Sean Connery in London

There is a photo of Connery posing on the stage of London’s now demolished Scala Theatre [1953] as for results for the Mr Universe heats are read out. Pg22.

Now the show (South Pacific), twenty months or so into its two-year run at the Drury Lane Theatre, was going on tour […] auditions were to be held for his part in the chorus. Pg23.

(1955) Back in London, Connery took a basement room at 12 Shalcomb Street, off the King’s Road – not even the glitzy spot it would subsequently become – and cycled to the West End every day to hector the big showbiz agencies, hang around the stage doors, keep up on the theatre gossip, all the while signing on at the Westminster Labour Exchange for the £6 a week dole to which he was entitled. Pg29.

[…] it was Robert Henderson (who palled up with Connery on the touring version of South Pacific) that he would be mounting a production of Witness for the Prosecution at the Q Theatre in Kew. […] Henderson recalled, ‘the main actors were compelling, but Sean’s movement across the stage was so eye-catching .. that it just wiped them out.’ Pg29-30.

Q Theatre was closed in 1956 for want of funds. He kept up his self imposed elocution lessons in a local library in Chelsea. On April 4th, 1956, Connery played O’Daniel in The Good Sailor, a theatrical version of Melville’s Billy Budd at the Lyric in Hammersmith. Pg31.

Julia Hamilton, (who Connery was dating) talks of seeing Connery in Hampstead Church, ‘Sean was there in full Scottish dress – kilt, frilly shirt, the whole get-up’. Pg33.

Julia Hamilton – ‘After the wedding I took him back home. That meant walking down Fitzjohn’s Avenue to Abbey Road […] heads were turning as we went by. After a while, though, I realised it wasn’t me they were interested in, it was Sean. He was so magnificent.’ Pg33.

Hamilton did not appreciate Connery’s ‘very damp basement’ in Chelsea, which she remembers as being plastered with Sean modelling underwear. Probably the work of Bill Green, who ran a studio called Vince in Manchester Street, north of Oxford St. Pg33.

Connery and Hamilton then moved into a flat above a double garage in Wavel Mews NW6 an area that, while is not quite Kilburn, is not quite West Hampstead either. Pg42-43.

The screenplay for Dr No was knocked together by Terence Young and his assistant Joanna Harwood in a week-long session at the Dorchester Hotel. Pg75.

Instead of marriage, Cilento proposed that they live together in a ‘largish house in an inexpensive area of London…in a sort of loose community of artists.’ In this commune – which sounds uncannily like the Acacia House Connery had just put his money into in Acton – ‘we would live together and bring up the children but not impinge on each other’s lives’ a well-to-do Iris Murdoch-style fantasy several years ahead of it’s time. Pg87.

A few days before the cast and crew of Thunderball travelled to the Bahamas, it was reported that Cilento had agreed a trial separation and Connery moved out of Acacia House and bunked up at a flat with golfing friend, the singer Ronnie Carroll. Pg122.

[…] back home in London after the You Only Live Twice shoot, he moved his family to a Victorian house in the middle of Putney Heath. A little more secluded than his previous residence, Connery’s new home came with an acre or so of land and was surrounded by walls rather higher than those he had failed to hide behind in Acton. Pg139.

[…] just as filming was about to begin, the news broke that he (Connery) and Cilento had separated once more, with Connery holing up in a flat on London’s Embankment that was once the home of Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Pg167.

At the end of Diamonds Are Forever […] not long after the film’s release, Connery himself announced that he was quitting Britain because of the ‘pollution thing.’ […] London seemed pretty ropey when I came back,” he said. “All those cars exhausts spewing out much.” Pg194.