Bond On Bond by Roger Moore

LA. Tony was head of the anti-smoking lobby (though strangely did not include cannabis in his campaign!) and when, at his home for a meeting, we all lit up, Tony showed me a book with a rather curious photo on the front. It was a cancerous lung. It put me off smoking cigarettes for life, though I must admit I did still smoke cigars into the 1980s.
    In the bad old days, I smoked Davidoffs, though, contrary to popular myth, they were not supplied as part of my contract. I had to buy them.
    Contrary to popular myth, it was not part of my Bond contract that I had to be supplied with cigars. Yes, I smoked them on set, but I bought my own – much to the delight of our assistant director Derek Cracknell. Whenever he saw me light up between takes, Derek would call, ‘Roger, they’re ready for you!’ and would offer to hold my cigar for me. Whenever I returned, saying they
weren’t
ready, I’d find Derek sitting in a chair puffing away on my Davidoff.
SARTORIAL SIMPLICITY
    William Shakespeare wrote ‘clothes maketh the man’. If that was the case for the literary James Bond, then I think we’d be a little disappointed in ‘the man’, to be honest. Contrary to popular thinking, while Ian Fleming had an eye for Savile Row quality, he rarely shopped there, preferring instead the ‘off-Row’ prices of Benson, Perry and Whitley in Cork Street, just a couple of roads along from the Row. He’d have three suits made at a time, for the princely sum of 58 guineas each.
    Sean at his Savile Row tailors, being outfitted for his Bond debut … and the finished result.
    It was reported by Mr Whitley of said establishment that ‘Mr Fleming wore his suits until they were in threads’, and, ‘He dressed for comfort not for style’. This attitude clearly extended to his hero, as in the books Bond’s clothes don’t vary a great deal. His look was probably best described in Fleming’s last novel,
The Man With The Golden Gun
, where he described Jim’s ‘dark-blue single-breasted suit, white shirt, thin black knitted silk tie, black casuals’ as his ‘usual rig’.
    Sean Connery cuts a fine figure in his Conduit Cut suit. His elegantly attired co-star Pedro Armendáriz was terminally ill during filming of
From Russia With Love
, though kept it a secret and completed the film in order to provide income for his family. He took his own life in hospital shortly afterwards.
    In
Moonraker
Fleming had Bond wearing a ‘heavy white silk shirt, dark blue trousers of navy serge, dark blue socks and well polished moccasin shoes … put on a black knitted silk tie and his jacket …’ in readiness for an evening at Blades Club. It was sartorial simplicity.
    That didn’t stop him noticing other people’s wardrobes, though. In the same novel Fleming wrote: ‘Bond concluded his inspection with Drax’s clothes, which were expensive and in excellent taste, a dark blue pinstripe in lightweight flannel, double-breasted with turn back cuffs, a heavy white silk shirt with a stiff collar, an unobtrusive tie with a small grey and white check, modest cufflinks, which looked like Cartier, and a plain gold Patek Phillippe watch with a black leather strap.’
    Despite all of the descriptive detail Fleming wove into his adventures, Bond’s wardrobe was by and large indistinct. No shirt maker was ever mentioned; no tailor ever credited. One thing we did garner was he liked ‘single-breasted dinner jackets’ and a ‘heavy silk evening shirt’ when it was time to enjoy the ‘solid, studied comfort of card rooms and casinos’, but that’s about as much as Fleming ever enlightened us about his hero’s tastes in attire. The films are a very different case.
    Hey, George! That’s how I got into movies.
JIMBO COMES ALIVE
    Bond’s on-screen look is credited to Terence Young, the director of
Dr. No
. He brought in his own tailor, Anthony Sinclair of Conduit Street, and shirt maker Turnbull & Asser. Young wanted to achieve the look of a well-dressed man,