Conclusion: Roger Moore Was ALWAYS Too Old to Portray James Bond.

And besides, he's The Saint.

During a discussion about just how old is Britt Ekland (see this weblog entry) I posited that if she was born in 1942, she would be an old-ish Bond girl. I was wrong on both counts: She's older than I reckoned and was only a little older than the average Bond girl when she performed in The Man with the Golden Gun.

See this table and this chart to see what I based my conclusions on. Although there are multiple Bond girls per movie (usually a good girl - only sometimes dead and a bad girl - almost always dead) the Bond girl listed is generally the one with the silliest name. Not included in the table are the average ages of the various Bonds and Bond girls. (44 and 29*) The average has not been realized on screen. The chart does not display the periodic gaps between the movies. There was a long interruption at the beginning of the nineties (thanks glasnost!) which distorts the trend.

If anyone can come up with a better expression for the class of characters from these movies than "Bond girl," I would love to hear it.

* which tallies with the formula reported by Malcom X for appropriate ages between grooms and brides. Go figure.