‘Do you expect me to talk?’ Connery ‘standoffish’ filming Goldfinger at RAF base, recalls airwoman
Sean Connery was “standoffish” while filming at RAF Northolt for Goldfinger, a former staff member has said as new pictures have emerged from the set.
The previously unseen images, now going up for auction, show the James Bond star at the RAF station near Uxbridge, west London, for a few days while filming scenes with his co-stars for the 1964 movie, rated by many as the best Bond film of all time.
Daphne Walker, who joined the WRAF in 1961 as a clerk statistics employee, watched some of the filming during her breaks and managed to be pictured with Honor Blackman, who played Pussy Galore, and Harold Sakata, Goldfinger’s bodyguard Oddjob.
Speaking ahead of the sale of a collection of her signed photographs from the time, she said: “We wandered over during our lunch hours and watched what was going on and I was lucky enough to get these photos.
“Sean was a bit more standoffish, he didn’t really chat to any of us. But Harold did and so did Honor.”
The pictures include shots of Blackman smiling with Ms Walker, dressed in her WRAF uniform, as well as shots of Connery being driven on set and the film crew while they worked in a Northolt hangar.
Individual portraits of Blackman and Connery are also part of the collection.
“She was very nice, she asked what I was doing there and how long I was in the air force, that sort of business,” Ms Walker said of the late Bond girl actress.
The pensioner, 79, explained: “They were there for two or three days, filming scenes of Sean Connery climbing up steps into a jet plane and he kept having to come back down and do it again.
“Then a lot of the flying sequences of Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus were filmed at RAF Northolt.”
She added that Sakata was “lovely” and “wanted to know if I was a pilot” before he got Connery to sign her photograph as well.
The collection of 10 photographs, taken by the station photographer during location filming and presented in an album, is now being sold by Ewbank’s in their dedicated James Bond auction on June 7.
They are expected to sell for an estimated ￡500-￡800.
Ms Walker, who is handing over the unique candid shots after more than six decades, explained: “I’ve hung on to them for more than 60 years, it seems a bit silly.
“Every so often I’ll get them out of the drawer and look at them and I was talking to my daughter [about them] and she told me someone might be interested in them, so she took over from there.
“I told her it would be a shame if they would just get chucked away when I die…but I’ve kept photocopies.”
Andrew Ewbank, senior partner at Ewbank’s, said: “Goldfinger is regularly cited as the best Bond film ever to be made, with Connery being the favourite actor to have played Bond. This is certainly true among aficionados of 007 material.”
