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 with rockets going astray. Similarly Bond's anti-heroin mission in "Live and Let Die" coincided with President Nixon's 1972 declaration of a War on Drugs, whilst "GoldenEye" played against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. For the series of Bond novels, Fleming realised that without threatening villains Bond seemed less heroic: this tradition of strong literary villain was brought across to the screen in the Eon series. The third Bond film, "Goldfinger", set a pattern for having a main villain with a loyal and dangerous henchman, a model which was followed in subsequent films. Whilst Bond scholar Glenn Yeffeth