“I was going upstairs when I heard my own voice coming from one of the rooms. My grandchildren were watching ‘Goldfinger’ (1964). So, I sat down with them and watched it for a bit. It was interesting. There was a certain elegance, a certain assurance to it that was quite comforting. There was a leisureliness that made you not want to rush to the next scene. Of course, I also saw things that could have been improved.”
Sean Connery never traveled to the United States to film this movie. Every scene in which he appears to be in the U.S. was filmed at Pinewood Studios outside London. This explains why Bond flips a light switch down to discover the golden corpse of Jill, as British light switches are generally turned on by flicking them down instead of up. According to director Guy Hamilton, Cec Linder (Felix) was the only main actor in the Miami sequence who was actually there. Connery, Gert Fröbe, Shirley Eaton, Margaret Nolan, and Austin Wallis, who played Goldfinger’s card victim, all filmed their parts when filming started in Britain, with rear projections used, and in the case of Fröbe and Wallis, stand-ins used for the long shots.
“Goldfinger” was the first Bond film where Connery wore a toupee, his hair getting too thin to be covered up by various techniques like in his first two Bond outings. He first started going bald at twenty-one. This is also the only movie where Connery’s James Bond orders a Martini shaken not stirred. (In “Dr. No” (1962), everyone who served him a martini said it himself or herself.)
Although Bond had made him a star, Connery grew tired of the role and the pressure the franchise put on him, saying “[I am] fed up to here with the whole Bond bit” and “I have always hated that damned James Bond. I’d like to kill him.” Michael Caine said of the situation, “If you were his friend in these early days you didn’t raise the subject of Bond. He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous with Bond. He’d be walking down the street and people would say, “Look, there’s James Bond.” That was particularly upsetting to him.”
“I never disliked Bond, as some have thought. Creating a character like that does take a certain craft. It’s simply natural to seek other roles.” (IMDb)
- Happy Birthday, Sean Connery!
