Actor-humanitarian Sir Roger Moore died Tuesday at the ripe-old age of 89. On television he was Simon Templar in The Saint, but he was best known for playing British Secret Service Agent 007 in seven James Bond films, from 1973 to 1985. And while I perfectly understand fan attachment to the original 007, Sean Connery, Moore was the Bond I grew up with.
I saw The Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker, The Spy Who Loved Me, and For Your Eyes Only on television, and Octopussy and A View to a Kill in the theater. My friend's dad derisively called him "babyface" and said his acting was too corny. A former colleague said Moore was not a great actor and a terrible on-screen kisser. Sure, he wasn't as dark as, say, Timothy Dalton. He didn't seem to get too cut or too bruised like Daniel Craig. Especially in later years, you could tell he wasn't doing a lot of his own stunts. None of that mattered to me. By the time he did A View to a Kill, Moore was 57 years old—but still able to take on Christopher Walken and Grace Jones. He was a master at delivering those English quips. His hair was always neat! And did I mention funny? Moore even spoofed himself in Cannonball Run as a James Bond wannabe whose real name was Seymour Goldfarb, "heir to the Goldfarb Girdle fortune."
Like all the 007 agents, Moore's Bond drank his vodka martini shaken, not stirred. But in Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale, 007 is not at all exclusive with his libations. His first drink is a whisky, and while he does imbibe in vodka, Bond more memorably asks a bartender to make a cocktail involving gin, vodka, and Kina Lillet called the Vesper. The shaken-not-stirred vodka martini phenomenon can be traced back to the first Bond movie, Dr. No.
So let us raise a glass to Roger Moore. But a glass of what, exactly? In the book Bond on Bond: Reflections on 50 Years of James Bond Movies, Moore reveals himself to be a martini purist, i.e., one with gin:
My gin of choice is Tanqueray, and the vermouth has to be Noilly Prat. Take the glass or cocktail shaker you are using, and, for two sensible-sized Martinis, fill 1/4 of each glass with Noilly Prat. Swill it around and then discard it. Next, top the glasses up with gin, drop in a zest of lemon, and place the glasses in a freezer or ice-cold fridge until you are—or should I say she is—ready.
Oh, James!