Desmond Llewelyn was an actor for over 60 years, but will forever be remembered for just one role, that of Q, inventor of countless gadgets for the world’s most famous secret agent James Bond. With an air of impatient but kindly acumen, Llewelyn would introduce the superspy to a batch of innocent-looking but lethal high-tech instruments in a scene that was always a highlight of each adventure. This affectionate tribute marks the 25th anniversary of Desmond’s death, though it’s the first time I’ve written about the day we met.
The James Bond films made Desmond Llewelyn one of the most recognisable faces in Britain but they were not an unmixed blessing for the man who played Q, 007’s inventor and supplier of ingenious gadgetry.
During pre-production for 1963’s From Russia With Love, director Terence Young asked Llewelyn to come in and read for the part of the Quartermaster Major Boothroyd, having recalled him from They Were Not Divided years before. Although Ian Fleming and Young wanted the actor to play the role as a Welshman, the Newport-born chap put on the thickest Gwent accent he could muster to put them off the idea, and it worked, as he recounted to 007 in April 1999.
“I said ‘Is this what you want?: (breaks into strong Welsh enunciation) “This lovely case I got ’ere, I just press a button and out comes a knife!” He said ‘no, no’, so I played him as a toffee-nosed Englishman ever since.”
With his straight-faced curmudgeonly delivery, the toffee-nosed Englishman swiftly became a fan favourite and, Live And Let Die excepted (“I think Saltzman was getting fed up with the gadgets”) would play the role of Q all subsequent the Bonds up until and including The World Is Not Enough. Indeed, Llewelyn appeared in more of the series’ iconic titles than anyone and playing opposite some of the most famous actors of their generation (Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan), and George Lazenby.
However, being so strongly identifiable with a massively famous film series denied Desnond other acting work because movie producers thought him too closely associated in the public’s mind with the irascible armourer from Q Branch.
With only a few minutes of screen time per picture (across 17 films his scenes add up to not much more than half an hour in total), the financial rewards of the Bonds were nowhere near as decent for him as the audience assumed. Indeed they were discreditably low, considering that the films are still making millions for their producers, directors and main stars. Amazingly, after he complained to the tabloids in the late 1980s, Desmond claimed to be “skint” and living entirely off his state pension in a dilapidated house in Bexhill-on-Sea, a “seaside” town on the East Sussex coast. EON Productions said nothing and rehired him for what would turn out to be his final decade.
There was a slight splash of rhetoric about his grievance, since the property, inherited by his well-heeled wife Pamela, was Georgian, huge and had a swimming pool; but the implied criticism of EON’s priorities and his scant rewards as part of the human furniture of the Bond phenomenon was not without justification.
In the last weeks of 1999, I was heavily engrossed in the design of my first major book project, BowieStyle, at the designer’s studio at the same Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury – London’s traditional writer’s quarter of olde – where the comic actress Catherine Tate was raised and living at the time.
However, me being me, as the clock ticked down to the start of a new millennium I managed to nip out for a trio of book launches and a film premiere, which just happened to be The World Is Enough in Leicester Square. It was certainly a breezily crisp November evening, but if truth be told I don’t recall even seeing Desmond the entire bash but poor Judi Dench seemed quite flustered for some reason.
Robert Carlyle, however, was very personable, and lo and behold, I did get to chat with the likes of ole thumbs aloft Paul McCartney and John Hurt, this being just a day or so after the death of the person the latter memorably portrayed in The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp. “I’m sad. Very sad,” Hurt told me, with an obviously heavy heart.
However, come December and one of those book launches happened to be at an afternoon affair at Harrods in Knightsbridge. The tome in question was Q: The Biography Of Desmond Llewelyn, written by Sandy Hernu, and is a nice item of Bondiana that includes a comprehensive list of Q’s gadgetry from each film, though the inner geek in me I was surprised there seemed to be none of the alleged hardback so-called first editions available. What am I talking about? Just looking at the footies from the day the geek was most certainly out. Yikes.
No matter, because I gaily made my way to the grand antique desk where both Desmond and Sandy were conducting their little meet and greet, signing books for whomever asked.
Meeting Desmond Llewelyn was a bit like meeting Santa Claus. After all, I had grown up in Buckinghamshire, the same county as the location of the legendary Pinewood Studios, home of the 007 Stage. My sister’s secondary school was virtually next door to the Aston Martin factory in Newport Pagnell to boot. Being born in Britain, Bond is part of the fabric indelibly woven into the culture of the country.
“The key to Q is his conflict with Bond,” Desmond explained to Bruce Feirstein, screenwriter of the first three Brosnan capers.
“When I was cast, the director said, ‘Everyone loves Bond, except for you. You hate him. You don’t think he appreciates you. Or your equipment. He doesn’t respect you. You’re always saving his life, and he never says thank you’.”
In a tribute he authored for Salon, Feirstein also revealed that “During the making of GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, there were a handful of conversations between producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and Desmond and me about coming up with a strategy for the character’s dignified exit from the series. It became sort of a running joke: Whenever we left a restaurant, he’d stuff a 10 or 12-page handwritten sequence into my pocket, each one detailing a new, ever more elaborate exit for his character. ‘Desmond,’ I would reply, ‘these are 45-minute sequences. I know you’re beloved, but…’
“‘You’ve got to figure out a way to write me out,’ he’d laugh. ‘You know, I’m not going to last forever.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ Barbara and Michael would respond. ‘You’ve got a contract through 2015. We intend to hold you to it.’
“But as we began The World Is Not Enough a decision was made that Q, as well as Desmond, should have the option of retiring gracefully. When I went back to my hotel room in London to write the scene, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about who Q was. Why did he touch a nerve with so many people? What archetype did Desmond correspond to that resonated with so many different people all over the world?”
This is what appears in the script for the 19th Bond, dated 16 June 1999:
Q and Bond look at the balloon, rolling away. Then, as the noise fades, Q and Bond share a moment. Both men know that after all these years, all these missions, this might – possibly – be time for goodbye. They look upon each other: Q’s Merlin to Bond’s Arthur.
Bond fights the sentimentality: “You’re not planning to retire anytime soon, are you?”
Q (ignoring this): “Pay attention, 007. There are two things I’ve always tried to teach you. First: Never let them see you bleed.”
Bond: “And second?”
Q: “Always have an escape plan.”
POOF!!! There’s a flash of powder, and Q disappears behind a secret door. Bond nods, a fond salute farewell.
What a chilling epitaph, words that could have been written by Ian Fleming himself.
In Harrods, Desmond was resplendent in a smart three-piece grey suit. His gentlemanly face and manner were genuine, though I noticed he seemed, not unsurprisingly at 85, tired, and seemed to be feeling slightly off. Perhaps he was as earnest and slightly crotchety as Q was famous for?
Naturally, not having read the tome he was promoting when we spoke, I could only think of the most bleedingly obvious question, one based on that very “exit strategy” we’d just witnessed on celluloid, where it looked like his newly introduced sidekick R, played by John Cleese, was being groomed to replace him. Would the words Die Another Die be helpful?
“Desmond, is this your last Bond film then?”
His answer, delivered wearily with no trace of a smile, slightly surprised me, but, of course, in retrospect would prove to be unbelievably poignant.
“No, I shall go on for however long the Almighty wants me to.”
That one line was to haunt me somewhat, as the following week we all heard the dreadful news that Desmond had been involved in a collision with another car on the day of a similar book event in East Sussex. The inquest heard how Desmond was driving his Renault Mégane just 30 minutes from his home as he tried to overtake a Fiat Brava at the end of a mile-long straight stretch but crashed into the car. He died hours later at Eastbourne district general hospital.
Sadly, there was no possibility of attempting re-entry, sir.
Steve Pafford
