The one-off Bond film that followed Fleming almost word for word
George Lazenby, a model with no acting credits, beat hundreds of candidates to replace Sean Connery, then announced mid-shoot that he would play James Bond only once. His single outing, the 1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service, earned mixed reviews at first but now ranks among the strongest entries in the series.
Connery quit after five films in 1967, not even speaking to producer Albert Broccoli while making You Only Live Twice. More than 400 actors were considered, among them Michael Caine, and Broccoli also met Terence Stamp. Roger Moore had been pencilled in for a Cambodian adaptation of The Man with the Golden Gun, but instability ruled out the location and he returned to The Saint instead.
The story had been delayed twice before, once for Thunderball and once because a warm Swiss winter left too little snow. Peter Hunt, who had edited and directed second units on the five earlier films, finally got his promised chance to direct, and he walked onto set carrying an annotated copy of Ian Fleming's 1963 novel. Richard Maibaum's script dropped the science-fiction gadgets and kept almost every event from the book, while Simon Raven sharpened the exchanges between Tracy and Blofeld.
Faithfulness caused puzzles. Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas, fails to recognise Bond despite having met him in the previous film, and an idea to give Bond plastic surgery was dropped. To reassure audiences it was the same agent, the producers packed in nods to earlier films, including Bond remarking that this never happened to the other fellow and a caretaker whistling the Goldfinger theme.
Shooting ran from October 1968 to May 1969 in Switzerland, England and Portugal. In the story Bond falls for and marries Tracy di Vicenzo, played by Diana Rigg, while foiling a plot to sterilise the world's crops and livestock. The film earned less than its predecessor yet still ranked among the year's top performers, and Connery came back for Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.
Source: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (film)
