BLONDE AMBITION (REMEMBERING HONOR BLACKMAN)

Honor Blackman never took herself seriously.

An actress with a natural flair for comedy, she set her sights early on in her life on an acting career and caught the public's imagination as the high kicking Cathy Gale in ITV's 'The Avengers'.

But she also earned her place in film history as the rather suggestively named, Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery's James Bond in the movie 'Goldfinger'.

Born in Essex in 1925, her father was a civil service statistician from the East End of London.

"He constantly pushed us to be better, was a bit of a disciplinarian and would whack us quite a bit - sometimes with his thick Army belt - which you got on the bare bottom," she recalled in an interview with the insurance company Saga.

"My mother was warm but downtrodden and afraid of my father because he could be so violent.

"She gave in to everything because she wanted a quiet life. But I loved my father and he's the reason that I succeeded."

At the age of 16, Blackman chose acting and elocution lessons over a bicycle.

Before long, she was studying over lunchtime in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which she paid for while holding down a job as a clerical assistant in the Home Office.

While she didn't feel at home among her fellow drama students, it did engender a desire to professionally act and her father would scour copies of 'The Stage' newspaper for possible auditions that would give her her break.

In 1946, not long after her graduation, she landed an understudy role in a West End production of Warren Cheltham-Strode's 'The Guinea Pig' with Denholm Elliott.

A year later, Blackman was in the main cast of Patrick Hastings' 'The Blind Goddess' with Basil Radford.

That year, she had her first foray into film with a non speaking role in Roy Boulting's political drama 'Fame Is The Spur' with Michael Redgrave.

There would be a more substantial role opposite Dirk Bogarde as a woman in love with her cousin in Harold French's contribution to the British anthology film 'Quartet', which drew on four stories by W Somerset Maugham.

Blackman continued to build a career in film, theatre and the new medium of television.

But there was also a disastrous marriage to the businessman Bill Sankey in 1948, which lasted eight years.

In David MacDonald's 1949 film 'Diamond City', Blackman starred as the daughter of a missionary in South Africa among a cast that included Diana Dors and Niall MacGinnis.

Developed as a starlet in the British film industry, there would be appearances in the 1949 romantic comedy 'A Boy, A Girl and A Bike' and Victor Saville's film noir Conspirator' with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.

She was the girlfriend of Dirk Bogarde's painter in Terence Fisher and Anthony Darborough's popular 1950 thriller 'So Long At The Fair' with Jean Simmons.

In Derek Twist's 1951 smuggling comedy 'Green Grow The Rushes', she starred alongside Richard Burton.

Blackman landed another notable role in Gene Martell's 1954 film noir 'Diplomatic Passport' with the Hollywood actress Marsha Hunt, who has been blacklisted during the McCarthyite Communist witch-hunts.

In Montgomery Tulley's 1955 mystery 'The Glass Cage', she starred alongside John Ireland and Sid James.

1958 saw her first foray into television, appearing in an episode of the US series 'African Patrol' with John Bentley.

There was also a part in Roy Ward Baker's gripping 1958 big screen account of the sinking of the Titanic, 'A Night To Remember' with Kenneth More, David McCallum and Alec McCowan.

She joined the comedian Norman Wisdom in John Paddy Carstairs' hit war conedy 'The Square Peg' as the Army officer he falls for.

Blackman landed her first recurring TV role in 1959 as Nicole, the secretary to Dan Dailey's Tim Collier in the ITV series 'Four Just Men' with Jack Hawkins.

In 1961, she married for a second time, taking as her husband the actor Maurice Kaufmann with whom she adopted two children.

There was an appearance that year as an adulterous secretary suspected of murder in an episode of 'The Saint' with Roger Moore.

Blackman also started studying judo - a skill that was to prove to be essential when she landed the part in 1962 of the high kicking Cathy Gale opposite Patrick Macnee during the second season of ITV's 'The Avengers'.

She remained in the role for two seasons, making way for Diana Rigg's Emma Peel but the success of the series and the popularity of her character caught the eye of Hollywood producers.

Blackman appeared as the goddess Hera in Don Chaffey's 1963 mythology 'Jason and the Argonauts' which acquired a cult status for Ray Harryhausen's special effects.

A Liberal Party supporter, she campaigned for them in the 1964 General Election in Britain but declined to run for office.

Blackman would, however, remain politically active for the rest of her life - supporting them when they became the Liberal Democrats and campaigning for their Alternative Vote campaign for proportional representation which was defeated in a 2011 referendum.

1964 would turn out to be a watershed year for Blackman.

She scored a chart success along with her 'Avengers' co-star Patrick Macnee with the song 'Kinky Boots'.

The song would get a new lease of life in 1990, re-entering the charts and reaching Number Five after incessantly being played by the BBC Radio One breakfast show host at the time, Simon Mayo.

However it was her performance as Pussy Galore in 'Goldfinger' in 1964 that was to stir movie audiences and producers.

Producer Cubby Broccoli was convinced that Blackman would be a hit with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, having admired her work as Cathy Gale in 'The Avengers'.

There was undoubted screen chemistry with Connery - she would later admit to being attracted to her leading man but resisted the temptation because she was married.

Blackman was taken aback, however, by how her appearance as a Bond Girl made her an instant and long lasting pin up.

"I never considered myself a sex symbol," Blackman told Saga.

"I hate watching myself. I've only seen 'Goldfinger' twice - once at the premiere and once at the 50th anniversary.

"I've turned down parts in the past because they required a sexy woman and I didn't think that was me."

There was an appearance in 'Life at the Top', the Canadian director Ted Kotcheff's 1965 sequel to 'Room At The Top' with Laurence Harvey, Robert Morley and Jean Simmons and a screenplay adaptation by the writer Mordecai Richer.

Blackman featured in the 1965 comedy 'The Secret of My Success' and Mervyn LeRoy's psychological thriller 'Moment to Moment' with Jean Seberg.

She was reunited with Connery in the veteran Hollywood director Edward Dymtryk's gritty 1968 Western 'Shalako' with Stephen Boyd, Brigitte Bardot and Jack Hawkins and featured in a controversial scene where her character was raped and murdered. The scene was cut by the censors.

Made in London's Shepperton Studios and on location in southern Spain, the film received mixed reviews, drawing unfavorable comparison to the Italian Spaghetti Westerns of the time.

Don Chaffey cast her alongside Richard Johnson, Roy Dortice and Peter Vaughn in the 1968 British maritime adventure 'A Twist of Sand'.

A year later, she joined Charles Bronson and Susan George in Richard Donner's 'Lola' (also known as 'Twinky') about a 40 year old man's obsession with a 16 year old schoolgirl, which featured performances by Orson Bean, Lionel Jeffries and Jack Hawkins.

In Christopher Miles' 1970 drama 'The Virgin and The Gypsy', Blackman appeared opposite Franco Nero, Joanna Shimkus and Maurice Denham in a movie adaptation of a DH Lawrence novel that was screened outside competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Gordon Flemyng's mercenary drama 'The Last Grenade' saw her play the wife of Richard Attenborough's General among a cast that included Stanley Baker, Ray Brooks and John Thaw.

Blackman appeared opposite her husband in Peter Collinson's 1971 slasher film 'Fright' with Susan George and Ian Bannen in which she played a doctor's wife whose babysitter is terrorised by her ex-husband.

There was a substantial role as a US Army Colonel's wife in Andrew V McLaglen's 1971 comedy Western 'Something Big' with Dean Martin and Brian Keith.

In 1975, her marriage to Kaufmann ended in another divorce and she would not remarry, telling interviewers she preferred the single life.

The split was amicable and she supported
Kaufmann during his 13 year struggle with stomach cancer.

"There was no one else who was caring for him and you can't watch someone you've lived go to pieces like that and not be there," she later recalled.

"And, of course, the children loved him dearly. He continued to work and our friend Albert Finney was so kind and gave him the role of his understudy in a play.

"But then, during a theatre tour, Maurice went into hospital. I visited all the time. He never came out."

Maurice Kaufmann passed away in 1997.

There was an appearance in the 1976 Hammer horror adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's 'To The Devil A Daughter' with Nastassja Kinski, Christopher Lee and Denholm Elliott.

In subsequent years, she increasingly turned to TV roles, appearing in episodes of the Australian detective series 'Boney', the Peter Falk led detective series 'Columbo', a BBC adaptation of 'Orpheus and the Underworld', 'Doctor Who' and a Christmas Day edition of the Cockney wideboy comedy series 'Minder', entitled of 'Minder on the Orient Express'.

Blackman spent a year playing the Mother Superior during a West End run of the hit musical comedy 'Nunsense'.

She enjoyed success as a maneating mother in law in the ITV sitcom 'The Upper Hand' with Joe McGann and Diana Weston, an adaptation of the US sitcom 'Who's the Boss?', which ran for seven seasons between 1990 and 1996.

Blackman would continue to act in feature films, portraying the conservationist Joy Adamson in Carl Schultz's 1999 movie 'To Walk With Lions' with Richard Harris, Kerry Fox and Ian Bannen.

In Sharon Morgan's 2001 comedy hit 'Bridget Jones Diary' with Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, she had a cameo as a party guest.

There were roles in Brian W Cook's underwhelming comedy 'Colour Me Kubrick.. A Trueish Story' with John Malkovich, Yoav Factor's 2010 comedy 'Reuniting the Rubins' with Timothy Spall, Barnaby Southcombe's 2012 thriller 'I, Anna' with Gabriel Byrne and Charlotte Rampling and Matthias Hoene's tongue in cheek 2013 comedy horror flick 'Cockneys versus Zombies'.

She appeared in TV shows like the BBC's 'New Tricks', 'Hotel Babylon', 'Casualty' and the thriller 'By Any Means'.

Blackman rekindled her love for the stage too - touring throughout 2006 as Mrs Higgins in a production of 'My Fair Lady', developing a one woman show 'Word of Honor' and playing Fraulein Schneider in the Lyric Theatre's 2007 West End production of 'Cabaret'.

In her final interviews,  Blackman laughed off suggestions that she was a national treasure in the UK.

But the reaction to her passing shows she was more than that.

 She was an international treasure.

(Honor Blackman passed away at the age of 94 on April 5, 2020)