Sean Connery: The greatest Scot?

Published on Tuesday 24 August 2010 19:55

As Sir Sean Connery marks his 80th birthday, Martyn McLaughlin looks at the reputation of a man who, despite the Hollywood plaudits, often faces hostility in his homeland

• Screen legend Sir Sean Connery recently returned to the area near where he was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, to unveil a plaque in his honour. Picture: Jane Barlow

IN the days when his newly illuminated star lit up the world, a short holiday in Ayrshire provided Sir Sean Connery with an acute reminder that those natives of Scotland who take their place on an international stage are not always guaranteed the warmest of homecomings.

Staying at the Turnberry Hotel, he was relaxing in the pool when two children also in the water began playfully splashing and shrieking. Gently, he asked them to lower their volume, only for an angry figure to appear at poolside, accusing him of insulting his granddaughter.

"I know who you are, you're that actor, you were the milkman," the man said, pointing at Connery. "I know your type. Delivering milk, delivering coal. An actor."

Years later, Connery recalled the bitter exchange with sadness. "It's people like him that have kept this country back," he said. "Suddenly because he knew what my background was, he knew what I was. That's the sort of parochial side you get in Scotland."

It is an anecdote which offers a succinct reminder that, despite his standing in the world, Connery's relationship with his home country has seldom been an easy one.

As he celebrates his 80th birthday today, he remains Scotland's most famous son, with semi-retirement from the silver screen posing no threat to his standing as the nation's lone global icon. The artist, Richard Demarco, a childhood friend, is in no doubt as to the significance of Connery's legacy.

"He's a phenomenon, a one-off," he told The Scotsman. "There will never again be someone who was in his kind of impossible situation who became a global figure.

"Even when we were growing up together in Edinburgh, he had this aura and dignity to him. He was almost a God-like figure."

IT was into the smog and the fumes of Fountainbridge's breweries and rubber mills that Thomas Sean Connery entered the world on 25 August, 1930.

Edinburgh during those inter-war years was a place where hope found scarce sustenance – a city, Demarco recalls, with "all the limitations of a prison".

Yet he watched Connery blossom, both physically and in terms of his ambition. The two men spent time together, with Connery dropping into The Ralleye on Lothian Road, a caf run by Demarco's father, and the young artist visiting Connery during his stints as a lifeguard at Portobello. When Demarco asked Connery to pose for him as a life model during his third year at Edinburgh's College of Art, he saw the man in a new light.

"Tommy might have left school at the age of 13, but even as a young man, it was obvious he was not going to be a French polisher," Demarco smiles, and pauses for thought. "But then, all he had to do was stand still and look beautiful."

As the years passed, and Big Tam's burgeoning film career took off, his circle of admirers increased. By the late 1950s, when he was starring opposite Lana Turner, his fame transcended Fountainbridge and Edinburgh. A few years later, and having won over two leading producers – namely Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman – Connery was known around the world.

As James Bond, Connery imprinted his brand of the alpha Scottish male onto the global psyche. Seductive yet dismissive, with a ruthlessness verging on sadism, the character, like the man, was a study of nuanced contradiction.

"He became the face of Scotland," Demarco reasons. "That quality he brought to the screen reminded me of Steve McQueen. Suddenly there was more than an actor. There was a myth."

As Connery's fame reached the highest plateau, however, the backlash from his compatriots in the press began. Having moved to London in the 1950s, then to Marbella in Spain in the 1970s, any comment he offered on life of his homeland brought accusations of hypocrisy. As one cynic said, he became "a man who will do anything for Scotland except live here."

An avid believer in the Scottish National Party's aims since Winnie Ewing's by-election victory in Hamilton in 1967, his friend, the film-maker Murray Grigor, has jokingly said the party thinks of him as the "president over the water".

But since basing himself in the Bahamas in the 1990s and accepting a knighthood, yet at the same time stepping up his support for the SNP and the cause of independence, the chorus of voices condemning his brand of offshore patriotism has only grown louder.

In his recent book, Being A Scot, a tome disappointingly short on autobiographical reflections, he acknowledged his critics.

"For someone who is a private person who also happens to be a public figure, I am a very easy target," he wrote.

"I've been accused of professing to give to charity to avoid tax. Yet I pay tax every time I work."

Many, however, believe he has fallen victim to the time-honoured "tall poppy" syndrome. His friends say the condemnation is an unedifying trend which fails to acknowledge the work he has done for Scotland,

As well as his ambassadorial work – Connery is honorary chairman of Friends of Scotland, the body behind the annual Dressed to Kilt event - supporters point to his oft-forgotten support for the late Jimmy Reid and the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, or the Scottish International Educational Trust, set up by Connery in 1971 with his fee from Diamonds Are Forever.

"We're guilty of attacking Tommy," one said. "It's so easy to reduce and dismiss what he does. But he's deadly serious about how he wants Scotland to play a role on the world stage.

"He's more than an entertainer, and he's more important than a politician. He's almost on the same standing as Nelson Mandela. Both men are complicated characters who started out with nothing."

Cultural commentator Pat Kane describes Connery as the "midpoint between Edwin Morgan and Jimmy Reid" in terms of "Scottish masculinity and politics."

He said: "As a star he's perfectly aware of how constructed a public identity can be, how much you need to morph and shape your personality to succeed – indeed, how camp the whole affair is. But as a patriotic, populist Scot, he also understands that a performer can rise from those who don't have the luck or willpower to shine in that singular way, and that it's important to keep them in mind, to collectively and systemically improve their chances of success.

"Does it make him the most consistent and coherent of characters? No. But you have to admire the energy and determination that holds all these contradictions together."

ASKED how Scotland will one day remember Connery, friends point to the adulation with which the US remembers John Wayne.

Connery epitomises the aspiration of Scotland in the same way Wayne's laconic, no-nonsense persona became synonymous with American masculinity.

Actors such as Ewan McGregor or Gerard Butler have benefited from Connery's status which proved that stardom could come with a Scottish accent.

Connery's voice has become, to some, the sound of Scotland; only Billy Connolly might be regarded as a comparable Scottish folk hero.

Demarco, who has written essays on Connery's influence, last met up with his old friend earlier this summer when he attended the unveiling of a plaque at the site of 176 Fountainbridge, where his childhood home was demolished as part of regeneration work in the 1960s.

While he welcomed the gesture, he still believes there should be a greater recognition in the home city of an Oscar winner once described by the director, Steven Spielberg, as one of only seven true global movie stars.

"I still think there should be more than a plaque," he said.

"He is a Scotsman who speaks to the whole world, someone we want to be, and I would liken him to Robert Burns in that respect.

"There should be a bronze statue of him in Edinburgh. Not of James Bond, but of Sean Connery. It'd be nice to see something by Sandy Stoddart."

Connery will celebrate his 80th birthday with a party this evening surrounded by friends and family at his home in Lyford Cay, the private gated community in the Bahamas where his neighbours include hedge fund managers, shipping tycoons, and CEOs. But Demarco is not alone in hoping that one day, he will return for good to his homeland.

"I pray he'll come back and live in Scotland," he added. "It's all very well that he's in the Bahamas, but like many Scots, I want to know he's here. It's not the same, and I think it's sad that he hasn't found a permanent home in Scotland."

Whether it necessitates a change in the political landscape for that change to occur remains to be seen, but a little known work from Connery's canon makes clear his love of Scotland has never been an idealised notion.

The long lost documentary, The Bowler and the Bunnet is his only directorial project to date. Released in 1967, the same year as You Only Live Twice, it charts the decline of shipbuilding, and opens with a powerful poem, written by the late playwright and broadcaster Clifford Hanley. It runs:

"Scotland, the country of the extremes/ Love of life, hatred of life/ Poets and murderers/ Rigid temperance and savage drinking/ John Knox and Johnny Walker/ Prosperity and poverty."

Proud yet prickly, and keenly aware of a life filled with discrepancies, it is a film sculpted in its famous director's image.

The facts:

• Born Thomas Connery into a working-class Edinburgh home, his first bed was the bottom drawer of the family wardrobe.

• The young Connery started smoking when he was only nine years old.

• He quit school, like many of his peers, at the age of 13.

• In 1953, he entered the Mr Universe bodybuilding contest, coming third in the tall men category.

• He has two small tattoos on his right arm. One says "Scotland forever", the other "Mum and Dad." He got them when he enlisted in the Navy at the age of 16.

• During his early life, he worked as a milkman, bricklayer, coffin polisher, nude model and lifeguard before acting came along.

• Football legend Sir Matt Busby offered him the chance to join his renowned Manchester United side - but Connery turned him down. He later said: "It was a great temptation but football seemed an even more precarious career than the stage."

• Connery's first foray into Hollywood was in the 1958 film Another Time, Another Place.

• He started losing his hair at 21. As 007, his hair was always a wig.

• Bond creator Ian Fleming did not at first approve of Connery in the role. He soon changed his mind.

• United Artists was so sceptical of his Bond that it premiered Dr No in the Midwest to avoid attracting scorn.

• Of the six actors to play the role of Bond, Connery is the only one to serve in the Navy like the fictional Bond himself.

• He is a keen poetry writer but is too shy to let anyone see it.

• The film title for Never Say Never Again (1983) was suggested by his wife, Micheline. Sir Sean had considered his Bond days over.

• His favourite Bond film is Thunderball.

• He believes he should have won an Oscar for The Man Who Would Be King.

• He received the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh in 1991.

• In 1999 he implored the Scottish Parliament to enact a total ban on handguns.

• His knighthood in July 2000 was reportedly delayed because of his staunch nationalism due to the opposition of the late Donald Dewar.

• Connery claims he will not return to Scotland to reside permanently until it has won its full independence.