Yaphet Kotto, an appreciation

Yaphet Kotto in Live And Let Die

Early in his career, Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021) was working as an actor when “Old Hollywood” was holding on for dear life.

For example, he appeared in 5 Card Stud, a 1968 western starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. It was produced by Hal Wallis, born in 1900 and as “Old Hollywood” as you could get. His credits included Casablanca as well as Martin and Lewis comedies. And this movie came out before the Wallis-produced True Grit.

Nevertheless, Kotto, not yet 30, more than held his own with his established fellow actors. Kotto’s character is killed but in his dying moments provides the clue needed to track down his killer.

Hollywood was about to change. And Yaphet Kotto would be part of the change.

Kotto made an impact, whether in films or on television shows. As news of his passing circulated, the actor was subject of numerous tributes on social media.

He was one of the most memorable villains in the James Bond film series. Kotto was Bond’s first Black primary adversary in Live And Let Die (1973). His Dr. Kananga led a double life, as the leader of a Caribbean nation who moonlights as an American criminal.

In his two identities, Kotto projected different personalities. Kananga was the seemingly dignified head of government for San Monique. Mr. Big was the street criminal.

It’s not until the second half of the movie, the audience gets to see Kananga’s true self. Kotto gets one of the best “villain speeches” in the series. He explains his plan is to provide free samples of heroin until the number of addicts in the U.S. has doubled.

Roger Moore, making his Bond debut, asks if that won’t upset certain “families” (i.e. the Mafia).

Kotto seizes the set-up line and runs with it.

He says those families will be driven out of their minds and “subsequently out of the business, leaving me and the telephone company as the only growing monopolies in this country for years to come.” Kotto’s delivery makes an impact.

Kotto had a long career. His IMDB.COM entry lists more than 90 credits. He appeared in a variety of genres, everything from science fiction to gritty crime dramas.

Among those paying tribute to Kotto were two film directors:

Yaphet Kotto. My Mom’s favorite. He’s one of those actors who deserved more than the parts he got. But he took those parts and made them wonderful all the same. A star. Rest well, sir. pic.twitter.com/BqeuVc7DSB

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) March 16, 2021

RIP Yaphet Kotto, a brilliant magnetic presence, bringing gravitas & naturalism to deep space or underground Bond lair. So memorable as Parker in Alien, Kananga (Mr Big) in Live & Let Die, Smokey James in Blue Collar or in the simmering funny rage of Midnight Run's Alonzo Mosely. pic.twitter.com/3LSuGSQQ8X

— edgarwright (@edgarwright) March 16, 2021

Some (very early) predictions about the U.N.C.L.E. movie

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as Solo and Kuryakin
(Art by Paul Baack)

Guy Ritchie’s movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is scheduled to start filming next month. While there’s a lot that isn’t known, here are a few predictions about the film that may emerge.

No dancing gorillas (or other third-season silliness from the original series): The movie probably will be similar in tone to the director’s two Sherlock Holmes movies.

Based on the early information available in the film’s IMDB.COM ENTRY, much of the crew worked on Ritchie’s two Holmes films. There will be some humor, but there will be much serious adventure also.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing. The original show’s FOURTH AND FINAL SEASON perhaps over-corrected the silly THIRD SEASON. Both seasons have good episodes but the drama-humor balance was out of whack compared with the first two seasons. The third season was like an U.N.C.L.E. version of the Adam West Batman series. The fourth seemed as if it were produced by Quinn Martin; the final season was produced by Anthony Spinner, a QM veteran.

U.N.C.L.E.’s wheelhouse lies somewhere inbetween those extremes. Whether Ritchie & Co. can achieve that remains to be seen. But the guess from here is that’s the goal. The two Ritchie-directed Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law were in that same general area. The question is whether Ritchie can achieve that with U.N.C.L.E.

It won’t be exactly like the television show because it will be done as a period piece. The television series was a product of its time. It was a post-Cold War series (an American and a Russian working together to deal with the greater evil) taking place in the middle of the Cold War (producer Norman Felton and author Ian Fleming had their first meetings a few weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962).

But when you do a story as a period piece, everything changes. The movies Murder, My Sweet (1942) and Farewell My Lovely (1975) are based on the same Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe novel. They’re both good, but the latter, starring Robert Mitchum, emphasizes its 1940s settings in ways the earlier Dick Powell film didn’t.

The movie’s success will depend on the chemistry of the lead actors: The original show was intended to center around Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo. But David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin made such an impression, the two emerged as equals. The Vaughn-McCallum pairing ensured that, in the fall of 1965, that The Wild, Wild West (with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin) and I Spy (with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby) had the same dynamic.

For the new U.N.C.L.E. movie to work, Henry Cavill (as Solo) and Armie Hammer (as Kuryakin) have to display at least similar chemistry. Cavill was a late casting as Solo after Tom Cruise exited the project.

Still, late castings can work. Jack Lord was cast as Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-O just *five days* before the pilot to that 1968-80 series started production. Cavill got the U.N.C.L.E. job about three months ahead of production. Compared with Jack Lord and Five-O, that’s a breeze.

Behind the scenes on efforts to film Fleming’s The Diamond Smugglers

Jeremy Duns of The Sunday Times has an article about the unsuccessful efforts to turn Ian Fleming’s non-fiction book The Diamond Smugglers into a movie.

Duns first provides some background on the book, which centered on John Collard, a one-time MI5 operative who was part of the International Diamond Security Organisation. In the book, Collard was given the given the pseudonym John Blaize.

Fleming portrayed Collard/Blaize as a quieter, shyer character than Bond, although readers would learn that Blaize owned 24 fine white silk shirts and intended to spend 48 hours gambling intensively in Monte Carlo, “to wash the last three years and the African continent out of his system”. This was familiar territory: Bond had put in time at the baccarat and bridge tables in the novels Casino Royale and Moonraker. Diamonds Are Forever had mostly been set in America; now Fleming had locations such as South Africa and Sierra Leone to play with, and he had great fun describing real-life villains every bit as larger-than-life as those Bond had faced, such as “Monsieur Diamant”, whom Fleming called “the biggest crook in Europe, if not in the world”.

In September 1957, the articles began to be serialised in The Sunday Times. They were published as The Diamond Smugglers in book form in November, with an introduction by Collard (under the Blaize pseudonym).

Duns writes that a number of efforts were made to turn the episodic book into a movie but coming up with a dramatic narrative proved problematic. One production team wanted to get Steve McQueen for the lead to give the proposed movie some star power. Not much came of that but Duns tracked down a copy of a screenplay by Jon Cleary, whose novel The Sundowners had been turned into a successful 1960 movie with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr.

The putative “Bond” has been renamed once more: no longer John Blaize, he is now Roy O’Brien, a secret agent sent to a diamond mine in Johannesburg under cover as a pilot. His mission: to infiltrate and break up a ring of smugglers preparing to make a huge deal with the Red Chinese. O’Brien is American, and his part reads very much as if written with McQueen in mind. We are told he is “marked with the sun and the scars of a man who has spent a good deal of his life in the outdoors”, and that “he was a boy once quick to smiles”, but is now “a man who has seen too much of sights that did not provoke laughter”. He is quick-witted, laconic, but very likeable.

To read the entire article, JUST CLICK HERE.