Sean Connery is one of those people who always looks like a movie star in every photo you see, so I really like this 1950s picture which just shows him as a normal guy (albeit with very bushy eyebrows!). The photo was taken in January 1954 in London at the Buxton Club (a hangout for actors) and he is with a girl called Mary Dixon.
He was a handsome devil wasn’t he – why on earth wasn’t she smiling..?
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That’s my mom! I scanned and uploaded that photo to my personal facebook page a while ago … not sure how it got out onto the world wide web! I have often wondered why she wasn’t smiling since – my god – that’s SEAN CONNERY. Except back then he wasn’t SEAN CONNERY yet, if you know what I mean. The Buxton Club was a hangout for actors, and at the time Sean had a thick Scottish accent and did television commercials, according to my mom, and many of the regulars there were stage actors who were somewhat of snobs. My mom said they used to call him “poor Sean” because they figured he had no future in acting because of his accent. I’m thinking nobody calls him “poor Sean” anymore!!!
Hi Alexandra, wow that’s amazing! I’ve always found it amazing that Connery got away with having the same accent regardless of the character he’s playing (Highlander for example!). I found the photo on Wikimedia Commons here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sean_connery_london_1950s_with_mary_dixon.jpg , but it looks like it’s been removed since then. Would you like me to remove the photo or am I OK to keep it on the blog? 🙂
Hi Mary, I don’t mind at all. It’s just bizarre to come across it and recognize it and *know* that it originated with me! I will contact wikimedia to give them permission – looks like from your link that it was deleted because whoever posted it did not provide provenance from the copyright holder. I feel rather IMPORTANT knowing that I have that power. I doubt that I have any other photographs in my possession that anyone outside my small circle would find the slightest bit interesting 🙂
My thoughts are with my mother this week in particular. She passed in 2008. Her birthday was May 10th, and as it happens this Sunday, Mother’s Day, is also her birthday. A bunch of us are going to a bar to hoist some Irish coffees in memory of our mothers who are no longer with us – we’ll each bring a photograph and share a bit about our mothers.