24 October—The big news today is that Amazon’s MGM Studios, which finessed its way into creative control of the lucrative 007 franchise only last year, has progressed on a script and found an actor—whose name will be released in a week or so—to play James Bond in the latest picaresque fantasy flick. In the interest of full disclosure, no one on the Monitor’s editorial bored can recall having seen a 007 flick in a movie house or on the boob tube since the turn of the century. Peccavimus!

By way of atonement, then, here’s a roster of all the actors who have been cast as Bond on screens big and small, in chronological order:

Barry Nelson (1954)
Sean Connery (1962-1967, 1971, 1983)
David Niven (1967)
George Lazenby (1969)
Roger Moore (1973-1985)
Timothy Dalton (1987-1989)
Pierce Brosnan (1995-2002)
Daniel Craig (2006-2021)

Barry Nelson? Before Sean Connery? For those too young or parochial to remember (or foreigners), Barry Nelson was an American movie and television actor. Rather than put on a stiff upper lip and speak with a curled tongue (or put on a curled upper lip and speak with a stiff tongue), he played an American agent named Jimmy Bond, working for a combined British-American intelligence agency, in a live TV adaptation of “Casino Royale,” which had been published only a year earlier, in 1953. The one-hour show co-starred Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre, the bad guy, by the way.

Yes, children, real acting used to be done on live—real-time, live-streaming—TV. Not that we miss it.

And Barry Nelson was one of only two non-Commonwealth actors to play James Bond. Pierce Brosnan, the other, is Irish, born in the Republic of Ireland. He’s a naturalized American citizen, as is Daniel Craig. And Timothy Dalton’s mother was American.

We read that the 007 flicks have become more politically correct since the bad old days when James Bond did unacceptable things like slap women around and blackmail them for a bit of rumpy-pumpy; drive under the influence; and—worst of all—smoke. And of course the Bond stories have abounded in racial, ethnic, cultural, and sexual stereotypes, among other no-nos. Can’t believe that anybody actually enjoyed those horrid books and movies.

So word on the street is that to make amends, Amazon’s new James Bond movie, whose first-draft script has just been approved by Amazon’s politically correct content moderators, will feature an indigenous African-Asian-Caucasian non-binary transgender (or gender-neutral) Agent 007. To avoid being lambasted—and worse, boycotted—by the African-Asian-Caucasian non-binary transgender (or gender-neutral) community, they (Bond) is sure to be played by an African-Asian-Caucasian non-binary transgender (or gender-neutral) actor . . .