The James Bond 007 Dossier

VEGAS COMES UP 007

Sean Connery returns to secret-agent country—replete, as usual, with pulchritude and peril—in the first U.S.-based James Bond thriller, "Diamonds Are Forever"

The late Ian Fleming’s indomitable secret agent, James Bond, has addictive qualities. In novel form, he has attracted such prominent fans as President John F. Kennedy; on screen, he has since 1962 been entertaining theater-filling fans numbering into the hundreds of thousands. Now, it appears, even 007's best-known alter ego is hooked by the role. After a one-picture absence, during which he loudly proclaimed that he was sick and tired of being James Bond, saturnine Scotsman Sean Connery is back in Bondage as the hero of Diamonds Are Forever, due to open over the holidays in theaters throughout the country. Produced, as were six previous Bond epics—five starring Connery and one featuring George Lazenby—by Albert R. ("Cubby”) Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for United Artists, Diamonds sets Bond on the trail of a gem-smuggling ring that leads to the casinos of Las Vegas. Most of the action takes place in and around the Nevada gambling capital, making this the first Bond movie shot principally in the U.S. In the best 007 screen tradition, Connery comes in contact with a number of pneumatic maidens, notably Jill St. John as Tiffany Case and Lana Wood as Plenty O'Toole. (It was Playboy's April uncoverage of Miss Wood that brought her to the film makers’ attention.) Also present in Diamonds are the other standard 007 film ingredients: infernally clever machines (a diamond entrusted, butterfly-winged moon car and an oyster-shaped one-man sub) and adrenaline boosting chases (a dozen cars crack up in Downtown Vegas). All in all, we predict a warm yule box-office welcome for the return of the prodigal Sean.

Photos: Back in harness as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery (right) finds himself, as usual, surrounded by girls, girls, girls—in this case, Judy Ritsko, a Vegas chorine.

Photos: Inspired by the glittering gems of the movie's title and the omnipresent neon glow of Las Vegas, photographer Simon Nathan created the multicolored portraits on these pages by projecting film images on the shapely bodies of Nevada showgirls who appear, as Themselves, in Diamonds. In this latest James Bond thriller, Sean Connery meets Jill St. John (below right) as Tiffany Case, member of an international smuggling ring. Bond and Tiffany pursue each other in and out of the sack—in a bridal suite, equipped with a water bed containing 3000 tropical fish (below left) and Bond's hotel room (bottom).

Photos: Bond, a big winner at the crap table, attracts the attention of a casino hanger-on, the opulently upholstered Plenty O'Toole {Lana Wood). In the sequence above, Plenty has insisted on escorting Bond to his room in the Tropicana Hotel—where, just as they're getting down to bare essentials, they are surprised by a trio of hired thugs, who give the young lady the old heave-ho, right out the tenth-floor window. (She survives, by scoring a direct hit on the hotel’s swimming pool; but by the time she gets back upstairs, Bond is already on the Case, and the waterlogged Miss O'Toole ends up with plenty o' nothing.)

[Source: Playboy Magazine, December 1971, P.180-183. Copyright © 1971 Playboy. All rights reserved.]