Dann Gire remembers agent of change Roger Moore for his charm, wit and 'humility'

Someone had to ask the question: Why are you wearing dark sunglasses at a dimly lit press junket in a New York hotel?

"Because I put them on this morning and I forgot to take them off!" Roger Moore replied.

Moore playfully fenced with reporters gathered at a June, 1981, press junket for the James Bond movie "For Your Eyes Only."

This would be the fifth of seven feature films in which Moore played Great Britain's most famous secret agent, a character he inherited from Scotsman Sean Connery and so radically retooled that it probably saved the film franchise. (More about that in a moment.)

Rumors persisted that the actor had pulled a real bender the night before the junket, and that his eyeballs were so bloodshot they resembled the opening credits to a James Bond movie. Hence the sunglasses.

"I'm a movie star!" Moore said, emphatically. "I've got to wear dark glasses. Isn't that what it says in the press kits?"

Moore, who originally found fame as TV's first international man of mystery Simon Templar in "The Saint," died Tuesday at 89 in Switzerland after a battle with cancer.

In 1999, the British government honored him with the title Commander of the British Empire, in part for his work as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and an advocate for children's causes.

Most Americans probably remember first becoming aware of the handsome young actor when he replaced James Garner on the popular 1957-1962 Western TV series "Maverick." Moore played Beau Maverick, Garner's British cousin.

Even though the series had already begun a ratings spiral, Moore won over audiences with his charm and quick, self-effacing wit, qualities that defined the actor and many of his roles for the rest of his career.

At the 1981 New York junket, a few arts journalists and I sat around a small table where Moore, still wearing those sunglasses, held court.

"When Cosmopolitan magazine started with nude spreads, they wrote and asked if I would do one," Moore said. "They wanted me to be holding a Walther PPK across my nether regions to hide them. I told them 'not even a Thompson submachine gun!' I'm terribly modest."

A reporter asked if Moore would ever do a film for a famous director.

"I'd like to do a film for anybody, actually," the star replied. "I'd like to work with Glenda Jackson and Jill Clayburgh. And there a couple of things I'd like to do with Raquel Welch. Heh, heh, heh!"

How about reading reviews of his movies?

"I only read the good ones," Moore snipped, "so I don't read much."

He cocked an eyebrow above a dark lens.

"Seriously, you don't believe the bad ones, so how can you believe the good ones?"

007 producer Cubby Broccoli couldn't have picked a better actor than Moore to play Bond in the 1970s.

The Cold War raged on during the 1960s and moviegoers became captivated by the bold spy with the license to kill. FBI and CIA operatives became the darlings of pop entertainment.

Then came the buzzkill '70s with Watergate and revelations about the inner workings of government security forces that threatened to render secret agents passe.

Connery's coldblooded Bond in "Dr. No" (he shoots an unarmed man in the back, a shocker for the time) suddenly felt out-of-step.

When Moore joined Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1973's "Live and Let Die," he brought his signature charm and wit to the character, upping its tongue-in-cheek quality to buffoonish comedy.

It all worked out. 007 novelist Ian Fleming wanted Moore to play Bond in the first place.

The actor never rested on his spy laurels. He starred in the drama "Sea Wolves," a dreadful thing called "Sunday Lovers" and scored big with Hal Needham's chase comedy "Cannonball Run," in which he played a rich playboy who imagines himself to be the famous actor Roger Moore.

"My greatest sin," Moore told us in 1981, "is humility."

He grinned.