The Living Daylights Premiere and Henchman Janni…Day 180 of Bond 365

The Living Daylights premiere

This day in 1987, the fifteenth Eon Productions’ James Bond film The Living Daylights had its London premiere with a new actor filling the tuxedo. Welsh stage actor Timothy Dalton became the fourth actor to portray the British spy, taking over for Roger Moore. The opening follows Ian Fleming’s “The Living Daylights” story with Bond on a stake out waiting to snipe a beautiful woman assigned to kill a KGB defector. Bond disobeys orders and shoots the assassin’s rifle from her hands instead.

The film starred Maryam d’Abo as the assassin with a cello; Jeroen Krabbe as the defecting officer and Joe Don Baker, the villains; as well as John Rhys-Davis, Art Malik and Virginia Hey. Desmond Llewelyn was back as Q and Robert Brown as M. Caroline Bliss took over as Miss Moneypenny, replacing Lois Maxwell. The film’s budget was $40 Million and box office receipts reached $191.2 Million.  

It has been too long since I watched this Bond film because I do not remember much of it. I definitely need to rectify that. 

Michael Brennan (Aveleyman.com)

Michael Brennan

Passed away this day in 1982

Janni in Thunderball

Michael Brennan was born in London with the birth name of Bernard O’Leary in 1912. According to IMDB, he began acting with a part as ‘John Kidd, Survivor’ in a television movie titled The Fame of Grace Darling (1939). In 1965, he was Janni, a henchman for Largo in the James Bond film Thunderball. Janni is one of the bad guys that presumably gets away after witnessing Volpe receiving a fatal guy shot wound in the back, which was intended for Bond. 

Brennan had a prolific acting career on television and film, which spanned 40 years and over 160 credits. His last role was in the tv series Cowboys (1980) as ‘Picket leader’ in the episode “C.L.O.D.” He passed away at the age of 69 in Chichester, West Sussex. 

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