The British interpreter played at the beginning of the saga, in two films, Sylvia Trench, a recurring conquest of 007 and a character ahead of her time
Eunice Gayson was the first to prompt Agent 007 to release the mythical “Bond, James Bond”. It happened in minute 8 of Agent 007 against Dr. No (1962), the first film in the longest-running film saga in history, and after that dialogue, the cinema was never the same again.
Eunice Gayson passed away in England at the age of 90. The actress was the first Bond girl, and of course, the best ally for Sean Connery, who, The Guardian says, had a hard time pronouncing the famous three words. In 2012, in an interview, Gayson said that on the day of filming the sequence, everything was very complicated.
First, the dress that was planned was of a color similar to that of the set. The wardrobe manager and Gayson, by order of the director, Terence Young, went to a nearby store and only found a red dress, too big for her, but that the actress knew how to hold on camera without being noticed. Then, already put in a situation, Sean Connery got stuck. On that set that resembled a casino, Gayson's character, Sylvia Trench, raises her bet and the secret agent starts a conversation with her: "I admire her courage, miss...". "Trench, Sylvia Trench. And I admire her luck, sir...".
"Bond, James Bond." Unfortunately, Connery was not able to recite the mythical "Bond, James Bond" in order, and faced with the impasse they got into, Gayson decided to take him out for a drink: "I had known him for a long time. I had never seen him like this, so nervous, I suppose because of the accumulated delay in filming", recalled the actress. Two drinks later, the couple returned to the set and nailed the dialogue the first time.
Gayson was very interested in her character from Trench. She did not appear in Ian Fleming's novels, she was a decisive, direct woman and she appeared on the screen playing alone in a casino. Terence Young's idea is that he had a continuation in the saga. And so it happened in the next installment, From Russia with Love, shot the following year, in 1963. But in the third, James Bond vs. Goldfinger, there was a change in direction, Guy Hamilton came in, and he dismissed this idea.
The current Bond family, led by producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, paid tribute to Gayson both on the official Twitter of the saga and on the private accounts of the filmmakers, praising her work. Gayson always spoke fondly of her character, and she attended several Bondian conventions, with no resentment that her voice was dubbed on screen. As was customary in the Bond saga in the 1960s and 1970s, Nikki van der Zyl - who did it with quite a few Bond girls - was actually the one who asked the secret agent's name.
And that Gayson had a good voice, as you can attest to by watching the trailer for Agent 007 vs. Dr. No. Born in Streatham, south London, in 1928, she grew up in Edinburgh, where she studied at its conservatory to become a soprano. At the age of 18, she made her debut in the British capital in the theater and a couple of years later she was already known because she knew how to sing, act and dance. At the age of 20, she made her film debut, a job that she combined with musicals: when she signed 007 for her, she played the Baroness on stage (and she did it in 2,000 performances) of Sounds and Tears. For the first Bond film, she auditioned for two characters: for the secretary Moneypenny and for the one she was awarded, the independent Sylvia Trench.
She continued working in the theater until 1992, although she left television and cinema in 1972. Among her films, Frankenstein's Revenge stands out, and on television the series El Santo and Los Avengers. Proof of her fame is that her first marriage, to writer Leigh Vance, was seen by more than three million Americans when it was broadcast on the Bride and Groom show in 1953. With her second husband, actor Brian Jackson, she had a daughter, Kate, who appears in the Goldeneye casino sequence alongside Pierce Brosnan.
