Entertainment

Bond director who wanted Burt Reynolds dies in Palma aged 93

Guy Hamilton (right) talking to Majorcan actor Simon Andreu, a Bond star himself. | P. Bota

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma21/04/2016 00:00

British filmmaker Guy Hamilton has died aged 93 - he passed away at the Miramar Clinic on Wednesday. Upon hearing the news, actor Sir Roger Moore, who worked with Hamilton on James Bond instalments Live And Let Die (1973) and The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) took to Twitter to share his respects for the filmmaker. The 88-year-old tweeted to his followers: "Incredibly, incredibly saddened to hear the wonderful director Guy Hamilton has gone to the great cutting room in the sky. 2016 is horrid."

Born in Paris, France, in 1922, Hamilton had been involved in the art of movie-making from a young age. He first experienced what it was like to work on a film set at just when he acted as a clapper board boy at the Victorine Studios in Nice. Later, around the beginning of World War II, he worked in a film library at Paramount News before serving in the Royal Navy for the remainder of the conflict.

His first directorial debut came in the form of mystery B-movie The Ringer in 1952, which told the story of a criminal master of disguise who hounds a crooked lawyer (Herbert Lom) for revenge. However, he really found fame when he joined the list of filmmakers helming the motion pictures about 007 with Goldfinger in 1964.

He directed the Bond at that time, Sean Connery, for the second time in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, before working with Moore. He was nominated for a Bafta for his screenplay for 1959 movie A Touch Of Larceny.

Hamilton spent the early part of the 1950s creating films focused on military stories such as the 1953 film The Intruder (his second film as director) dealing with returning soldiers to civilian life and 1955’s prisoner of war The Colditz Story (which was to be Hamilton’s highest grossing movie of the 1950s). Less successful films of the 1950s included An Inspector Calls in 1954 (with Alastair Sim), 1956’s musical comedy Charley Moon and Manuela in 1957.

He had his first experience of bigger budget films towards the end of the decade when Hamilton replaced the sacked Alexander Mackendrick on the set of The Devil’s Disciple featuring Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. His last directorial work was coincidentally all about Sir Ian Fleming’s iconic secret agent, for action documentary short On Location with The Man with the Golden Gun. It featured on the DVD special features of the titular movie in 2006.

Hamilton spent much of his retirement living in Puerto Andratx and he once revealed to the Bulletin in an interview that he had put Burt Reynolds forward to be the new James Bond, but Bond producer Cubby Broccoli and his family strongly ruled out having an American playing the part of the British spy.