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Approved by the Shaw Family
Estd. 2020
Taking a more in-depth look at the action characters portrayed by Shaw
Name: Donald Grant (Donovan Grant)
Alias(s):
Red Grant
Krassno Granitski
Granit
Granitsky
Captain Norman Nash
Rank: Major
Born: 1927, Aughmacloy, Northern Ireland
Organisation: Otdyel II,
the execution department
of SMERSH
Status: Killed by James Bond on the Orient Express 1963
Early life
Born Donovan Grant in the small border village of Aughmacloy, Northern Ireland, Grant was the result of a midnight union between a Southern Irish waitress and a German professional weight-lifter who had been performing at a circus outside Belfast. Shortly after giving birth in 1927, his mother died of puerperal fever; leaving a request that the boy be named 'Donovan' (after his father's stage name, "The Mighty O’Donovan").
He was reluctantly raised by his Aunt and grew healthy and extremely strong, but very quiet; refusing to communicate with other children and taking anything he desired with his fists. Consequently, Grant was feared and disliked by his fellow students. His boxing and wrestling at local fairs gained him notoriety and, after he left school, he became a strong-arm for Irish republicans and local smuggling groups.
Red Grant became a killer at an early age, his urges to kill coinciding with the full moon. In October of his sixteenth year, he strangled a cat to satiate the 'feelings' and continued his lust killings initially with animals, culminating in the murder of a sleeping tramp. Subsequently, every month, Grant cycled to distant villages in search of new victims.
By the end of his seventeenth year, the 'Moon Killer' had caused local vigilante groups to form and police reinforcements were brought in to assist. Despite being stopped and questioned several times, Grant evaded detection by attributing his cycling at irregular hours to fitness training as a boxer. Grant moved on to Belfast before he was caught and, after strenuous training, won the North of Ireland light-heavyweight championship in 1945, on his eighteenth birthday.
Defection
Shortly afterwards, he was called up for National Service and became a driver in the British Army's Royal Corps of Signals. The training period in England sobered him and it was in the woods around Aldershot that he learned to control his 'feelings' by consuming a bottle of whiskey. His transport section was subsequently posted to Berlin. It was there that Grant, intrigued by stories of Soviet brutality and recently disgraced for cheating in a boxing match, defected to the Soviet Union with top secret papers.
After uncovering Grant's murderous tendencies, the interviewing MGB colonel debated whether to ship him off to a labour camp or have him shot. Eventually, he contacted SMERSH, who sent Grant back into the British Sector with an assignment to assassinate a vital West German spy, Dr Baumgarten. He succeeded and returned to the Soviet Union, where he began a year of internment and evaluation whilst Soviet spies painstakingly investigated his past. Grant devoted the time to keeping fit and learning Russian.
Although politically cleared, his evaluators agreed that Grant was an exceedingly dangerous member of society. He is transferred to 'Otdyel II', the Operations and Executions department of SMERSH, who changed his name to Granitsky and trained him to become their assassin. Over the course of two years he studied Marxism (which he fails miserably), espionage techniques, judo, boxing, athletics, photography, radio and marksmanship.
On every full moon he was transported to the nearest jail and allowed as many executions as there were candidates available. In 1949 and '50 Grant was allowed to go on minor operations with Mobile Groups in the satellite countries. In 1951 and '52 he was granted Soviet citizenship and a handsome increase in pay. In 1953 he was given the rank of Major, with back-dated pension rights and a Crimean villa. Two bodyguards were attached to him, partly to protect him and partly to guard against defection. By 1955, Red Grant had reached the apogee of his profession as the Chief Executioner of SMERSH.
The Konspiratsia
As part of an elaborate scheme to sow dissent in the intelligence community by murdering and discrediting a significant figure in western intelligence, Grant is chosen by SMERSH to stage a murder-suicide by killing British spy James Bond and their pawn Tatiana Romanova on-board the Orient Express. On their bodies he was to plant a forged blackmail letter from the girl along with the footage of their lovemaking captured at the Kristal Palas Hotel in Istanbul.
The bait for the scheme, a Soviet Spektor cypher machine rigged with explosives, would be left at the scene of the murder, taking the lives of Western cryptography experts who attempted to tamper with it. After completing his task, Grant was to rendezvous with his SMERSH superior, Rosa Klebb, in Paris and act as her chauffeur for their journey back to the Soviet Union.
On-board the Orient Express, Bond and Romanova are approached by Grant, posing as a British operative named Captain Norman Nash. Romanova, unaware of his true identity, takes an immediate disliking to the man and is suspicious of his name, which in Russian means "ours"; a term used in Soviet intelligence when an operative is one of 'their' men. Bond also finds the man's mannerisms to be disagreeable. During dinner Nash sits beside the girl and clumsily (but intentionally) knocks over Tatiana’s glass of Chianti and spikes her replacement drink with chloral hydrate. Nash brings the drugged girl back to Bond's compartment and agrees to share guard duties in their stateroom.
However, the next morning he allows his identity to be known and holds Bond at gunpoint, using a firearm disguised as a copy of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace. In a moment of hubris, he reveals SMERSH's scheme and the time and location of his meeting with Klebb the following day. Bragging about his skill, he informs the spy that he will put a bullet directly through his heart as the train enters the tunnel. Bond evades death by blocking the path of the bullet, using a thick paperback book and his gunmetal cigarette case. Sprawled motionless on the floor, the spy carefully extracted a flat-bladed throwing-knife from his trick Attaché case and stabbed Grant as he attempted to murder the girl with Bond's Beretta 418. After a violent scuffle, Bond reaches for Grant's gun-book and shoots him to death.
Name: MacConnachie
Age: Unknown
Nationality: British
Occupation: Soldier
Status: Deceased (Shot)
Two men run across a beach at dawn with their hands are tied behind their backs. After several shots of a helicopter frantically searching the landscape, it becomes apparent that the two men are escapees of some kind. It is later revealed that their names are MacConnachie and Ansell. The two continue running across barren land, trying to escape the sight of the helicopter. MacConnachie continuously berates Ansell as they run, showing that he is the leader, more or less.
The duo eventually get away from the helicopter and find a goat herder. MacConnachie sneaks up and kills him hoping to find any useful supplies, but does not find anything. The action, however, greatly upsets Ansell. They continue on through harsh terrain, sometimes being found by the helicopter, but they manage to escape again.
One night, they come across a small town. They sneak through, and get into a house, where the only inhabitant is a lonely widow sitting in a chair next to the bed of her presumably deceased husband. She doesn't seem to notice they are there, but she does however seem to be guarding a basket of bread. The two ignore her and loot the house, finding many supplies and even a rifle.
While Ansell prepares to leave, MacConnachie takes a piece of bread from the woman's basket, causing her to drop out of her trance and scream, causing them to flee as the townspeople are alarmed. At the town limits, Ansell tells MacConnachie that he wants to continue travelling with him, which is against MacConnachie's idea of splitting up. He eventually consents and the two continue on. Ansell reveals that he formerly worked at Fortnum & Mason, in London.
They come across the helicopter again in the mountains. They come up with a plan for Ansell to distract the helicopter while MacConnachie shoots its gas tank in order to destroy it. Ansell goes to distract it, but instead of shooting the gas tank, MacConnachie shoots the observer in the helicopter's passenger seat. Ansell protests, but MacConnachie tells him that he did it to show power over the helicopter and to avoid injuring Ansell in a possible explosion. They also find a sub machine gun with the observer's dead body.
After being pursued by ground troops through a field, they then come across a military compound where the helicopter goes to refuel. They try to sneak through, but are caught, and are forced to fight and escape, in the process shooting up the parked helicopter. They continue travelling across a mountain range afterwards where the ice is melting.
Eventually, they arrive at a snow peaked mountain, which seems to be what they were searching for the entire trip. At the top there is a military post, presumably at the border, and several soldiers who come out to greet them. Ansell is overjoyed and runs out to them, though MacConnachie hears a kind of noise from behind him, which is the helicopter.
Before joining Ansell, he decides to stage a last stand battle between himself and the helicopter. Despite shooting it many times, the helicopter fires at MacConnachie, killing him. Ansell feels remorse, but eventually returns with the soldiers to the compound.
Name: The Priest
AKA: Aguila
Job: Priest (former revolutionary)
Nationality: Irish
Location: Bastard, Mexico 1895
Status: Deceased (Shot)
In 1895, in a small town ravaged by the Mexican Revolution, the revolutionary leader Aguila and his men massacre the town's locals and the military garrison soldiers. Ten years later Aguila,now a reformed priest, sees a newly-arrived woman who is looking for those responsible for murdering her husband.
The town is run by the corrupt Don Carlos who promises to help Alvira find those who killed her husband,in return for the gold reward Alvira is offering. Don Carlos has no idea where Aguila is or what Aguila looks like but he's prepared to do anything in order to collect the gold reward offered by Alvira.
Everything is complicated by the sudden arrival of the Mexican Army led by a brutal Colonel whose face looks very familiar to the town priest.
Name: Bernard Ryder
AKA: Mr. Blue
Job: British Army (Retired)
Rank: Colonel
Terrorist/Hijacker
Nationality: English
Status: Deceased (Electrocuted)
Mr. Blue is a mercenary leader who hijacks the Pelham 123 subway train along with three other armed associates. Holding seventeen passengers on board hostage, Mr. Blue contacts the New York City Transit Authority and demands that they give him and his men $1 million in exchange for the hostages' lives. A police lieutenant named Zachary Garber learns that if Mr. Blue does not receive the payment within one hour, he will begin killing hostages every minute.
After obtaining the money and killing one of the hostages, Mr. Blue and his men successfully override the train's dead-man's switch which allows the train to continue moving without a driver. The hijackers remove their disguises and prepare to escape from the subway with the money, but one of the hostages (an undercover police officer) manages to leap from the train and onto the track.
At that moment, Mr. Blue shoots and kills Mr.Grey for refusing to hand over his gun. The hostage then distracts Mr. Blue by firing towards him, forcing him to take cover. Mr. Blue wounds the officer and is just about to finish him off when Garber appears, having guessed that the moving train was a diversion and that Mr. Blue was escaping.
Garber orders Mr. Blue to put down his gun, to which Mr. Blue complies before asking him if the death penalty is still applicable in New York. Garber replies that it isn't, with Mr. Blue claiming that it is a pity. Before Garber is able to arrest him, Mr. Blue commits suicide by stepping on the third rail, frying himself.
Name: Quint
Job: Shark Fisherman
Nationality: American
Location: Amity Island, MA
Military Service: United States Navy
Ship: USS Indianapolis
Campaign: World War 2
Status: Deceased (Eaten by a shark)
Quint was a grizzled, seasoned shark hunter, who once resided on the Island of Amity, MA in the shanty seaside port of Menemsha. Running a bootleg distillery, and a whale oil business, as well as a weekend charter service, Quint captained the "Orca" and became part of local lore after his last trip out to sea in a bid to capture a giant rogue killer shark. Hired to catch the shark, Quint was joined by the Chief of Amity Police Department, Brody, and visiting ichthyologist, Hooper serving as crew.
Quint was known to have served aboard the USS Indianapolis during World War II, in which he and his shipmates delivered the Hiroshima bomb to the South Pacific island of Tinian. A Japanese submarine sank the Indianapolis and the 1200 crewmen ended up in the water as prey for the sharks as they drifted alone at sea for seven days until they were rescued.
Quint was one of only 300+ men to survive the event. Following Quint's return from the war in the Pacific, Quint decided to make shark fishing his sole purpose and opened a charter fishing business on the summer resort Island of Amity.
Using what little savings he had for construction supplies, Quint was able to build a two level shack and fishery with his bare hands on the property of an old friend by the name of Chuck Gramling who had promised it to him during the war.
On Amity, Quint would scrounge for local pilot whales, and other fish commodities including blue gills, and Tommy cod.
Between fishing seasons Quint sold moonshine from a bootleg distillery making his own apricot brandy which was a favorite among the likes of fishing locals including Ben Gardner. Although there were many police raids done in search of the moonshine, Quint was able to avoid legal scrutiny by hiding his stashes of alcohol in kegs stowed on board his boat, Orca.
Even though the mayor was relentless about disallowing zoning approval, and the local fisherman were constantly filing complaints that Quint was disrupting their trade, Quint managed to stay in business and earned a reputation as an excellent charterman and shark hunter.
In the wake of Alex Kitner's death during the summer of 1973 by the first shark, Quint agreed to kill the shark for a total of $10,000. However, it wasn't until the shark's third fatal attack that Quint was finally hired to hunt down the creature. With Chief Martin Brody and Oceanographic Institute researcher Matt Hooper in tow, Quint sailed the Orca out to kill the shark.
In the events that followed, Quint tried many tricks to catch the shark over the course of two days, first by recalling it in on rod and reel, then by harpooning it with his Greener Light Harpoon Rifle to attach barrels to the shark, in the hopes it force the shark to the surface. Though both attempts failed, Quint was incredibly stubborn and resilient.
Quint ultimately tries to kill the shark in a last ditch effort as the shark attacks the Orca. One of Hooper's scuba tanks rolls over his fingers, causing him to lose grip and slide toward the waiting shark. He tries kicking at the Shark but to no avail. Gaining the advantage, the shark bit down on one of Quint's legs, moving quickly up to his waist. Screaming in pain, Quint grabs a machete and stabs the fish with it but to no avail. With one final crunch, Quint spits up blood and is quickly dragged under the waves, dead.
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The real-life inspiration for Quint was likely the late Frank Mundus. Born in 1925 and a native of Montauk, New Jersey, Mundus is seen by many as the man who first started kindling interest in sport-fishing for sharks and shares many traits in common with the fictional Quint, including the famous line "You all know me. You all know what I do".
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The word Quint is derived from the Spanish word Quinto, which translates to fifth, being the fifth victim of the shark.
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In the novel, Quint dies when he becomes tangled in the ropes of the harpoons he has thrown at the shark and it drags him under, drowning him.
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His death won the Golden Chainsaw in YouTuber Dead Meat’s Kill Count of Jaws.
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Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden were both offered the role of Quint but both turned it down.
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In the novel, Quint is described as gaunt and completely bald-headed and wearing a Marine fatigue cap.
Name: Charles Hodgson
Job: Diamond Dealer/Cat Burglar
Nationality: English
Location: London
Relatives: Earl Hodgson (Twin Brother)
Charles and his twin brother Earl (both played by Robert Shaw) share an intense rivalry that comes-out during their judo karate contests. Little is known about their backgrounds except they come from aristocratic stock and Charles works as a diamond dealer for the Graff diamond company in Mayfair, London. Both privately educated and with a domineering mother, the twins have spent their lives in competition.
Charles wants to top his brother at everything including getting the better of him at his own expertise, which is that of security specialist who has created a vault in Tel Aviv that holds a cache of diamonds and is supposedly impenetrable.
Charles is determined to rob it and uses the help of expert safe crackers Archie and Sally.
Name: "Red" Ned Lynch
Job: Pirate Captain
Nationality: Irish
Location: Jamaica, 1718
Ship: The Blarney Cock
Little is known of Lynch's background, and it's interesting to know how the Sligo born sailor ended up in the Caribbean. Lynch is an expert swordsman who has earned a reputation along Port Royal and has had several run-ins with the authorities in the past. In Jamaica in 1718, a band of pirates led by Captain "Red" Ned Lynch oppose the greedy acting Governor, the evil Lord Durant. Durant has ruthlessly imprisoned his Lord High Justice (taking over the role himself) and mercilessly evicted the judge's wife and daughter. The daughter, Jane Barnet, attempts to assassinate Durant by paying Lynch to ambush him at the port.
The ambush fails, resulting in Jane and three of Lynch's crew being captured and sentenced to death. The other prisoners, including the judge, are also awaiting execution.
Lynch returns to the island and joins forces with the local inhabitants to overthrow the military forces and return everything Durant has stolen to its rightful owners. In the process Durant is killed by Lynch and all the prisoners are released.
Name: David Kabakov
Rank: Major
Israeli Army (1955-1970)
Mossad Counter-Terrorism Agent
Nationality: Israeli
During a raid on a Black September unit in the Middle East, the Israeli counter-terrorist Mossad agent David Kabakov surprises Iyad while she is bathing. His mission was to kill everyone in the unit; however, seeing her unarmed and naked, he spares her life and turns his attention to clearing the rest of the unit. She escapes. When the raid is complete, Kabakov finds a recorded message which Iyad had planned to publish after the terrorist attack. The recording explains the motive for the terrorism, but does not include any specific information about the attack plan itself.
Collaborating with FBI agent Sam Corley, Kabakov and his partner Robert Moshevsky try to learn the details of the plan. Meanwhile, Black September bribes freighter captain Tekiaki Ogawa to transport the plastic explosives, disguised as statuettes. Ogawa puts the explosives aboard Iyad and Lander's motorboat, but the two terrorists are discovered by the Coast Guard and forced to flee.
Ogawa is interrogated by Kabakov and Moshevsky, only for a bomb Lander had secretly planted to explode, killing Ogawa and injuring Kabakov, who is hospitalized. Iyad disguises herself as a nun to infiltrate the hospital and assassinate Kabakov, only for Moshevsky to discover her. When he tries to report her to the hospital security, she kills him and escapes. Kabakov uses a contact in the Egyptian government to discover her identity, and Corley tracks Iyad and her superior Mohammed Fasil to a hotel in Miami.
They attempt to capture them, but Iyad escapes, while Fasil is killed. After searching Iyad's room, Kabakov realizes that they are targeting the Super Bowl. Corley and Kabakov form a security detail to search the crowd for any sign of suspicious activity. During the Super Bowl game, Kabakov figures out that Iyad and Lander have mounted the bomb on the Goodyear blimp. He and Corley commandeer a helicopter and set out in pursuit of the blimp, accompanied by a police helicopter.
Loaded with the bomb, the blimp approaches the stadium. Lander pilots the blimp while Iyad exchanges deadly gunfire with policemen in the pursuing helicopters. From his place in one helicopter, Kabakov sees Iyad's face, and recognizes her as the Black September agent whose life he had previously spared. This time he does not hesitate; he shoots and kills her. Lander is mortally wounded, but he lasts long enough to succeed in flying the blimp straight into the Super Bowl, causing mass panic and destruction in the stadium. Just before dying, Lander lights the fuse of the weapon.
With just minutes away from detonation, Kabakov lowers himself from the helicopter to the blimp, and hooks it up with a cable to the helicopter, which hauls it out of the panicked stadium and over the ocean. Kabakov unhooks the cable from the blimp, and clings to the cable as the helicopter moves away to a safe distance. A few seconds later, the bomb detonates, firing the flechettes harmlessly into the water.
Name: Romer Treece
Job: Treasure Hunter/Historian
Nationality: English
Location: St. David's, Bermuda
Not much is known about Treece's past. As a young boy he found the barely alive Adam Coffin on beach after the Goliath was shipwrecked. Treece is something of a local celebrity as treasure hunter featuring on the cover of Life magazine and is an archivist and historian on shipwrecks of Bermuda. In a deleted scene we discover that he was once married but his wife was murdered by Henri Cloche over drugs. He lives in a lighthouse on St. David's Island and is largely based on the real-life treasure hunter Teddy Tucker who has a cameo in the film.
While scuba-diving near shipwrecks off Bermuda, vacationing couple David Sanders and Gail Berke recover a number of artifacts, including an ampoule of amber-coloured liquid and a medallion bearing the image of a woman and the letters "S.C.O.P.N." (meaning "Santa Clara, ora pro nobis", for "Saint Clara, pray for us") and a date, 1714. Sanders and Berke seek the advice of lighthouse-keeper and treasure-hunter Romer Treece on the origin of the medallion; he identifies the item as Spanish and takes an interest in the young couple.
The ampoule is noticed by the man who had rented diving equipment to Sanders and Berke, which in turn attracts the attention of Henri "Cloche" Bondurant, a local drug kingpin for whom the shop owner works, who unsuccessfully tries to buy the ampoule and then begins to terrorise the couple with black magic. The ampoule contains medicinal morphine from the Goliath, a ship that sank during World War II with a cargo of munitions and medical supplies. The wreck of the Goliath is considered dangerous and is posted as off-limits to divers due to the danger of explosions. Treece concludes that a recent storm has exposed her cargo of morphine and unearthed a much older wreck containing Spanish treasure.
Treece makes a deal with Cloche, so they can dive in peace and making him believe he will get the ampoules for a million dollars, while his real plan is to have the chance to find the treasure. Cloche gives him three days to recover them. Sanders, Berke and Treece make several dives to the wrecks, recovering thousands of morphine ampoules from Goliath and several additional artifacts from the Spanish wreck. Adam Coffin, the only survivor from Goliath, joins to help in the boat, but his loyalty is not very clear. When they are attacked by sharks, Coffin only says that he probably fell asleep without noticing they were in trouble.
Through research in Treece's library, they reconstruct the history of the lost treasure ship, locate a list of valuable items, including a metallic jar with the letters "EF" engraved on it, and learn that it identifies Elisabeth Farnese, a noblewoman for whom they were made by the king of Spain. Sanders is determined to locate at least one item on the list to establish provenance, since without it there is no real value to the treasure. Treece wishes to destroy the Goliath to put the morphine out of reach of Cloche, and Cloche interferes with their efforts so that he can recover the morphine for himself.
During a running series of conflicts, Treece's friend Kevin is murdered by one of Cloche's henchmen. Adam betrays them and is killed when he triggers a booby-trap while trying to steal the recovered morphine. A climactic battle during the final dive ensues, with Cloche and his divers being killed in the destruction of the Goliath and the recovery of a gold dragon necklace that will provide the needed provenance of the treasure.
Name: Vladimir Marenkov
Rank: General
генерал армии
Russian KGB
Комитет государственной безопасности
Nationality: Russian
Status: Defector
Marenkov's background is shrouded in secrecy, but after a lifetime of service in the KGB, during which time he lost lost his young wife, he has decided that Russia has failed him and he is not happy with their direction so he decides to defect to the West. CIA agent Harry Wargrave is sent to lead the team to get him out. Marenkov reveals that the Russians are trying to develop biological weapons.
Wargrave decides that Marenkov should travel across Europe by train, on the "Avalanche Express", in an attempt to lure the Russians into attacking the train so that they can discover who the Russian secret agents in Europe are. During the journey they must survive a terrorist attack and an avalanche, all planned by Russian spy-catcher Nikolai Bunin. A tape gets decoded and Harry hands it over when he boards the jet plane with Elsa.
During production in Ireland, both director Mark Robson and starring actor Robert Shaw died of heart attacks within weeks of each other. Monte Hellman was brought in to finish the direction and Gene Corman (Roger Corman's brother) was called in to complete Robson's duties as producer.
Robert Rietti was hired to re-record Robert Shaw's dialogue in the opening scene, as it was decided to redo that scene in Russian with English subtitles instead of having the Russians speak broken English. As a consequence, for continuity, all of Shaw's dialogue throughout the film was re-recorded by Rietti.
Hellman, Corman and Rietti were not credited for their work, but the film's end credit contains a note stating: "The producers wish to express their appreciation to Monte Hellman and Gene Corman for their post production services."
