Real Men Wear Gingham

Sean Connery as James Bond and Claudine Auger as Domino 

in Thunderball (dir. Terence Young, 1965)

 

Everyone loves gingham, don't they? 

 

The medium-weight, plain-woven cotton fabric which, although originally striped when imported into Europe in the 17th-century, is now famous for its checked pattern (often in blue and white).

 

The beauty of gingham is not only its extreme versatility, but that it seems to mean whatever people want it to mean. For example, it can signify wholesome innocence when worn by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), or it can signify stylish sophistication when worn by English mods and French sex kittens. 

 

It can even signify that one has a licence to kill - did Sean Connery's Bond ever look better than when wearing an unbuttoned camp-collared pink and white gingham short-sleeved shirt (with matching Jantzen shorts and Wayfarer-style sunglasses) on the beach in Thunderball (1965)? 

 

I don't think so ... Unless it's in the blue version of the shirt that he also wears in Thunderball, or, indeed, the long-sleeved gingham shirt that he sports on screen two years earlier in From Russia with Love (1963). 

      

This shirt, which Bond naturally wears in a casual manner - untucked and with the sleeves turned back - is also in cornflower blue and comes with two large square patch hip pockets. It's fastened with distinctive silver-toned metal buttons.   

 

It all just goes to show that real men are unafraid to wear whatever the hell they want and can make anything look masculine ...

Sean Connery as James Bond and Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench 

in From Russia with Love (dir. Terence Young, 1963)

 

In Memory of Honor Blackman

Honor Blackman (1925-2020)

as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964)

I have to admit that I'm more of a Mrs Peel and Mary Goodnight man than I am a Cathy Gale and Pussy Galore devotee (it's a generational thing I suppose). Nevertheless, I was saddened to hear of the death of the English actress Honor Blackman earlier this week, about whom there were several things worthy of admiration:

(i) She retained her beauty and style long into old age ...

(ii) She was an East End girl (born in Plaistow) who always cheerfully identified as a Cockney ...

(iii) She played Mrs Fawcett in Christopher Miles's 1970 film adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novella The Virgin and the Gipsy.*

(iv) She declined a CBE in 2002 on the grounds of staunch republicanism ...

(v) She called out her Bond co-star Sean Connery in 2012 for being a hypocrite of the first order: "I disapprove of him strongly. I don't think you should accept a title from a country and then pay absolutely no tax towards it. He wants it both ways. I don't think his principles are very high."**

Doubtless there are numerous other reasons to commend this talented and intelligent woman, but even this brief list demonstrates she was a good egg. 


* Thanks to James Walker for reminding me of this.

** From an interview with Nigel Farndale in The Telegraph (27 August 2012).