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How Walt Disney Charmed Sean Connery to Hollywood

Vaseline 1 month ago

Picture the scene: James Bond and Walt Disney go to the races in Ireland. Sounds a bit surreal, right? Well, it’s exactly what happened in 1959 when Sean Connery starred Darby O’Gill and the Little People for Walt Disney Productions – and Walt himself paid a lot of attention to the ruggedly handsome young Scot.

Throughout the 1950s, Connery plied his trade in British theater and television. He had supporting roles in musicals and now forgotten TV shows Sailor of Fortune And Dixon of Dock Green. He also reportedly met with infamous American gangster Johnny Stompanato on the set of the film Another time, another place. The tall, sturdy Connery is said to have hit the criminal on the backside after pointing a gun at his girlfriend – and Connery’s co-star – Lana Turner.

After five years in the theater, Connery graduated from taking out gangsters to taking out boxers in the live BBC Television production of Requiem for a heavyweight. His performance as boxer “Mountain” McLintock – a role that originated on American television by Jack Palance – caught the attention of Hollywood, and he was soon signed to Fox.

But much to Connery’s chagrin, he ultimately didn’t do much with Fox, and the studio simply loaned him to Disney to be made into a movie. Darby O’Gill in 1959. Connery funnily claims that when he showed up at the Disney studio in Burbank, California, in his blue Ford Impala convertible, the security guards wouldn’t let him in because they had no idea who he was. But he was eventually granted access, and on his first day of shooting, he met head honcho Disney himself.

Disney reportedly gave Connery a tour of the studio, and they hit it off like a house on fire. When the film was subsequently released in Ireland, he and his leading man visited the races together for a day out. In 1996, while promoting The Rock – produced by Walt Disney Studios and distributed by its subsidiary Buena Vista – Connery was asked about the animation legend. He said, “I found him absolutely charming,” adding that Disney was “a very harmonious studio” at the time.

One of Connery’s funnier memories, however, involved a part of the studio that would probably be labeled problematic today. He chuckled: “When I went there – it must have been 38 years ago now – there was a place called ‘The Nunnery’ where women did all the pen drawings, and no men were allowed in there.” Other Disney employees have vouched for Connery’s claim over the years, including animator Jack Kinney, who hinted that the male and female artists were separated because it was frowned upon to “dip your pen in the company’s ink.”

Disney was reportedly so fond of Connery that he followed his career closely for the next seven years until his death in 1966. It must have amused him to see Connery get the role that would define his career. No doubt Disney would have enjoyed watching the four iconic Bond films that Connery starred in between 1962 and 1965: Dr. No, From Russia with love, GoldfingerAnd Thunderball.

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