Honor Blackman is dead to me

[quote]The actor, who became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and enjoyed a career spanning eight decades, died of natural causes unrelated to coronavirus.

As Archie Bunker would say, she died of 94.

Pussy has closed up.

So young.

She was beautiful even into old age. She was my favorite Bond girl.

Beautiful woman.

Taking her was a point of Honor.

She played the "Mona" character in the UK version of "Who's The Boss?"

She played a hot pussy, but she couldn't live forever.

Here is Honor Blackman playing "Mona" on Who's The Boss

Her hit song (with Patrick MacNee).

She's English. Shouldn't it be HonoUr?

I just watched Goldfinger on Sunday.

I loved her in Midsomer Murders.

She was one classy dame.

Galore no more.

Pussy No More.

Beautiful lady. RIP.

I was fortunate to see her play the Baroness, Elsa, in a London revival of The Sound of Music (with Petula Clark as Maria). She exuded class and confidence.

Wouldn't you have loved to be at a party with her where she let her hair down and started dishing? She will be missed.

She was smart, funny and sexy.

I loved her as the Rich Lady in First Class in A Night to Remember taking her children in the lifeboat and pretending to believe her husband that everything would be all right.

Honor was two years older than Queen Elizabeth? Wow!

So, did she like black men?

I believe she was considered for the role of Lady Marjorie Bellamy in Upstairs Downstairs (1971-1975)

I saw her in the London production of Nunsense, of all things. She was good fun.

Textbook case on how to age with dignity in show business.

^ Oops, I posted the wrong link, but the song was high drama!

This one was part of a series on growing old in Britain.

She was doing Pilates in her eighties.

Note: Sean Connery waking up to her in Goldfinger at 0:28 is the sexiest I've ever seen him.

She was in a dreary early episode of Columbo which was beneath her. I too loved her Midsomer Murders episode "A Talent For Life" where she plays a free-spirit who gets murdered. RIP x

I loved that Columbo

Did Miss Rona pay pussy a visit?

How sad now it has to be in someone's obituary they didn't die from the coronavirus.

I loved her Pussy Galore hair style.

Her character was one of the few Bond girls who was his equal in kicking ass.

The Introduction - Sean Connery & Honor Blackman as James Bond and Pussy Galore.

I can't believe Pussy died before I had a chance to grab her

Exquisite bone structure. Great name as well. RIP, Honor.

Blimey, so she was already 40 in 1965.

[quote] Her character was one of the few Bond girls who was his equal in kicking ass.

Agree. She was the best.

Pussy was a dyke ... but Bond turned her.

“You can spare the charm. I’m immune.”

Not one of the few. The first. After 1977 (Barbara Bach in The Spy Who Loved Me), most of the Bond women brought something to the table besides tits.

[Quote] Exquisite bone structure.

I'll say.

My favorite Blackman related story is of a talk show appearance of hers in the 1960s. The host had offered to go over the questions before showtime. She declined the offer stating that she preferred to be surprised. The show goes live and the host asks her: "What is it like to be half man, half woman?" Not missing a beat, Honor leaned over in her low cut dress and replied "To which half are you referring?"

She was nothing if not direct.

I think the photo at the link is the one to which she objected.

I love the Irene Handl quote.

[Quote] "Remember Irene Handl?" Of course - the late, great English TV and film actor. "She was doing TV and a young excitable director decided to explain a new way of filming he'd devised. She let him carry on for a while and then said, 'Excuse me, I think you've mistaken me for someone who gives a fuck.'"

While appearing in "The Sound of Music", she replied with a fan who had asked about Stephen Boyd, her co-star in the Sean Connery - Brigitte Bardot western "Shalako."

[Quote] Stephen was easy to get on with - [he] was going through a phase [...] which involved a greeting of "Peace" as opposed to "Good morning" or "Hi."

[Quote] One had the impression that he had not found anyone worth caring deeply about - or perhaps had & had lost the person.

I thought this rememberance was funny, from, I presume, a lesbian.

[Quote] RIP Honor Blackman. I met her at a memrobillia convention once. I was all shy & came out with "what lovely photos" which she replied 'yes they are.!' then gave me a wink and a smirk as I picked out the one of her in a bra to sign. She was lovely. #HonorBlackman #RIPHonorBlackman

With said lesbian fan.

[Quote] She was in a dreary early episode of Columbo which was beneath her.

Sadly, many of Honor Blackman's projects were beneath her. She had a good, dramatic scene with Laurence Harvey in "Life at the Top," the 1965 sequel to "Room at the Top." But on screen, her dramatic abilities were mostly untapped. When asked about her favorite role, Blackman cited a production "A Little Night Music" where she played Desiree. I imagine Honor's particular combination of steel and flamboyance was an excellent fit for the role.

[Quote] Any regrets about your career trajectory? "One. Peter Brook asked me to play Juliet at Stratford, but I had just signed a contract for a film which was rubbish. My agent should have known. After that, I got contracted for two years to Rank as a film actress and that meant I was never going to be taken seriously as a classical actress. I'd love to have played those roles."

[Quote] Sad news on #HonorBlackman death but she would have laughed at her subtitles on @BBCNews which said she was Pudsey Galore in Goldfinger.

Honor Blackman is interesting as an example of someone getting their breakthrough mid-career, which is very unusual for an actress in particular. After her first marriage failed and she returned from Canada, to which she'd moved, she spent most of the 1950s in b-pictures. She'd had a nervous breakdown not long before her stint in "The Avengers." But at the age of 37, Blackman became a true star in the UK. She was an example of coming back from the brink. She was fiercely independent, as the interview at the link attests, but she was also kind and loyal. She attended to her ex-husband as he fought cancer.

[Quote] @TanyaFranksRuns I knew Honor Blackman’s ex-husband Maurice Kaufman. They were no longer married but when he was in hospital with stomach cancer she spent every day with him, continuing to show such love and friendship to him. I never met her but what a wonderful story of love #RIPHonorBlackman

r42 Honor had huge tits and the hips and butt of an athletic man. A very unusual body type.

She had pussy galore but she couldn't live forever. x

I enjoyed her “Columbo” episode, it was a treat to watch her matching wits with Columbo.

Those aren't the hips of an athletic man.

"Most of the Bond girls have been bimbos," she once said. "I have never been a bimbo."

What a woman!

As Hera in Jason and the Argonauts

I wonder what would have happened if she had stayed with the Avengers. The black and white episodes with her are very good but Rigg added something different.

That should be in the unflattering hairstyles thread, r57.

I expect it would have been business as usual. Blackman and Macnee's chemistry was more the traditional love/hate thing. I doubt American audiences would have not taken to it.

R57 I hated it too!

interesting that she was already 40 when she played her most famous role in "goldfinger".. back in the mid 60's, a 40 year actress especially one famous for her beauty and sexuality, was like a 50 plus year old woman nowadays trying to come off and be "sexy" in a action film....

I think her age did factor into her inability to build a good film career in the wake of "Goldfinger." She was already playing Susan George's mother by the end of the decade.

Well it takes decades to establish and build a Flying Circus.

A consummate pro. She doesn't even flinch when her scene partner said "Fuck" (almost) live on air (in 1963!).

A remembrance from a director who worked with Honor:

[Quote] “I’d been thinking about doing The Glass Menagerie, and so I said, ‘What about Honor playing Amanda? Would she be interested?’.”

[Quote] The answer was affirmative, whereupon arrangements were made for Damian to meet Miss Blackman at her London abode. “I can remember going to see Honor at some place in Mayfair, and her instructions were very particular.

[Quote] “She said, ‘you’ll need to ring the bell, I’ll buzz you in. Then, when you get in the lift, you’ll arrive at what it says is the top floor. The doors will open…but don’t get out. They’ll close again and the lift will bring you up to my flat’.”

[Quote] What happened? “Exactly that! When the doors opened, I found I was inside her flat! Getting there was just like something out of a Bond movie!” Damian said. “It was a beautiful apartment too.”

[Quote] “I went to see her in her one-woman show, Dishonourable Ladies, in Wales on the Sunday night before we were due to begin, and the deal was I would drive her to York…as it turned out, in her sports car, me driving, while she enjoyed a bottle of champagne! Glorious!”

[Quote] She was enormously gracious and generous. She had friends coming to her dressing room each night, and liked to have a bottle of champagne in the fridge, but that dressing room didn’t have a fridge until she bought one for it and then gifted it to the theatre. It’s still there in dressing room one, as far as I know!

[Quote] I can recall her sitting by the window with my son Felix, who was only three at the time. “My neighbour was standing watching, and I remember him saying, ‘Was that Pussy Galore in your window?’. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘My god, a Bond girl next door,’ he said.

What a beauty she was. She was the best example of striding the line as a woman between beautiful and handsome.

I don't think I've ever seen a better looking 80 year old. Honor did says her mother lived into her nineties and still looked great. Good genes, I guess. Honor also always had great hair.

It was Dolores Hart, R46.

Stephen Boyd and Dolores Hart were hot n heavy?

[Quote] Stephen Boyd, with whom Hart had a romance, confided in her that he once had a drinking problem and looked for salvation in spirituality.

....

R76 Eat shit and die

Hard year for Bondphiles.