Bond, James Bond

When you ask TigerBlog about the coolest of the cool when it comes to movie stars, the clear top three to him have always been Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and James Garner.

If anyone ever made a run at them, it was Sean Connery.

The fiercely proud-to-be-Scottish actor passed away Saturday at the age of 90. He was named "The Sexiest Man Of the 20th Century" by People Magazine; TB will others to decide if that was the correct choice.

Connery, of course, is best known as the first person ever to play James Bond, something he did seven times. TigerBlog is a huge, huge fan of the Bond series, but really only when the hero was played by Connery or his successor, Roger Moore.

Connery was great in all of them, especially in "Goldfinger" and "Diamonds Are Forever." He stamped his coolness forever with his first-ever scene as Bond, though.

If you've never seen the first Bond movie, it's called Dr. No. If there had never been another Bond movie after that, "Dr. No" alone would have been a classic. 

In his first scene, Connery is in a casino, where he compliments a woman who is losing to him on her courage. Then he says "Miss, uh?," to which she responds "Trench, Sylvia Trench."

Then she tells him that she admires the still-unseen Connery's luck, following that by returning with a similar "Mr.? ..." 

Then the camera first turns to him, and he responds with, well, you already know what he responds with. 

If you don't, you can watch it here.

It's great, right?

Connery played many other roles besides Bond. His one and only Academy Award, in his one and only nomination, came when he played the tough Chicago cop in "The Untouchables" in 1987. In all, he made 77 movies, the last of which was in 2003.

TB's favorite non-Bond role? As the Russian submarine captain in "The Hunt For Red October."

In one of his roles, Connery played Henry Jones Sr., who was the father of Indiana Jones.

Henry Jones Sr. was also a professor of medieval studies at Princeton University. Since the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" is set in 1938, then you can guess when it was that he taught at Princeton.

Perhaps Professor Jones was a Princeton football season ticket holder? 

If he was, then he saw Princeton teams that won national championships in 1933 and 1935. If he'd been there for 16 years by the time he left to chase the Holy Grail, then perhaps he saw the 1922 Team of Destiny.

Princeton had 17 varsity sports by 1938, all of which, obviously, were men's teams, since women still wouldn't be admitted for another 31 years yet. It was in 1925 that men's fencing became a varsity sport; surely there was a sword-fighting scene in one of those 77 movies.

TB tried to find a connection between Connery and Princeton, and that's the best he could come up with, that he played a Princeton professor in an Indiana Jones movie. TB has no idea if Connery was ever on the Princeton campus or anything like that. 

TB did a search of the senior thesis database, and nothing came up for Connery. The closest was Sean O'Casey, an Irish playwrite who had eight people write their thesis about his work. 

A search of the Daily Princetonian archives turned up 128 matches for "Sean Connery," but all 128 of them are either advertisements for movies showing on Nassau Street or reviews of other movies. There's no story about a time he actually was involved in something on campus, or at least if there is, TB didn't see it.

Maybe that's the best connection he had with Princeton.

If Connery ever was on the Princeton campus, TB couldn't find it. Connery, though, was on the campus many times, though not in person. 

Maybe the best connection is how much Princetonians, and everyone else, loved to see his movies. 

And now he's gone. He lived to be 90, going from leaving school at the age of 14, into the British Navy and eventually a stage debut on the West End in the chorus of "South Pacific." And then all of the amazing things he accomplished, on the screen and in real life.