Telly Savalas He attribute his success to "his complete ability to be himself." Savalas had his first lead role in a film in "Crooks and Coronets" (1969), a British crime comedy. More widely seen was the James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969), where Savalas played Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Savalas had the lead in a Western shot in Spain, "Land Raiders" (1970), then was second-billed to Clint Eastwood in the war-heist film "Kelly's Heroes" (1970), shot in Yugoslavia, directed by Hutton. He was second-billed to Charles Bronson in an Italian–French crime film, "Violent City" (1970), then went to Hollywood to
Motifs in the James Bond film series be a "wink at the audience", with the suggestion that the violence was all a joke. This was shown in "Live and Let Die" when he threw the villain, Tee Hee, out of a train, removing his prosthetic arm in the process, Moore commented that he was "Just being disarming, darling". When Timothy Dalton took the role, the humour was downplayed, bringing the character more in line with that of the novels. The humour returned for the Brosnan films, with Bond admitting between kisses that he "always enjoyed studying a new tongue". Similarly, Moneypenny called Bond a "cunning linguist" after