Honor Blackman

[Moon Raker]

Honor Blackman gets her kit off here in a clip from the 1970 movie 'The Virgin and the Gypsy'. More caps @ #99.



Type: MPG, size: 3 MB, duration: 16s.
Link: http://depositfiles.com/files/h20ie8tbc

[Moon Raker]

Honor Blackman appears here in a clip from the 1977 movie 'Ragtime Summer' aka 'Age of Innocence'. More caps @ #98 and #99.



Type: AVI, size: 47 MB, duration: 2m57s.
Link: http://depositfiles.com/files/biunhv5u0

[Moon Raker]

Honor Blackman appears here in a clip from the 1968 movie 'The Fight for Rome' aka 'Kampf um Rom' aka 'The Last Roman'. More caps @ #83.



Type: AVI, size: 7 MB, duration: 21s.
Link: http://depositfiles.com/files/t93spj15l

[womwam]

Cathy Gale - Avengers

[Joszka]

1967, by Terry O'Neil. A cropped version on #52.

[Findcandor]

.
An ITV documentary from a seven-episode series called Must See TV celebrating The Avengers (hosted by Joan Collins, looking pretty sharp) was available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qj58KYbEPo, and...



...There were such lovely selections from all three of the ones playing the female agents, I was propelled to make these presentations (also one for D. Rigg, and another for L. Thorson).




Before I begin, I see I am again on the Honor Blackman thread, after preparing two detailed posts (here and here) in 2021 in celebration of this magnificent creation of the female race. In my mind, I had prepared these posts when Honor was alive, but upon checking, she died in 2020.


U.S. cable network Turner Classic Movies
honored the exquisite one in their memorium.

I looked at the "Self" section of her IMDb page (documenting non-acting appearances), and I suppose what will now be described has been bypassed, but I recall Honor appeared in a prime-time U.S. TV special celebrating either the Bond films or the Bond girls (probably in the 2010s, or maybe the prior decade), and Honor was in between two other beauties, and although the oldest, she hit me like a ton of chicks. Honor totally overwhelmed the other two as far as getting the eyes to fixate, and I asked myself, how could such an old broad still come across as so beautiful? When she served as a talking head in the British documentary, she once again demonstrated her exceptional loveliness at an advanced age. (See the four photos in a row, above.)


I have an absurd backlog of VEF posts
materials have been collected for but
not yet put up, and one is for an actress
named Margaret Blye; she was only
sixty-five in the view from THE LONG
GOODBYE seen above, with actor Chad
McKnight. She reminded me of how
wonderful "Old Honor" looked.

I'm not ashamed to admit I once dug up 2012's dopey Cockneys vs Zombies because of my fascination with the lady, and I recall some disappointment, because she looked like an old woman (hey, she was only eighty-six). Understandably, that happens with extraordinary women who still look spectacular in their advanced years (Joan Collins, Raquel Welch), but then the inevitable point arrives where you have to admit, yep, they are now old. Now that I'm looking at views of Honor from that film, I'm now thinking, you know, she still didn't look so bad.


Last: kicking ass in COCKNEYS VS. ZOMBIES

You may get a kick out of two interviews she gave to promote the film, first one and second one, the latter from which the screen shots seen above are from. In that second one, she irresistibly states by interview's end, in response to whether Honor may be expected to be seen in anything like this again (beyond her physical appearance, you know, her mind was still crackling): "Who knows what happens in life. I would never have thought I would be involved in anything like this before, but here I am... making an idiot of myself."

....
Did you know Honor was in the fantastic (in both senses of the word) JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1964)? Even
if Jason (as played by Todd Armstrong, seen above) were normal-sized, he would still be looking up at Honor Blackman.
Honor played Hera, Zeus's wife, which makes me hate Zeus all the more. She shot these scenes in between filming
The Avengers, and in the year before she appeared in SERENA, a somewhat forgotten British murder mystery; Honor
is the wife of the man (Emrys Jones) Scotland Yard suspects is the murderer, but then Honor shows up.


Let's move on to what has spurred this post, choice views of Honor from the British documentary. The actress appeared in forty-three episodes of seasons two and three from 1962-64 (the series began in 1961, but the two leads were men; the other besides Steed was "Dr. Keel," and the only female regular was an actress playing his receptionist, named Ingrid Hafner), and many appear to have been shot on video (some episodes, at least from the first season, are unfortunately lost), so frame grabs can be rather poor. Notice Honor had two moles on the side of her face at this early career stage.



In my first Honor Blackman post, I wrote, "One interesting thing I learned from this thread is that there was a time Honor capitalized on her image as a kick-ass female (weaned through The Avengers, and naturally the role she is most famous for, from Goldfinger), and came up with a self-defense book. That is the coolest."

Originally Posted by julesnbob

Ms. Blackman learned Judo and became a real life black belt for her role of Cathy Gale on the show; her book, Honor Blackman's Book of Self Defense, came out in 1965 and has been covered on the thread at least thrice, the best posts of which may be found here and here.


Ms. Blackman got her feet wet in the spy biz with her appearance in "Colonel Rodriguez,"
a 1960 episode of DANGER MAN, starring Patrick McGoohan. She played the wife of a
journalist who was wrongfully imprisoned by a dictator.

So we know she could handle herself in fight scenes (although she might have been still learning at the time of the discussed episode, the third season's "Mandrake," from 1964). In the documentary (which is prefaced by how everything was filmed in a catch-as-catch-can manner, simulating a live performance), she judo flips the man, and he first lands on the hard base underneath, before bouncing off and landing on the makeshift graveyard. (Painful!)



Honor describes how "instead of being nice and putting my foot on his face and kicking, I just kicked... and I split his nose right down and his eyes crossed..." She was laughing out of embarrassment, but if you watch the scene, boy! That was a real kick (second photo). She ends the story by relating how the actor (a real-life wrestler named Jackie Pallo) was out for almost eight minutes afterwards.



("And I was walking around the grave sobbing, 'I'll never fight again.'" She was just too adorable.)



Lovely Carol Lynley (middle shot) was in the cast.

1978's haunted house comedy thriller The Cat and the Canary was directed by sex-mad Radley Metzger, and I was thus harboring mild hope the script would require Honor to show herself off more intimately, but it was not to be. (Of course the fact that she was fifty-three did not increase the odds.) In this show, heirs gather for the reading of a will, but someone starts picking them off.



Goldfinger (1964)

A video on YouTube is entitled, "Honor Blackman Meets Sean Connery | Prior To Filming "Goldfinger" | James Bond 007 | March 1964." (Although a commenter remarked, "Connery is wearing his toupee and the dusty gear he had on during the DB5 Chase around Goldfinger's factory and laser table scene, so this was recorded during filming," and not before.) The description states, "During the publicity shoot, Ms. Blackman presented him with the Variety Club of Great Britain Award."



The Scotsman, recognizing opportunity when he saw it, went straight for the lips, which was quite a move if this indeed constituted their very first meeting. Of course, he was Sean Connery.








In the documentary, Patrick Macnee said of the lady behind Steed's first female partner: "She was the most un-male person I know, she was totally feminine, and extremely agile with the opposite sex, and a delightful woman."













.

[tsunamiSD]

... I couldn't find these (which are screen caps from a YT video).