one hundred and fifty years ago. Since those days he has produced nine films, married three times, and has a couple of kids. My mother would be absolutely gaga if she could see Bob Dix because he looks exactly like his father, who was her favourite screen heart-throb. When I was a child, she used to take me to see all his pictures. My father was mad for Jean Harlow and I was just mad for ice-cream and Mickey Mouse.

Disaster was averted when the pontoon carrying, if you’ll pardon the pun, twenty-one people was swept out of control in a wide, strong current. The water was slapping over the side, and everybody was nervously clutching scripts, cameras and cans of film. Jerry and I felt suitably heroic when we saved the day by pushing the bows of our powerboat up against the pontoon and shunted it out of trouble.

Elaine, the script girl, dubbed ‘The Duchess’, was already jittery, but really got the wind-up when I said we hadn’t seen an alligator for at least five minutes.

Harry cornered me at lunch for our floating gin rummy game, and this time I broke even, which is like winning when you are playing with Harry. He left early in a glum mood because he has to pay today’s production costs out of his own pocket. Or perhaps it was because I stirred it up by telling him that whatever our stunt driver, Jerry Comeaux, was being paid for his fifty-foot leaps was not enough and that I had told Jerry the same and advised him to get an agent.

The Live and Let Die circus is really beginning to catch on in these parts. Our caravan of spectators gets larger and larger. I spend more time signing autographs than I do chasing villains. The threatened rain didn’t come, but it is decidedly cooler. It makes a pleasant change from the sauna bath conditions in which we have been working.

The lawns of the Baldwin estate sweep down to the bayou’s edge, where, at low tide, the wreck of a Union Army barge is revealed. Soft Spanish moss decorates the giant oak trees and makes a picturesque setting for B-Day Seven.

The peace was shattered by the roar of Evinrude engines as Bond’s boat, with me at the wheel, leaps out of the water and up onto the lawn, closely followed by one of the villains, whose boat outstrips mine and lands in the swimming pool. A powerboat with a 135-hp Evinrude sitting in a kidney-shaped swimming pool on somebody’s lawn is a ludicrous sight. It looks like one of those advertisements for the man who has everything.

To get a back view of me at the wheel, General Hamilton and Bob, the camera operator, planted themselves in the boat’s back seat. This upset the delicate balance, and when Guy said ‘Hit it’ I gunned the engine, the nose came up and stayed up at an angle of 90 degrees with the water and our backsides submerged. Next time we weighed the bows down with sandbags.

Cubby Broccoli joined us today from London, bringing with him Donald Zec of the Daily Mirror. For Donald it was a totally unexpected trip. The day before, Cubby had suggested they have dinner and Donald agreed. Cubby said: ‘I have booked a table at Antoine’s in New Orleans.’ A slightly bewildered Donald flew 4,000 miles from London for a meal, which, he assures me, was probably worth it.

Tomorrow, we shoot a wedding scene where Bond, pursued by villains, roars in a speedboat across a 200-yard-long lawn on which a bridal pair are taking their vows. Alas, the local radio picked up the news and wrongly announced that we needed extra wedding guests. It will be chaos.

The spot where we shoot tomorrow is where I came in conflict with the corrugated iron shed when we were rehearsing. Thinking of that accident reminds me of another. It was in my very first starring role in Hollywood with Lana Turner. The picture was Diane, the story of Diane de Poitiers, played by Lana. I was Henry II of France. Dressed in magnificent golden armour, I led a charge of sixty horsemen. My gauntlets, like my breastplate, were metal and would not bend easily. As I spurred the horse forward, I lost the reins and just managed to kick my feet free from the stirrups as the beast charged straight for some stone steps. I became conscious under a circle of worried faces and muttering voices. The first clear words that came to my ears were Lana’s. They were: ‘Is his cock all right?’

B-Day Eight. In front of an outdoor altar on the rolling lawns of the Treadway estate, the movie marriage, that we hope will never be consummated, is being solemnised. The bayou flows peacefully by and a nuptial nicely hangs in the air like the soft Spanish moss from the circling trees. But the beautiful bride, the groom, the bridesmaids, the vicar and eighty wedding guests seem too tense for a languid, sunny Southern wedding. Not surprising.

The tranquillity was torn by the horrendous roar of power, which drowned the marriage vows; four cameras turned and rows of stills cameras prepared to click as the jet boats, stunt driver Murray Cleveland in the lead, hit the bank at 65mph. Murray skidded wildly across the lawn out of control and crunched straight into a giant oak tree with the loudest thud I have ever heard. The cameras stopped as Murray was thrown forwards then backwards, and a mob of people ran to pull him clear. Ten minutes later, Jerry Comeaux’s boat lost power and crashed into another tree; and as if two accidents were not enough for the day, the engine on a third boat cut and it also careered into a tree.

After a forty-five-minute delay, the stunt coordinator, Eddie Smith, aimed his boat with unerring accuracy at over 60mph, leaping from the water onto the lawn and slid straight for the three-tiered wedding cake. The bows burst the cake into a cloud of confectionary, while the boat ripped on into the wedding reception marquee, shattering tables, chairs, piled presents and champagne glasses; all ending in an ear-splitting special effects bang.

The Treadway estate, which once formed part of an Indian reservation, looked like Custer’s cavalry had been on the rampage. Behind the collapsed marquee, casualties were spread out like a field hospital. The three wrecked boats make it an expensive day for the insurance companies: £30,000 down the drain, or should I say, the bayou. Still, the doctors of America are having a field day.

I took Donald Zec out in one of the boats for a quiet, slow cruise before lunch. Having seen the accidents, I don’t think he was very happy about it, but it gave him an appetite because we had only been out five minutes when he dropped some very deliberate hints about having lunch. The production’s upper echelon was sitting in a semi-circle on the lawn. Harry got up and walked away, prompting Donald to ask where he had gone. ‘The way things are going today,’ I said, ‘I think he’s gone to shul.’

Tension was running high between the press and stills photographers, who were squabbling among themselves about which of them should have the pictures. I spent much of my day listening to ‘Could you move over, please’; ‘Look up at this light’; and ‘Watch this lens, please’. It reminds me of when Luisa and I got married at Caxton Hall. Every day brings new journalists, and there are so many here now they outnumber the mosquitoes. The pressure of being Bond grows daily. Not in playing the part, but in being the actor playing the part. How much time am I going to spend actually acting?

I could not sleep last night, finally falling into a fitful doze at 2 a.m. only to be woken at 5 a.m. by Leslie Bricusse calling from London, where it was only 11 a.m. He has saved a piece of the investment in his new show The Good Old Bad Old Days for me. Leslie has written a number of lyrics for the Bond films’ title songs, and Cubby is anxious to talk to him about a lyric for Live and Let Die. When I got back from location tonight I turned on the television and there was Leslie’s wife, Yvonne Romaine. So, the Bricusse family started and ended my day. The sun goes up, the sun goes down.

Sunday morning and Day Nine; and up comes television’s verbal mush with the breakfast marmalade. I searched the channels for an early newscast, but all I could get were words like: ‘I felt like crying, my heart was sad, just everything, I mean, it’s tough to put into words, but I looked into his eyes and he looked like he wanted to cry and I felt the same. I just wanted to touch him and just let him know that I was with him at that particular moment. It takes a real man to do that.’ This was an interview between a sports commentator and a sportsman. It is too much to take at any time, and impossible at 6 a.m.