I’ve been inspired to write this entry this evening after accidentally flipping through channels tonight and seeing (as one often does) in the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore a familiar, highly recognizable face over a t-shirt that read, “Guns don’t kill people. I kill people.”
Forever typecast as a villainous imposing henchman due to his size, Richard Kiel in person couldn’t be more the opposite in real life. When he smiles, it’s warm and genuine, and there’s not a hint of the steel that Roger Moore so deftly dodged in a pair of 70s-era Bond films. I can speak with authority on this — you see, I, like many others before me, have had my head crushed by Richard Kiel.
If you told my five-year-old self that I would one day willingly placed by tender skull in the hands of the metal-mouthed monster from The Spy Who Loved Me, I would have pissed myself and then told you that you were crazy. By the time I hit Kindergarten, I was already a fan of Bond (watching the cleaned-up versions that came on network TV). Bond was all action and adventure, and I never worried about the fate of the world because I knew that such movies always have happy (well, aside from OHMSS) endings. I was never scared of the villains either. I think that, even at that young age, I realized that actors were actors. Christopher Lee got rid of his third nipple at the end of the day and collected a paycheck to play the role of a neurotic assassin.
I was OK with all of the villains but one — Jaws. I didn’t see him as an actor. He was big, he had metal teeth, he could bend steel. This was not a costume that someone could wear, I thought. Those are his real teeth! I didn’t trust him even after Moonraker. I feared for that poor little pig-tailed blonde girl. It’s funny to look back on it now, but I was genuinely scared of Jaws. I had some horrible nightmares about getting bitten. If I developed a problem, this might have spelled the end of my being able to watch the 007 films, and would have pre-emptively eradicated Mister 8 and my life long enthusiasm for espionage fiction.
Luckily, one of the other things that I watched regularly was a show called You and Me Kid, that aired on the Disney Channel. It was typical educational kids morning television fare, but one of the segments featured celebrities and their children. One morning I caught Richard Kiel and (I believe) his son in one of these segments, and it changed my entire opinion of Jaws. He’s been one of my favorite characters ever since, the one bright spot in Moonraker for me. Here’s an interview with Richard and David Letterman from circa the time that You and Me Kid segment was filmed, and you can see how unscary he is when not in character. Listen to the tale about his bouncing days that comes just before the video ends:
I’m including a post about Kiel in the midst of this week’s James Bond spotlight because the role of Jaws was the one that made Kiel a name in Hollywood. But his non-007 “spyography” is quite impressive. He was the henchman Otto in 1967′s A Man Called Dagger, for instance. In this trailer, you can see a few seconds of him brawling with the film’s star, Paul Mantee:
He was in some of the best episodes of The Wild Wild West, playing Voltaire, a henchman to Dr. Miguelito Loveless (played by the amazing Michael Dunn):
He was also in the I Spy episode “A Few Miles West of Nowhere,” and the It Takes a Thief episode, “The Galloping Skin Game.” Oh, and he was in two episodes of the Man From UNCLE — “The Vulcan Affair,” and “The Hong Kong Shilling Affair,” where he played “Merry”:
But as we noted before, the James Bond films really brought Kiel into the limelight. COBRAS agent Wes Britton writes in his Spy Television that Kiel gained the role after Bond producer Broccoli saw him in a failed TV show, Barbary Coast, a sort of Wild Wild West take-off starring William Shatner. Lucky for Kiel, but luckier for the Bond folks, who found in him a perfect physical match for the part of Jaws, a towering thug who hides an inner tenderness. Here are some classic fight scenes between Jaws and Roger Moore’s James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me:
Jaws returned in Moonraker, where he began as a villain again, but slowly, through the guidance of love, comes to be a hero in the end. Here’s his last scene of villainy, which culminates in his finding a pretty young lady to hold his attention instead:
It’s late as I write this, but I can’t think of any other Bond henchmen who return from one movie to another (Had it happened before Jaws made a return in Moonraker? Has it happened since? Remind me in the comments section). Kiel believed that his media friendliness helped with the decision to bring his character back:
The press were there waiting to do their interviews but Roger Moore and Barbara Bach were late, and the director Lewis Gilbert was late. And the press had already interviewed [producer] “Cubby” Broccoli dozens of times. So since I was there, they started to hit on me with all these questions. The press can be very nasty–at press conferences like that, there are always one or two people who are very rude and adversarial. It’s like during a Presidential press conference, there’s always the person who asks the loaded question trying to embarrass the president or make him look bad. But I’d had enough experience doing press conferences and interviews that I was able to deal with it.
I remember, at the Royal Premiere, this interviewer from one of the British tabloids asking, “Mr. Kiel, have you seen all the James Bond movies?” I said, “Well, I believe so. Most of them, if not all of them.” “So you’ve seen all the James Bond movies. Now let me ask you a question: Who do you think makes the best James Bond?” Here I am, working with Roger Moore and we’re getting along really, really well; and of course, I’d grown up on the Sean Connery movies and, like a lot of people, I liked Sean Connery as Bond very much. But if I say Connery, it’s gonna be splashed in the headline, RICHARD KIEL PREFERS CONNERY TO MOORE, and I’m gonna make Roger Moore mad. And if I say Roger Moore, then I’m gonna make all the Sean Connery fans angry with me….
…Then, all of a sudden, it was like God gave me the right answer: I said, “Well, I kinda go for George Lazenby myself.” [interviewer laughs] The whooole cadre of press, there were maybe 40 of them, all laughed like you just did. And they were not only laughing at what I said, they were kind of laughing at the guy getting zinged, the guy who asked the loaded question….
…Mr. Broccoli was there, and I guess he determined, “Hey, here’s a guy who can hold his own with the press and has the right answers.” So he sent me out with various Bond girls, we got to go to different places, I got to bring my wife and my family, and it was a huge success. And I think that was part of the reason that they decided to keep the character of Jaws alive and to bring me back for another film [Moonraker], because I was good at promoting the films around the world.
(This excerpt comes from an amazing piece that is, ostensibly about a B-movie called Eegah, in which Kiel got his first starring role, but that really is about Kiel as a young actor struggling in Hollywood, and then demonstrating what talents, learned and natural, that helped him gain a foothold in the industry. The interview can be found in Eye on Science Fiction: 20 Interviews with Classic SF and Horror Filmmakers
…But certainly there’s the fact that Jaws is awesome, both in the literal sense of the word, and in the way you use the word when something makes you jump up and point at the television screen in excitement. Jaws did, after all, come in first in a poll of Bond supporting characters last year, garnering 30% of almost 5,000 votes.
When, a few years back, I saw Kiel sitting behind a table at one of those conventions where celebrities turn up to sell their photographs and autographs, I resisted at first. I walked by his table a few times before thinking to myself, “Man, that’s Jaws. When are you ever going to get this opportunity again?” I went to the table, and was led to Kiel by his handler. I told him a condensed version of the above story about my fear of him pre-You and Me Kid, and he chuckled and said that many folks my age had told him the same story, and that he was glad he did the show. I asked how the photo thing worked.
“You kneel down,” he said. “And I will crush your head.”
I hesitated. A little of the old fear crept up inside me. But kneel I did, and two giant hands engulfed my face. I wish I could turn up the photo from my archives, as I’m sure the mixture of shock and excitement is equally registered in my (then-crushed) face.
Kiel continues to work, although he doesn’t see as many of the traditional movie “heavy” roles any more. But anyone who doubts the talent of Richard Kiel need only look at him, and look back on times when he was defeated onscreen in hand-to-hand combat by the likes of Robert Vaughn, Robert Conrad and Roger Moore…to take a dive like that is true acting. He could have massacred those guys altogether. Trust me, I know — the man has crushed my head.
Richard Kiel is currently running a 2-for-1 deal on autographed photos. Check out his website for more details.
