MOTION PICTURE June 1964

A Tattooed Man Makes a Wonderful Lover

as the lucky Mrs. Sean Connery could tell you!

All passengers from the London jet had passed through U.S. Customs at Los Angeles International Airport -and only one was left. He was a lean, loose-boned, tattooed, leather- faced guy who, if he'd sported butterfly boots and a Stetson, you'd certainly have tagged a Texan. Instead, he wore brogans, baggy cords, a rumpled sweater and a corduroy cap pulled down over his eyes. His ham-sized hands toted just two dinky bags, one crammed lumpily with books. A bright plaid tam-o'-shanter flopped outside the other.

Two Universal Studio publicity execs, who had been peering anxiously through the visitors' glass all this time, stared at each other in disbelief. They were there to greet and rollout a big, red Hollywood carpet for a very, very VIP from England-Sean Connery, the slick, snobby, supersleuth James Bond, operator 007 of Ian Fleming's movie thrillers, Dr. No and From Russia, With Love. Connery was the eminent actor the great Alfred Hitchcock had persuaded (Imagine Hitchcock having to persuade any actor!) to star in his new picture, Marnie, for Universal. He'd even had to put off shooting it for months, they knew (Imagine Hitch waiting for any star!), just to bag this Connery prize with a $200,000 check.

These press agent types, who had never laid eyes on Sean Connery and somehow had missed his movies, nonetheless thought they knew exactly what to look for: A Bond Street tailored, elegant Britisher, possibly sporting a bowler, piped vest and rolled umbrella. One sure tipoff would be the expensive custom luggage by Peale carrying his impeccable sartoria for a big splash in Hollywood. And now this!

"Well, it must be our man," said one. "James Bond."

"Uh-uh," corrected the other. "Not our man-his own-Sean Connery."

The second guy was right. How right was stubbornly demonstrated every day Sean Connery stayed in town, and from the start: If anyone started to rollout that red carpet, he poked it firmly back.

When, for example, Sean was advised the studio had a limousine and chauffeur at his disposal, Connery was horrified. "My dad drives a truck," he stated in his Scottish burr. "So did I. I'll just rent one of those little economy cars, if you don't mind, like my Volkswagen at home." When they dropped him off at the fashionable Chateau Marmont, an old but definitely "In" favorite with distinguished visitors, he said, "Nice place. But what's wrong with that little motel I stayed in six years ago out in . . . where was it? . . . Burbank. Easy to go in and out of and very inexpensive." They tried again. Dinner-how about the Derby, Chasen's, or LaScala? "Oh, we'll just pick up a hamburger," vetoed Sean. When he also picked up the check they almost fainted. Well now, was there perhaps anything he'd like to do in the way of entertainment? A girlie show, nightclubs-just to make him feel part of the town? "A bit of sunshine tomorrow, I think that's all," ordered Sean. "The beach later and maybe a round of golf." That could be arranged; after all, the first two were absolutely free and a Bel-Air guest card was only a matter of a phone call. Oh, there was one thing: "I'll be needing a house," said Connery. "My wife and kids will be over in a few days." They took him looking that week. He rented the first one he saw, stalked down to the market for a sack of groceries and moved right in.

Now, obviously, it's impossible to drape a canny Scot like that with much Hollywood glamour or any other kind. Sean Connery is about as phony as a gold guinea, which is more than you can say about the character he plays-every other picture on the screen. Sean has nothing against being James Bond. He's flattered that a London newspaper poll picked him for that job. He observes "No, I don't mind playing Bond. He's a character. It's a part. I'm an actor." But if people expect him to go around making like a girl-chasing, dasher-detective, they're just out to lunch. Sleuthwise, Sean gets very low marks.

When he went out to Santa Anita racetrack, for instance, for a mild go at the bangtails, he forgot where he'd parked his car and had to wait until the huge lot emptied before he could find it! At a Pro Bowl football game, he couldn't deduce just what the Yankee boys on the field were up to, although at home he plays center-forward on the "Show Biz Eleven" soccer team. And while he did dash mysteriously one night into the UCLA emergency hospital carrying a beautiful semi-conscious blonde dripping blood, it turned out to be only his loving wife, actress Diane Cilento. She'd taken a swipe at him with a mop in a bit of household horseplay, caught her wedding ring on a door hasp and practically tore off her finger. But Sean had to call Alfred Hitchcock before he knew where to take the limp beauty to have her finger sewed up.

As for high life, Sean prefers beer and Scotch to vintage wines. And the riotous trail he left in Hollywood flamed only with such orgies as a visit to Marineland with the kiddies, a look-in on his friend, Hank Mancini, as he recorded the music Sean admires, sunbaked sprawls on the beach, and golf, which he soon preferred to whack out at Fox Hills, a public course. There was one rash visit to Hollywood's saucy Pink Pussycat. "Good fun," he appraised the hijinks, but both Sean and the rake who lured him there, Rex Harrison, were well chaperoned by their wives. For sweet publicity . . . most actors' life blood . . . Sean couldn't care less. They wanted him to lay the cornerstone of Universal City's new MCA building, which meant pictures and stories plastered all over the press. He sent regrets because he had a golf date. Sure, he sat dutifully through scattered interviews answering questions politely, but as for pulsing private revelations-I can tell you true-Sean is strictly a case of Intermission.

On the face of such things, it's easy to tab Sean Connery a dishwater-dull chappie, which image he might seem to project by Hollywood standards. Yet nothing could be more cockeyed. Sean is simply loaded with sex. When you meet him you know you're up against something interesting: namely, a real man. Rangy, slim-hipped and bridge shouldered from weight lifting (that's how he got to be an actor), the real Connery lurks behind a broad brow over nice brown eyes a girl could get lost in. His mouth is wide and firm under a slightly ski-tilted nose, and braced by fascinating cheek creases that could pass for long dimples. His hair and skin are Latin dark ("They had me playing Italians and Indians for a long time"). His voice is soft and deep, delivered in that no-nonsense Scottish burr. What Sean has, to give a girl tingles, is simple. His wife, who should know, has it tagged; "Masculinity," says Diane Cilento, "pure male authority. Absolutely nothing like all the actors I'd met before."

Diane had met plenty of actors before she ran into big, masterful Sean. She's been acting herself since she was 15, has over 100 plays under her girdle by now, movies, TV and everything else. Moreover, Mrs. Connery is no mouse; on the distaff side, she's what Sean is-sexy. If you saw her as "Molly," the lusty, uninhibited tidbit in Tom Jones, which put her in the Oscar running, you shouldn't even bring up the question. Diane wore a straggly black wig in that and she was considerably mussed up from tumbling around. In person she's a vivacious, green-eyed, corn-yellow blonde; small but with everything where it should be and a husky, man-disturbing voice. An Aussie lass with fiery Italian blood, too, Diane's plenty sophisticated. Her Italian-born father, Sir Rafael Cilento, is a doctor, knighted for work in tropical diseases; and he represented Australia at the UNO in New York, where Diane spent her teens, in cosmopolitan circles. Her mother's a gynecologist; three brothers and a sister are also doctors and another's a well-known painter. Diane's traveled allover the world, and was married before to a Roman writer, Andrea Volpi. In short, Diane knows a man when she sees one.

She saw Sean first when they did Anna Christie together for British TV. "At first I thought Sean wore a terrific chip on his shoulder," Diane remembers. "He'd come to my place and stretch out on the floor, I think, just to see if I'd be surprised or get angry. I didn't and soon I realized Sean's an individualist, very much so. In fact, I'd say that's his outstanding trait. He lives exactly as he wants to. Maybe when we first met, he didn't have all the answers about a lot of things, especially acting. Now he's sure of himself. That's the whole thing about him. And it's hard to resist."

Sean was impossible for Diane to resist, even though she admits, "I didn't want to marry him, I didn't want to marry anyone, You know, I'd just been through it and it hadn’t worked." Just the same, she finally found herself saying "Yes" to the quiet Connery charm, rough cut or not. A couple of times she ran off to America to duck the issue, but there was that persistent Scot, popping up on the next plane. They were married in Gibraltar-of all places-a couple of years ago and certainly Diane hasn't been sorry, They have a year-old son, Jason, ("Golden fleece and all") whom Diane brought over to Hollywood, along with her 7-year-old daughter, Giovanna Volpi, to give Sean some home life, "and cook him some big meals. He needs great lumps of food." Diane had no job there; in fact, she skipped one in London to be with her man.

But, less than anyone, does Diane Cilento Connery confuse her mate with the silicon-slick operator he plays so well on the screen. She has only to recall their wedding day to realize-a little smugly-that, like most he-males, Sean can wear six left feet and a dozen thumbs when it comes to staging a deft romantic operation. That day was a clumsy comedy of errors, frustrations and mixups which, as Diane sighs, "was like one of those funny Telly shows."

They picked Gibraltar because it was a bit of Britain nearest where Diane was staying in Spain when she finally weakened; also, because there you don't need to wait for banns. Sean could walk right in past the Gib check-points to make arrangements, being a Queen's subject. Diane, being an Aussie, had to come in properly with her passport via Algeciras. But the customs guards kicked Diane off the boat because her passport wasn't stamped or something, so that when it showed up Gibraltar side she wasn't aboard. “Sean thought I'd run away again,” sighs Diane, “jilted him, you know. It made him terrible angry.”

Things just started that way at 9 A.M. and kept up all day long. Sean trying to get over to Algeciras to find her, as Diane was trying to land on the rock-and everyone shuttling around missing everyone else. They finally made it to the magistrate by evening, but his honor was trying a case that went on and on, until the two British Tommies they'd yanked off the street for witnesses had to duck out or go AWOL. Finally, a couple of non-English-speaking types stood up for them in court, "along with a few hashish peddlers and white slavers," recalls Diane. "Not exactly orange blossoms and old lace." But that wasn't the worst.

The battered newlyweds sought romance after dusk atop Gibraltar itself, to drink in the harbor lights below as the warm breath of Africa, across the Straits, caressed their faces, cheek to cheek. The only trouble was -they stayed too long and couldn't get down to their hotel. Sean had got them trapped deep inside a military preserve when the gates clanged shut. So, they had to huddle there miserably while those notorious Gibraltar apes frolicked around making obscene faces. Finally, around midnight, a kind hearted sentry relented and let them out.

That was the tipoff to Diane that life with Sean Connery, while not James Bond style, was not going to be dull-and it hasn't been. To keep up with him she's had to scoot around all over the world-Turkey, Africa, Israel, Italy, France, Spain-to name a few stops-and, of course, Hollywood. Being a busy girl herself, sometimes that's taken a lot of doing and posed family problems. For instance, when Jason decided to arrive, Sean was working in Rome and couldn't beat the labor pains home, Diane called her painting sister, Margaret, handy in London. "I think I'm going to have my baby," she announced.

"You cahn't!" protested her sis. "I've a dentist's appointment and I've already broken it three times before!" Diane went right ahead anyway.

At that point, Sean and Diane were already installed in a honeymoon house which, in all the wacky world of actors' retreats, probably has no equal. It's a 100-year-old nunnery-or was until the Connerys moved there, because, Sean explains, "I like lots of room."

He sure got it. The stone place is four stories high and formerly housed 27 sisters of the Spanish Adoratrice order. It even had a chapel and an altar, and was consecrated ground," Sean reveals, "but they deconsecrated it fast when we moved in-so we could pay taxes." Sean also paid 5000 pounds (about $14,000) on top of the 9000-pound price (about $25,200) to knock out walls, install new floors, a central heating system, and generally revamp the convent. Being an old coffin-polisher by trade, he refinished all the woodwork while Diane assembled the modern pieces mixed with antiques to furnish it. By now they feel right at home, especially since, when he got the deed, Connery discovered that the Adoratrice patron saint's day was also his birthday, August 25.  Made us feel like members of the gang," he says.

“Acacia House,” as they've dubbed it, sits in Acton, a tough section of London, but strategic between the city and the film studios. A park surrounds Connery's convent which adds a free city-supported estate to their three-fourths acre. Giovanna, and soon Jason, can romp around Acton Park with the Connery pup, a huge Alsatian named Harry Hotspur, and every now and then a fun fair sets up. That's when the Connerys invite their friends out for a day long bash. Diane makes her famous spaghetti and Sean sees that the beer flows free before they all take in the carnival. "Oh yes, Sean can let himself go," says Diane. "He eats heartily and drinks the same. When he sleeps, he sleeps long-and snores." At home, at Hollywood, Sean’s not one for dress. Diane buys all his ties. “Because,” she says frankly, “I'm good at it and he's not.” Sartorically, according to Sean, he's hardly James Bond. "I'm really a slovenly sort. Sure, I get dressed up for an occasion. Otherwise, how do you know you're going somewhere?" But he really doesn't care a hoot about what he looks like.

Sean's manorial setup at Acacia House is for the comfort of himself and his family, and it's fantastically different from the tramped two-room tenement he began with as Tommy Connery, 33 years ago, in Edinburgh. Maybe that's why today he craves so much room to spread out. His brother Neil, mother Euphamia, and dad Joseph, were all crowded in a Scottish version of a Manhattan cold-water flat, although smaller, and his parents still live there. Joe Connery worked as a mill hand and later drove a moving truck, which he-in his 60s-still does. Instead of a park, all Tommy had to play in were the city streets, or the bleak playgrounds of crowded city grammar schools. He was sharp at soccer and loved the game, which he still does, a little recklessly by now. Last year, when Sean was shooting Dr. No, he made a bold sliding tackle in a Show Biz Eleven game, ripped the cartilage of one knee and had to have it removed. He finished the picture and three weeks later was back booting the ball, Sean's pretty proud of that because a pro soccer idol of his, one Danny Blanch flower (Captain of Ireland) , had the same trouble, the same surgery and it took him five weeks to get back in the lineup. Besides, Connery pulled the iron man feat first.

By rights, Tommy Connery should have wound up another Danny Blanchflower instead of an actor. He had the coordination and the rugged Scottish physique (6'2" today and 190) spiked with a jigger of scrappy Irish blood. "I was called Sean long before I was an actor," supplies Connery. "I had an Irish buddy when I was 12 named Seamus-that's pronounced 'Sha-mus,' you know. So they nicknamed us ‘Shamus and Shawn’ and it stuck. Good thing. When people hear 'Sean Connery' today, they say 'Irish'-and it just saves a lot of bother explaining. Actually, I'm practically all Scot."

Whatever his blood line, Sean Connery was certainly poor and as certainly unprodded by any artistic heritage. “Sean has marvelous parents,” attests Diane, who could be snobbish with her Commonwealth Establishment background if she cared to. "Certainly they were poor but they gave him health, love and security." Nonetheless, Sean stopped school to earn his keep when he was only 14. For a while he hustled a milk route around Edinburgh and hoisted heavy produce on and off trucks. But when he was 16, Sean Connery followed the lead of most Edinburgh dropouts. He signed up for the British Navy, on a 12-year hitch. That should have sprung him back to civvies only five years ago at 28. Instead, he was dumped after only three years, mostly spent in the guts of a battleship, which dreary duty messed up his own. They invalided him out at 19 with stomach ulcers, about the last thing you'd expect calm Connery to contract. “I just wasn't the sailor type,” he explains. The sores healed fast when he was discharged, though, and today the only naval scars left on Sean Connery are two elegant tattoos on his arms, one defiantly proclaiming, “SCOTLAND FOREVER.” the other, “MUM AND DAD.” Alfred Hitchcock had to re-shoot a scene recently in Marnie when Sean rolled up his sleeves too high and exposed his past.

After the service, Sean batted around in all sorts of jobs-cement mixer, bricklayer, steel bender, printer's helper, lifeguard, and furniture finisher. That's when he shined up coffins. But the strong back-weak mind existence began to bug him almost as much as the Navy had. There were too frequent periods when jobs winked out and he had to go on the dole. That doesn't sit well with a Scotsman.

Sean got his feet wet in show biz during one doleful period when he answered an ad for extras in a flag-waving revue at an Edinburgh theater, got dressed up as a Guards officer and actually drew a paycheck for it. Then a weight-lifting pal steered him onto a chorus boy job in a London company of South Pacific. Sean took a crash 48-hour dance course and became a prancing gentleman of the ensemble, which is very hard to imagine right now. By then he was hooked. Repertory bits, the same in films and TV, won mainly on his good looks, barely kept him from starving while he boned desperately to catch up on the education he'd missed. For months, in and out of jobs, Sean practically lived at libraries, slugging away at the dramatic literature any actor worth his salt has to know. The reading habit stuck. Sean lugs a bag of books wherever he goes, and at home even buries his nose riding to and from work. That's not such a feat as it seems, because in London studios have to chauffeur important actors to their jobs. "We're supposed to be hard-drinking late-hour rounders," Sean explains, "smash-prone drivers and unreliable. You can't get insurance."

Back then cramming paid off, and so did that masculine authority of Sean's: Bits grew to impressive leads in TV and films, including some made by American runaways from Hollywood. Sean returned the favor himself in 1958 for Walt Disney's Darby O'Gill. At first, he didn't quite know what to make of the place.

"I arrived late, went to the Hollywood-Roosevelt hotel and crashed," (translation: slept) he relates. "Next morning, I went down to the dining room for some breakfast and almost got knocked over. I thought something had happened. The noise was terrible. Little old ladies with pink hair were running all around, badges pinned to their bosoms, screaming and waving their arms. I started to clear out when the biggest man I ever saw came up to me, explained this convention, and asked me to sit at his table. He said his name was Teddy Bear-turned out to be Buddy Baer-and he cleared a path. I thought: What a place-wild women with pink hair and giants!" He laughed at the recollection.

He moved to that motel in Burbank, where he wanted to camp again this last time, stayed four months practically incognito and went back home swearing never again.

This trip, with Diane along, Sean was happier. The only menace he encountered was an eye-stinging smog. “At first, I couldn't understand it,” he says drily. “I thought maybe it was the whisky here.” That's a tricky thing about Sean Connery: He says things like that with such a deadpan that you never know whether he's naive or slyly yanking your leg. “Sean has a terrific sense of humor, really,” says Diane. "Only it's the kind you have to think twice to get." Actually, Sean’s not a bit naive about America. This last was his sixth hop over, some chasing Diane and some his own career. A few months ago, he flew over and plugged Dr. No around U.S. cities, coast to coast, as he says, “on jet planes and whisky. I'll bet,” he admits, “I've seen more of the United States than 75 per cent of the people who live here. But I'd never do it again.” Good thing he's not a Beatle. “I just don't get that fan hysteria stuff,” he snorts.

“Sean has a temper, all right,” reveals Diane. "But I don't think he'd ever hit anyone unless he was very mad." Sean himself is not so sure. “When I get a blue,” he says, “I'm greedy. I keep it to myself. But if someone asks me, 'What's the matter?' I'm likely to clip him on the ear."

Both Diane and Sean Connery flew away from Hollywood not knowing how soon either of them would be back, if ever. Sean hopped to Portugal to make his next James Bond thriller, Goldfinger. After that, he'll go to Ireland to make a film based on the life of Irish playwright, Sean O'Casey, for American director John Ford. Sean had never met John Ford when he signed, but then he had never met Alfred Hitchcock either. He doesn't have to-they hire him sight unseen. He doesn't think that's unusual at all because Sean Connery is not one to sell himself short. When he was approached to do Marnie, he demanded to see the script. “But nobody has to read a Hitchcock script,” objected the London agent for Hitch. “Maybe I'm nobody,” answered Sean, “but I want to know what I'm doing. I'm cautious,” he told me, “I have to be shown. Like-how do you say?-from Missouri.”

This time Sean Connery had a good, long look at Hollywood and you get the feeling that he'd like to come back again if the job and the price are right. “We're rather playing it by ear,” is the American way Diane puts it. She did The Third Secret with Stephen Boyd before she came over to keep house for Sean and there are rumors that 20th Century-Fox is nibbling for a contract. Curiously, one offer Diane had while in Hollywood, was to play in a James Bond story that a wildcat producer had snagged. Since she'd said "No" to the ones with Sean, she said it again. "But we'd love to act together," allows Diane, "and I think we can help each other. Sean has a lot of catching up to do on dramatic background; that's why he reads so much. He's a slow study and sometimes I help with the lines." Diane even sent Sean to a couple of women teachers she knew, for stageside ease and grace. To her, though, James Bond is Sean's own baby. "I think he has a great sense of humor about the part and enjoys playing it," she ventures. "But he'll never let himself be typed in it; he's too canny a Scot."

That's the trite but true essence of Sean Connery, an independent, hardheaded Scotsman, who, even if he did wind up in Hollywood, would settle strictly on his own terms. Before that question even comes up though there's a family project he has to work off with Diane. They have a movie they want to make together, Call Me Where The Cross Turns Over, to be filmed in Diane's homeland, Australia.

Professionally speaking, Sean hasn't worked with his favorite actress since he met her, and they're both itching for a try. But, as usual, there's another canny reason. Although they've been married two years and have a son, Sean has yet to be introduced to his wife's family. He didn't think that bit of protocol entirely necessary when he wooed Diane Cilento. Sean Connery simply went out and got what he wanted, like always. But now he thinks maybe it's time he met her folks.

-BY KIRTLEY BASKETTE