Or at least when it was still hanging in there on its own follicular terms. The 31 year-old Sean Connery may have applied some kind of augmentation for Dr. No (a scalp darkener?) but what the camera saw was more or less what was there. (The first 007 “rug” appeared in Goldfinger over two years later.).
On top of which Dr. No (which was only a modest earner upon opening in late ‘62) and From Russia With Love (ditto) are still the best of the series — lean and rigorous and relatively modest in terms of scale and pushing the bounds of credibility. Plus there were no sensitivity police around to protect the Zoomer candy–asses from all that bruising sexism and rugged machismo, Mainly because (thank you, 20th Century!) Zoomers wouldn’t become a cultural force until roughly 2010.
