r.i.p. miss moneypenny

[Bright Moments]

Bond's Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell, Dies

Sunday September 30 10:22 AM ET

LONDON (AP) Lois Maxwell, who starred as Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond movies, has died, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Sunday. She was 80.

The Canadian-born actress starred alongside Sean Connery in the first James Bond movie, "Dr. No," in 1962 as the secretary to M, the head of the secret service.

She died Saturday night at Fremantle Hospital near her home in Perth, Australia, the BBC cited a hospital official as saying.

ADVERTISEMENT

Bond star Roger Moore said she was suffering from cancer.

"It's rather a shock," Moore, who had known her since they were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1944, told BBC radio.

"She was always fun and she was wonderful to be with," he said.

Born Lois Hooker in Ontario, Canada, in 1927, she began her acting on radio before moving to Britain with the Entertainment Corps of the Canadian army at the age of 15, the BBC said.

In the late 1940s, she moved to Hollywood and won a Golden Globe for her part in the Shirley Temple comedy "That Hagen Girl."

After working in Italy, she returned to Britain in the mid-1950s.

In addition to her 14 appearances as Miss Moneypenny, she also acted in Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" and worked on TV shows including "The Saint" "The Baron, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)," and "The Persuaders!," the BBC said.

She was 58 when she appeared in her final Bond film, 1985's "A View To A Kill." She was replaced by 26-year-old Caroline Bliss for "The Living Daylights."

Her last film was a 2001 thriller called "The Fourth Angel," alongside Jeremy Irons.

[GARussell]

RIP. Makes me feel nostalgic.

[porcy62]

  GARussell said:

RIP. Makes me feel nostalgic.

Me too.

[Don Brown]

Lois Maxwell's father was my Grade 7 teacher at Davisville Public School here in Toronto. I still remember Mr. Hooker as being a stern and rather overbearing figure. The only time I can recall any touch of levity in his classroom was when I asked him where the name Hooker had come from. He smiled and suggested his ancestors may have been pirates. I'm not sure whether or not the term hooker was being used at that time (1945) to describe "working girls".

Edited September 30, 2007 by Don Brown

[Teasing the Korean]

I've been on a real spy music kick lately, and just today was compiling a bunch of spy music for a custom CD-R.

I'll title it Miss Moneypenny in her honor...

[GARussell]

  Don Brown said:

I'm not sure whether or not the term hooker was being used at that time (1945) to describe "working girls".

Don, the term "hooker" goes back to the US Civil War. A Union general named Hooker provided them to his men, and they were known as "Hooker's girls".

[Alexander]

RIP.

[Don Brown]

Thanks to GARussell for his explanation of the use of the word hooker as a synonym for prostitute. I found his story interesting so decided to investigate further. Logging in to Dictionary.com I found this word history from the American Heritage Dictionary:

"In his personal memoirs Ulysses S. Grant described Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker as a dangerous man...not subordinate to his superiors. Hooker had his faults. He may indeed have been insubordinate; he was undoubtedly an erratic leader. But "Fighting Joe" Hooker is often accused of one thing he certainly did not do: he did not give his name to prostitutes. According to a popular story, the men under Hooker's command during the Civil War were a particularly wild bunch, and would spend much of their time in brothels when on leave. For this reason, as the story goes, prostitutes came to be known as hookers. However attractive this theory may be, it cannot be true. The word hooker with the sense "prostitute" is already recorded before the Civil War. As early as 1845 it is found in North Carolina, as reported in Norman Ellsworth Eliason's Tarheel Talk; an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860, published in 1956. It also appears in the second edition of John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary. "Etymologically, it is most likely that "hooker" is simply one who hooks. The term portrays a prostitute as a person who hooks, or snares, clients."