The loss of the man who played famous secret agent, James Bond, 007, the longest.
Today it was announced that Roger Moore passed away due to a battle with cancer. This really affected me in a big way.
I’ve been a huge James Bond fan since I was a little kid. I got it from my parents who were also huge fans. When I was growing up, ABC used to show James Bond films just about every Sunday night. It was the only time I was allowed to stay up late. It was a special thing that I was able to share with my parents. Bond was bigger than life and twice as cool. The films rotated from Sean Conney, George Lazenby, and of course Roger Moore. Moore’s films had more humor in them than the other two and maybe that’s why I gravitated towards them. Of course, at the time it was either The Man With The Golden Gun and Live And Let Die.
My parents would eventually take me to see Bond on the big screen and once again it was Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me. There was Moonraker, which tried to capitalize on the Star Wars hype. He would go on to make more James Bond films until his final one, A View To A Kill. And Moore even had a sense of humor. In Cannonball Run he played a Jewish man so obsessed with Moore’s Bond that he got plastic surgery to look like him. Nice to see he could take a joke.
I even remember when he was on the Muppet Show, kicking the crud out of Muppets. And trying to sing! Funny as all hell!
My parents told me when they saw Moore in the TV show The Saint, they knew he’d make a great Bond. This lead me to research it and I did watch the show and understood what they were talking about. I then find out he played Maverick on TV as well. Moore didn’t play the original Bret Maverick but his cousin Beau Maverick. Great job there as well.
In between playing Bond, Moore starred in the film ffolkes. ffolkes was an anti-terrorist commander with a lot of quirks. He loved cats but had no place for women. Quite the change from the womanizing James Bond. A great film none the less.
In the end, no matter what the role Moore would play, at least to me he’d always be James Bond. This isn’t a typecast. It’s just the Bond I grew up with.
Thank you for your service, Roger. You will be missed, but never forgotten.
Anthony Andujar Jr.