That Time My Cousin Was In A James Bond Film...

After a ten-hour shift, I sat down and turned on the TV. From time to time, I'll watch a show for a minute or two. This afternoon one of the channels was playing old James Bond films from the 1970s.

One Bond film ended, another one began. Turns out the one that started is the one my cousin is in.

The film, The Spy Who Loved Me, came out in 1977. I was in jr. high school in 1977. This was pre-internet days so one of the best ways to learn about a movie was to sit at lunchtime with your friends who had actually seen the show and talk about it. Everyone freaked out over the movie's opening scene where some baddies chase James down a mountain, shooting him and trying to kill him while skiing. This was also the time when I did a lot of skiing (an expensive all-day pass was $24 back then...). And when Bond skis off the cliff and deploys a Union Jack parachute, boy--that was hard to top.

And when I found out my cousin (well, technically, he was my mother's cousin, but he was born in 1951, closer to when we were born than my mother who was born in 1931 so we considered him our cousin...). His name was Robert Young and he was a skiing pioneer. I found his obituary when I googled him name earlier today. You can access it: HERE.

If Robert had been born twenty years later, he would have done well in the internet age. He was confident, brash, good-looking, and a huge personality. He probably would have competed in the Olympics as well. Plus, the arial training wouldn't have destroyed his body at such a young age. There were no pools to land in back then. It was trial-and-error on the slopes. 

Robert passed away in 2003--he was only fifty one. At the time I thought that was old. Since I'm older than that right now, it's not old at all. Since he was older, we didn't hang out much, but we sure knew of him. When we found out he was in The Spy Who Loved Me, we thought he was the skier who did the jump. Turns out, he was Bond's double but he didn't jump. Still, that's okay by me--I knew someone who was actually in a James Bond film.

If Robert were still alive, he'd be sixty-seven (still young in my book...). I'd love to sit down and chat about the life he led, the awards, the experiences, what it was like to be on a big-budget movie set. I suppose that conversation will have to wait for another time.