R.I.P. Sean Connery
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Aljean Harmetz’s NY Times remembrance of Sean Connery (thanks reader Chris for sending):
Like the months that 12-year-old Charles Dickens spent working in a factory that made shoe blacking, Mr. Connery’s deprived childhood informed the rest of his life. When he was 63, he told an interviewer that a bath was still “something special.”
His anger was never far below the surface. What he called his “violent side,” he told The Times, may have been “ammunitioned” by his childhood. The same was true of his odd combination of penury and generosity.
A passionate golfer — he discovered the game about the same time he discovered James Bond — he was the only player at the Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles who carried his own bag.
Other stories, including one from Jim Nantz (embedded below), indicate he was a lifelong walker/carrier even where caddies were required.
There was also this and why he ended up a member at Valderamma:
Mr. Connery and Diane Cilento, an actress he had met when they played lovers in a television version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” in 1957, were married on Nov. 30, 1962. Their son, Jason, who would grow up to become an actor, was born six weeks later.
The marriage lasted, more or less, until Mr. Connery met Micheline Roquebrune, a French artist and obsessive golfer, at a golf tournament in Morocco in 1970. She was married, he was married, and they both won medals. After their marriage in 1975, they lived in Marbella, Spain, mostly to avoid British income taxes but partly because of Marbella’s 24 golf courses.
Two years ago, Connery penned this Golf Today essay on his life and fascination with golf titled “Bond, Golf and Me”.
I never had a hankering to play golf, despite growing up in Scotland just down the road from Bruntsfield Links, which is one of the oldest golf courses in the world. It wasn't until I was taught enough golf to look as though I could outwit the accomplished golfer Gert Frobe in Goldfinger that I got the bug. I began to take lessons on a course near the Pinewood film studios, and was immediately hooked on the game. Soon it would nearly take over my life.
National Club Golfer posted this item two years ago on his preparation for the scene.
The golf scene from Goldfinger, filmed at Stoke Poges.
Nantz with a terrific, though painful, Connery golf story:
