Dr. No lobby card: Denial is not just a river in Egypt

Dr. No lobby card with Jack Lord (yes, really), Ursula Andress and Sean Connery

Social media has a way of unleashing debate. For example, a 58-year-old Dr. No lobby card showed up this week on Facebook and got one such debate going.

The question was whether Jack Lord was in it, along with Ursula Andress and Sean Connery.

Lord, of course, was the first film Felix Leiter. (The 1954 Casino Royale on CBS changed Leiter’s first name to Clarence and made him British.)

The lobby card photo (see above) was taken on the same Jamaican beaches that doubled for Crab Key in the movie. Lord as Leiter wasn’t in those sequences. The actor also is wearing clothing (a big hat and ascot) he didn’t have in his scenes in the film.

This week on social media, some Bond fans said there was no way it could be Jack Lord because of that outfit.

Nevertheless, Lord often wore similar outfits during Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) in scenes where Steve McGarrett was off duty. At a 1996 Five-O convention in the Los Angeles area, a fan asked members of the original cast about such outfits. “Jack picked his own clothes,” replied James MacArthur, who played Danny “Danno” Williams in the show.

Here’s an example from the 1972 episode V for Vashon: The Patriarch, the only three-part story of the series.

Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett in an off-duty moment in a 1972 Hawaii Five-O episode.

Long before this, the lobby card photo has made the rounds (without the lobby card information). It must be John Derek! (Andress’ husband at the time). That comment was made without knowing the photo was part of a lobby card.

Would United Artists feature somebody in a lobby card who wasn’t in the movie or part of the crew? Pretty doubtful. Meanwhile some collectors have the captions for the lobby cards, which indicate that, yes, it was Jack Lord.

While the consensus seemed to be it must have been Jack Lord, there were those who still didn’t believe it. Some may have been joking, but some clearly were serious. “It’s just my opinion.”

There is a famous quote from Isaac Asimov. Part of it refers to how there is “the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”