On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) United Artists/Action-Adventure RT: 142 minutes Rated PG (language, violence, sexual situations) Director: Peter R. Hunt Screenplay: Richard Maibaum Music: John Barry Cinematography: Michael Reed Release date: December 19, 1969 (US) Cast: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Gabriele Ferzetti, Ilse Steppat, Angela Scoular, Lois Maxwell, Catherina Von Schell, George Baker, Bernard Lee, Bernard Horsfall, Desmond Llewelyn, Yuri Borienko, Virginia North. Opening Song: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (composed by John Barry) Box Office: $22.7M (US)
Rating: **
Sean Connery decdied to call it a day after You Only Live Twice. He was tired of playing James Bond and wanted to pursue other roles. That put producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli in a predicament. They needed to find a replacement for the next film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Over 400 actors, including Oliver Reed and future Bond Timothy Dalton, were considered before the producers chose George Lazenby, a male model from Australia with no prior acting experience. Boy, did they choose poorly. He might be handsome, but he can’t act worth a damn. He doesn’t bring the same charm, wit and sophistication to the role as his predecessor (and eventual successor).
Lazenby isn’t the only reason On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the weakest entries in the series. The plot is disappointingly slim. There’s not a lot to it. I’ll come back to this momentarily. I’d like to talk about the opening sequence which concludes with the best line in the whole picture. Bond follows a woman (Rigg, The Avengers) to the beach where he stops her from drowning herself in the ocean. He’s then jumped by two thugs who obviously don’t know who they’re messing with. He makes short work of his assailants then watches as the woman drives away without so much as a “thank you”. That’s when Bond breaks the fourth wall and says to the audience “This never happened to the other fellow.” Sadly, the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to its promising start.
For the past two years, since the events of You Only Live Twice, 007 has been on the trail of SPECTRE head Ernst Stavros Blofeld. He is determined to find him and take him down. He meets the suicidal woman again; this time in a casino in Portugal. Her name is Tracy and she’s the daughter of the head of a European crime syndicate, Marc-Ange Draco (Ferzetti, Once Upon a Time in the West). He makes Bond an interesting offer. He will pay him one million pounds if he marries his troubled daughter. Ever the gentleman, 007 turns down the money, but agrees to romance Tracy if Draco helps him find Blofeld.
Back at MI6 HQ, M (Lee) informs Bond he’s being taken off the Blofeld case as it’s become too personal for the agent. Bond immediately tenders his resignation, but quick-thinking Moneypenny (Maxwell) changes it to a request for two weeks vacation. He returns to Portugal to accept Draco’s offer, but Tracy wants no part of it and demands her father tell Bond where he can find his archenemy. This is where the romance begins replete with a montage set to Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World”. It’s not what you expect to see in a James Bond adventure; it feels rather out of place.
So where in the world is Blofeld? He’s running an allergy research clinic in Switzerland. Bond goes there in the guise of a genealogist looking into Blofeld’s claim that he descends from royalty. His nemesis is up to something and Bond intends to find out what. Hint, it involves world domination, but when doesn’t it?
In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the role of Blofeld is played by Telly Savalas who would go on to star in the hit detective show Kojak. He’s not a good Blofeld. He doesn’t project the same level of menace as his predecessor Donald Pleasance (You Only Live Twice) or successor Charles Gray (Diamonds Are Forever). They say an action movie is only as good as its villain. Blofeld is one of the greatest movie villains of all time, but not in Telly’s hands.
Up until this point, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service moves at a snail’s pace. Not too much of interest happens, not even when Blofeld reveals his latest scheme to rule the world. It doesn’t really get going until the final 45 minutes starting with Bond’s escape from the mountaintop clinic on skis complete with Blofeld’s goons shooting at him. That’s followed by a car chase that puts Bond and Tracy (who miraculously turns up in the right place at the right time) in the middle of a stock car race. Then there’s the finale where Bond goes against M’s orders and leads an attack on the clinic. The action is very well done. It’s legitimately exciting, but it happens at a point when viewers will likely have stopped caring.
I don’t usually like to spoil the endings of movies, but I will make an exception in this case only because it lays the groundwork for Bond’s future conflicts with Blofeld. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the one where James Bond gets married. He is deeply in love with Tracy, one of the more interesting “Bond Girls” although it’s not really fair to characterize her as such. She’s more than just some girl he sleeps with. She’s the one. Unfortunately, their happiness is cut when Blofeld and his main henchwoman Irma Bunt (German actress Ilse Steppat in her only English-speaking role) kill Tracy en route to the honeymoon. It’s a sad ending that lends a note of pathos to the series.
I admire that the producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli wanted to try something different with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. They wanted to make a more realistic film that closely followed Ian Flemings’ original novel. It doesn’t really work. Most of the fault lies with Lazenby. He just doesn’t cut it in the lead role. The good news is he only played James Bond once. He was offered the chance to play him in seven films, but his agent convinced him to quit after just one saying that the character would become archaic and outdated by the liberated 70s. Bad news for Lazenby; good news for the rest of us. Even better, Sean Connery returned for the next movie Diamonds Are Forever.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the worst of the Bond films. Aside from the good (not great) action sequences, there’s nothing about it that’s particularly memorable. Sure, the spy with the healthy libido gets to sleep with a few of the clinic’s female patients (aka “Blofeld’s Angels of Death”), but that’s nothing new. John Barry’s classic theme isn’t heard until the two-hour mark. Until then, the score is completely forgettable. The editing, particularly in the fight scenes, is bad. To be fair, it was a new guy (John Glen) doing it this time. The usual editor Peter R. Hunt got promoted to director. It’s not the most auspicious of debuts.
In short, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is weak. I’m not saying that every Bond adventure has to be awesome, but it doesn’t even seem like they’re trying here. The only one putting forth any real effort is Ms. Rigg. The rest of the film is just mediocre. Ordinarily, I might advise you to skip this particular entry but since the final scene is so significant, I’m not inclined to do that. It’s hardly a recommendable movie, but you needn’t go out of your way to see it.
