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Joseph Wiseman, 1918-2009

October 20, 2009

“One million dollars, Mr. Bond. You were wondering what it cost,” Joseph Wiseman coolly announces as the price of his evil lair’s fish tank to Sean Connery’s visibly impressed Agent 007 in the very first big screen James Bond adventure, 1962’s Dr. No. Wiseman portrayed the not-so-good titular doctor, the very first in a lengthy series of super-villain—and still one of the best—to have his designs on world domination foiled by the world’s greatest secret agent. Wiseman died yesterday at his home in Manhattan at the age of 91.

 

A fine character actor of the stage and screen who made memorable appearances in such films as Detective Story (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952) and The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), as well as a slew of TV shows including Law & Order, The Streets of San Francisco and a memorable installment of the original Twilight Zone, Wiseman remains best remembered for his role as the nefarious Dr. No, creating a blueprint for

a galaxy of well-moneyed bad guys to follow over the next half-century. As a kid in the Seventies watching my first James Bond films on The ABC Sunday Night Movie, he made a quite an impression on me. Maybe not quite as much as Ursula Andress’ Honey Ryder, but a strong one, nonetheless.

 

At the end of his first scene opposite Connery in Dr. No, after he has considered offering Bond a position in his evil organization, Wiseman dispatches his enemy to a torture session with another outstanding reading of still another awesome bit of dialogue (by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood and Berkely Mather):

 

“Unfortunately I overestimated you, you are just a stupid police man,” Dr. No calmly fires at Bond. “…whose luck has run out. 

And until Bond eventually sends the steel-handed No to his death in a pool of boiling, radioactive water, I believed that Bond’s really was out of luck!!

Posted by Laurence Lerman on October 20, 2009 | Comments (1)