In Remembrance: Robert Brown

    Robert Brown, the British character actor best known for giving James Bond  his assignments in the 1980s has  passed away on Friday, November 14th, 2003. He was 85.

     Little is known about Brown's early life outside of the fact he was born on November 12, 1918 on the Hebrides Islands, Scotland.

     His first film role was an uncredited bit part in Orson Wells' The Third Man (1949). (Ironically, Bernard Lee, whom Brown would replace in the Bond series, also appeared in The Third Man.) Throughout the 1950s to the 70s he appeared in numerous British film productions including dramas such as Shake Hands With The Devil (1959) and period pieces like Ben-Hur (1959) and The 300 Spartans (1962).

     Brown would first meet his Bond series co-star Roger Moore in 1958 when the two appeared together on the BBC series Ivanhoe. Brown would team up with Moore on television two more times, guesting on Moore's The Saint series in 1963 and 1964.

     Brown made his first appearance in the Bond series in the 1977 installment The Spy Who Loved Me in the role of Admiral Hargreaves. He would return to the series in 1983's Octopussy, taking over the role of M, the head of the Secret Service from the late Bernard Lee. (Lee had passed away just prior to the shooting of 1981's For Your Eyes Only and producer Cubby Broccoli, not wanting to recast the role so quickly out of respect, had the script changed to say that M was on vacation.) Brown would stay with the series for another three films (A View To A Kill (1985), The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence To Kill (1989)), overseeing the handoff of the Bond role from Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton.

     Brown's last role was in the 1992 television movie Merlin Of The Crystal Cave.